As their national presence grows the Right Wing is going to extremes to discredit Parkland students.

Alex Jones played a video featuring @davidhogg111's #MarchForOurLives speech dubbed over with a Hitler speech https://t.co/icsyQcxG4I pic.twitter.com/3Dt5mhIL4J

— Media Matters (@mmfa) March 27, 2018

The above tweets features the always rational Alex Jones suggesting that Parkland student David Hogg is the new embodiment of Hitler.

Because you know that makes sense.

But the smear tactics did not end there. Not by a long shot.

Courtesy of Media Matters:  

Right-wing media outlets amplified claims that Parkland survivor David Hogg made a Nazi salute after his speech at the March for Our Lives event in Washington, D.C. But the gesture Hogg made was clearly a raised fist, not the Seig Heil salute.

In a March 25 article, Breitbart writer AWR Hawkins positively highlighted several Twitter accounts that claimed Hogg made a Nazi salute, although the image used to illustrate the article debunked the claim.

Writing for conservative pundit Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire, Ryan Saavedra wrote that Hogg “threw up a salute that sent Twitter into a frenzy.” Saavedra claimed it’s “not clear what Hogg meant by his hand gesture” but went on to include nine tweets that called the gesture, among other things, “Hitler-esque.” 

In a March 24 blog post, Alex Jones’ pro-Trump outlet Infowars called the march “the ‘Hitler Youth” invasion of Washington D.C.” and referred to the speakers as “young fascists-in-training,” specifically calling Hogg “the propagandist-in-chief”.

At left is @tyler_mitchell’s photo of @Emma4Change for the cover of @TeenVogue. At right is what so-called “Gun Rights Activists” have photoshopped it into. #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/jW6tTOv2Db

— Phillip Picardi (@pfpicardi) March 25, 2018

Here, by the way, is the video from which that image on the left was taken, just in case there are any trolls here who want to argue that the one of the right is not photoshopped.

💪🏼🧡 pic.twitter.com/aSuEgPEh5o

— Sarah Chadwick// #NEVERAGAIN (@Sarahchadwickk) March 26, 2018

And yes, there's more:  

And as of this weekend, this group of idealistic young people have officially become the right’s leading hate figures. 

The first and most repugnant strategy was to directly attack high-profile campaigners, especially students David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez. 

Running short of reasoned arguments, many attempted to push conservative buttons with high impact visuals. Alt-right social media company Gab was one of many that disseminated a doctored animation of Gonzalez in which she falsely appeared to be tearing up the US constitution. Cartoonist and Trump sycophant Ben Garrison depicted Hogg as an assault rifle, wielded by CNN, and loaded with Marxism. Breitbart re-published a round of tweets accusing Hogg of throwing a Nazi salute. 

On Front Page – an outlet led by David Horowitz, whose main stock in trade is virulent Islamophobia – Bruce Thornton decried Hogg’s “profanity laced tantrums” and reduced him and his fellow students to political “shock troops” being manipulated by a progressive “ideology of melodrama and moral exhibitionism”.

Though David and Emma have born the main brunt of the vicious attacks from the Right Wing, likely due to their effective messaging, other Parkland kids have also been targeted:  

Along with Hogg and Gonzalez, the right found some new targets among the Parkland survivors. The one who got the most scrutiny was Marjory Stoneman Douglas student Delaney Tarr, who spoke at the Washington rally. In her speech, she suggested that bump stock bans could be expanded into further gun control. Many rightwing outlets drew the inference that the movement would not stop at an assault weapons ban, but would try to ban firearms altogether. 

Fox News did not resort to calling the Parkland students Nazis, but they did call them sanctimonious pawns.

Fox News covered the #MarchForOurLives by insulting students for not wanting to be gunned down at school. This is unhinged. pic.twitter.com/xBArtKREu8

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) March 26, 2018

Keep in mind that these are children.

Children who just had their lives torn apart by gun violence, and many of whom lost friends to that same violence.

But to the Right Wing they are nothing more than adversaries who must be crushed under foot, and their suffering does not buy them any sympathy or empathy whatsoever.