How Hate Spreads From Fox To Trump ????? And Pittsburgh

[_Kevin Graham]

How Hysteria And Hatred About Migrants Spread From Fox To Trump — And Pittsburgh

Not fake news at all.

[_Chap]

Here's the article:

(Why not do this in future, KG? A lot of people will pay no attention to a bare link, and it's a good article it would be a pity to see people miss.)

"There is no crisis except for the one that Fox News and Trump have sought to create in order to get GOP voters to the polls."

The role of President Donald Trump’s ominous warnings about the caravan of migrants headed toward the U.S. border from Central America in inspiring the virulent anti-Semite who killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday highlights the destructive consequences of Fox News’ grip on the president.

While Robert D. Bowers, the man accused of carrying out the mass shooting, had criticized Trump for being insufficiently anti-Semitic, critics pointed out that president had “stoked the fears of the Bowerses among us,” deploying incendiary and false rhetoric about the migrant caravan in hopes of bolstering the Republican Party’s standing. “The shooter might have found a different reason to act on a different day,” Adam Serwer wrote for The Atlantic. “But he chose to act on Saturday, and he apparently chose to act in response to a political fiction that the president himself chose to spread and that his followers chose to amplify.”

Trump, in turn, came into contact with that fiction via Fox’s fearmongering. The president’s first public statements about the caravan came in response to a segment he watched on the Fox News morning show ”Fox & Friends,” and in the weeks that followed, his rhetoric and that of the conservative network escalated at pace.

For more than a year, I’ve been studying the Trump-Fox feedback loop, my term for the way Fox News at times is able to set the national media agenda because the president watches the network’s programming, tweets about it in real time and adopts its particular fixations. As the rest of the press scrambles to cover Trump’s comments, Fox’s right-wing obsessions consume the news cycle, whether or not they were originally newsworthy. In this case, Fox News urged him to whip his followers into a frenzy over the caravan, and he did it. There’s no indication that either Fox News or Donald Trump will cut off this campaign of fear.


The caravan formed in Honduras on Friday, Oct. 12. By Oct. 15, it was already receiving substantial coverage on Fox News. The next morning, in response to a report on ”Fox & Friends,” Trump issued his first public statement on the migrants, warning the Honduran government that he would cut its aid if the caravan was not stopped. Trump’s comment generated more coverage both on Fox News and at other media outlets. On Wednesday night, Oct. 17, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared on Fox News and urged Republicans to make the caravan a key voting issue, claiming that “the left is eager” for the caravan to enter the United States.

The next morning, “Fox & Friends” repeatedly aired Gingrich’s comments and suggested that Republicans should take his advice. In response, Trump issued a series of tweets using the caravan’s advance to attack Democrats, saying they had “led (because they want Open Borders and existing weak laws)” an “assault on our country.”

The network and its most powerful viewer spent the next week raising the temperature, stoking fears about whether the migrants were criminals or terrorists, calling the caravan an “invasion” and describing its approach as a national emergency. Escalation bred response bred further escalation, with no sign of a line beyond which the president and his propagandists wouldn’t go.

Trump’s Fox-fueled commentary turned the caravan story into a major national news story as reporters sought to explain and contextualize what he was talking about. But the situation does not, on its face, justify the coverage the caravan has received. The migrants are currently in southern Mexico, their numbers are dwindling and, depending on whichroute the caravan chooses, they face a journey of 1,000 to 2,000 miles to the U.S. border that will take weeks or months. Those who make it to the border have the right to seek asylum, and those whose claims are rejected will be turned away. That’s what happened when a similar caravan ― which also drew vitriol from Fox News and then from Trump ― reached the U.S. border in May. The caravans have been going on for roughly a decade without issue. There is no crisis except for the one that Fox News and Trump have sought to create in order to get GOP voters to the polls.

I’ve written before of the perils of having a president who relies on conservative cable news hosts to help him understand current events. When federal policy and personnelshifts can be driven by a Fox-inspired presidential whim, the network’s influence is staggering. The greatest risk is that Trump could use his unilateral control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal in response to a Fox segment; Trump was reportedly unnerved by b-roll the network aired in March 2017 of a North Korean missile launch, convinced that it was happening live. But on a day-to-day basis, the major concern is that the president is a demagogue who constantly lashes out at his perceived enemies in order to secure his base’s support, and Fox News’ programming is providing him with targets for his ire, whether that’s protesting NFL players or recalcitrant Justice Department officials. That pattern has played out again and again since Trump ascended to the presidency.

