Fox Nation Promotes A Racist Hate Group’s Twisted Defense Of Donald Trump

FrontPage Mag, the online organ of David Horowitz’s right-wing Freedom Center, regularly publishes virulently anti-Muslim screeds intended to spread disinformation and fear. Horowitz is a radical rightist who has been called the godfather of the modern anti-Muslim movement” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. His organization is a fringe assembly of wingnuts that is tied to notorious Islamophobes like Pamela Gellar and Daniel Pipes. And that makes it a perfect source for the bigots at Fox Nation.

Seeking to shore up Donald Trump’s widely lambasted proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, FrontPage reached back thirty-five years to post an article titled “Jimmy Carter Banned Iranians from Coming to the U.S. During the Hostage Crisis.” The apparent purpose is to exonerate Trump by suggesting that Carter did the same thing. There’s just one little problem: It isn’t the same thing at all.

Fox Nation

It takes a deliberately obtuse individual to find any similarity between what President Carter did when Americans were being held captive in Iran, and what Trump is proposing now. Iran is a sovereign nation with an identifiable and accessible governing body. In 1979, in what became known as the Iranian Hostage Crisis, students, with the support of the government, took over the American embassy in Tehran and held fifty-two diplomats hostage. Responding to that act of terrorism, Carter implemented a series of sanctions against the nation of Iran to pressure them to release the hostages.

Among the measures taken by Carter was the breaking off of diplomatic relations, suspension of trade, freezing financial assets, and this one that was included in the FrontPage article to vindicate Trump:

“Invalidate all visas issued to Iranian citizens for future entry into the United States, effective today. We will not reissue visas, nor will we issue new visas, except for compelling and proven humanitarian reasons or where the national interest of our own country requires.”

That is what FrontPage and the Fox Nationalists think is comparable to Trump’s desire to prohibit all Muslims, from all nations, from entering the U.S. based on their religion. Carter was imposing sanctions on the citizens of a country that was unlawfully detaining Americans. That is a reasonable reaction to an act of aggression by sovereign state. It is how diplomacy is conducted in order to pressure an antagonistic country into complying with international law.

Trump, on the other hand, is advocating a ban on all individuals of a particular faith. They may have nothing to do with any other nation or entity that is in conflict with the U.S. They may, in fact, be supporters of the U.S. who seek to travel here in order to help in the fight against terrorism. They may be doctors or scientists or teachers who cherish Western freedoms. They may be diplomats or politicians from Canada or Italy or Indonesia. They may be relatives of American Muslims who simply want to visit or reunite with their families. The one identifying characteristic prohibiting them from entry under Trump’s proposal is their religion.

That sort of religious bigotry is antithetical to everything for which America stands. It violates the very principles that inspired the first Europeans to venture to a New World. And, unlike the sanctions imposed by Carter, there is no discernible benefit that could be derived from imposing it. Nevertheless, here is the nearly incoherent argument offered by FrontPage:

“Now unlike Muslims, Iranians were not necessarily supportive of Islamic terrorism. Many were and are opponents of it. Khomeini didn’t represent Iran as a country, but his Islamist allies. So Trump’s proposal is far more legitimate than Carter’s action. Carter targeted people by nationality. Trump’s proposal does so by ideology. […] Classifying Iranians as a group is closer to racism than classifying people by a racist supremacist ideology that calls for the mass murder and enslavement of non-Muslims, as ISIS is doing today.”

To set the bar for idiocy as low as possible, the very first sentence of their argument implies that all Muslims are “supportive of Islamic terrorism.” They go on to make the absurd contention that “Khomeini didn’t represent Iran as a country.” WTF? And based on those ludicrous assertions, they conclude that Trump’s proposal is “far more legitimate than Carter’s.” This is literally too stupid to respond to.

