Extremist and sexist memes, video scrubbed from Whatcom candidate’s social media
A Republican candidate for the state Legislature in Whatcom County has shared sexist and antisemitic memes online, promoted misinformation about COVID-19 and offered apparent support for anti-government militants.
Dan Johnson of Laurel, a former towing company owner who’s running for the 42nd Legislative District’s position 2 House seat, also has apparently removed his vlog “The Hook News and Information” from the video streaming site YouTube and recently restricted access to his public Facebook page.
But The Bellingham Herald made copies of false, sexist and antisemitic posts before they disappeared from public view, and “The Hook” remains available in audio form on the Spotify streaming service.
Johnson placed second in the Aug. 2 primary and is facing Democrat Joe Timmons of Bellingham in a race for the seat now held by state Rep. Sharon Shewmake, D-Bellingham, who is running for state Senate.
Johnson collected $88,444 for his campaign since registering to fundraise in November 2021, according to the state Public Disclosure Commission website on Friday, Sept. 23.
In addition, the state Republican Party has spent $4,800 as an independent expense in support of Johnson’s campaign.
In a phone conversation, Johnson told The Bellingham Herald that “I don’t have a lot of time right now” and disconnected the call without answering questions about his social media posts.
“You called me a racist right off the bat,” he said, saying that further questions should be sent to his campaign email.
Johnson was given 24 hours to answer emailed questions from The Herald but he failed to respond to two emails and a text message.
Opponent’s reaction
Timmons told The Herald that he thinks voters should be aware of Johnson’s online presence, even though Johnson has apparently tried to hide it.
“There is no place for racism or bigotry of any kind in the Washington state Legislature, regardless of political party,” he said in an email.
“I believe candidates and elected officials should lead by example and that voters have a right to know the true values and opinions of those they are electing to represent them,” Timmons said.
Such political extremism is different from normal partisan debate, said Andrew Reding, who heads the Whatcom Democrats.
“No political party has a monopoly on truth. That’s why Democrats and Republicans need each other to make democracy work, by giving citizens real choices at the ballot box, and curbing excesses on either side,” Reding told The Herald.
“But that breaks down when candidates promote extreme falsehoods and imply that our democracy may need to be overthrown by force of arms. Johnson trivializes the deliberate mass murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust by comparing it to the mass distribution of vaccines against COVID, which, according to a study in the respected medical journal The Lancet did exactly the opposite — prevented the deaths of well over 14 million persons worldwide in just the first year they became available,” he said
“Johnson propagates this conspiracy theory to falsely imply that the U.S. government is engaged in mass murder of its own citizens, and that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to arm citizens to overthrow their democratically elected leaders, as demonstrated by self-styled ‘militias’ in their Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol,” Reding said in an emailed statement.
Republican response
Johnson was “recommended,” but not officially endorsed, by the Whatcom Republicans for the August primary, according to their campaign website in July.
John Ramsey, who heads the Whatcom Republicans, didn’t respond to phone calls seeking comment for this report.
A spokesman for the state Republican Party did not respond to an email from The Herald, and the main office phone rang unanswered at the party’s Bellevue offices.
Online sexism, antisemitism
A Herald examination of Johnson’s public Facebook page going back nearly a decade shows that he has shared sexist and antisemitic memes, including crude jokes aimed at women, and comparing COVID-19 restrictions to the Holocaust.
The Herald will not publish the most offensive of the memes from Johnson’s social media, but the newspaper has shown them to the people who are quoted in this report.
A meme shared in 2014 sympathizes with cult leader David Koresh, white separatist Randy Weaver, and anti-government activist Cliven Bundy, comparing the armed sieges at Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Bundy ranch to the 1970 Kent State massacre of students at a nonviolent peace rally.
On Jan. 18, 2013, he shared a meme from the National Association for Gun Rights that FactCheck.org said was based on a fabricated quote.
Another Facebook post from 2013 offers a criticism of unruly children at a Bellingham supermarket.
