Quelle surprise - US far-right surges in strength

[FutureTaoiseach]

Things have gotten out of hand, and Glenn Beck, the entire Fox News team, Roger Ailes and ultimately Rupert Murdoch have a lot to answer for. The thing that really gets me is the hypocrasy of the right in America at this point in time. They blatantly bend the rules when it suits them. So, criticising a president in a time of war is unpatriotic when it's George Bush but allowed when it's Obama; presenting news items as 'Fair & Balanced' while blatantly they are skewed to the right.

There are no sane moderate right wingers in the US public arena at the moment who are making an impact. Instead, we have Beck and Limbaugh and the like. The scary thing is that this seems to reflect the public sentiment also. All of a sudden Obama is the going to bring about a communist revolution. Hmmmmm .... who was that last guy? What were the things he did again? The collective amnesia about the fact that it was far right elements which got America into it's current quandary is astounding.

Future Taoiseach, I agree with you that not every right winger is a far right winger. But on this occasion, things seem to be geared up for something to happen. What that something is, I don't know, but the right in America has become radicalised (just like the left can become radicalised in other places at other times), and I dread to think what a republican in the white house will do. Or maybe a march on the capital, or a military coup ... extreme, yes, but the right wing movement is gearing up for something.

I would not have been of that opinion a couple of years back, but things have changed. So, yes, I do think there is cause for concern. Unless everyone comes to their senses.

If I were Murdoch I would shut it down. He is more right wing than left wing, but I think that if anything does happen Fox News will have a lot to answer for, and that means that he will have a lot to answer for too. It's irresponsible. I know that he isn't directly involved in the running of the network (that's Roger Ailes) but he is the one who is ultimately responsible for the whole thing. I know his other media outlets have been accused of various things throughout the years, but this would top the list if anything were to happen. It already does top the list in my opinion.

I'm reminded of a line from Spiderman of all things! 'With great power comes great responsibility.' So, Rupert Murdoch, if you're listening, shut it down or reform it - it has grown into a monster of propaganda, with radical nutjobs feeding their agenda to a recession era public, leaderless after the failure of the moderate right over the last decade or so.

This is the path to violence. And a large part of the blame lies wit Fox News and the way they have positioned themselves in American life.

On the contrary - he should keep it. They are the most trusted name in news. In any case, America has always been a conservative society. Even when William Jennings Bryan moved the party to the Left by jumping into bed with the labour-unions, he continued to deny the theory of evolution. The Democrats preceding him were laissez-faire libertarians while the Republicans were the first Progressives. That is why Theodore Roosevelt left the party to run as a Progressive Party candidate when they moved to the Right. America has had 18 GOP and 15 Democrat presidents. The American political centre-of-gravity is consistently conservative. The failure of health-care reform in 1994 underlines that fact. Even many Democrats (particularly in the South and West) despise Big Government and regard the public-sector as a special-interest-group - as demonstrated consistently in Rasmussen polls on this matter.

In fact, I would love to see Fox set up in Ireland and take on the PC-brigade. The cosy, PC, social-liberal Establishment need a serious shock to the system. As Voltaire (a real liberal - unlike the lefties in Newstalk and the Irish Times) once said:

Think freely and allow others do likewise.

My ideology is a cross between liberatarianism and conservatism. I believe the State should stay out of the bedrooms of consenting adults - regardless of sexual-orientation. I also believe that society's optimal state is as a market of ideas, goods and services - but not necessarily labour. Restrictions on immigration are needed to prevent other country's problems being imported into Irish society e.g. terrorism, extremism - but some legals should be allowed in. Existing legal-immigrants should be allowed to stay unless and until the terms of their residency expire - but illegals should all be deported to a safe-country. The State should be aggressively-secularist and consign all state-funding of denominational-education to the dustbin of history. In the present context, it constitutes segregation and sows the seeds of ghettoisation.

It is my firm belief that the Irish people need a Tea Party, and in that context, I hope that Murdoch pushes Newscorp's conservative message in this country. I am not a pure conservative: I am liberal on moral issues (except abortion), while tough on law and order and illegal immigration. So I don't share the views of the minority lunatic-fringe of the Tea Party with respect to "literacy tests" or Obama being the devil. But I do share the wider movement's philosophy of Small Government and individual-freedom (except on guns). This tea offers Ireland a prescription for economic recovery - and we would do well to sup from it. Drink!

[Ecoguy]

The US has an extremely dysfunctional society - which can be traced back to the holocaust of native peoples to its modern day bullying corporate imperialism that has fueled wars around the world as well as leaving 40% of its children living in poverty while the top 1% enjoy more weath then 97% of the rest of the population. Throw in gun toting, war mongering, pro life god botherers like Sarah Palin and you can see that America as a nation has serious internal issues to sort out

[Pauli]

The US has an extremely dysfunctional society - which can be traced back to the holocaust of native peoples to its modern day bullying corporate imperialism that has fueled wars around the world as well as leaving 40% of its children living in poverty while the top 1% enjoy more weath then 97% of the rest of the population. Throw in gun toting, war mongering, pro life god botherers like Sarah Palin and you can see that America as a nation has serious internal issues to sort out

I agree with you but we are, according to some, closer to Boston than Berlin. There are, as you know, posters on this site who absolutely love the place but not enough, alas, to actually relocate there.

[Breadan O'Connor]

Things have gotten out of hand, and Glenn Beck, the entire Fox News team, Roger Ailes and ultimately Rupert Murdoch have a lot to answer for.

This is the path to violence. And a large part of the blame lies wit Fox News and the way they have positioned themselves in American life.

What you must remember is that Rupert Murdoch is not a revolutionary but the ultimate insider.

