Fox News has blood on its hands. Everyone who works at that place is, in some way, responsible for the attempted assassination of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) on Saturday in Tucson, Arizona. It still remains to be seen if Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged shooter of Giffords and 18 others, has any connection to Right Wing political groups. So, unlike Fox News, I will not speculate about his motives.
One thing we do know for sure is that Fox News has made a business out of demonizing the Left and inciting their viewers towards violence.
Fox News on air personalities are continually calling Democrats and those that do not agree with them “communists” “enemies of the state” or even “terrorists.” They paint a picture that those “on the Left” are destroying this country and need to be stopped by any means necessary.
Its one thing to have a difference of opinion or even genuinely hate the opposition, but it is quite another to incite your followers to commit acts of violence against the opposition.
And Fox News does this on a daily basis.
The first murder that I am aware of Fox News having a hand in, is that of Dr. George Tiller. Bill O’Rielly frequently referred to him as Tiller The Baby Killer, and compared him to the Nazis for his “Mass murder” of unborn babies. O’Rielly once stated, “There has to be a special place in Hell for this guy.” So is it any surprise when Scott Roeder, a Right Wing zealot, goes out and murders Dr. Tiller?
Of course after that murder, O’Reilly and Fox News tried to distance themselves from the hateful rhetoric they had been spewing but by then it was too late. The die had been cast.
We all know now that Sara Palin (a Fox News correspondent) put crosshairs over many congressional districts with Democrat Representatives (including Giffords). And she likes to invoke gun imagery in her speeches, urging her followers, “Don’t retreat, RELOAD!’
We do not have to become “The Angry Left” as Russell Simmons implored us not too long after the shooting. I agree with him to the extent that we do not have to become violent like so many on the Right. But I do believe we need to get angry over the fact that the Right has continued to terrorize our elected representatives. They vandalize Democratic Representatives offices. They send death threats. They disrupt townhall meetings. They have become the very terrorists that they say they despise. And Fox News is their Al Qaeda.
There is a time for turning the other cheek and a time for standing your ground and saying, “No more!” This is the time for taking a stand.
My advice to those reading this is to organize with those that are like minded and let your voices be heard. And if you live in a place where there aren’t any like-minded people you can still let your voice be heard. Write posts for websites like Global Grind or start your own blog. Write letters to your local paper. Make videos and post them on YouTube. There are dozens of avenues to get you message out. We can no longer afford to remain silent.
But most importantly we all need to get involved in politics (myself included). And I don’t just mean every four years when there is a Presidential election. We need to get involved our local political scene as well. From School Board all the way up to U.S. Representative. That’s what the Right does. And that is one tactic that we should emulate. If we can change our leader
