Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Poisonous’ Brand Is A Malignant Cancer In The American Body Politic

For those of you who are not familiar with this history, Rupert Murdoch, an Australian citizen with a media empire of sleazy tabloid newspapers in Australia and Britain, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1986, only in order to satisfy the legal requirement for US television network ownership in order to purchase 20th Century Fox (a foreigner could not own a television network at the time). It was something of a scandal at the time. People have forgotten about this.

Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including in the UK (The Sun and The Times), in Australia (The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sunand The Australian), in the US (The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post), book publisher HarperCollins, and the television broadcasting channels Sky News Australia and Fox News (through the Fox Corporation). He was also the owner of Sky (until 2018), 21st Century Fox (until 2019), and the now-defunct News of the World. With a net worth of US$21.7 billion as of 2 March 2022, Murdoch is the 31st richest person in the United States and the 71st richest in the world.

Rupert Murdoch and his spawn of Satan sons are among the worst immigrants ever to come to the United States.

Now, I know what you are asking, “Can we revoke his citizenship and kick his ass out of this country?”

According to USA.gov:

[A naturalized citizen] might lose U.S. citizenship in specific cases, including if you:

• • • Run for public office in a foreign country (under certain conditions)
    • Enter military service in a foreign country (under certain conditions)
    • Apply for citizenship in a foreign country with the intention of giving up U.S. citizenship
    • Commit an act of treason against the United States

Fox News is the principal fascist propaganda media outlet in the United States. Fox on-air personalities supported Donald Trump’s “Stop The Steal” nonsense right up to the point that his MAGA/QAnon insurrectionists stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, and Sean Hannity freaked out calling the White House to tell Mark Meadows to tell Trump to call off his paramilitary dogs.  Within days, Fox changed its tune and started calling the violent insurrectionists “patriots” and portraying them as political prisoners – “Free the J6!” – for their “legitimate political discourse.” Now January 6 was just another day of tourists at the Capitol on Fox News – “what’s the big deal?” – trying to disappear the worst act of sedition against the United States since the Civil War down the memory hole.

The New York Times just ran a three part investigative report on Swanson Frozen Foods heir and privileged prep school white boy, Tucker Carlson, and his “White Power Hour” on Fox News. The three parts are:

• “How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable.”
• “How Tucker Carlson Reshaped Fox News — and Became Trump’s Heir.”
• And an audio/video piece: “Look inside the apocalyptic worldview of ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’”

Nick Confessore’s report says Carlson’s show “may be the most racist show in the history of cable news.”

Update: Fox News Host Mark Levin Proudly Stokes ‘Great Replacement Theory’: “Fox News host Mark Levin blatantly supported the “great replacement theory” Tuesday on his radio show, joining colleague Tucker Carlson and top House Republican Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) in pushing a racist conspiracy embraced by the gunman charged in the Buffalo, New York, mass killing.”

White Christian Nationalists are committed to the overthrow of U.S. democracy and replacing it with a theocratic authoritarian white supremacist government.

Thomas Edsall explains, The MAGA Formula Is Getting Darker and Darker (excerpt):

The chilling amalgam of Christian nationalism, white replacement theory and conspiratorial zeal — from QAnon to the “stolen” 2020 election — has attracted a substantial constituency in the United States, thanks in large part to the efforts of Donald Trump and his advisers. By some estimates, adherents of these overlapping movements make up as much as a quarter or even a third of the electorate. Whatever the scale, they are determined to restore what they see as the original racial and religious foundation of America.

“While these elements are not new,” Robert Jones, the chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute, wrote by email, “Donald Trump wove them together and brought them out into the open. Indeed, the MAGA formula — the stoking of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment while making nativist appeals to the Christian right — could accurately be described as a white Christian nationalist strategy from the beginning.”

I asked Katherine Stewart, the author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,” how much Christian nationalism and the great replacement theory intersect. “The answer is complex,” she said. “There is definitely a wing of the Christian nationalist movement that overlaps with the great replacement theory and demographic paranoia in general.”

[I]nstead of Christian nationalism, Stewart prefers the use of “religious nationalism,” which she describes as

a reactionary, authoritarian ideology that centers its grievances on a narrative of lost national greatness and believes in the indispensability of the “right” religion in recovering that lost greatness. This mind-set always involves a narrative of unjust persecution at the hands of alien or “un-American” groups. The specific targets may shift. Some focus their fears on the “homosexual agenda”; others target Americans of color or nonwhite immigrant groups; still others identify the menace with religious minorities such as Muslims, Jews and secular “elites” or perceived threats against gender hierarchy and sexual order. And of course, many take an all-of-the-above approach.

