After the 2nd they come for the 1st
This was an angle I was not readily expecting following the Tree of Life Shooting.
I was bracing for the usual anti-gun and anti-NRA wave that always follows a mass shooting.
What I didn’t expect is this:
Opinion | Fox News and the rest of the right-wing media can’t escape responsibility wapo.st/2qhD5nu?tid=ss… <-- THIS
Here is the article:
After a “lone wolf” Islamist militant attack, the media invariably ask: What inspired him to kill? Usually the answer is found in Islamist militant propaganda. We need to ask the same question about right-wing terrorism. What inspired Cesar Sayoc to allegedly send mail bombs to prominent liberals? What inspired Robert Bowers to allegedly gun down 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue? What inspired Gregory Bush to allegedly kill two African Americans in Jeffersontown, Ky., after failing to enter a predominantly black church?
To ask these questions in no way obviates the perpetrators’ ultimate responsibility for the evil that they do. But terrorists do not operate in a vacuum. So who created the environment in which right-wing terrorism has become far more commonplace — and, since 9/11, far more deadly — than Islamist terrorism in America?
President Trump — by championing “nationalism,” denouncing “globalists” such as Jewish financier George Soros, vilifying immigrants as “snakes” and “animals,” fearmongering about a refugee caravan and defending white supremacists as “fine people” — bears a substantial share of the blame.
Where do these politicians get these noxious ideas? From a right-wing media industrial machine that includes Fox News, Breitbart, Infowars, Newsmax, the Daily Caller, Gateway Pundit and many other outlets. It was Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business Network who asked Grassley if Soros was behind the Kavanaugh protests — and after Grassley endorsed the charge, Trump gave it his imprimatur. The Wall Street Journal, in turn, ran an op-ed endorsing this calumny. Last week, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs interviewed Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch, who claimed that the Central American caravan was directed by the “Soros-occupied State Department,” echoing neo-Nazi propaganda about a “Zionist-occupied government.” (Fox Business has since apologized.)
There is partisanship on both sides of the political spectrum, but no left-wing outlets propagate extremism as successfully or widely as conservative media do. A new study of “Network Propaganda” by three Harvard researchers notes that liberals, by and large, get their news from sources such as The Post, the Times, NPR and CNN that, regardless of any political bias, also engage in rigorous fact-checking. Conservatives, by contrast, are being brainwashed by right-wing media that are an “echo chamber” for “rumor and conspiracy theory.”
The frightening thing is that the right-wing media will be here long after Trump and the current crop of Republican politicians are gone. These outlets have a First Amendment right to say what they want, but investors and advertisers also have a right to take their dollars elsewhere. If Rupert Murdoch and his sons won’t rein in its extremist propaganda, advertisers should flee Fox, and investors should flee its parent company, News Corp. Its stock should become as toxic as shares of mining companies that produce “blood diamonds.” The propagandists and politicians who are radicalizing the American right must not be allowed to escape responsibility for the dangerous consequences of their actions.
So according to Max Boot, and endorsed by Jenifer Rubin, the problem isn’t just Trump, it’s the “Right Wing Media.”
The blood of 11 Jews from Pittsburgh is squarely on Tucker Carlson’s hands.
If Boot’s proposed boycott doesn’t work, obviously the goverment should do something. The Right Wing Media must be reigned in from spreading this kind of hate.
Then there was one time Presidential candidate and governor Howard Dean.
Gab.com is apparently a platform like Twitter but without Twitter’s desire to control the speech of its users. It is a platform of unapologetic free speech.
Bowers, just like Dylann Roof used Gab to post hateful and bigoted messages that would have gotten him banned on Twitter and Facebook.
Howard Dean believes that makes Gab an accessory to murder.
I guess if some neo-Nazis publish a news letter or flyer for a hate rally, Hammermill Paper is an accessory to murder too.
Three high profile people are now using the Tree of Life Shooting as an excuse to gut the First Amendment. No more free press and no more free speech. If you espouse an idea, or host that idea unchecked on your platform, that could be blamed for inciting violence, you deserve to be shut down and treated as an accomplice.
This is a level of extremism that is beyond anything we’ve seen before.
“We want to fight neo-Nazis by taking away your guns and only allowing the press and speech we agree with to be published” is not a good look.
I will not allow any of my rights to be taken because people, even my people, were murdered.
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