Background/Context:
1. Fox News And The GOP Are Basically Terrorist Organizations (Based On Their Rhetoric & The Effects Of That Rhetoric)
2. GOP Hypocrisy...The Republicans Basic Argument Is: We Are Going To Hurt & Betray The Country But You Should Be Nice To Us... While We Lie & Incite Terror!
3. The Ultimate Proofs That Fox News Is Basically Just A Group Of White Supremacists/Nationalists/Nazis
4. Trump's Terrorist Attack On the Press (With Fox News Support)
RNC 2020 & Kenosha: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Media Matters: Fox News' support for violent right-wing vigilantism is as horrifying as it was inevitable The network has been building to this moment for years
Amid a quasi-fascist rant Wednesday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson responded to murder charges against a pro-Trump teenager who crossed state lines and shot to death two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, by asking, “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?” Several other Fox personalities have similarly downplayed or seemingly excused the deadly Tuesday night confrontation.
Fox’s turn toward advocating violent right-wing vigilantism is a horrifying but natural evolution for the network. Its personalities have spent the last several months recklessly issuing dire warnings to their viewers, telling them that their lives are in jeopardy from racial justice protesters and that the Democratic leaders of cities facing civil unrest are refusing to protect them. This fearmongering has repeatedly inspired President Donald Trump, an avid Fox viewer, to dump more fuel on the fires.
The police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor forced a national reckoning on race and policing that continues to this day. For months, protesters in cities across the country have marched to call for an end to systemic racism and police brutality. The movement has spurred corporate changes and government reforms, even as protests have at times been marred by looting, property damage, and violent confrontations with law enforcement personnel, often escalated by their use of violent tactics.
Throughout this period, Fox has been laser-focused on finding instances of violence, blaming them on the protesters, and castigating Democratic mayors and governors for failing to stop them. The network has bombarded its viewers -- including the president -- with images of burning buildings and civil unrest. At times using weeks-old footage and other misinformation tactics, Fox personalities have inflated the scope of the damage to depict a nation on the brink, denouncing the supposed threat posed by “antifa" agitators, Black Lives Matter activists, and statue-toppling vigilantes -- even demanding that violent protesters be treated as “domestic terrorists.” And they have sought to use that demagoguery to shore up Trump’s faltering campaign, warning that civilization itself will be on the ballot in November.
Carlson has led the charge. He has described the protests as an “ancient battle” between “normal people” and “thugs.” He has claimed that the protesters are engaged in “the destruction of our cities and our history” and are “trying to topple our political system.” And he has called for protest leaders to be labeled “domestic terrorists,” arrested, and paraded “in front of cameras like MS-13.” Moreover, he has denounced Republican leaders who he believes have been overly supportive of the protests, while repeatedly demanding that Trump take a harder line against them.
At one point, his program even predicted a rise in vigilantism. On Carlson’s June 4 broadcast, former CIA officer Bryan Dean Wright denounced Democrats for supporting protests while opposing the use of the National Guard or military to put them down. “What does that leave, Tucker? Let me tell you what it leaves. Vigilante justice,” he concluded. “That’s exactly right,” Carlson responded. Wright added, “It's you and me and everybody watching this program arming ourselves. Is that how we run a republic? No sir, it is not, and you do not want a country that goes there.”
Carlson’s venom has cost him more of his shrinking base of advertisers, but in fact it's what Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch want from him -- he apparently retains their support.
The president, whose administration is heavily influenced by Carlson’s show, has been watching. He has triggered escalating violence by trying to push Fox’s narratives for his own political benefit, first with angry Fox live tweets lashing out at protesters and the Democratic officeholders he claimed were coddling them, then with a speech at Mount Rushmore attacking “the violent mayhem we have seen in the streets of cities that are run by liberal Democrats,” and finally with a “law and order” strategy that went around those officeholders by sending heavily armed federal paramilitaries into an American city.
All week long, that dire portrait of the country has been at the center of the Republican National Convention. Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who became a Fox News cause celebre but were charged with a felony weapons count after pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters earlier this year, spoke on Tuesday night. “Make no mistake: No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America,” Patricia McCloskey told the convention. In his own speech the following evening, Vice President Mike Pence pushed the same message. “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” he warned.
This isn’t the first time that Fox has sought to help Republicans to political victory by warning their viewers that Democratic victories could lead to a threat to their safety. As the midterm elections approached in 2018, the network’s commentators began claiming that “the average citizen, if you're on the right, should be concerned and in danger” because Democrats had “normalized violence in America.” A few weeks later, a Trump superfan started mailing bombs to prominent Democrats and journalists.
On Tuesday, after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha spurred protests inflected with violence, Carlson again raised the temperature, telling his audience, “Joe Biden's voters really are a threat to you and your family.” That’s a sick statement, but one entirely in line with what his network has been pumping out for months. If you believe what he was saying, you very well might decide that the best response is to arm yourself, drive to a protest in a nearby city, and go looking for trouble. And if you do, there’s no telling what might happen next.
