Was the McManuth-Price family from Dearborn, Michigan evicted and fined $100,000 for having Christmas lights by islamic neighbours and local authorities? No, that's not true. The story was published by a liberal satire website that tries to educate gullible Trump supporters and Republicans about the need to actually click and read links before sharing or liking them in order to avoid being embarrassed by fans of the site later. All the events described in the article are not real.
The story originated from an article published on December 16, 2018 titled "BREAKING: Dearborn Family Evicted, Fined $100K For Christmas Lights" (archived here) which opened:
Mickey and Kira McManuth-Price and their children were literally run out of Dearborn, Michigan this afternoon after they bucked the system and put up their Christmas lights. According to the Dearborn Town charter, which has been dictated by Muslamic Fallahs for more than five years now, Christmas lights can only be displayed where they aren't visible to the Moon God.
The Prices decided they would fight back this year after their son, Bob, was diagnosed with incurable Hodgkins Lymphomyopia. All he wanted was to see the lights he remembered as a young boy. At 16, Bob smiled as they turned the lights on. The smile lasted less than ten minutes.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
BREAKING: Dearborn Family Evicted, Fined $100K For Christmas Lights
They shouted Muslamic curse words as the family fled town.
The article contains several warnings that it is satire, for example the header of the page says "Information you probably shouldn't trust" and the category the article was published in read "Muslamic is a Word Now in Satire". There is indeed no real word "muslamic" and we are not sure what "fallahs" are supposed to be either.
The site comes with a clear satire disclaimer at the bottom of each article:
sat·ire ~ˈsaˌtī(ə)r
noun
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, OR ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
If you disagree with the definition of satire or have decided it is synonymous with "comedy," you should really just move along.
The owner and main writer of the site is self-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair, a man from Maine who has made it his full time job to troll gullible conservatives and Trump supporters into liking and sharing his articles. He runs several other websites, including potatriotpost.us, dailyworldupdate.us and nofakenewsonline.us. Sometimes he is also known under his nickname "Busta Troll". A second man working on the sites is John Prager as revealed in this earlier story we wrote.
Articles from Blair's sites frequently get copied by "real" fake news sites who often omit the satire disclaimer and any other hints the stories are fake. Blair has tried to get these sites shut down in the past but new ones keep cropping up and he keeps knocking them down.
Blair and his operation were profiled by the Washington Post on November 17, 2018 by Eli Saslow:
'Nothing on this page is real': How lies become truth in online America
November 17 The only light in the house came from the glow of three computer monitors, and Christopher Blair, 46, sat down at a keyboard and started to type. His wife had left for work and his children were on their way to school, but waiting online was his other community, an unreality where nothing was exactly as it seemed.
If you are interested in learning more about Blair and the history of his sites, here is something to get you started:
The Ultimate Christopher Blair and America's Last Line of Defense Reading List | Lead Stories
STORY UPDATED: check for updates below. Yesterday Eli Saslow at the Washington Post wrote a fantastic article about Christopher Blair, a man from Maine who has been trolling conservatives and Trump supporters online for years and occasionally even made a living out of it.
If you see one of his stories on a site that does not contain a satire disclaimer, assume it is fake news. If you do see the satire disclaimer it is of course also fake news.
NewsGuard, a company that uses trained journalist to rank the reliability of websites, describes wearethellod.com as:
A site that publishes false stories and hoaxes that are often mistaken for real news, part of a network named America's Last Line of Defense run by hoax perpetrator Christopher Blair.
According to NewsGuard the site does not maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability. Read their full assessment here.
We wrote about wearethellod.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:
- Fake News: 13 ISIS Members NOT Arrested As Migrant Caravan Hits Santa Recto
- Fake News: Colin Kaepernick NOT Arrested For Domestic Violence
- Fake News: Clinton Foundation NOT Ordered To Cease Operations - Chelsea NOT Charged With Fraud
- Fake News: Kid Rock, Ted Nugent Did NOT Raise More Than $10 Million to Fight the War on Christmas
- Fake News: Bush, Clinton, Obama Funeral Party Did NOT Trash Air Force One
