Fox News' Greg Gutfeld suggests "civil war" because "elections don't work"

jeffw@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 362 points –
salon.com

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld erupted with dark rhetoric during Thursday's broadcast of "The Five," appearing to advocate for a new American civil war because “elections don’t work” and the nation is in “peril and chaos," the Daily Beast reports. The host, whose takes have grown more extreme in recent years, made the remarks during a discussion on the recent looting in Philadelphia. Gutfeld bemoaned how some looters received lesser consequences than participants in the Jan. 6 insurrection, who he claimed received harsher sentences because of their race and political affiliations. He went on to allege they were being "driven out of cities by the oppressed" and compared the political tensions of the moment to the turmoil around slavery that gave birth to the Civil War. “Doesn’t that feel that way now?” Gutfeld rhetorically asked. “That this defiant refusal to reverse this decline argues against the survival of a country. What does that leave you with? It leaves you with ‘you need to make war to bring peace’ because you have a side that cannot change. Because then that means the admission that their beliefs have been corrupt all the time.”

Liberal co-host Harold Ford Jr. responded by suggesting an election, but Gutfeld disagreed. “No, elections don’t work,” he retorted. “We know that.” After Ford countered that they do work, Gutfeld went on a tirade insisting democracy is no longer a possibility. “Look what we have! We had a moderate president, and we have crime exploding everywhere,” he shouted. “We had a Democrat president promise that he was going to be moderate, promise that he was gonna unite the country and now we have a terrible education system. We have no border. We have crime everywhere. Every facet of society is in peril and in chaos because our elections don’t matter!”

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So it worked when Trump was elected, but now it doesn't... how are these people on TV?

This guy is a comedian. Not that that was how he was acting in this statement. But that's his background.

He actually wasn't all that terrible 10-15 years ago. He had a show on at 3 am, on Fox News even. The guests were sometimes good too, other funny comedians. Now Greg Gutfeld just sucks. Not funny except to conservatives who find simply shitting on their political opponents the funniest content there ever was. It'd be sad if it wasn't so serious.

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“People won’t let us install our totalitarian dictator, so we think it’s time to try straight-up mass murder.” - Republicans

"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."

-- Actual quote from an actual Republican

David Fruhm btw. Bush era speechwriter, coined "axis of evil" in case you were thinking he has a soul.

".....because you have a side that cannot change. Because then that means the admission that their beliefs have been corrupt all the time.”

The projection is strong with this one.

I got the same feeling a lot with Tucker, where he'd say something so specific and so contrary to reality, that there must have been a point to it. I think a part of it is to inoculate the audience against criticism, doubt, and introspection. You flip around, or simply bring up and immediately dismiss what's actually a strong argument against your position, so that people don't take it seriously when it comes up outside of the echo chamber.

We had a Democrat president promise that he was going to be moderate, promise that he was gonna unite the country and now we have a terrible education system.

WTF has Trump done to political discourse in America? This guy is doing exactly what Trump does. Say something that sounds like a sentence that's making a point, but if you go back and look at it written down, it's really just noises surrounding keywords.

The only possible link between poor education and Biden uniting the country is if Biden compromised with some Republican who is trying to gut our schools. (I don't know whether he did or not.)

It's Republicans who are working against education. Trump wanted to get rid of the Department of Education. DeSantis got in a war with the AP program over teaching American History, and turned back LGBTQ+ progress for Florida high schoolers 50 years. The Republican party of Texas once published that it was their platform to make sure that children didn't learn critical thinking, because that would interfere with the parents' rights to always choose what is best for their kids.

Over and over, it's Republicans working to harm our education system, and Democrats working to improve it.

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I have a question, how can this be legal? How can this guy say this crazy shit and not being immediately fired and banned from television? It's just unbelievable to my European eyes

Well, to my European eyes it's not strange at all. These are some extreme takes but that's how freedom of expression and press work. My European country has a politician with decades-long career who routinely claims democracy is a bad system, that women should not be allowed to vote etc. Luckily for us the man has near-zero actual power, but still, we can't jail him for talking even if what he says is horrifying.

Usually a "call to arms" is where freedom of speech ends.

Sounds like stochastic terrorism.

Someone should really put a stop to fox news, by the way. It's a little weird that there's like a mass shooting every day but no one has like gunned down Fox news hosts in the parking lot or anything.

Honestly we should unite and perform a coordinated attack on fox news, the same way that anonymous took over russian news stations, russian sites, and even hacked russian GPS.

This isn't just a case of freedom of speech, this is mobilising, terrorising and seditious speaking. The US government themselves know best just how powerful this propaganda is, as they've used it themselves against many governments. They're doing the exact same thing at fox news.

Look into the Jakarta method, a book written about how the US government destabilised and dissected government's that they viewed as hostile and communist.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jakarta_Method

We have known for a long time that fox news creates soviet style propaganda, but now, with Russia being hostile and China semi-hostile, surely they're trying to destabilise at best, start a civil war at worst. Why doesn't the USA do anything to stop this clear and obvious cooperation with the enemy?

Freedom of speech is not freedom to incide sedition. It doesn't protect people from convincing traitor's to pick up their weapons. Fox news should never have won that lawsuit where they claimed "no rational person would believe it" because that's irrelevant. A good portion of Americans (30%+) are irrational. So why discount them? It's like saying "only a criminal would shoot someone if we paid them to do it, therefore when we pay them to do it, it's not our fault". Well yeah, only a criminal would do it, but you still paid them!

The mass shooters come from the pool of Fox News viewers. Dollars to donuts, if Fox News tried a segment tasked with deprogramming the hell spawn they created, the crazies would target the host in a heartbeat.

