Fox News' militia media: mainstreaming the fringe
Imagine if Fox News had been on the air back on February 28, 1993, just months into the new Democratic president's first term, when agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms attempted to serve warrants on David Koresh's Branch Davidian compound, located on the outskirts of Waco, Texas. Agents arrived because federal authorities got a tip that Koresh and the followers of the misguided messiah were stockpiling weapons.
The authorities were right. Outgunned, ATF agents quickly met resistance from the Davidians, who had a .50-caliber rifle, machine guns, and more than a million rounds of ammunition at their disposal. The shootout lasted hours and became the longest in American law-enforcement history. In the end, four ATF agents were killed, and 16 were wounded. Inside the compound, five Davidians were killed and scores more injured, including Koresh, who was shot in the hip and the wrist. The gunbattle signaled the start of a 51-day standoff between Koresh and federal authorities.
Rupert Murdoch's all-news channel didn't debut in America until October 1996, but it's chilling to consider the what-ifs of how today's Fox News lineup of doomsday, anti-government prophets would have reacted to controversial and defining news events in the early 1990s -- like Waco.
As news of the failed Waco raid broke, would Fox News' notoriously weepy and apocalyptic host Glenn Beck have broken down on the air and wept for the tyranny that he saw unfolding in the government's raid? While FBI negotiators tried to win the release of Koresh's followers, would Beck have warned viewers that the president would "take your gun away one way or another"?
Amidst the 51-day siege, would Beck have warned against the creeping "totalitarian state" inside America? Would the host have gravely announced that we'd "come to a very dangerous point in our country's long, storied history"?
Would Beck have routinely vilified President Clinton as a fascist? Would he have told viewers that he wanted to debunk the militia-movement conspiracy theory that the federal government was building prison camps, but that he just couldn't knock the story down -- and that, at first glance, it appeared to be "half true"?
And can you even imagine Beck's on-air reaction when the FBI's final, failed assault on the Waco compound unfolded on live TV on April 19, 1993? As the horrific images of the compound going up in flames and the grim realization spread that Koresh's followers were not coming out -- that they had staged a mass suicide (and in some cases, executions), rather than surrendering to federal officers -- would Beck have claimed that the scene of destruction reminded him of the "early days of Adolf Hitler"?
Would he have invited self-styled militiamen onto his show to game out how the pending civil war against the Clinton-led tyranny was likely to play out and to ponder whether members of the U.S. military would fire on American citizens when the blood began to flow in the streets? And setting aside all decency, would Beck -- post-Waco -- have pretended to douse a Fox News colleague in gasoline and, lamenting how the government was disenfranchising its citizens, then urged Clinton to just "set us on fire," or pleaded that it would be better if Clinton had just shot Beck "in the head"? (That's how Koresh died inside the Waco compound: from a bullet to the head.)
Based on the paranoid, anti-government rhetoric that Fox News has embraced since President Obama's inauguration, it's no leap to suspect that if Murdoch's outlet were broadcasting in the early 1990s -- and if it were broadcasting the same fringe message it's echoing today -- that the militia movement would have found a friend in Fox News during the Waco era and throughout Clinton's first term, when the conspiratorial patriot movements flourished.
And that's the chilling significance of what's now unfolding. Last week, I wrote about the inherent dangers and irresponsibility of Fox News consciously shaping itself into a kind of militia news outlet and how it's impossible to ignore the anti-government message some viewers such as Richard Poplawski, the man accused of shooting and killing three Pittsburgh police officers, might be taking from Fox News.
But let's take a step back and see just how extraordinary Fox News' latest lurch to the revolutionary right really is. And let's clearly understand how Fox News is actively trying to mainstream fringe allegations, how Murdoch's outlet functions as a crucial bridge -- a transmitter -- between the radical and the everyday.
