This week’s Liberal Media Scream features MSNBC doing its best to become the network of the crackpot Left, talking itself into irrelevance for just about everyone else.
Not satisfied with its record of attacking Republicans and conservatives as MAGA crazies, the cable channel rolled out a host and guest who dismissed the party as fascists. And not just simple fascists such as World War II-era Italian leader Benito Mussolini.
How about “neo-fascist,” “proto-fascist,” and “semi-fascist?” Now that’s got to hurt.
The name-calling came Saturday when Mehdi Hasan hosted Yale University philosophy professor Jason Stanley on Velshi on MSNBC.
Stanley, who authored a book titled How Fascism Works, warned, “I think ‘semi-fascism,’ ‘fascism,’ ‘neo-fascism,’ these are accurate descriptions. We need to drop talk of populism, drop these misleading descriptions that hide what we’re actually facing.”
From Saturday’s Velshi:
MEHDI HASAN: Jason, the GOP is back in power again, at least in the House of Representatives, which means there will be a fair bit of normalizing of them again by the media. In your view, is it fair to describe the modern GOP as ‘neo-fascist’ or ‘proto-fascist’ or, to quote Joe Biden on the MAGA movement, ‘semi-fascist?’
JASON STANLEY, Yale University: There’s certainly within the modern GOP, as the scapegoating of LGBT citizens demonstrates, a fascist movement rising. We — and, to talk about this as some kind of European thing is a confusion since fascism is Jim Crow with a foreign accent. So we have a native, we have multiple native far-right extremist movements: Christian Nationalism, we’ve got, sort of, heritage of Jim Crow. We’ve got an anti-democratic business establishment. And this is a structure, a grouping, that’s going to bring people to vote for an authoritarian party. And that’s what we have, that’s what the modern GOP is increasingly looking like — as Ruth [NYU history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat] said, an anti-democratic party. I think ‘semi-fascism,’ ‘fascism,’ ‘neo-fascism,’ these are accurate descriptions. We need to drop talk of populism, drop these misleading descriptions that hide what we’re actually facing.
Brent Baker, vice president of research and publications for the Media Research Center, explains our weekly pick: “Quite the multiple-choice, a range which says more about the narrow thinking of MSNBC hosts and guests trying to discredit Republicans than it does about anything to fear from Republicans. Hasan dreads ‘normalizing’ Republicans because it’s a lot easier to demonize them than to take on and seriously address views with which you disagree.”
Rating: FOUR out of FIVE SCREAMS.