Fox News is now mainstreaming a proposition that ought to be morally beyond the pale: that an armed 17-year old who traveled from his home in Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin, and killed two people during ongoing Black Lives Matter protests, was justified and somehow acting in “defense” of either himself and/or local property.
A 17-year old from Antioch, Illinois, was arrested in his hometown for shooting and killing two people in Kenosha, during ongoing protests following the police shooting of an unarmed Black man, Jacob Blake. The shootings were captured in graphic video footage, appearing to show the 17-year-old firing on a crowd of people attempting to subdue him after an initial shooting.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that the suspected shooter’s social media presence indicated that he considered himself to be part of a self-styled militia, and that the armed vigilante group was openly supported by police who tossed them water bottles.
In an interview with The Daily Caller, conducted before the shooting occurred, the suspected shooter declared: “If there’s somebody hurt, I’m running into harm’s way. That’s why I have my rifle, because I’ve gotta' protect myself, obviously. But I also have my med kit.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson became the most prominent media personality to voice support for the suspected shooter, declaring on the August 26 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight that the killings were the result of the protests and civil unrest themselves: “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”
On the same edition of The Five, co-host Greg Gutfeld declared that people who had opposed police crackdowns on the protests, such as his co-host Williams, had “abdicated the responsibility” over the matter to “militias” and “defenders of property.” He continued: “Because once the police are not allowed to act, the rioting can proceed without consequence. People come in and fill the void.”
Martha MacCallum, the “straight news” anchor of Fox’s The Story with Martha MacCallum, also suggested that the shooter was simply part of a group defending “their businesses” even though the shooter was from out of state. MacCallum argued, “Here you have a 17-year-old out in the street with a gun, and it's understandable that people want to protect their businesses, but this just looks like total chaos and anarchy.”
Pavlich and Francis later attempted to walk back their comments when questioned by co-host Chris Wallace.
Be armed and prepared to defend yourself and your home. We’ve seen “protestors” in other places venture into residential neighborhoods already, so don’t believe for an instant that there’s no chance of it happening. Based on what we see in Schaffer’s video from Monday, they might even start shooting without even meaning too, so be ready.
Related: Warriors Against Rule Of Law and Equality to All Under The Law
Former Sheriff David Clarke on Jacob Blake protests: “I am tired of seeing these subhumans be allowed to destroy property” Clarke: “At some point, law enforcement is going to have to put their foot down and respond in kind to these assaults, this looting, this rioting, to quell these riots”
Charlie Kirk: Black Lives Matter wants to “fan the flames of a race war in our country” Kirk: “This is an outright threat. A full frontal domestic terrorism in our country”
After Kenosha shootings, former Sheriff David Clarke advises radio listeners on how to get away with killing protesters Clarke tells his Wisconsin audience to “have a plan” to legally justify shootings and hypes vigilante violence: “You don’t need permission from the police”
Tucker Carlson hosts lawyer for accused Kenosha shooting suspect for friendly interview
Tucker Carlson: Black Lives Matter “is the actual armed militia of the Democratic Party” Carlson: Democrats “Will burn down your cities and tell you that you did it. And if you don't accept that judgment, maybe they will send BLM to your house”
A gunman killed two protesters in Kenosha. Fox News figures have sided with the shooter.Tucker Carlson isn't the only Fox News figure defending the vigilante violence
Founder of violent far-right group Patriot Prayer in Portland does tour of right-wing media Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson calls for full prosecution of Portland killing — while denouncing murder charges in Kenos
After Kenosha shootings, Wisconsin talk radio personalities hype vigilante violence Hosts Vicki McKenna and former Sheriff David Clarke warned listeners to prepare firearms and have a plan for “all the law requires”
Even after a vigilante gunman shot and killed two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, two popular local conservative media personalities — radio host Vicki McKenna and former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke — have continued to encourage armed individuals to take the law into their own hands, and they even laid the groundwork for further vigilante actions.
WILLIAMS: I'm just telling you right now, right-wing -- I'm telling you, I'm telling you this country is really experiencing a wave of right-wing violence. We saw two men killed, two men killed in Kenosha by a young man, 17, who identified himself as part of a militia, pro-police --
MACCALLUM: And he is under investigation. That's a heinous situation and nobody is -- nobody is being supportive of it.
WILLIAMS: And again, Black Lives Matter protesters -- and he should be! But I don't see President Trump -- Martha, has President Trump once said that that young man did something wrong? He's been given every opportunity and never said it.
MACCALLUM: He said it's under investigation. In fact, I just questioned Hogan Gidley about exactly that, that question.
No comments:
Post a Comment