Fox News Photo Provides Graphic Evidence of Their Racism and Fear Mongering

The reputation for rampant racism at Fox News has been well established over many years. Their top program hosts routinely disseminate the positions of notorious hate groups (see Fox’s Senior White Nationalist, Tucker Carlson), who reciprocate by expressing their admiration and support for those hosts.

Fox News, LeBron James, Maxine Waters

On Thursday morning Fox News provided additional evidence of their embrace of overt bigotry. On an article posted on their website, Fox attacked NBA all-star Lebron James for a tweet that they said was “inciting violence” against the Ohio police officer who shot and killed a 16 year old girl. The now-deleted tweet was posted shortly after a jury convicted Derek Chauvin, the Minnesota officer who murdered George Floyd (which Fox News twisted to accuse Democrats of advocating riots) The tweet said simply “Accountability. You’re next.”

Clearly James was referencing legal accountability for what appeared at the time to be another police shooting of a Black “suspect” when other less deadly options were available. The question as to whether or not this was an unjustified overreaction by this officer has been raised since video of the event was released. And James deleted his tweet to lower the heat generated by this controversial subject.

However, the question of Fox’s racism is unarguable. The photo (above) that accompanied the article was blatantly contrived to induce fear and to prejudice the viewer against “mad” Black persons in public life. Next to James, Fox News placed Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, a favorite target of Fox. Waters was similarly accused of inciting violence when she advocated that protesters be “confrontational,” which is actually what protests are about.

Neither James nor Waters ever incited violence (unlike Donald Trump and his Fox News shills). But both James and Waters were depicted by Fox News as ominous villains in order to frighten Fox’s audience that is already riddled with racial anxieties and prejudice. Fox News ran numerous segments on these subjects that they repeatedly – and falsely – described as “putting a target” on the backs of police. Which is an awkward turn of phrase considering the literal targets that police put on the backs of Black Americans.

Now Fox News is doing the same thing. Fox’s deliberate distortion of the comments by James and Waters, along with the photo intended to invoke fear, are proof positive of the right-wing network’s intent to spread racist memes to their millions of viewers. It is a despicable abuse of not-very-subliminal messaging to elicit hate. And it’s what Fox News has been doing since its inception.

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

CHOPPER TALK: Trump Whines About ‘Haters’ in Congress – Because He Hates Democracy

For the past six weeks Donald Trump has been unable to wallow in the glow of the glassy-eyed disciples who clamor to his cult rallies. Nor has he been able to hold his impromptu “Chopper Talk” sessions prior to jaunting off to some self-serving campaign junket. And he had to quit his Coronavirus Task Force briefings (aka Trump 2020 Reelection Campaign Infomercials) because even his friends recognized that they were deep sixing his approval ratings.

Donald Trump, Chopper Talk

But now, as Trump rushes to “reopen” the nation to ever more misery, exposing people to rapidly rising incidents of coronavirus infection and death, he is happy once again. He’s happy because he couldn’t care less about the suffering of the American people. The only thing Trump cares about is Trump. And the priority of our reality TV game show host president is that he has been sorely missing the feverish adulation from his deplorable fanatics and his rancid, lie-riddled verbal jousts with reporters.

On Tuesday morning, however, Trump got his groove back as he strutted in front of a waiting helicopter to harangue the assembled press. Why they still show up is mystery considering Trump’s open hostility to them. Among the questions he awkwardly avoided by dodging and deceiving was one relating to his recent and strikingly totalitarian command barring members of the Task Force from testifying before Congress.

It’s unclear whether Trump has the legal authority to issue such a prohibition, but it is unarguably an insult to the American people who rely on their representatives in Congress to conduct oversight of the Executive branch. Trump’s explanation for why he dictated this ban was an overt admission of his disrespect for the pursuit of truth and for democracy itself (video below). He ranted that…

“The House is a set up. The House is a bunch of Trump haters. They put every Trump hater on the committee. The same old stuff. They, frankly, want our situation to be unsuccessful, which means death. Which means death. And our situation is gonna be very successful. The House has put on an Oversight Committee of Maxine Waters and Maloney and the same people and it’s just a setup.”

So Trump is confessing that he is withholding the testimony of experts who work for the people because he’s afraid they might tell Congress the truth. The members he calls “haters” were overwhelming elected in 2018, when Democrats took control of the House of Representatives. So that would imply that it’s the people who hate Trump. Which, according to most polls, is correct. He’s also forgetting that there are Republicans on the Oversight Committee in the House, and Democrats on the Senate committee where Trump is allowing the Task Force members to testify.

More troubling is Trump’s aversion to democracy. Congress needs the testimony of experts and government officials in order to carry out their constitutional duties. But Trump seems to think he only needs to answer to the bootlicking sycophants who enable his criminal behavior. His obstructionism is more evidence of his cowardice. And that applies in particular to the women in Congress. We know that Trump is scared to death of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But the only members of the committee whose names he mentioned were Maxine Waters and Carolyn Maloney. The men on the committee are surely feeling left out this morning.

Trump confirmed his misogyny at another morning affair when he complained that two female reporters, Weijia Jiang and Paula Reid, were not behaving like 1950’s TV housewives. “It wasn’t Donna Reed, I can tell you that,” Trump said in a throwback to an archaic era of television. Trump also went on to say that “Democrats should be ashamed,” because “they want us to fail so they can win an election.” That’s another example of how Trump employs pure projection of his own motivations onto others. Trump provided an example of his own interest in “success” when he replied to a question about whether he was concerned about increasing virus infections and death if states relaxed their guidelines too early by saying “No. They have to do it.”