What Fox News, and specifically Beck, is doing in early 2009 is giving a voice -- a national platform -- to the same deranged, hard-core haters who hounded the new, young Democratic president in the early 1990s in the wake of Waco (i.e. the Clinton Chronicles crowd). What Fox News is doing today is embracing the same kind of hate rhetoric and doomsday conspiratorial talk that flourished during the '90s, and Fox News is now dumping all that rancid stuff into the mainstream. It's legitimizing accusatory hate speech in a way no other television outlet in America ever has before.
Today's unhinged, militia-flavored attacks from the right against Obama are clearly reminiscent of 1993 and 1994 and the kind of tribal reaction conservatives had to the Democratic White House. What's different this time around is that that it's being adopted and broadcast nationally by Fox News, as it proudly mainstreams and validates the fringe.
Back in the early 1990s, marginal critics, militiamen, and so-called "Patriots" had to rely on somewhat crude methods of communications to spread their conspiratorial distrust of government. They used grassroots fax networks, the very early days of online bulletin boards, and even passed around copies of The Turner Diaries. At the top of their media pyramid were right-wing talk-radio hosts as well as the writers on The Washington Times' and The Wall Street Journal's editorial pages, who eagerly disseminated the culture of partisan paranoia.
But in terms of television, the most influential mass medium in America, nowhere on the TV landscape in the early 1990s were rabid government haters able to hear their message of fear amplified on a nightly or weekly basis the way Obama haters are able to today via Fox News. Even Rush Limbaugh, who from 1992 to 1996 hosted a syndicated television show, didn't go there. Limbaugh's purely partisan television program avoided describing the new Democratic administration with the same doomsday language that's now casually thrown out about Obama: that he's a Marxist or a fascist, or that totalitarian rule remains a real and imminent threat. Even Limbaugh (or his producers) thought that kind of rhetoric was too much for American television.
Fast-forward two administrations, and that kind of talk has become Fox News' signature.
To be accurate, there was one person with a national television audience back then who did regularly promote outlandish conspiratorial claims about Clinton: the Rev. Jerry Falwell. He actively pushed the now-infamous Clinton Chronicles documentary on his Old Time Gospel Hour television show. The Clinton Chronicles, which was produced by Citizens for Honest Government, which in turn paid off key Clinton critics who cooperated with the house-of-mirrors film, claimed that the new president had accumulated a long criminal record while governor of Arkansas and continued his lawbreaking ways as president, that the Clintons were associated with drug-running, prostitution, murder, adultery, money laundering, and obstruction of justice, just to name a few.
Playing that hypothetical card again today, is there anyone who doubts that if Beck were broadcasting on Fox News back in 1994 that Citizens for Honest Government reps would have been ushered onto his program to discuss Clinton's alleged depravities? I don't doubt it, simply because Beck has, at times, become the voice of the militia this year -- and the militia devoured The Clinton Chronicles. As author David Neiwert, an expert on the right wing, reported, "The militia movement provided most of the early audience for The Clinton Chronicles; large stacks of the books and videos sold well at Patriot gatherings."
What's so startling today is that the unhinged, irrational attacks being leveled against Obama sound so similar to the unhinged, irrational attacks leveled against Clinton more than a decade ago. For instance, here's a line from the introduction to The Clinton Chronicles: "The hijacking of America was under way, and its impact on future generations would be incalculable."
That claim would sound familiar to any casual viewer who has tuned into Fox News since Obama's inauguration.
Here's what Neiwert highlighted in 2003:
Had you gone to any militia gathering -- held usually in small town halls or county fairgrounds, sometimes under the guise of "preparedness expos," "patriotic meetings" or even gun shows -- you could always find a wealth of material aimed at proving Clinton the worst kind of treasonous villain imaginable. Bill and Hillary Clinton, after all, occupy a central position in Patriots' "New World Order" paranoiac fantasy.
You'll note that Obama today occupies the same central position in the Patriots' Fox News-fed paranoiac fantasies.
And media critics Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon wrote this more than a decade ago:
"Patriots" rail against Bill Clinton and the plot toward global government known as the "New World Order"; they see gun control as a Big Brother conspiracy.