According to some scholars, there are two versions of Christian nationalism, one more threatening to the social order than the other.

* * *

Ruth Braunstein, a professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut and the author of the 2021 paper “The ‘Right’ History: Religion, Race, and Nostalgic Stories of Christian America” … distinguishes between two variants of Christian nationalism. One she calls “white Christian nationalism” and the other “colorblind Judeo-Christian nationalism.”

The first, according to Braunstein, “explicitly fuses whiteness, Christianity and Americanness,” leading to the conclusion that “white Christians alone embody the values on which a healthy democracy rests and, as such, white Christians alone are suited to hold positions of social influence and political power.”

In contrast, she continued, colorblind Judeo-Christian nationalism

either ignores race or uses colorblind language to describe ideal Americanness. This has become the predominant form of Christian nationalism among mainstream conservatives. And for many conservatives, like members of the Tea Party that I studied for several years, the invocation of colorblind Judeo-Christian nationalism is intended to distinguish them from groups on the racist right.

[In] their January 2022 paper, “Christian Nationalism and Political Violence: Victimhood, Racial Identity, Conspiracy, and Support for the Capitol Attacks,” Miles T. Armaly of the University of Mississippi and David T. Buckley and Adam M. Enders, both of the University of Louisville, argue: “Religious ideologies like Christian nationalism should be associated with support for violence, conditional on several individual characteristics that can be inflamed by elite cues.” Those characteristics are “perceived victimhood, reinforcing racial and religious identities and support for conspiratorial information sources.”

“It’s unlikely that a single orientation or one belief was promoting the type of violent action we witnessed in Buffalo or the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” Enders wrote by email. “It’s a toxic blend of extremist orientations, such as Christian nationalism, racism, some expressions of populism and conspiracism, for example, that edges individuals closer to supporting violence.”

Extremism, white Christian nationalism, racism, far-right populism and conspiracism – this is the business model of Fox News. Fox News is daily inciting political violence and insurrection against the government.

No content appears on Fox News that Rupert Murdoch or his son Lachlan have not approved. (James Murdoch had a falling out with his family several years ago. He criticized the “alternative reality” that Fox News created, and how his brother Lachlan allowed for that to continue. A nearly $18 billion media empire, 6 children, and a succession battle: Meet the Murdoch family.)

So treason against the United States? One could certainly make a strong case against immigrant Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan at Fox News. So yeah, revoke this evil old bastard’s U.S. citizenship, kick him out of the country, and take away his flagship Fox News. And he can take his spawn of Satan son with him.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday tore into billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, blaming the Fox News founder for the white supremacist foundation that inspired the racist massacre in Buffalo, New York, that killed 10 people. Lawrence O’Donnell Accuses Rupert Murdoch Of Shaping Thinking Of White Supremacist Killers:

Fox News’ prime time star, Tucker Carlson, has repeatedly talked about the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory the white suspected Buffalo killer cited to justify the mass shooting in a supermarket in a mostly-Black part of Buffalo.

“No one should waste their breath on the men in makeup at Fox when Rupert Murdoch is responsible for everything that they say and do that helps shape the thinking of white supremacist mass murderers,” O’Donnell said on “The Last Word.”

Fox News hosts will stop peddling racism “the minute Rupert Murdoch tells them to stop,” he added in the segment titled “Fox News Has Blood On Its Hands.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer delivered a similar critique on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Chuck Schumer rips Tucker Carlson, Fox News, and ‘MAGA Republicans’ for pushing the ‘replacement theory’ in the wake of the Buffalo shooting:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tore into Tucker Carlson and Fox News on Monday following a mass shooting in Buffalo that left 10 people dead in what authorities have said was a racially motivated attack.

Schumer referred to a New York Times investigation that found Carlson, cable TV’s highest-rated host, brought up elements of the white supremacist conspiracy theory known as “the great replacement theory” in more than 400 episodes of his show. The theory baselessly claims that white people are being replaced by people of color and will ultimately become extinct. Carlson has repeatedly argued that Democrats want to force demographic change on the US through immigration as a way to retain and grow their political power.

“According to one measure by the New York Times, Fox’s top political pundit, Tucker Carlson, has spewed rhetoric that echoes replacement theory at least 400 hundred, 400 hundred times on his show since 2016. 400 times,” Schumer said during a speech on the Senate floor. “This is a poison that is being spread by one of the largest news organizations in our country.”

