Nothing says "ugly politics" these days more than a good old-fashioned false equivalency, and the Buncombe County GOP just delivered a real whopper.

With former Asheville City Councilman and congressional candidate Carl Mumpower chairing the Buncombe County Republican Party these days, their press releases and website have become highly entertaining, if not downright wacky at times. Take this post from last week, promoted on their website and complete with a picture of anti-fascist protesters wearing black hoods and garb: "Does this anger mismanagement group look familiar? Antifa and ISIS differ only in weaponry & experience…"

Mumpower goes on to lump in the Black Lives Matter movement "and other anger mismanagement groups masquerading as social justice collaborators," noting that "their ‘anything goes’ boundaries have an eerie similarity to another terror group – ISIS."

It gets better, with Mumpower offering a comparison chart that claims both groups rely on chaos and confusion, power and control, and despotic governance. They do this by employing "pretense of principle; deception intimidation and fear; and anger and violence."

Now, I suppose this is like saying that a ravenous wolf and a surly chihuahua are no different because they're both canines, have bad dispositions and sharp teeth, and they'll try to intimidate you by biting and growling, but seriously, the comparison is laughable.

But in today's world, where possibly the least qualified candidate in American history managed to become president partly on the strength of false equivalencies, it's important to debunk these canards.

So, for the record, the anti-fascists and Black Lives Matter protesters were not the ones that drove a car into a group of anti-Neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville, killing one woman. A neo-Nazi was arrested for that.

The Antifa and BLM members were not the ones marching by torchlight, evoking the terror of Nazi Germany by chanting "Jews will not replace us" and the Nazi slogan "Blood and soil." That would be the neo-Nazis — you know, the ones who want an ethnic cleansing for America, a completely white nation in which people of color have been removed.

Yes, Antifa and BLM members have provoked demonstrators, and I don't agree with some of their tactics. In general, I don't support violence in trying to make a point during civil unrest, especially when you're protesting a group that relies on violence and intimidation to recruit more hate-filled members.

Again, I would think this is self-evident, but I also don't think Antifa, which is a loosely based group of anarchists and other protesters, and Black Lives Matter, a better-organized group that formed to protest police-involved shootings of black people, espouse the tactics of Isis. Those Islamic State terror tactics involve beheadings, torture, rape, throwing human beings off of buildings and mass executions, not to mention the absolute subjugation of women in all matters, all in the name of a twisted form of Islam, with the ultimate goal of forming a Muslim state, or caliphate, that would drag the world back to about 800 A.D.

Let me put it this way: I grabbed this example of false equivalence from the website trulyfallacious.com. It reads: "Gang bangers cover there heads with hoodies. Nuns cover their heads with habits. Therefore, nuns are no better than gang bangers."

You see, the two are not equal, so the comparison is false. It's just like saying Antifa and Islamic State are the same.

They're just not.

But Mumpower claims they are, even going so far as to show a blurred picture of an Islamic State member holding two actual severed heads, juxtaposed next to a picture of comedienne Kathy Griffin holding a fake yet bloody head of what is supposed to be Donald Trump.

It was a tasteless, vapid joke that backfired horribly, without doubt, but it was not the same as two actual severed heads.

"This isn't a joke," Mumpower wrote under the shot of the Isis soldier. "This isn't either," he wrote under Griffin's picture.

Actually, it was. Just a really stupid one.

So, what's the harm in offering up a little false equivalence as legitimate commentary, you say? I posed that question to Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University.

"I think it's just bad for democracy when we conflate violent extremists with the opposing party," Cooper said, assigning some blame to both parties. "When the left says that Republicans all side with (white supremacist) Richard Spencer, that is also awful. I think rhetorically it’s a problem for democracy, because it makes it difficult if not impossible to find moderation."

Indeed. Moderation has left the building, particularly on the right, where President Trump goes on the air and says there were "very fine people" on both sides of the Charlottesville debacle.

Sorry, I just can't define neo-Nazis as "very fine people." It's a false equivalence run amok.

Cooper says the Buncombe GOP posting illustrates, on a local level, that "there’s a battle going on over the future of the Republican Party." Mumpower's Islamic State-Antifa comparison is not meant to be the wind beneath the wings of moderate Republicans.

"I don’t think it’s a message that inspires," Cooper said. "It's a message of fear. That's the goal. That may be effective in the short term for the party, but it's destructive in the long term for democracy."

Honestly, I wouldn't really care that much about this if it were just Mumpower spouting off, as he has wandered so far right that he flirts with irrelevance at times. But the move is indicative of a troubling shift in the GOP to the far right.

"If you’re a conservative, the only game in town is the Republican Party," Mumpower wrote.

I know a lot of conservatives who don't believe in this tripe, who are smart, deep-thinking people who can appreciate nuance — and blatant manipulation. I can't imagine Mumpower's party is for them.

I realize both parties have shifted farther to the edges after the election, but I'd say the right has lurched considerably farther, embracing the alt-right and Tea Party wing, with gusto.

That's what Mumpower is doing with his false equivalence nonsense. And nobody would really care, except other Republicans elected him to be their leader in Buncombe County.

"This wouldn't be very meaningful, or frankly very interesting, if this were a fringe group posting this," Cooper said. "But this is a group that's supposed to represent the biggest tent of the Republican Party in Buncombe County."

I've got to think that's a tent a lot of conservatives don't want to enter.

This is the opinion of John Boyle. Contact him at 232-5847 or jboyle@citizen-times.com