Again, that type of rhetoric has become synonymous with Beck, who recently claimed the Second Amendment is "under fire" and that the "Big Brother" government will soon dictate what its citizens can eat, what temperature their house can be, and what kind of cars they're allowed to drive.
Hearing the attacks on Obama, it's déjà vu all over again. The key difference this time around the right-wing hate track is that Fox News has signed on as a TV partner and has agreed to embrace -- and air to a national audience -- the militia-like allegations about Obama. Fox News has agreed to descend into the right-wing conspiracist subculture in order to portray the new president as the worst kind of villain imaginable: somebody who's plotting take away guns and who's not above employing fascism to obtain his goals.
On the two-year anniversary of the Waco inferno, militia admirer Timothy McVeigh, feeding off his hatred for the government, drove his rented 20-foot Ryder truck and parked it across the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, the truck's three-ton ammonium nitrate bomb detonated and sheared the north side off the Murrah Building, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds more.
McVeigh later wrote, "I reached the decision to go on the offensive -- to put a check on government abuse of power." McVeigh wanted to "send a message to a government" by "bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government."
The Oklahoma City bombing story broke 18 months before Fox News made its cable-news debut. But if Murdoch's team maintains its current course -- if Beck and company insist on irresponsibly fanning the militia-type flames of distrust -- there's the danger Fox News might soon have to cover other episodic gestures of anti-government payback.
But in terms of television, the most influential mass medium in America, nowhere on the TV landscape in the early 1990s were rabid government haters able to hear their message of fear amplified on a nightly or weekly basis
Ahhh.... So THAT must be where the myth of liberal media bias comes from! Thanks for clearing that up for me!
I hate to say it, but I think Boehlert picked a really bad example in the Waco incident.
I'm hardly a right wing survivalist, but Waco was a real black mark for the U.S.-- the ATF's behavior-- with their longtime reputation as bumblers-- was inexcuseable, really. At the time it also seemed like it was a Bush set up to make Clinton look bad, too.
What is Boehlert thinking here? Koresh could have been detained at any time previous without much incident-- he went to town all the time.
In other words-- and I'm a Beck hater-- if Beck had cried for the Waco kids and families, I would have agreed with him. So would have many liberals.
I think it's back to the drawing board on this one fro Boehlert-- there are much better examples of right-wing wackiness than Waco.
Boehlert is thinking that it would have been extremely dangerous to the nation if revolutionary rhetoric would have been amplified nationwide during the incident.
It was an opinion about amplified revolutionary rhetoric, not Waco.
The problem is, to make his point, Boehlert is clearly rationalizing the Waco situation and the government's response-- and there was a substantial amount of amplification back then over it already, because ATF's actions were so egregious. They didn't need Beck and he would not have made much of a difference.
It was a bad example--a stretch. I understand Boehlert's idea, but the example could have been better chosen. It also doesn't even relate to the present day, because in that case, the right wing were actually correct about "the government" and its actions. Most liberals agreed with them, too.
It's a sick, ignorant subculture that has glorified the stockpiling of weapons and ammunition as an honorable (picture flags waiving, eagles soaring and strains of God Bless America), patriotic function of fighting a paranoid, delusional fear of tyranny. These losers have romanticized their fringe beliefs to a degree that suggests a disconnection with reality. And, yet, they have been mainstreamed because the Republican Party knows their votes count equally with sane people.
Ya I don't get America's gun laws, is it the fourth Ammendment or something?
I mean how easy is it for anyone to buy a gun in America?, seriously do you only need money and an I.D and you have one?
Another thing is what guns can you own?, I wouldn't complain about pistols or shotguns (I don't know much about guns so I can't name specific gun models), but can you have machine guns, uzi's?
And if so then thats seriously f***ed up.
I appreciate that its a different culture and it is written by your Founding Fathers, who I wouldn't dream of insulting, but for the love of Mary, they were still human, they aren't infallable, why can't you make it so that there's restrictions on buying machine guns and how many guns you can own?
