Fox News Implies The Left Creates White Supremacists
A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News for week ending 5/22/22
A typical Fox viewer last week would think the U.S. economy is about to collapse, our Southern border is overrun with migrants, and Tucker Carlson had absolutely nothing to do with the mass shooting in Buffalo.
This past week took an especially sinister turn when Tucker Carlson repeatedly tried to distance himself and his political rhetoric from “The Great Replacement” an antisemitic conspiracy theory promoted on Tucker Carlson Tonight over 400 times and espoused by the alleged shooter in the racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo New York.
Normally I pick one topic that Fox promoted heavily in the prior week and explore it for the first half of the newsletter. I decided instead this week to focus on a theme pushed on Fox News instead of a news story. The theme for this week - the idea that right wing violence is caused by the politics of the left.
The argument goes something like this,
“The left has become so extreme that they have driven right wingers to a breaking point. The woke culture is so hard on white men and white culture some white men are pushing back with violence. It’s not our fault this happens, it’s the angry politically correct left wing mob that drove them to it.”
That’s not a direct quote but I’ve seen that rationalization repeated throughout the right wing media ecosystem.
Clip of the Week - The Buffalo Shooter - “You made me hit you.”
Earlier this month on “The Five” comedian Greg Gutfeld made a similar argument.
A former member of the Proud Boys even wrote an entire book on this topic. I won’t mention this person by name because he’s threatened me with litigation multiple times. He calls himself a “former extremist” but still exposes xenophobic and racist views on social media and elsewhere.
In his memoir about his own journey out of extremism he views young white males as the ultimate victims. The cruel woke world has labeled young white men as entitled monsters and they have no alternative than to either accept an ultra left wing ideology or rebel against it.
The core of this thesis is deeply flawed for a number of reasons. First it negates the fact that extremism and white supremacy have existed long before the civil rights movement or woke politics. The roots of white supremacy go all the way back to the 17th century.
The other major problem with this justification is that it completely ignores the plight of people of color. The same white men who declare that progressive politics are overly critical of the legacy and contributions of Europeans will also claim racism doesn’t exist.
Tucker Carlson regularly promotes the idea that if we simply stopped talking about racism we’d have no conflict or tension between racial groups. The idea of meritocracy is seen as the path to a future where everyone is judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.
Carlson often uses the language of the civil rights movement as a twisted way to discount the damage of systemic racism, homophobia, xenophobia and misogyny.
In this fantasy of a meritocracy the best and brightest rise to positions of power and influence based on their merit, intelligence and hard work. Of course Carlson leaves out that a Black child born into poverty is going to have a much harder time in life than a white child raised by the wealthy heiress of a frozen food empire. Carlson’s stepmother inherited a great fortune from the same family that owned the Swanson Frozen food company.
Systemic racism creates barriers that simply don’t exist for a white person. Carlson either doesn’t believe racism is a real problem or he pushes the myth that it doesn’t exist for his own personal gain.
Another huge flaw with the argument that young white men are radicalized due to liberal politics is the scenario can be flipped on a dime.
What about people of color? Why aren’t Black men running around targeting white people? Why aren’t Indigenous Americans going on killing rampages? Of course there are isolated incidents where a person of color will specifically target white Americans but disproportionally domestic terrorists are white men angry at the world and ready to take out vengeance on communities of color or society in general.
Timothy McVeigh, arguably one of the most destructive domestic terrorists in the history of the United States, was driven in part by his white nationalist beliefs. McVeigh detonated a fertilizer bomb outside the Oklahoma City Federal building injuring 800 and killing 168 including 19 children.
McVeigh had become obsessed with “The Turner Diaries” a racist work of fiction published in 1978. The book was penned by a white nationalist leader William Luther Pierce III, the head of the National Alliance. The plot centers on a government overtaken by Black and Jewish people who persecute white men. The protagonist goes on a series of attacks against this tyrannical regime, killing and bombing everything in his path.
The “Turner Diaries” has been tied to at least 200 murders and 40 terrorist attacks and hate crimes.
There is simply nothing in the left wing that comes anywhere close to organized hate groups on the right or the cultural infrastructure of grievance that they’ve built up for decades. Despite this, Carlson and others will still insist domestic violent extremism comes from the left side of the political spectrum or is at least fueled by it.