But they aren’t done embarrassing themselves. The next half-baked notion they float is that targeting citizens of a nation with which you are in conflict is racist, which by definition, it is not. At the same time they dismiss that notion that targeting people by religion is racist, which by definition it is. And they close by again implying that all Muslims practice the sort of perversion of Islam that is practiced by ISIS.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

This is the sort of garbage “journalism” that Fox News has chosen to pluck out of the hate mongering fringe in order to defend Donald Trump. That tells you just how desperate they are to maintain their appeal to Trump’s bigoted supporters. It is a marriage made in hell that only furthers the interests of America’s enemies.

Media By Ass: Breitbart Editor Launches TruthRevolt Site To Counter Media Matters

The diseased minds at Breitbart News and David Horowitz’s Freedom Center are joining together to fill what they perceive as a void in media criticism. Not satisfied with the efforts by richly financed conservative operations like the Lie Factory of Fox Nation, the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters, the Washington Free Beacon, or Breitbart’s own BigJournalism, this new cabal is forming with the unmistakeably hostile mission to…

“…unmask leftists in the media for who they are, destroy their credibility with the American public, and devastate their funding bases.”

Oh my. That’s sounds ominous. But if anyone is capable of venturing down such a repugnant path, it’s BreitBrat Ben Shapiro, the editor-at-large of Breitbart News. Shapiro’s record of keeping the media in check includes falling for a fake story about Chuck Hagel; bashing fact-checkers; whining when Republicans are vetted; and exposing the socialist propaganda of Sesame Street.

As for BreitBrat Ben’s partner, David Horowitz, he is a notoriously racist fringe conservative who believes that slave labor has benefited contemporary African-Americans. He also publishes “Jihad Watch,” which has labeled President Obama a “practicing Muslim.”

The new TruthRevolt project describes itself as “a conservative counterpunch to Media Matters, the Obama-linked organization that focuses on silencing conservatives in the media.” Of course, there is no Media Matters link to Obama offered by the BreitBrats, nor any evidence that they have ever silenced any conservative. What right-wingers regard as silencing is really just getting caught saying what they actually believe. That’s all that Media Matters does.

Breitbart has been after Media Matters for a long time. They have challenged the tax-exempt status of Media Matters; accused them being anti-Christian and anti-American; charged that they get their marching orders from the White House, George Soros, or any other convenient rightist bogeyman. Even their hallowed leader, St. Andrew, has taken cheap shots at Media Matters and its founder, David Brock. He published an absurd article alleging some sort of conspiracy by the media to hide an old photograph of Brock that he characterized as narcissistic and homoerotic. But he could have been talking about himself and the photos he posed for in Time Magazine:

Andrew Breitbart

Breitbart’s destructive tendencies are well documented. He once swore to “bring down the institutional left” in three weeks. He’s more than four years overdue. Now his successors are nursing the same obsessions. And as usual they are incapable of providing a single example of anything that Media Matters has done that was incorrect or deserving of criticism. Their unambiguous goal (as they admitted above) is to tear down an organization that does nothing more than document the conservative bias in the media. It is a plainly articulated, well-financed, censorious revolt against truth – hence their name.

Be Sure To “LIKE” News Corpse On Facebook

American Conservatives Who Still Think That Slavery Was A Good Thing

Right-Wing RacismFor obvious reasons, the American conservative movement has long been dogged by accusations of racism and racial insensitivity. From their famed Southern strategy to their determined efforts to suppress minority voting via phony voter ID initiatives to their race-baiting Obama attacks, conservatives have made clear their opposition to a tolerant, multicultural America. In fact, much of their electoral strategy relies on scaring older, white voters about blacks and Hispanics taking over “their” country.

It’s not uncommon to hear a prominent conservative, even one who holds elected office, make patently offensive remarks, yet some occasionally hit an unimaginable low. This week, it was revealed that Republican Rep. Jon Hubbard has published a book in which he wrote that “[T]he institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise.” He defended his book on Wednesday, telling the Jonesboro Sun that he still believed slavery to be a blessing because it helped blacks come to America. Yes, he praised slavery. And when given the opportunity to backpedal, he doubled down.