Please educate me on this, cause I'd like to know the reasoning as I'm sure almost everyone outside America doesn't get it
I'm not sure I get it either, but one thing I do know is that many gun "enthusiasts", in America, only care about the 2nd amendment. They can dance around and skip over any of the other freedoms quarantined in our constitution. They can interpret how certain segments of our society aren't entitled to constitutional protections, but the right to bear arms is absolute.
Everyone has their own interpretation but I would say that many of these groups fall outside of "a well regulated militia for the security of a free state"
The 2nd amendment enthusiasts are too busy defending the "right to bear arms" portion of it to bother with the "well regulated" portion. I guess that's the fault of all us liberals trying to snatch their guns.
How true. I even know a Democratic Lawyer who is a gun enthusiast, and he totally dismisses the "well regulated militia" clause. In their thinking, it is an anachronism, or a mistake. They won't give an inch on that point.
I generally support the right to own guns. Where I part company with the hardliners is when they insist that they have the right to own fully automatic assault weapons and use teflon bullets that will penetrate body armor.
The way I see it, if you can't defend yourself and your home with semi auto handguns, rifles and shotguns, it's Mad Max time and you're probably doomed anyway.
>>In their thinking, it is an anachronism, or a mistake.
That's an odd angle for the strict originalists.
My thought as well. These same people will bristle if you suggest the notion of a "living Constitution"... yet they insist that a "well regulated militia" has no meaning in modern society, and can therefore be ignored.
You're assuming they value intellectual consistency ...
Yeah, they're sooooo PATRIOTIS, but yet they want to overthorw the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.
TRAITORS. Is what they're called. It's about time we took that word back, forcibly, from the Conervatives who apparently don't know the MEANING OF IT.
(While we're at it, let's take back PATRIOT. as well. These people don't know what THAT word means either!)
Now now, they don't want to overthrow the U.S. Government. They just want to overthrow the democratic party and create a one party country where only white men are allowed to rule...
Tomato, to-mah-to.
Traitors?! Are you for real? I am a staunch conservative, who has devoted 12 years of my life in service to this country (23rd Airborne), and now some 20 something like you is going to call me a traitor because I believe the government has no business in mine and my families life? Lets talk about some other words here like courage and sacrifice and the responsibility of people to take care of their own (not for someone else to) and then if there is something left to help take care of your neighbors, because you want to, NOT HAVE TO...
Fox News on a daily basis incites there listeners to think of the President of the United States as a Communist. a Fascist, a Socialist, eventually some sicko is gonna take a shot at the President thinking he's saving our country from the next Hitler. You complain about govt. interference in your life because he wants to raise taxes on the richest 5% while the GOP has been trying to outlaw sex acts between consenting adults, pushing there religous beliefs over others and interfering with a womans choice. Who's in your business.
I'm an aussie, living in Australia and when we got FNC about 4yrs ago. I sat down to watch what I thought was a news channel. Imagine my horror when the first thing that assailed me was a 'Sean Hannity' speaking the most vile lying things. I thought "this is an abberation' until the next show called The Factor. I have been since then pulled intensely towards this Fox thing. Now I have become bored or maybe it doesn't have any shock power left. The only thing I find shocking is that the media lets this thing tell lie after lie about a President whom you can't help but like and admire. Or is Fox become the 'american way'. If so, your country is dying and quickly.
Isn't it really confusing when you first watch Hannity and O Reilly, I mean especially when you see Fox NEWS is the channel, almost makes you laugh ha ha
Oh they'd like to destory America. They try hard. But we managed to elect Obama despite their best efforts. SO I'm hopeful that it's not AMERICA that's dying, but rather the REPUBLICANS, the CONSERVTAIVES and the TRAITORS to America, like those who orginise "tea Parties" and watch and listen to the FNC.
Yea but the ironic thing about electing Obama is that the conservatives wont be the ones that kill off America.
The irony of this would be that it was created by Rupert Murdock, who I believe is an aussie as well.