The Great Replacement is from The Left
Sources
The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea - The Guardian
The roots of America’s white nationalism reach back to this island’s brutal history - TheConversation.com
The Turner Legacy The Storied Origins and Enduring Impact of White Nationalism’s Deadly Bible - International Center for Counter Terrorism
Ku Klux Klan: A History of Racism and Violence - Southern Poverty Law Center
White Nationalist - Southern Poverty Law Center
Tucker Carlson fails to name a single victim in the Buffalo mass shooting.
In this clip Tucker Carlson admonishes the press for focusing too much on the shooter and not enough on the victims of the mass shooting in Buffalo, NY. You’d think Carlson might take some time on his show to talk about them himself but he doesn’t mention a single victim.
I found several examples where other media companies published memorials for the victims.
According to Sen. Tom Cotton - The FBI was trying to rig the 2016 election for Hillary Clinton!
I included this one for comic relief. Any of the millions of Hillary Clinton supporters would like a word. Many believe that the then FBI director James Comey’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails might have cost her the 2016 presidential election.
Monkeypox! - Fox News rewrites history about the AIDS Crisis.
I fear this theme will get more insidious if the monkeypox virus continues to spread. Dr. Marc Siegel simply rewrites history here. Gay men were demonized, ostracized and ridiculed during the AIDS crisis. There was no concept of “political correctness” towards gay men in the early 1980s. AIDS was called a gay plague.
Stories NOT covered on Fox News
An Inspector General Report on Afghanistan was released last week. - Morale across Afghanistan's military was "destroyed" when then-President Trump reached a deal with the Taliban in 2020. It was further weakened when President Biden affirmed the U.S. withdrawal in 2021. The report wasn’t exactly kind towards Biden or the Afghani government but it was also quite critical of the Trump Administration which is probably why Fox News didn’t mention it.
New cases of COVID-19 are spreading rapidly and hospitalizations are up again.
Thomas Lane, one of the officers involved in the murder of George Floyd, pleaded guilty to a state charge of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter
NY Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order to target domestic terrorism and strengthen red flag laws regarding guns. Counties would be required to perform reviews of their systems meant to identify terrorism threats in their areas and to submit plans to confront racially-motivated threats.
The FBI released 2020 Hate Crime Statistics - The report showed that hate crimes are at the highest level they’ve been in a decade.
Dubious Expert of the Week
Due to the length of this newsletter I’m not going to include clips but I will list some of the worst offenders this week.
Matt Walsh - A political pundit with a high school education. He talks a lot and doesn’t hide his disdain and hatred for the trans community. Tucker Carlson has him on quite a bit. This past week he discussed the DHS Disinformation Governance Board even though he absolutely no expertise in this issue.
Lara Trump - The daughter-in-law of former President Donald J. Trump. Lara tends to make appearances on “Fox & Friends” where she talks about any number of topics. When she worked for the Trump Administration she hosted bizarre videos that promoted her father-in-law. She was recently busted by Facebook after she posted a video featuring an interview with the former president. The video was removed.
Dr. Scott Atlas – A physician who briefly worked for the Trump administration. Dr. Atlas speciality is radiology not not an infectious diseases. He has promoted multiple conspiracy theories involving COVID-19
By the Numbers
Inflation was the top issue discussed last week but it will most likely be a top story for several weeks if not months so I decided to focus the newsletter on Tucker Carlson’s reaction to the mass shooting in Buffalo.
Another interesting wrinkle to the coverage of the primary elections last week is that Fox only focused on the Pennsylvania primaries whereas PBS NewsHour had far more comprehensive coverage of multiple races and states.
Fox News also pretty much has given up on the war in Ukraine.
As always without fail Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-D) made this list. The Keystone XL Pipeline also made a return as the magical fix for the rising rates of inflation.
Fox News also included a countdown of sorts for the end of Title 42, a Trump era policy that sent back migrants who tested positive for COVID-19. Fox News has predicted an onslaught of migrants crossing our Southern border when Title 42 is lifted.
Fox News pundits almost seemed disappointed when a federal judge blocked the Biden administration’s attempt to end the policy. They would love nothing more than their dire predictions to be one more thing they could use against President Joe Biden.
Next week I will be watching and analyzing the first hour of “Fox & Friends” as well as “The Five”. For my primetime selection I’ll be switching back to ‘The Ingraham Angle.”
I fear that MAGA Republicans would be happy to have the US ruled by a permanent "Ruling Party", as has happened in some South and Central American countries, over many decades.