This article was also published on Alternet

You may think that this does not occur often. You would be wrong. Here are a few other prominent conservatives who have suggested slavery was not all that bad.

1) Pat Buchanan
In his essay “A Brief for Whitey,” Buchanan agreed that slavery was a net positive saying that, “America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.”

2 & 3) Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum
Bob Vander Plaats, the leader of the arch-conservative Family Leader, a religious organization that opposes same-sex marriage, got GOP presidential candidates Bachmann and Santorum to sign his pledge asserting that life for African-Americans was better during the era of slavery: “A child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”

4) Art Robinson
Robinson was a publisher and a GOP candidate for congress in Oregon. One of the books he published included this evaluation of life under slavery: “The negroes on a well-ordered estate, under kind masters, were probably a happier class of people than the laborers upon any estate in Europe.”

5) Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson
Peterson is a conservative preacher who articulated this bit of gratitude: “Thank God for slavery, because if not, the blacks who are here would have been stuck in Africa.”

6) David Horowitz
Horowitz is the president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and edits the ultra-conservative FrontPage Magazine. In a diatribe against reparations for slavery, Horowitz thought this argument celebrating the luxurious life of blacks in America would bolster his case: “If slave labor created wealth for Americans, then obviously it has created wealth for black Americans as well, including the descendants of slaves.”

7) Wes Riddle
Riddle was a GOP congressional candidate in Texas with some peculiar conspiracy theories on a variety of subjects. His appreciation for what slavery did for African-Americans was captured in this comment: “Are the descendants of slaves really worse off? Would Jesse Jackson be better off living in Uganda?”

8) Trent Franks
Franks is the sitting congressman for the 2nd congressional district in Arizona. As shown here, he believes that a comparison of the tribulations of African-Americans today to those of their ancestors in the Confederacy would favor a life in bondage: “Far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery.”

9) Ann Coulter
Known for her incendiary rhetoric and hate speech, Coulter was right in character telling Megyn Kelly of Fox News that, “The worst thing that was done to black people since slavery was the great society programs.”

10) Rep. Loy Mauch
This Arkansas GOP state legislator has found biblical support for his pro-slavery position. He wrote to the Democrat-Gazette to inquire, “If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution and why wasn’t there a war before 1861?”

There is an almost palpable nostalgia amongst some conservatives for a bygone era wherein they could sip Mint Juleps under the Magnolias while the fields were tended to by unpaid lackeys. And it isn’t a vague insinuation. Mitt Romney supporter Ted Nugent declared explicitly that “I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War.” Allen West, the chairman of Romney’s Black Leadership Council, frequently portrays Democrats as plantation masters who want to enslave American citizens. And no one should regard it as a coincidence that so much of this racist animus has surfaced during the term of the first African-American president of the United States.

It’s one thing to harbor such offensive racial prejudices privately, but when people in public life are comfortable enough to openly express opinions like these, it reveals something of the character of their movement. And what’s worse is that conservative and Republican leaders, given the opportunity, refuse to repudiate the remarks. Mitt Romney has stated that all he’s concerned about is getting 50.1% of the vote, and if that means tolerating appeals to racist voters in order to attain his goal, then it’s just a part of the process. Conservatives often complain about being characterized as racists, but there’s a simple solution to that problem that would make it go away overnight: Stop being racist.

Primetime Propaganda And The Sesame Street Path To Socialism

Ben Shapiro’s “Primetime Propaganda” is a book that perfectly epitomizes the rightist paranoia about liberal bogeymen under our beds, in our closets, and, most of all, on our TV sets. The book is promoted as…

“The inside story of how the most powerful medium of mass communication in human history has become a propaganda tool for the Left.”

