No other single entity creates more terror among American citizens than Fox News, and
Roger Ailes, 72, the president of Fox News, chairman of Fox Television Group, is the creator of Fox and its very hands-on manager.
There is a tremendous amount of intense visceral anger in our land. A group of not inconsiderate size hates with an intensity that we haven't seen since the days of "forced bussing" and integration. Normal looking people are apt to abruptly break into trembling as they strain to control themselves, and spew shocking invective in a Pavlovian response to key word triggers. They are Tea Baggers, the politically unaffiliated, Republicans, Libertarians – all on the political Right in America.
Fox News viewers are buying guns (1.5 million semi-automatic assault rifles), ammunition (armor piercing), Kevlar vests, and camo clothing in record numbers, stocking up on survivalist foods and materials, and watching the skies, terrified of spotting black helicopters. The more gullible and unstable among them are also murdering other Americans at their places of work, at schools or where they shop, sometimes starting at home with their own families. They are pushed to the brink by the incendiary talk, lies, and exaggerations from Fox News and hate radio.
Fox viewers inhabit local and state governments and propose and sometimes pass bizarre laws, such as those again Sharia Law (a Muslim code much like the Old Testament's primitive admonitions), impelled by their own paranoia. Some are in Congress. And they are all scared out of their wits, terrified of an imaginary totalitarian take-over by the U.N. (or somebody).
Roger Ailes, Fox News, his on-air staff, and their program guests disseminate a broad array of terror-inducing scenarios, all twisted or exaggerated and virtually all false, to rile up their viewers and make them afraid – terrified. Their goal is to make a lot of money and further the power of the 1%, and apparently they don't care how they do it. They use it and preach it until they, themselves, believe it.
Until his contract was recently renewed Ailes was paid $21,000,000 a year; the new figure is reputed to be $31 million dollars a year.
Roger Ailes is the mastermind responsible for the terror induced by Fox. He created Fox News under the instructions of the Australian-American billionaire Rupert Murdoch.
A good argument can certainly be made that Murdoch is America's Top Terrorist, and I would be hard-pressed to counter it. It's true that he is Ailes' enabler and boss, and that he hired Ailes to create Fox News to further his right wing views, but as much influence as Murdoch has had he is not the daily director of the terrorism-inducing network, and the word, true or not, is he has no daily input. It's unclear how culpable he, his sons and daughter might be.
A case can by made for Wayne LaPierre in the way same. As CEO of the NRA (National Rifle Association) he has a very large role in the arming of both stable and unstable people, and of working them into a maniacal mob mentality in his speeches and emails.
He enables the broad spread of weapons so crazies such as Adam Lanza and his mother, reputedly stimulated and inspired by Fox and hate radio and likely (on the scanty evidence that Lanza destroyed his computer hard drive) right wing web sites, can easily get a hold of fierce high-tech guns.
It seems to me that he might be indictable as a co-conspirator or under RICO in a variety of manslaughters and murders, but I'm not a lawyer – and he doesn't control a 24/7 propaganda and motivational television enterprise. The most he can conjure up is a very tacky monthly magazine and an email list, some of whose recipients laugh at him.
Glenn Beck is another obvious candidate, and I won't argue that he hasn't caused significant terror in his viewers and listeners. The author of a book on the right wing recounts his visit to the home of a middle-aged couple, and that he watched the Beck TV show with them. The woman broke into tears and had to leave the room, presumably at the future of our country as interpreted and imagined by Beck, and it was clear that the husband, as well, was filled with fear by Beck's money-making fantasies.
So Beck might well be classified as a terrorist, and he does seem to play to the most fragile and gullible among us, the unhinged and adolescent minded adults who scare easily, but he lacks the power of Ailes and Fox.
Other hate radio hosts should also be considered, but they're small potatoes compared with Fox. They're often even more extreme and create a great deal of vicious anger over a period of time, so I would think they're certainly part of the mix. However, their individual audiences are relatively small, though probably cumulatively significant and perhaps as a group they are a solid contender for being named to the top of the list.
But as an individual Ailes is not only influential enough to terrorize a large population, he now controls a major political party. To quote the famous lines from conservative David Frum, "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us," he said. "Now we’re discovering that we work for Fox."
All of the other individuals and factions likely contribute to the intense anger among a growing group on the fringe of our democracy, and the sub-group on the fringe of sanity. I think all of them can properly be called terrorists. But they're not the Top Terrorist. I believe that title fits only one man.
In a revealing story about Ailes and Fox in Rolling Stone magazine, http://www.rollingstone.com/... journalist Tim Dickinson tells the story of Fox, and managed to get some input from Ailes. This article appears in the June 9, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available in the online archive now.
In the piece Dickinson wrote: "Fear, in fact, is precisely what Ailes is selling: His network has relentlessly hyped phantom menaces like the planned 'terror mosque' near Ground Zero, inspiring Florida pastor Terry Jones to torch the Koran. Privately, Murdoch is as impressed by Ailes’ business savvy as he is dismissive of his extremist politics. 'You know Roger is crazy,' Murdoch recently told a colleague, shaking his head in disbelief. 'He really believes that stuff.'
To watch even a day of Fox News – the anger, the bombast, the virulent paranoid streak, the unending appeals to white resentment, the reporting that’s held to the same standard of evidence as a late-October attack ad – is to see a reflection of its founder, one of the most skilled and fearsome operatives in the history of the Republican Party."
Ailes not only creates the bubble in which Republicans and Tea Party types live, he lives in it himself. Dickinson again: "Ailes is also deeply paranoid. Convinced that he has personally been targeted by Al Qaeda for assassination, he surrounds himself with an aggressive security detail and is licensed to carry a concealed handgun……His country home – in the aptly named village of Garrison – is phalanxed by empty homes that Ailes bought up to create a wider security perimeter."
The biggest proof that Ailes lives in the bubble that he himself created is this quote in the article: "Ailes is certain that he’s a top target of Al Qaeda terrorists. 'You know, they’re coming to get me,' he tells friends."
If Al Qaeda is following you, Rog, it's only to get your measurements so they can erect a statue in your honor.
It seems obvious to me that Roger Ailes causes more terror among a larger segment of the American population that anyone else living in America, and probably more than anyone living, period. That's virtually a working definition of "America's Top Terrorist".
A Southerner in Yankeeland