I do not believe that Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch are crazy. I believe they are cynical and short-sighted individuals who believe they can harness the power of the crazies to their own political ends. This is what scares me about them, since history is short of examples of that actually working and long on examples of how that strategy led to disaster.
The Nazis were on the decline in the early 30s, until a few cynical politicians decided that they could control Hitler if they went into a partnership with him. The Russian Revolution was originally guided by people like Alexander Kerensky, who thought the Bolsheviks were a fringe group they could easily discard once they got rid of the czar. The democratic reformers in Iran who got rid of the Shah thought the same thing about the Mullahs. Any time someone has tried to harness the power of the lunatic fringe for their own ends, it's blown up in their own faces and the entire world suffered for their hubris.
It's terrifying to me that Glenn Beck can stand in front of the Alamo and basically lead calls for secession (which I saw on Greta van Susteren's show last night). In 1995, Rush Limbaugh squealed like a pig if anyone dared to draw a link between himself and Timothy McVeigh, but now he's treating a report on far-right radicals in the mold of McVeigh like it's a personal attack on himself.
This is deeply frightening stuff, and it's going to take responsible people on the right to take it down, and so far those people have been conspicuously meek in the debate. Frum tried, McCain grumbles incoherently every so often, a couple of people floated opposition to Limbaugh then immediately backed down. But if the sane conservatives in this country, of whom there are many, do not stand up and take charge and face down the mob that Ailes and Murdoch are working overtime to whip into a frenzy, I fear that there are going to be dire consequences for all of us.
This is deeply frightening stuff, and it's going to take responsible people on the right to take it down.
But they won.t So the RIGHT must be taken down, in it's entirity. The Republicans should be disbanded and replaced with a Center-Right party or Psuedo-Libertarin/Populists. We need to cast the fringe back to the fringe, and the Republicans show no willingness to do this on their own. The traitors.
There are very few responsible people on the FAR RIGHT.
There's NO responsible people on the FAR RIGHT, and VEWRY FEW (as you say) in waht remains of the Republican Party. The RESPONSIBLE ones were all moderates, and they're wither jumping ship or being marginalized by their own party.
AMEN TO THAT
Breno: I agree with pretty much everything that you said, but I think I'm more cynical than you are--I don't think that Ailes and Murdoch are short-sighted, I think they know exactly what they're doing and they don't care. They have enough money that they don't care what happens to the rest of the world, it won't affect them much. The level of wealth they have accumulated means that they can essentially live anywhere and their standard of living won't change. They just want to ensure that their own wealth increases and to hell with everybody and everything else. I think they are deliberately harnessing the extreme right wing knowing that they will be on top no matter what happens, and it is easier to increase their own wealth and power when everybody is looking for some OTHER (like Hitler used the Jews) to blame for all their problems. Listen to, for example, Beck's rhetoric, or the call by the Governor of Texas for secession. They aren't trying to solve any problems; they're trying to CAUSE them.
Ailes and Murdoch only care about their money if they could make money off the left they would. Since there are no more conservatives with conscience or spines its up to the left to take the time to see whos advertising on the fox and start making calls. The business world cant afford to lose a single customer in this downturn and need to be reminded of just what their sponsoring. It worked for UPS, thats why Inow ship with them.
I think I let FAUX push its limits and help them along as much as possible right to the line of inciting to riot, sedition, or treason. Then I'd yank their license.
Faux has been seditious in their comments and yesterday on that idiotic Beck's show, standing in front of the Alamo, he was pulling back, talking about peaceful demonstrations. This morning, F&F idiots tried to get Sec. Napolitano to say she would "change" the right-wing language due to Catholicism - which she said she would re-write the footnote if she had the chance, but then F&F come back on stating she "agreed" that it was wrong and would take it out. Liars, seditious liars who try to "trick" a former US Atty, Governor and now DHS Secretary. Doocy and Carlson cannot get one fact straight and are so stupid they think they "solve issues". Faux has spent yesterday and this morning TRYING to make their failed teabagging into a "movement". WHINING, all the way about the MSM not covering their SPONSORSHIP of the partisan BS and that the Pres WILL NOT notice them.
