New Movie Times: fox

Monday, 5 August 2019

Who Said It: The El Paso Shooter or Fox News?

Screenshot: Fox News

When a white supremacist manifesto allegedly posted by the El Paso shooting suspect first began making the rounds on Saturday night, it was hard not to feel a sense of familiarity.

From a New York Times summary of the manifesto (emphasis mine):

It spoke of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” It detailed a plan to separate America into territories by race. It warned that white people were being replaced by foreigners.

Hey, where have I heard that kind of violent extremist talk before? Oh, that’s right: on Fox News, constantly.

A tiny, tiny sample follows. See if you can spot the pattern (emphasis mine throughout):

Tucker Carlson, 7/9/19:

This cannot continue. It’s not sustainable. No country can import large numbers of people who hate it and survive. The Romans were the last to try that, with predictable results.

Laura Ingraham, 6/18/19 podcast:

No longer can they claim to be for border enforcement, or “Oh yeah, we’re for enforcing the border, oh yeah, we’re for—we’re for keeping the country safe. And oh yeah, we’re not for illegal immigration, we’re for legal immigration”— that’s what they used to say That’s what the Obama folks and the Clinton folks used to say, but no longer. No, you’re for replacing the current American population, or swamping the current American population, with a new population of people who are perhaps more hospitable to socialist ideals.

Tucker Carlson, 5/21/19:

The American piñata has been getting pummeled for decades and now it has finally come apart. Our national wealth is up for grabs by whomever gets here first, and they are coming. Over just the past year, 1% of the entire population of the nation of Guatemala has moved to the United States. A Wall Street Journal piece last month described the plight of that country’s villages. Some of them are literally depopulating as people stream north to America’s generous welfare state. Meanwhile a new study from the Federation for Immigration Reform, FAIR, given exclusively to this show, shows the scale on which the United States is being plundered.

Tucker Carlson, 12/13/18:

Our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this. We have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided. Immigration is a form of atonement.

Fox & Friends, 11/2/18:

When you see a lot of young men carrying the flag of their country to your country to break your laws, it looks a lot more like an invasion than anything else.

Laura Ingraham, 8/7/18:

In some parts of the country, it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like.

I could go on. This is not some fringe ideology confined to the dark corners of the web. It’s being peddled constantly by some of our highest-profile media figures—oh, and by the president of the United States.

Sunday, 4 August 2019

After Mass Shooting, Lt. Gov. Tells Antifa to Stay Out of Texas

Photo: Loren Elliott (Getty Images/File)

Authorities hadn’t even released the official number of dead and wounded from a mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart on Saturday when Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick began complaining on Fox News about Antifa.

The shooter, a white, 21-year-old male identified as Patrick Crusius of Allen, TX, began firing outside the Walmart before noon local time, and then entered the store, going “aisle to aisle” shooting everyone in sight. He was eventually taken into custody alive.

Meanwhile, police are investigating a white supremacist’s so-called manifesto that circulated online days ahead of the shooting that may have been written by Crusius. The racist text rails on corporations and Democrats, and states that immigration is “detrimental to the future of America.” It complains of the “Hispanic invasion of Texas” and praises the white supremacist who carried out a mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand. Authorities have not yet verified whether Crusius is the text’s author.

However, NBC News reported that authorities are “reasonably confident” Crusius posted the text on the online forum 8chan.

Nevertheless, Texas’ lieutenant governor thought it a good idea to phone in to Fox News and deliver a strongly worded warning...to Antifa.

“You know, I was looking at a story recently…where Antifa is posting, you know they want to come down to El Paso and do a 10-day siege. Clear message to Antifa: Stay out of El Paso,” Patrick said.

He was referring to information shared by conservative writer Andy Ngo about a “Border Resistance Convergence” organized for Sept. 1-10 in El Paso. According to the Border Resistance website, the event consists of 10 days of “trainings and direct actions” to address “US-funded genocide and local concentration camps” at the border.

“Stay out of Texas, basically,” Patrick said, referring to Antifa. “We don’t need them coming in on September 1st. We didn’t need them to begin with, before this happened. But I would say to Antifa, scratch Texas off your map and don’t come in.”

A week ago, just a day before another mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Northern California, President Donald Trump threatened to label Antifa a terrorist organization.

After the Texas attack this weekend, Fox News also was quick to play up the “mental health” angle of the white shooter.

And heartfelt thoughts and prayers were widely distributed, including by White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham.

Others argued that no one should mention the alleged mass murderer’s name, but rather elevate the first responders to “celeb status,” which unfortunately has become a way to gloss over the motivations of mass shooters like Crusius:

We’ll find out soon enough what those motivations were, and I can wager a strong bet that they have nothing to do with Antifa.