In the book published by Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins, Shapiro claims to have interviewed Hollywood’s most important power players and gotten them to admit that they have been secretly inserting their subversive messages into popular programs for decades. But his work is decidedly one-sided and he takes great pride in the obvious. For instance. the revelation that MASH had an anti-war theme is not exactly earth-shattering and it hardly exposes a liberal conspiracy. However, he presents it as a triumph of investigative journalism.

Big Bird - Sesame StreetIn a defensive posting on Andrew Breitbart’s BigJournalism, Shapiro complains about the criticism his book has received. He is dismayed that critics allegedly focused on the parts referencing Sesame Street, but then proceeds to bash Sesame Street for the remainder of the posting.

According to his own defense, Sesame Street is awash in propaganda. For instance, they broadcast segments teaching kids about divorce. He apparently thinks that subject has no relevance to kids today. The program also aired segments after 9/11 about peaceful conflict resolution. Shapiro asserts that these were designed to steer kids away from retaliating against terrorists, when the more likely purpose was to illustrate how wrong the actions of the terrorists were. Then Shapiro whines about everything from teaching kids not to beat up other kids of different cultures, to using gender-neutral language like firefighter or flight attendant. If that is evidence of leftist indoctrination, then Shapiro is implying that rightists support cross-cultural fights amongst children.

What doesn’t seem to be acknowledged in Shapiro’s book is that the vast majority of television programs in the period of time his research encompasses were far from being dogmatically left-wing. There were more police dramas and westerns than any other genre of program. Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and The Waltons, or Dragnet, Magnum P.I., and 24, were not exactly peddling liberal doctrine. Nor were the iconic sitcoms from Andy Griffith, The Golden Girls, or Frasier. Why didn’t Shapiro interview people from those shows to ascertain whether they were planting conservative opinions in their programs?

Even worse, Shapiro is attempting to position this book as a scholarly investigation into historical television practices and philosophies. But he provides no historical context whatsoever to support his obviously predetermined conclusions. He lumps shows like The Partridge Family, Happy Days, and Family Ties, into the liberal cabal that “took over your TV,” but fails to note that those years were mostly dominated by Republican presidents and conservative culture. It was the heart of the era that saw the rise of the Reagan Revolution, the Moral Majority, and the Christian Coalition. If the purpose of these pinko TV executives was to reshape America in their leftist image, they failed miserably. Yet Shapiro insists that this was their purpose and that they succeeded in turning America into a socialist state.

For the record, Shapiro is the Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, an ultra-conservative organization whose mission is to “combat the efforts of the radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values and disarm this country.” Shapiro was interviewed about the book by Horowitz’s Front Page Magazine who called him “a courageous defender of our civilization – and such a brave soldier on the frontlines in our culture war.”

Shapiro’s previous books were Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth, and Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future. He recently penned an article for CNSNews, a division of the rabidly right-wing Media Research Center, wherein he castigated Jews who support President Obama as…

“Jews in name only. They eat bagels and lox; they watch ‘Schindler’s List’; they visit temple on Yom Kippur – sometimes. But they do not care about Israel. Or if they do, they care about it less than abortion, gay marriage and global warming.”

That exclusionary and insulting diatribe suggests that the Jews are such a shallow people that they are incapable of caring about more than one thing at a time, particularly if it’s about the rights and well being of others. And Shapiro neglects to disclose who designated him as the Jewish certification authority.

Shapiro is a part of the conservative campaign to assault the media and popular culture, and he is tightly integrated with the leaders of that campaign. David Horowitz’s Freedom Center began as the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in 1988 to “establish a conservative presence in Hollywood.” Andrew Breitbart, who runs both the BigJournalism and BigHollywood blogs, wrote in his recent autobiographical book, Righteous Indignation,” that…

“The biggest point I wanted to make was one I’m still making: Hollywood is more important than Washington. It can’t be overstated how important this message is: the pop culture matters.”