I've always been curious why MMFA will never take on AOL-- which is truly a big part of the MSM.
Their news articles are just as slanted as FOX, yet it is their comments section-- where they allow the most vile racist talk to be posted without removal-- that deserves scrutiny.
Every day, 1,000s of nutcase comments are encouraged, and they are always inspired by the liberal-baiting articles on AOL.
Notice the Obama administration, and even the DHS report, have made no mention of what's going on over at Fox. Neither has the New York Times, or any mainstream news outlet. I don't know if it's for fear of picking that fight, or if they've made a calculation, and given them all the rope they need to hang themselves...
"Notice the Obama administration, and even the DHS report, have made no mention of what's going on over at Fox."
And yet... FoxNoise ran a couple of days of stories acting as if it was them that the Obama administration was talking about...
Guilty conscience? or.... as you said "and given them all the rope they need to hang themselves..."
If that's the case... Score one brilliant move for the Obama people!
President Obama showed that kind of genius througout the campaign as well. All that time his liberal critics kept saying that he needed to "HIT BACK, HARD." And he just kept play it cool saying, in essence, "Chill the f--k out, I got this." He's the man. He's knows how to play these things.
It's a little hard to consider the hypothetical in this case. After all, Fox news has only been anti-government for a couple months now, after 8 straight years of public relations work for the executive administration.
LOL. Yeah... but Clinton WAS a Democrat, even if just in name only!
While I'm no fan of hypotheticals or 'what if" stories...
I have to say that when you take into account the way FoxNoise presents itself today... in the wake of Senator Obama becoming President Obama... and contrast that with how lovey dovey the FoxNoise crowd was with President ChuckleNuts and Darth Cheney...
It most certainly is easy to see how this thread makes perfect sense. Because had Fox existed then... this is one theory (story) that most assuredly would have been fact had Fox been around then!
As I said... one only has to look at how Fox reacts to everything when its Democrats in charge and how they don't react when its Republicans in charge!
Anyone who believes what Fox News is doing in this country right now is free speech, should look at Afghanistan. Are the Taliban's constant rantings and ravings on their airwaves free speech !
Fox News, "and I choke on that label for them " is inciting the true bottom feeders of our society right now. You know I'm just a home-maker from upstate NY, but I refuse to be afraid to speak up !
If we can get this country to stop watching mindless television, and mind numbing FOX WATCHING ! Then maybe we could get a handle on our world !
sincerly, Jeannie Danna
They're traitors. Pure and simple. And I'm the biggest supprter of free-speech that you're likely to find. But organizing protests with the underlying purpose of overthorwing the government, and casting your lot with seperatists, and not only giving them a voice, but a PLATFORM as well... Well... there's a word for that, and it's called: TREASON.
The Republican Party has gradually come under the control of Southern Neo Confederates, and it's starting to bubble to the surface in an ugly way. These guys still thinThe Governor of Texas was hinting at secession yesterday. Is it treason for a government official to encourage secession from the union? Probably not, but it is certainly unseemly.
Dropped a sentence... darn. I meant to add that these guys still think we'd be better off if the South had won the Civil War.
Yeah, like I said: TRAITORS. The "Liberal media" should not be letting this point slide.
I think you nailed it! Southern Neo Confederates are gaining ground on the right. And the ideological/financial linkage of Clear Channel radio and Fox "News" bodes ill for the country. They manage to get those "strange bedfellows" together: the uber-rich and the bitter, poor gun-toters. Who would have thought? But there's a clear agenda that each of those elements of society have (undergirded with a nice dose of free-floating rage) that is served by Fox and Clear Channel. And those media boys are laughing all the way to the bank.
Don't forget the Evangelical nutbags. They're a big part of the Frankenstein monster that has been cobbled together animated by the Republican party to devour us all.