Should we adopt popular and effective platforms? No, let's reject democracy and embrace fascism instead!

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

The wisdom of Voltaire is always worth being reminded of.

Hey Gutless-feld, if you want a war, why don't you take up arms yourself? Oh yeah, you'll just get some kill-billies to do it for you, then ignore it on your show when they blow up a Wal-Mart or a black church or a government building. "It wasn't MY fault! I was just exercising my right of free speech!" I wish someone would exercise their right of free fist in your mouth.

They REALLY think the left isn't armed and willing to fight if it comes down to it, don't they?

Oh don't think for one second that they actually want a civil war. A civil war is fought by sides that have fundamental differences in how they want the government to function. Conservatives don't really have any idea how or if they want the government to function. Because if you sit a bunch of conservatives down in a conference room and talk them through their ideal government, writing it all down and asking questions like, "but what if the president is corrupt?" Or "how do we ensure safe, clean drinking water?" they'd wind up basically with what we have now (but maybe with states having more power but maybe even less).

When conservatives barf up words like, "civil war" it's really just a dog whistle. What they really want is an excuse to commit mass murder of black people, immigrants, LGBTQ, etc (all the people they hate and blame for all the problems they create or refuse to fix).

Here's how it would play out: A consensus forms in the conservative crazysphere that civil war is a must then some event happens and the talking heads will declare, "it's a civil war!" and then the crazies with guns will congregate go on a killing spree.

If law enforcement stops them it will end, briefly before it happens again. If law enforcement helps them it'll be a real civil war. That's when things will become real bad for Americans. Severe economic consequences; the dollar will tank. Food and supply shortages will create a lot of desperate people.

Foreign governments will probably straight up invade and claim territories under the excuse of "keeping things stable" (for their own economies).

Billionaires will just move to other countries but they'll lose probably 90% of their wealth. If they're caught undefended out in the open they probably won't make it. Their assets would be siezed by any territories claimed by democratic (aka "liberal") groups in order to fund the war. Mere millionaires will find their wealth disappear overnight. They'll probably try to pass themselves off as middle class for as long as they can... Moving in with family, forced to abandon their mansions.

The rich that sided with the liberals (e.g. celebrities that are easily identified as liberal) will fair the best amongst the wealthy in democratic strongholds.

I was pretty much with you until you got to foreign powers invading. Seems unlikely. At worst, we’d end up with the two strongest armies on earth (both American) fighting each other. I can’t think of another country on earth who would think it worth it to cross an ocean and occupy the territory. If he have a civil war, there’s a good chance China will try and take Taiwan, but I don’t see California, or even Hawaii, as worth invading in terms of RoI, economic or political.

You assume the locals wouldn't welcome a foreign power lending their military might. You think Maine's local military strength would be enough to fend off the Massachusetts Liberal Liberation Army?

With no central government America's states would become clusters of alliances and those that did not wish to join may have few options.

I'm imagining Canada and Mexico invading the US to carve out pieces in the chaos...

I, a Liberal and 2a supporter, do not think the left is armed and willing to fight. The party of frappucinos and e-bikes? Come on. "Guns are scary" is a central tenet of the Democratic Party.

Wow, you're such a liberal.... /S

I am. I'm just not naive.

I voted for Clinton. In the primary. I'm a Biden/Newsom/Clinton style liberal, except I also support the 2nd amendment.

“If we can’t cheat our way to victory, violence will be the only remaining path towards it!”

Sincerely, ALL conservatives.

Our electoral system (USA) is a failure, but using that as “proof” elections don’t work is kind of like trying to use the fact that you can’t run Baldur’s Gate 3 on an Apple II as “proof” that computing doesn’t work. It’s not a serious argument, it’s admission of a personal thirst for authoritarianism. Anyone who wants to lick boots is welcome to hire a dominatrix and leave the rest of us out of it.

There's a conspiratorial aspect around guys like these and their apparent playing of the masses like a fiddle, and putting on theatrical and eccentric media facades for their financial gain. It has to be true to an extent, but then again, I think they really are just dumb, like really, really dumb.

I tend to think if it was just calculated self interest that drives their action, you wouldn't see them going this far, too risky for their own self interest. He's a great beneficiary of the status quo and only needs play pretend enough to make sure it continues and yet here he risks having to live with real consequences.

This would be irrational behaviour for someone with any self awareness or master plan. Surely at no time in history has "clown", or "village idiot" been such a well compensated position but he's risking that which keeps him so comfortable for a very ill conceived fantasy. That tells me that that even if he thinks he's cleverly poking the bear, he doesn't know quite how much danger he's inviting.

Gutfield used to be the cool old dad of Fox News what the hell happened there

Same thing that happened to all the cool old dads that went down the Facebook conspiracy death spiral in the last 10 years

We're fucked.

No, we're not. The fear-driven "news" media want you to think that

I’ve thought we were fucked since the early 2000s, so I’m pretty sure the right wing media didn’t convince me. It was the telltale Constitution beating under the floorboards. Also, I assume you’re aware that your enemies can want you to believe things that also happen to be true?

Unfortunately, fear driven media and propaganda works on too many of us. That's why we are fucked.

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Liberals and leftists really need to arm up (and train) for when these idiots make good on their threats. We need to be able to defend ourselves and each other.

These idiots won't do shit. They folded like a cheap suit on January 6 when one shot was fired.

If these morons got together anywhere and declared open war on the US government they would be utterly destroyed.

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Fox, I know you are a pathetic pandering shit network, but you can maybe censor your lunatics when they start foaming at the mouth at least. I mean, even my parents are disgusted by this.

Cosplay comedian.

Could learn a lesson or fifty from George Carlin.