Vice News is a leftist outlet, partially owned by The Walt Disney Company and Soros Fund Management.  A recent Vice article about the National Park System gives an insight into just how deep in the weeds leftist publications must go to find "fresh" new content to keep their more fanatic readers happy.  That's how we get a fiery article informing readers that the national parks are hotbeds of White nationalist racism.  The funny thing is that, to the extent racism is tied into the National Park System, much of it came from the forerunners to today's Democrats and Progressives.

The article's title and subtitle make the premise clear: "White Nationalists Want to Reclaim Nature as a Safe Space for Racists: White supremacy groups have deep roots in the U.S. wilderness and recreation movements, going all the way back to the creation of the National Park System."

The author, Tess Owen, really, really hates Republicans and sees White nationalists behind every bush and tree.  She's published a string of articles bearing such titles as "The GOP Paved the Way for the Far-Right to Terrorize Pride This Year," "Arrested Patriot Front Brothers Have Ties to Apocalyptic Christian Nationalist Church," and "They Love Jesus, Bon Iver, and Incels.  Inside America's New Ultranationalist Youth Movement."

That same red-hot hatred burns in the article about the national parks.  These are the opening paragraphs:

America's white nationalists are once again embracing the great outdoors. 

At first glance, it may seem out of character: Wholesome activities like hiking, foraging for berries, and camping seemingly stand in sharp contrast to lifestyles of the basement-dwelling, far-right livestreamers. 

While you're laughing yourself silly about that, here's the shtick about the modern "White supremacist" movement and the national parks: scary extremists, who are also scary Christians, believe that Americans need to reconnect to the land far from leftist urbanism and "'ecofascism,' a racist theory that has surged in the far-right in the last decade that blames immigration for environmental woes."  Suddenly, the environment is no longer the preserve of leftist hippies.  It's neo-Nazis all the way.

The Nazis get thrown in here too because they "encouraged a healthy lifestyle and good diet" to keep their race pure.  Given the crunchy organic veganism and nature-worship that many leftists embrace, I guess we could make an argument that Owen's political fellow travelers are also health-loving Nazis.  It's a stupid argument about both the left and the right.

Image: Old Faithful in Yellowstone.  Public domain.

But here's what's really funny about Owen's emotional logorrhea: in spelling out the horrible, racist history of America's national parks, Owen indicts Democrats, socialists, and progressives.

Owen writes that the national parks were the home of Native Americans, many of whom were forcibly removed or even killed.  That's true.  The history of European settlers and Native Americans is a sad one, but it's also a complicated one.  For many decades, the Native Americans gave as good as they got, losing only because the Europeans, between natural population growth and immigration, inevitably triumphed.  Life isn't fair, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the parks.

Next, Owen explains that the early conservation movement was racist: "These conservationists embraced restrictive immigration laws, scientific racism, and eugenics."

That may well be true, but scientific racism and eugenics were core to the beliefs of some of the most admired people among today's leftists — for example, Helen Keller (socialist), Margaret Sanger (Planned Parenthood founder), WEB DuBois (African-American activist), Clarence Darrow (anti-creationist), Oliver Wendell Holmes (progressive Supreme Court justice), Jacques Cousteau (oceanic environmentalist), John Harvey Kellogg (founder of the same Kellogg's brand that boycotted Breitbart), Sidney Webb (co-founder of the leftists' beloved London School of Economics), Francis Crick (scientist), and John Maynard Keynes (economist).

Owen points out, too, that some of the national parks embraced Jim Crow's segregation policies, with these ending only in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act.  Jim Crow, of course, was institutionalized racism put in place by Democrat politicians.  And the Civil Rights Act passed because of Republicans, with Democrats desperately attempting to prevent it.

What Owen cannot point to is any example of modern Blacks (since 1964) being actively or passively barred from the national parks.  She doesn't point to one single incident in which one of these White supremacist groups, on one of their "back to nature" trips, interfered with Black enjoyment of the parks.

It's hard to imagine that, because conservationists over 100 years ago were racists or because Jim Crow affected some parks before 1964, Blacks are still too damaged to take advantage of the dazzling natural beauty America has to offer.  One thing that's very clear, though, is that it's not the White nationalists keeping Blacks out of those parks.