Ah yes, wouldn't want to leave them out of the picture, either! It only takes one or two knee-jerk phrases to get them to vote against their own--and our-- welfare: abortion, gay marriage, whatever. Dangle those carrots and they will happily follow anywhere. Makes things so convenient for the upper crust: it really is easy to get good help these days. All a matter of marketing. After the election is over, you don't have to address abortion seriousl,y of course... in fact, if it went away, what would be substituted as a "motivator?"
I agree with you. I am starting to tell businesses who have their TV's turned to Fox News in the waiting rooms that I am highly offended and disapprove. I will take my business elsewhere. I have also protested when our internet provider put Fox New on their Web site Portal. They refused to remove it but did add another news source. I think it is time for bumper stickers and t-shirts protesting Fox News and the right-wing militia movement. I live among these crazy people. TRUST ME, YOU SHOULD BE SCARED.
i think that fox news management has really just made a business decision here.
they are catering to the extreme right in this country because they know that that group of people distrust the government and the media. so fox sets themselves up as the anti-media watchdogs and push all things right wing. they don't worry about truth or facts because their audience does not care. but this is why they are number one on cable. all the right wing people tune in to have their "beliefs" reinforced. and we help with the ratings as well because we tune in to see what insane things they are discussing at the moment. fox will only get more extreme as time goes on because doing so is good for thier bottom line. murdock cares for money and power. he has zero concern for what happens to this country. if we collapse because of the wingnut war he fox starts he can always go back home and count all his money.
just a thought
It's the same thought that Michael Savageweiner has had himself, as a matter of fact.
I agree that Ailes, Murdoch, etc., believe that they have a long range vision, but where I think their shortsightedness comes in is in their belief that they can control the forces they're whipping into a frenzy and use them to emerge unscathed or better off in the end. Whipping up revolutionary frenzy has rarely ended up benefitting those who stirred it up - Robespierre ended up headless, Kerensky exiled, Trotsky got an icepick through the ear, etc. These things have a tendency to take on a life of their own, and it's usually not the life the instigators had planned for it. This is why intelligent people tend not to deploy revolutionary dogma lightly. I don't think when the Iranian intellectuals overthrew the Shah, they were expecting to be in front of a firing squad two years later.
Most of the right-wing pot-stirrers love to pretend to be upstanding supporters of Biblical principles, but if any of them ever bothered to open that book, they might be familiar with the warning from Hosea (I think it was Hosea, anyhow) - "They have sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind." It's a dangerous game to whip up an armed rabble and it's a game that very rarely follows the rules the people who started it believe it will.
I think we have to be very careful using Waco as a reference for anything. There were acknoweldged mistakes, including the government's relative ignorance concerning the meaning and importance of the Branch Davidians' religious beliefs. The government was right to go in for the weapons, but a lot of that violence could have been avoided if there had been anyone savvy enough about religion to act as a mediator between the two groups. A lot of people outside Waco DID see that event as persecution of Christians by the government. A lot of people in this country DO see things that way anyway, because their churches teach them that Christians will be persecuted for their beliefs. So they (wrongly) think Christians are persecuted. We cannot afford to downplay the religious factor in this country. The Republicans have been capitalizing on religion for the last 8 years, and will continue to do so until we get some kind of understanding about Christian life in this country.
You shoot a law enforcement officer and you lose everything. Once the Davidians chose to fire on ATF agents they got exactly what they deserved.
Whatever. I'm not here to argue semantics with a self-proclaimed expert on the Waco situation. I still think it is a bad example to use for the purposes of this article.
A minor point but 2/28/1993 was weeks, not months, into Clinton's first term. It's hard to say how Fox would've behaved had they been around at that time. As you say even Rush Limbaugh was relatively restrained back then.
Until he called Chelsea the "White House dog."
Amen!
That is one well written piece describing the exact fears I have been feeling since discovering Fox News during the elections. Every time I think I have seen the bottom of their outrageousness, they find a way to go even deeper!
Keep up the great writing!