Murdoch gets begged for support by the top politicians like for example David Cameron.

Murdochs family holidays with the richest people on the planet like the Rothschilds.

He is using people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin in order to dupe disgruntled US conservatives IMO. Murdochs real fear is if US conservatives followed a truly independent leader.

Murdoch is trying to set up a controlled opposition.

[Húrin]

The American right wing has to be the biggest joke ever. They fantasise all day, every day, about an unbiased capitalism that never has existed and probably never can exist. They hark back to a religious past that never existed, they deify the "founding fathers", and want to return America to the principles of the pre-industrial society that those founders lived in.

Small government has never existed in America. Even worse, the southern and mid-western states that are the heartland of "small government activism" recieve far higher federal subsidies than the liberal coastal states, who are in fact financing the cheques.

What the Irish and European Left hate about America is its freedom - both in terms of the free market in goods and services and freedom of expression afforded to those who are not leftwing.

Haha, come on, George Bush quotes are a bit old now. Europe has a free market of goods and I fail to see how people with "Tea party" style opinions are suppressed here; they are just less numerous than in America.

The US has an extremely dysfunctional society - which can be traced back to the holocaust of native peoples to its modern day bullying corporate imperialism that has fueled wars around the world as well as leaving 40% of its children living in poverty while the top 1% enjoy more weath then 97% of the rest of the population. Throw in gun toting, war mongering, pro life god botherers like Sarah Palin and you can see that America as a nation has serious internal issues to sort out

I presume FT reads this and sees these various issues as manifestations of "freedom" and when you define these issues as problems, it means that you "hate America".

Murdoch is trying to set up a controlled opposition.

Exactly. It is what cunning leaders have done throughout recent history. FT mentioned Roosevelt and the Progressives of the early 20th century USA: the reason for their existence was to be a controlled opposition that would remove support from socialist trade unions by making reforms without fundamental system change - and they succeeded quite well.

[punchdrunk]

A report on The Guardian's website (wait for the attack-the-messenger brigade to ride into town) notes that there has been a 250% surge in extremist anti-government groups in America in the last year.

Undoubtedly, this rise has been greatly aided by ravings of the dangerous far-right buffoon Glenn Beck on FNC.



US facing surge in rightwing extremist and militia groups | World news | guardian.co.uk

Some of these loons have praised the Austin 'tax protester' who committed murder-suicide by flying a plane into the IRS building in Texas recently. Frank Rich had a great article in the NYT last Sunday on this topic.





Op-Ed Columnist - The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged - NYTimes.com

The likes of Beck and Palin are stoking the flames of the next Oklahoma bombing, and yet the mainstream of the Republican party shows no interest in combatting this madness. Dangerous times.

Now for the TRUTH:The Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell was a registered Democrat.
Read the FACTS here:Michelle Malkin About the Pentagon shooter; Update: Stop playing games, MSM. John Patrick Bedell was a registered Democrat
MSM etc have been spinning lies.
Now listen to Democrat supporter Bill Maher:
Breitbart.tv Maher on Pentagon Shooter’s Death: ‘Why Couldn’t (it) Have Been Glenn Beck’
The New York Times is a discredited liberal trash paper on the verge of collapse. Similarly MSM is on the verge of collapse. The main reason is that they are no longer credible.
Presumably you are happy with the hatred spewed by Maher in the above video.

The New York Times perpetrated an ugly smear against John McCain during the 2008 presidential election campaign. Read: Boots and Sabers - The blogging will continue until morale improves...

[CiaranMc]

I don't think you can write off the Tea Party as uniformly an 'extremist' organisation, given its decisive influence on mainstream politics - notably the election of Scott Brown in Massachussetts

Ah, if I'd a cent for every time this invention has been repeated on politics.ie I'd have bought Hangar 6 several thousand times over.

So, once again.....the Tea Party people had absolutely nothing to do with Scott Brown's Massachussetts win. Brown is loathed by the right, regarded as a RINO (Republican In Name Only) and dismissed as bordering on the 'librul'. His decision to break party lines and vote for the Democrats' Jobs Bill recently confirmed their worst fears about him. They despise him.

eg Free Republic is going after Scott Brown. NeoCons are furious.

The last straw? He's campaigning with John McCain in Arizona against the darling of the Tea-partiers, J.D. Hayworth.

C'mon people, can't we at least try to get our 'facts' right before we bash them out on the keyboard?

[CiaranMc]

Now for the TRUTH:The Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell was a registered Democrat.
Read the FACTS here:Michelle Malkin About the Pentagon shooter; Update: Stop playing games, MSM. John Patrick Bedell was a registered Democrat

:mrgreen: You gotta love someone who quotes Michelle Malkin and expects to be taken seriously.

Who next? Ann Coulter? Glenn Beck? Rush Limbaugh?

:

[CiaranMc]

As Voltaire (a real liberal - unlike the lefties in Newstalk and the Irish Times) once said:My ideology is a cross between liberatarianism and conservatism.

He also said: "An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination."

Very 'librul'.

It is my firm belief that the Irish people need a Tea Party, and in that context, I hope that Murdoch pushes Newscorp's conservative message in this country. This tea offers Ireland a prescription for economic recovery - and we would do well to sup from it. Drink!

FutureTaoiseach? Grow up.

[Oreo Livermore]

The last straw? He's campaigning with John McCain in Arizona against the darling of the Tea-partiers, J.D. Hayworth.

As it turns out, the 4 tea party groups in Arizona are not backing Hayworth, they are decided to endorse nobody.

But a real teabagger will be for Hayworth

Likewise in Texas. Sarah Palin, Miss Teabag campaigned for Perry.

The real teabaggers voted for Medina. They were 19% and Perry got 52%