Why Don’t Right-Wingers Have ‚Fact Checkers‘?

‘No one is completely useless,’ as they say in Germany, ‘they can still serve as a bad example.’

Well, according to this saying, the very German project ‘Volksverpetzer’ is not entirely useless either. (If you’re not familiar with it: Imagine the stereotype of a stereotype of an ultra-left, ultra-woke chatterbox – and then turn the crazy knobs up to 200%. Their concept of reality and truth is… quite unique. Nevertheless – or precisely because of that? – they call themselves ‘fact checkers,’ and that’s where it gets interesting.)

Recently, this project on the leftist X/Twitter clone ‘BlueSky’ stated:

So, why are there no right-wing fact checkers? There are so many right-wing millionaires who are starting entire media houses. But there shouldn’t be a fact checker among them? They complain that fact checkers are so ‘leftist’ & everything is quite different. Well then, do it! Or are they afraid! (@volksverpetzer.de on BlueSky, quoted from @mtaushb, 23.09.2025)

One wants to roll their eyes, chuckle, and turn to other topics. We intuitively sense that this is nonsense. And in everyday life, this intuition is enough to avoid wasting time.

The folk wisdom on this is: It takes much more work to scrape pudding off the wall than to throw it there. So it often is with leftist nonsense.

However, we know from philosophy that sometimes articulating supposed self-evident truths can lead to greater clarity in one’s own thinking. So let’s articulate why this nonsensical statement is so nonsensical (and at the same time revealing).

So why do no ‘right-wing’ fact checkers exist?

To answer this question precisely, we must first clarify what ‘right-wing’ really means here.

The term ‘right-wing’ does not necessarily have a meaning regarding political positioning today. In real usage, ‘right-wing’ usually means ‘not left’ or simply ‘bad.’ ‘Left’ and ‘good,’ however, refer in practice to what the current propaganda of corporations and billionaire-funded NGOs says. If ‘left’ is ever defined in content, it is roughly as ‘anti-Western.’

(That ‘left’ in practice simply means ‘the propaganda of the day’ is evident from ‘leftist’ positions like ‘Queers for Palestine’ or from the rapid shift from denial to hysteria at the beginning of the Corona panic. What is internally contradictory or can be switched to the opposite on command is not a thought structure that can be labeled as ‘left’ or ‘right.’)

The sentence ‘So, why are there no right-wing fact checkers?’ could thus be correctly translated: Why do groups and media that do not parrot the propaganda of the day not have dedicated authorities to determine what is true and what is false? These leftist ‘fact checkers’ are nothing other than wannabe truth ministries modeled after Orwell’s 1984.

The post of that leftist initiative indeed describes a real difference! Yet the implicit accusation is a brutal self-revelation.

A difference between ‘leftist’ and ‘rightist’ understanding of truth-finding is the role of authorities.

Leftists say things like ‘Trust the science!’ They employ ‘fact checkers’ and thereby reveal a radically authority-seeking method of truth-finding. For those who today call themselves ‘left,’ true is what their authorities have labeled as ‘true.’

‘True’ for (today’s!) leftists is, for example, what the person on state or corporate media said. Right-wingers may be Trump supporters, and it is rare to find that they hold something to be true just because Trump said it. However, you will hear the most absurd nonsense from leftists (such as that a man in women’s clothing is a woman) as long as they feel that by uttering this nonsense they are pleasing a moral authority.

For ‘right-wingers’ (or more precisely: ‘non-leftists’), it is the task of every person and especially every journalist to examine statements for truthfulness and contradictions. For (today’s) leftists, terms like ‘independent thinker’ are a sign of ‘right-wing extremism.’

When that leftist initiative (perhaps enviously) talks about ‘right-wing millionaires’ who are ‘starting entire media houses,’ they probably first have ‘nius.de’ in mind.

And from a leftist perspective, it indeed seems like a gap: Why are there no ‘fact checkers’ at Nius or the Freien Denkern?

The answer is, dear leftists: You can’t see the forest for the trees! Meaning: We so-called right-wingers are all what you call fact checkers.

If I wanted to use the Bible and the church for illustration, I could tell the leftists: You believe that every person is the greatest authority on what God and the Bible say (‘sola scriptura’). Yet in worldly matters, you don’t dare to add two and two together without the man on TV or the speaker at the demo telling you the result.

And furthermore: For (many of) us, it’s exactly the opposite! In matters of faith, I rely on the insights of two thousand years over my gut feelings – yet in worldly matters, my motto is: Test everything, believe little, think for yourself!

We ‘right-wingers’ have no fact checkers because each of us is a fact checker. And if ‘right-wing’ journalists have a special authority in matters of facts, it is not because this has been granted to them by the state or anyone else, but because they have long proven themselves against the many fact checks of the readers.

No, no one is completely useless. Even a ‘Volksverpetzer’ can be useful if we can sharpen our own statements and make them less foolish by examining the stupidity and vagueness of its statements.

But I ask you, dear readers, to also examine these statements. Do I pass the fact check? Was I perhaps even somewhat useful? I would be very pleased – so definitely send a link to this essay to a friend!