You all are so our of touch. Poll after poll of the Americans people shows that we as a nation collectively are right of center, yet you call US the fringe? How superior of you. Let's axamine how CNN fired people up shall we?
Susan Rosegen, the CNN reporter who argued Obama talking points to a Tea Party demonstrator she was supposedly interviewing yesterday, offers a teachable moment on CNN and MSM bias. Mark Hemingway of NRO discovered a 2006 Newsbusters report on her contrasting behavior at a lefty demonstration:Rant much?I mean, the piece from the NRO is hysterical. Just keep thinking like that, and the Dems will be in power a long time.
You know what I find interesting.... I have been across many 'Left' and 'Right' websites and reviewed the comments by all and I have found one very strange thing; all of the "conservative sites" allow EVERYONE to have a voice, and there are no shortage of people from the left who do nothing but come out, just like MANY on this site, and spew some of the most hateful stuff. The difference is you are not allowed to here on this site until a moderator has reviewed a number of your porsting to make sure that the opions line up with theirs. I cannot stand what the government is doing to this country, that includes what George Busg did as well, please don't think Iam a fan of 90% of Republicans, I am not, but the Democrats disgust me equally. This is how we get taken down, they turn us against each other, and they not us are the ones succeeding... Oh well, I didn't write a bunch of hate towards Fox News so therefore these comments will likely not show up anyways.... But yours will on Fox's website.
I grew up as a democrat and ina family who used guns to hunt for food to feed ourselves. Yes, I no longer have to use a gun for food but I have had a home invasion attempt and an incident where some hoodlums tried to run my wife and I off the road and followed us every turn. I displayed my weapon from my window-still in its holster and that defused that situation.
On the issue about the statements made by DHS secretary: I do believe they stepped over the line by trying to paint with a broad brush so many Americans who just have a different idea or value than what many others have. You cannot label everyone a terrorist just because they do not think the same as you wish them to. By calling so many different opinionated citizens potential terrorist and at the same time, down playing the actual threat we have in this country from extremists radical groups from Islamic cells to drug cartels to MS-13 gangs, to enviromental extremists like ELF - these are REAL concerns to the average tax paying citizen.
Call out the name TERRORIST when discussing those organizations like I mention above. DO NOT taunt the general citizenry with retoric and mis-statements about potential uprisings from a tiny percentile of the population who haven't even yet shown the desire to organize or create dissension. If we ALL truly BELIEVE in freedom of speech and want that protected; we'd better be fair and equitable with our tolerance to what all sides have to say about anything!!!
I agree. We do have to be careful about labelling people. I wish I'd seen and heard more of that kind of talk when I and others were demonstrating in opposition to the Iraq war. We were often called traitors and even terrorists and Homeland Security definitely had it's eye on us. Heck, they were monitoring QUAKER peace groups.... You know, those wild, crazy Quakers. Never know what they'll come up with next...might even start praying for the country!
Eric, you may want to revisit this line:
The producer of Limbaugh's TV show was Roger Ailes, who, of course, is now the CEO of Fox News. So obviously, Limbaugh's producer does NOT think that kind of rhetoric is too much for American television. At least he doesn't think so now.
What's going on now at Fox is actually more dangerous than the rabid, anti-Clinton movement of the 90s because Fox is bringing extreme right wing crazy talk into the mainstream. During the Clinton years, the militia-types huddled in bunkers with their guns, food rations, and copies of the Turner Diaries, and no one in the media took their message seriously. The McVeigh-types were viewed as the crackpots that they are.
Now, there's a major cable news network broadcasting the irrational, inflammatory, paranoid rantings of lunatics, and presenting them as news. The fact that a major news outlet is willing to promote and endorse these wingnut views gives them the legitimacy and credibility they did not have in the 90s. There are plenty of people who think that Fox is a real news network, and that if something is on the news, it must be true. What Fox is doing is dangerous and irresponsible, but I doubt anyone at Fox or in the Republican party is losing any sleep over it.