So there you have it. You are commanded to return to work now, despite the risks, because Dear Leader says so. And it must be so comforting that he isn’t concerned about the heightened potential that you and your family might die. That’s not his problem. He needs to get the economy back on track before November or he’ll have no chance of being reelected (not to mention it’s costing him a small fortune). Although causing more Americans to get sick and die might also be drag on his get-out-the-vote effort.

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

Hannity Has Already Blamed Maxine Waters – and Obama – for the Capital Gazette Shooting

Thursday morning there has been yet another mass shooting in America. This one occurred in Annapolis, Maryland at the building housing the Capital Gazette newspaper. At his time there are five confirmed fatalities, and the suspect is in custody.

Sean Hannity Fox News

The local police are still interrogating the suspect and they are not reporting any motive yet. This could be the work of a disgruntled employee or domestic violence. But the lack of factual data hasn’t stopped rampant speculation on the part of conservative media and right-wing zealots who are quick to accuse liberals. Never mind that it is the right whose hostility toward the media is more likely to trigger violence. Wingnut troll Milo Yianopoulos said just a couple of days ago that he “can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight.” And Trace Gallagher of Fox News has already checked into the Capital Gazette’s ideological bent, presumably hoping to find it conservative so that liberals could be blamed. And, of course, Donald Trump telling his unstable disciples that “the media is the enemy of the American people.”

But leave it to Sean Hannity to come roaring out of the gate with the first flagrantly accusatory allegations. In a radio rant, Hannity leveled his charges at both Rep. Maxine Waters and President Obama saying that (video below):

“I’ve been saying now for days that something horrible was going to happen because of the rhetoric. Really Maxine? You want people to create – Call your friends. Get in their faces – and Obama said that too. Get in their faces. Call ’em out. Call your friends. Get protesters. Follow them into restaurants and shopping malls, and wherever else she said.”

First of all, Obama never said any such thing, And what Waters said was strictly limited to legal protesting and constitutionally protected dissent. But Hannity is blatantly associating these comments with the motive of the shooter, despite not knowing anything about it.

That’s how these people work. It used to be the domain of fringe figures like Glenn Beck and Alex Jones who would dash immediately into irresponsible charges and conspiracy theories. But in today’s rancid right-wing media environment, it is now the top rated host on Fox News who is doing it. And let’s be clear, reckless rhetoric like this is likely to create exactly the sort of violence that it pretends to criticize. It’s an invitation to other maniacs who seek the notoriety that comes with being hailed by crackpots like Hannity. He should learn to keep his mouth shut when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But then that would be pretty all the time.

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

Sick and Dangerous Lies: What Trump is Saying About Democrats Defiles Democracy

No one with any credibility or knowledge of democracy would describe Donald Trump as a champion of freedom or self-government. His entire presidency has been a quickly metastasizing tumor of fascism. He exudes the totalitarian tendencies of the dictators he most admires: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, etc. And he boasts about advancing initiatives that are overtly discriminatory and suppressive.

Donald Trump Zombie

Yet somehow he continues to be treated as if he were a legitimate leader of a democratic nation. Never mind his repeated assaults on the free press, which he has tagged in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the American People.” This is the ideology of tyrants, which it is clear that Trump aspires to become.

One of the more obvious signs of Trump’s despotic desires is his personal and slanderous attacks on political opponents. It’s been a year and a half since his inauguration and he is still clamoring to “lock up” Hillary Clinton, despite no evidence of any wrongdoing on her part other than challenging Trump. But he is going even further than that by making absurd characterizations of the agenda of Democrats. One example that perfectly illustrates this came in a tweet Tuesday morning:

Trump is ranting about recent comments by Rep. Maxine Waters that called for people to make their feelings known to Trump’s surrogates when encountered in public. That’s nothing more than good old fashioned dissent as guaranteed by the Constitution. Of course Trump falsely accused Waters of advocating violence, which she didn’t do. But then he made his own unambigous threat of violence in response. That’s nothing new for a man who told his supporters assault protesters at his rallies, and then promised to pay their legal bills if they did.

But the claim by Trump that Democrats “want Open Borders and Unlimited Crime” is an unprecedented misrepresentation by an American president. It goes without saying that no Democrat has ever advocated for open borders. Not one, ever. And certainly no Democrat has ever done or said anything in support of crime, unlimited or otherwise. This rhetoric is just plain stupid and would be rejected by all reasonable people.

The problem with this particular moment in history is that Trump has succeeded in aggregating a following of brain-dead cultists who believe everything he says literally. He affirmed that during the campaign when told a rally that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose support. And just yesterday he bragged about a supporter who was asked if there was anything Trump could do to lose her support and she answered “absolutely nothing.”

Perhaps it’s time to fight fire with fire. If Trump thinks it’s acceptable to make hideous assertions about Democrats that have zero basis in fact – or reality – then maybe he should get a taste of his own medicine. Maybe Democrats should start accusing Trump of heinous activities and ideas. For instance:

Oh, wait. All of those are true. If we want to emulate Trump’s contemptible and dishonest rhetoric, this wouldn’t be the same thing at all. We would have to be even more extreme than his reality by saying things like “Trump drinks the blood of immigrant babies.” Or “Trump demands prison for any American who doesn’t drop to both knees and chant his name whenever they see him, or even hear his name.” Or “Investigators have incontrovertible evidence that Trump is the Zodiac killer.” Or “Russian doctor planted a microchip in Trump’s brain that gives Putin control over his thoughts and actions.”

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

That ought to do it. And it would be just accurate as any of the things that Trump says about Democrats. Unfortunately, American liberals aren’t brainwashed the way that Trump’s glassy-eyed disciples are. So no one would believe any of it. But it might still be a useful exercise to demonstrate what a pile of walking bullshit this president is. He needs to be held accountable for his words. And if the media won’t do it, the people need to step up.