“If they were my kids I would have put them in the ground years ago and started over,” he wrote.
Scrubbed and censored
Several of his Facebook posts have been flagged by the social media company as false, partly false, or misleading.
It was unclear if Johnson had intentionally scrubbed his vlog, as some hard-line conservatives are doing with their social media in this election, or if YouTube had removed his channel.
A spokesperson for Google, YouTube’s parent company, didn’t respond to Herald questions about Johnson’s account, which now has no videos, even though the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine shows that his page once contained more than 50 episodes on topics like “Critical Race Theory,” “Sexual Health Education for K-12 Students: Right or Wrong?” and “Flip Flop Fauci, AOC’s Grandmother’s House, and Euthanizing Baby Boomers.”
In a February interview with The Herald, Johnson mentioned his involvement with a podcast and vlog called “The Hook News and Information.”
At the time, The Herald was unable to locate copies of his show to verify content.
But more in-depth research revealed the Spotify files and evidence that more than 50 episodes of “The Hook” once existed on YouTube.
That evidence includes posts promoting ‘The Hook” with YouTube links on his public Facebook page, and The Herald made copies of those posts before his Facebook page was wiped clean.
Critical race theory
On Episode 31 of “The Hook,” dated June 29, 2021, Johnson appeared to advocate political assassination in a discussion of the Second Amendment.
“The right to bear arms is more necessary today than it was 200 years ago. As our government gets more out of control, our citizenry, better known as a well-regulated militia, may someday be needed to put the elected officials back into check or remove them entirely,” he said.
In Episode 45, Johnson tackles critical race theory, which is a way of understanding some ugly truths of American history — including the genocides of slavery, Jim Crow and removal of Indigenous people, as well as Chinese exclusion laws and the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
“They’re wanting to teach, ‘If you’re white, you’re not right’,” Johnson said.
Bellingham City Councilwoman Kristina Michele Martens, who was elected in 2021 as the council’s first Black woman, rejects that claim.
Martens, who worked with the Chuckanut Health Foundation to create a countywide Racial Equity Commission, called the episode an “overly simplified, shockingly short attempt to summarize the incredibly complex thesis that is critical race theory,” in an emailed statement to The Herald.
“In my mind, at its heart, critical race theory is wanting the actual and holistic history of America to be taught, how it began to accumulate its wealth, and the consequences and centuries-long focus of protecting one specific class, straight, white, rich, land-owning males,” Martens said.
“I would say it’s not even just a whitewashing of the issue. It seems like more of an attempt to assuage white guilt by belittling the fact that America is a country that was founded on male-dominated white supremacy,” she said.
False Holocaust comparison
In a public Facebook post dated April 20, 2020, Johnson features a yellow Star of David with the words “Vaccinated. 2020-ID-No-V-123-666.”
Text that accompanies the meme reads: “A new badge has been created which will allow you to go back to work, to travel in your state, to fly, catch a train or bus, and to buy and sell.”
To introduce the meme, Johnson wrote: “I think this would sum it up. BTW’s if you don’t understand the meme, crack a history book.”
April 20 is the birthday of Adolf Hitler, who as the leader of Nazi Germany orchestrated a genocide against European Jews that included forcing them to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing.
At the Anti-Defamation League in Seattle, regional director Miri Cypers said such false comparisons make light of the Holocaust, which occurred during World War II when Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered 6 million Jews and 11 million others, including gay men, disabled people, Roma, political opponents, ethnic Poles and Soviet civilians.
“Elected officials comparing vaccine mandates aimed at ending the COVID-19 pandemic to Nazi Germany trivializes the Holocaust and diminishes the trauma of victims and survivors,” Cypers told The Herald.
“In fact, these types of comparisons actually distract and deter society from addressing the root causes of the Holocaust and making it sure that it never happens again,” Cypers said in an email.
Such trivialization is antisemitic on its face, according to the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy organization.
This story was originally published September 25, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