Chuck Schumer calls out Tucker Carlson and Fox News for "spewing" the "poison" of rhetoric echoing replacement theory pic.twitter.com/lRIhgThWJj

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 16, 2022

Schumer laid the blame for the popularization of the racist conspiracy theory at the hands of “several right-wing outlets” who are “engaged in a craven quest for viewers and ratings.” Echoing President Joe Biden’s recent remarks, Schumer blamed “MAGA Republicans” for spreading the argument.

“The message is not always explicit, but we’ve all seen the pattern,” Schumer said. “Every time MAGA Republicans or pundits vilify wrongly immigrants and call them ‘invaders,’ every time they falsely claim that millions of undocumented people cast ballots in our elections, every time loud, bigoted voices bemoan the disintegration of a ‘classic America’ the subtext is clear,” Schumer said. “These hard-right MAGA Republicans argue that people of color in minority communities are somehow posing a threat, a threat to the American way of life.”

Chuck Schumer Sends Letter To Rupert Murdoch Calling For End To Amplification Of “Great Replacement Theory”:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Rupert Murdoch and other top executives of Fox Corp. and Fox News to stop the “reckless amplification” of the “great replacement theory” by some of the news channel’s hosts.

The letter came following the deadly shooting rampage in Buffalo, NY, over the weekend, in which 10 people were killed. The alleged shooter had, according to a manifesto posted online, been an adherent of the “replacement theory,” or the belief that elites are trying to replace native-born Americans with non-white immigrants for political gain.

“For years, these types of beliefs have existed at the fringes of American life,” Schumer wrote in the letter. “However, this pernicious theory, which has no basis in fact, has been injected into the mainstream thanks in large part to a dangerous level of amplification by your network and its anchors.”

Schumer did not mention Tucker Carlson in the text of the letter, but cc’d him.

[In] his letter — which the Times published here — Schumer quoted a Monday editorial from the Wall Street Journal, owned by Murdoch’s News Corp., that said politicians and media had an obligation to “condemn…such conspiratorial notions as replacement theory.”

Schumer, though, wrote that “words of condemnation are hardly enough.”

“To this end, I implore you to immediately cease all dissemination of false white nationalist, far-right conspiracy theories on your network,” he wrote.

Finally, President Biden declared “white supremacy is a poison.” Transcript (excerpt):

What happened here is simple and straightforward: terrorism. Terrorism. Domestic terrorism. Violence inflicted in the service of hate and the vicious thirst for power that defines one group of people being inherently inferior to any other group. A hate that, through the media and politics, the internet, has radicalized angry, alienated and lost individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced. That’s the word. Replaced by “the other.” By people who don’t look like them.

I and all of you reject the lie. I call on all Americans to reject the lie, and I condemn those who spread the lie for power, political gain and for profit.

That’s what it is. We’ve now seen too many times the deadly and destructive violence this ideology unleashes. We heard the chants — “you will not replace us” — in Charlottesville, Virginia. I wasn’t going to run, as the senator knows, again for president. When I saw those people coming out of the woods of the fields in Virginia, in Charlottesville, carrying torches, shouting, you will not replace us, accompanied by white supremacists and carrying Nazi banners, that’s when I said, “No, no.”

[L]ook, we’ve seen the mass shootings in Charleston, South Carolina; El Paso, Texas; in Pittsburgh. Last year in Atlanta. This week in Dallas, Texas, and now in Buffalo. In Buffalo, New York.

White supremacy is a poison. It’s a poison. It really is. Running through our body politic. And it’s been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes. No more. I mean, no more. We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America. None.

Look, failure to saying, that is going to be complicity. Silence is complicity. It’s complicity. We cannot remain silent.

* * *

Look, the American experiment in democracy is in a danger like it hasn’t been in my lifetime. It’s in danger this hour. Hate and fear are being given too much oxygen by those who pretend to love America, but who don’t understand America. To confront the ideology of hate requires caring about all people. Not making distinctions. Reverend, the scripture, the — seeing that we’re all part of the divine.

That’s the America I know, that Jill knows. And most deserve the most — look, we are the most multiracial, most dynamic nation in the history of the world. Now is the time for the people of all races, from every background to speak up as a majority in America and reject white supremacy. These actions we’ve seen in these hate-filled attacks represent the views of a hate-filled minority.

We can’t allow them to distort America. The real America. We can’t allow them to destroy the soul of the nation.

As president of the United States, I travel the world all the time. And other nations ask me, heads of state in other countries ask me, what’s going on? What in God’s name happened on January 6th? What happened in Buffalo? They’ll ask.

We have to refuse to live in a country where Black people going about a weekly grocery shopping can be gunned down by weapons of war deployed in a racist cause.

We have to refuse to live in a country where fear and lies are packaged for power and for profit.

We must all enlist in this great cause of America.