“Ordinarily,” Serwer wrote, “a politician cannot be held responsible for the actions of a deranged follower.” So, too, it usually doesn’t make sense to attribute a president’s actions to a news network. But Trump is suggestible, he watches Fox News constantly, and the network’s commentators are aware of that. In lighter moments, the “Fox & Friends” hosts joke about the president’s tendency to watch the programs. In heavier ones, the program’s commentators openly offer him advice, telling him not to sit down with special counsel Robert Mueller or pull troops out of Syria.

But on the Monday after the synagogue murders, nothing had changed. The migrants were again drawing coverage on “Fox & Friends” (“Border Battle Rages as Caravan Heads to U.S.,” read one chyron). And hours later, Trump tweeted that the migrants were conducting “an invasion of our Country.”

[_MeDotOrg]

Fox broadcast an ICE agent saying that members of the caravan could be bringing in diseases like smallpox. Smallpox was eradicated in 1980. In the Middle Ages when the Bubonic plague ravaged Christendom, Christians burned the Jews and blamed them for the plague.

We've come a long way, baby

[_subgenius]

Only butt-hurt hair-fire liberals and democrats would blame Trump for Pittsburgh.....

[_Kevin Graham]

Only butt-hurt hair-fire liberals and democrats would blame Trump for Pittsburgh.....

And only those who pretend to be decent human beings while burying their heads in all things republican, would insist Trump has absolutely nothing to do with crimes committed against his enemies by his own followers who obsessively follow his "leadership."

[_canpakes]

Only butt-hurt hair-fire liberals and democrats would blame Trump for Pittsburgh.....

Surely you are more swift of thought as to not fall into the maw of idiocy in declaring that there are only two extremes to choose from:

1. Trump is solely responsible for events like Pittsburgh’s shooting.

Or,

2. Trump cannot contribute in any way to the causes of events like Pittsburgh’s shooting.

Aren’t you?

[_subgenius]

Only butt-hurt hair-fire liberals and democrats would blame Trump for Pittsburgh.....

Surely you are more swift of thought as to not fall into the maw of idiocy in declaring that there are only two extremes to choose from:

1. Trump is solely responsible for events like Pittsburgh’s shooting.

Or,

2. Trump cannot contribute in any way to the causes of events like Pittsburgh’s shooting.

Aren’t you?

No, i recognize the 3rd option as well, the hysteria and atmosphere of persecution and intolerance created by the Left has resulted in many people exaggerating the otherwise innocuous public/political debate.

There is absolutely only one person responsible for the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. There is no conspiracy afoot.

[_ajax18]

How Hysteria And Hatred About Migrants Spread From Fox To Trump — And Pittsburgh

Not fake news at all.

This coming from one of the most hateful people I've ever met.

[_Res Ipsa]

USA Today did an interesting story that traces the spread of the "Soros is funding the caravan" lie through the internet and into mainstream discourse. https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/ ... 824633002/

[_Chap]

There is absolutely only one person responsible for the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh.

YES - in the sense that, assuming he had no material help by anybody else who was aware of his plan, he is indeed the only person who will have to face charges for the killing of these people.

NO - in the sense that there were people on his Gab list (it was Gab, was it not?) who spent many hours writing and reposting material designed to suggest that the USA, and particularly the white citizens thereof, were in mortal danger from conspiracies launched by evil Jews, and in some cases discussing what kind of action should, ideally be taken to eliminate that threat. Did none of them think:

"Hey - although I believe this stuff, I'm not really intending to go out there and shoot all the Finkelsteins I can find. I know I'm not a threat to anyone's life. But what if there is a crazy guy out there with a few guns, and the need for a purpose in his sad little life? He might actually DO something after reading the stuff I post. So maybe I ought to ease off a little?"

If on the other hand the members of that list just had a great time spewing out and even hyping up all the Jew-hate material they could find, day after day, while cherishing the secret hope that someone would actually ''get 'er done" one day - then those people ARE in part responsible for what this guy did.