This is a coordinated attack on the creative community that has long been a target of the right-wing martinets of virtue. They demonstrated their hostility for the arts when they orchestrated congressional hearings and blacklists against Hollywood in the 1940’s and 1950s. And they are demonstrating it today as they seek to defund public radio and television, as well as arts institutions like the National Endowment for the Arts. Their censorious mission is reflected in attacks on movies like Avatar and rappers like Common. It is ingrained in the works of the secret society of Hollywood conservatives, the Friends of Abe. They recognize the power in creative expression and they are determined to either hijack it or shut it down. That’s why Shapiro et al are so adamant about silencing overt propaganda like this alarming segment from Sesame Street that he explicitly rebuked for advancing a gay/liberal agenda:

Do you feel gayer or more liberal yet? Shapiro’s new book appears to be the literary equivalent of James O’Keefe’s dishonest video ambushes. Shapiro taped conversations with his subjects and is releasing them without having obtained permission to do so. Of course, he certainly won’t release any tapes that exhibit ideological fairness or otherwise don’t fit his agenda. And, as noted above, we won’t be seeing any comments from producers of the far more numerous conservative-themed programs that reveal their own biases. There is no way of knowing whether the tapes were edited in misleading ways, as the right is prone to doing – particularly the Breitbart right. And notice to whom Shapiro ran first to whine about being criticized.

Expect to see Shapiro making the Fox News rounds with an already announced appearance on Sean Hannity’s show. Watch as he shamelessly bashes the broader media even as he exploits it. And sadly, like a victim of spousal abuse, the media will forgive him and beg him not to go. His Murdoch-published book will get plenty of play from Fox News, the rightist blogosphere, and conservative talk radio as he laments the imagined prevalence of left-wing media. How ironic.

Dick Morris Shills For GOPtrust On Fox News

The lines between Fox News and the Republican National Committee just keep getting blurrier. The latest evidence that this media giant is in bed with the political party came last night on Hannity and ???. Dick Morris was the guest and he made an overt solicitation for donations to the GOPtrust, a group that bills itself as a right-wing MoveOn.org.

This isn’t anything new, of course. Media Matters has documented multiple occasions where Morris did the same thing on Fox. Last night’s appeal was particularly urgent::

I’ve been pushing very, very hard for a group called GOPTrust.com that is running $1 million of ads in Georgia to elect Chambliss and defeat the Democrat […] It is crucially important that every American who cares about the free enterprise system go online as soon as this show is over, and Alan makes his announcement, and get online to GOPTrust.com and give Chambliss the money he needs to win. Your whole future depends on it.

But the story of this relationship doesn’t end there. As it turns out, Morris is not only fundraising for GOPtrust, he is getting paid by them. FEC reports reveal that the group paid Morris over $24,000 for “email communications.” Morris dismissed complaints of this by saying that what he did is no different from what the New York Times does when taking ads. However, it is completely different. The Times doesn’t run editorials soliciting donations on behalf of their advertisers. And they certainly don’t make television appearances to make pitches for donations for them either.

But this is precisely what Morris has done. And it is not an innocent expression of support for a political ally. Morris openly conspired with GOPtrust to take these actions. In a speech earlier this month at David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend, Morris related this tale of how he helped fund GOPtrust’s anti-Obama ads. When the group’s director complained that he was broke, Morris said…

“I’ll take care of that, I’ll get on Fox News every five minutes, and I’ll push the GOPtrust.com, and I’ll get you money as long as you raise it against Reverend Wright.”

[Author’s note: David Horowitz is an ultra-rightist provocateur who is known for his racist diatribes against liberals and his targeting of universities and Hollywood as the cesspools of American culture and politics]

So Morris admits that he is raising money for a group that is putting some of that money back into his own wallet. And he is using appearances on Fox News to further his unscrupulous scheme. Furthermore, it is not plausible that Fox News is unaware of their complicity seeing as how candid Morris is about his intentions.

While the Republican Party is licking its wounds following the recent election, it must be feeling pretty good about having an international media empire in its pocket.