Fox News Reporter: Wake Up And Fight The Fascism In Our Country (VIDEO)

HuffPost has comprehensive coverage of the Tax Day Tea Party protests. Click here for the latest photos and video.

Over-stimulated, perhaps, by the Tea Party surrounding him, Fox News reporter Cody Willard called the recently passed stimulus package fascist, and urged viewers to "wake up and start fighting the fascism" that is coming from the U.S. government.

Here is a short clip of Willard's dispatch from a rally in Boston:

"You got to love this one right here," he said, pointing to a sign held by a young girl. "'I'm only eleven and deep in debt.' She had to pay for the $160 billion Republican stimulus package that came out in 2007. Now she is paying for the $800 billion Republican Democrat fascist stimulus package that is coming out this time. Guys, when are we going to wake up and start fighting the fascism that seems to be permeating this country?"

Fox News has come under some heat from progressive news outlets for ostensibly promoting the Tea Party movement, helping elevate a somewhat confined topic into a political phenomenon. Clips like these don't do much to dissuade that notion.

(h/t Jed Lewison)

UPDATE: Media Matters grabs a clip of Willard on Fox Business News saying that conservatives and liberals are "both fascists who are taking my money and building up corporate America with my welfare."

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Comments

[flossophy]

If all the Objectivists went to Faux... how does that change the equasion... ???

perhaps the subjectivists were all camped out in the MSM because of fame-ism...

let's separate this human frailty from the centers O' power...

don't let your pr0gressive arrogance get in the way of real human pr0gress..­..........­...

..........­..........­..........­..........­.......

do any of you get this?

[TheBlackCat]

Flossophy,
Here's what I get from you. You are an armchair intellectual with actually VERY little real world experience. The things you spout are all things which sound good in theory, but which reflect absolutely no ACTUAL real life experiences on your part.
For one small example, you wax ecstatic about U.S. Healthcare and how privitization is its salvation. Yet I WORK at a hospital, in finance, and the bureaucratic nightmare is with PRIVATE INSURERS. With Medicare, I send the bill, it gets paid. I tell them what the doctor needs to do, and they pay for it. With private insurers, their goal is for you to die, so they don't have to pay. So they set up their policies in such a way that filing claims are logistical nightmares. They ROUTINELY deny medically emergent procedures despite the patient's doctor stating it is absolutely necessary. I have NEVER EVER had a Medicare or Medicaid program deny one of my patients after their doctor approved a procedure but this happens all day every day with private insurers.
You talk about Canadians having to come to America for procedures- without taking into account at all that Canada is an enormous and largely rural nation. If you live in the middle of no where, guess what, it's going to be hard to find good medical care. So you go somewhere else, and often America is closest, and we DO have more hospitals because WE HAVE FAR MORE PEOPLE.

[flossophy]

Our health care system is broken... but only because of decades of bad decisions on behalf of the industry and bad policies on behalf of the government.

And regarding Canda... why can't their wonderful health care system not take care of all of it's citizens? There are (illegal) private clinics that are sprouting up to meet this need... and the Canadian government is reluctant to shut them down because of the potential backlash of the people.

That should be a red flag to Americans...

[SteevK]

Allow me to bolster your argument. I do online IT for a large (biggest in the world) med lab. Billing for Medicare & medicaid are straightforward and always electronic (even before the law required it), while private insurance companies have set up their own series of hoops to have us jump through. Certain health carriers automatically reject the first bill for any service - a few even reject the 2nd, especially the smaller ones who are stalling, because the recession has depleted their subscriber base, and their money pool. These are the same insurers who STILL haven't complied with Gov't mandates to adapt to standard (electronic) forms.

I wouldn't go so far as to say these insurers want their subscribers to DIE. But, it does look like they're trying to make the provider eat the bill, or rebill it to the patient.

I've seen the process from both sides, having worked as a contractor in the claims-IT section of Aetna-USHC. Gigantic programs behind each screen (tens of thousands of lines of code) all designed to REJECT every bill/claim possible. The system has over 800 rejection codes, and only ONE accept/pay code!

We're NOT on the verge of Single-payer (gov't run) health care - nobody's proposing it at this time. From my POV, it keeps me employed ;o)

[TheBlackCat]

Part II:

You also completely ignore that FAR MORE Americans go to CANADA to get cheap drugs and medical procedures which they simply cannot afford in the United States. You also ignore that when polled, the number of Canadians who want to switch from their healthcare system to a privitized one is in the single digits.

Also, guess what, I work at a non profit hospital. It's the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and its ranked #2 in the nation. The idea that profit is the only thing that drives people is wrong.

Also, as far as public education goes- your idea that government provided public education cannot be good is false, and again, shows that you pretty much just don't know a lot of people from different places. I live in New England and we have some great public schools. Brookline High, Newton High, and Boston Latin Academy are the top schools in the Boston area and beat out ALL the private schools. You also completely ignore that how a public school performs is DIRECTLY related to how much taxes a community puts into that school. You ALSO completely ignore the fact that all those other nations which outrank us in education ALSO have public education systems.

You talk about not letting progressive arrogance getting in the way of human progress, when right now the single biggest threat to human progress in this country are religious fundamentalists who actively are trying to destroy science.

[flossophy]

Canadian drugs are subsidized... Americans take advantage of this.

When people are dependent on government for their primal needs, it is hard to ween them off that addiction. This explains the low poll figures.

I would argue that Canadians are not familiar with how a privatized system would work, and how it would lower cost & improve quality. Since the government is behaving like one large healthcare corporation, they have no interest in promoting a privatized system.

Government subsidized education can be good if it's allowed to compete.

If we want to subsidize food for citizens, we don't create government-run grocery stores... we give people Food Stamps so they can buy from the local grocery store. If we want to subsidize education, we should give parents Education Stamps which they can use to send their children to the school of their choice. Instead, we create government-run schools... and just like government-run grocery stores, they are not very good.

Ever since the NEA changed itself from a professional organization into a trade union in 1965, testing scores have been going downhill. Essentially, the Teachers Union has created a monopoly... which suffers from the same problems that any monopoly has: high cost / low quality.

If you think the fundamentalists are the biggest threat to this country only shows that you get your information from one side of the ideological spectrum. The pr0gressives are using the state to control society in the same way you fear the fundamentalists are doing...

[TheBlackCat]

Part III.

You talk about how liberals are more racists and bigoted than conservatives- but the only thing you back that claim up with is with complaints about the welfare state and education. But those aren't race specific programs. They are applied to ANYONE who is poor. So there you go actually showing your own racism by acting like only black people are poor, so any programs aimed at poor people are racist because they're meant for blacks only. These programs exist in states with very few black people and in liberal nations with very few black people. And I'm not saying you don't have valid argument AGAINST such programs.

[flossophy]

The Minimum Wage Act and the Great Society programs were Democrat legislation. They thought that they were helping society... but there were unintended consequences.

The reason I bring up the 'soft big0try of low expectations' is because it was that notion that led to the legislation that replaced the father with the state in the black community. You're right, it's more of a class issue... but the blacks have been voting for Democrats for over 40 years, thinking that they can help get them out of poverty... and they obviously cannot.

If you drive through the inner city slums of every major Democrat run city... you'll see human devastation, caused by government policies which dis-incentivized people to improve their lives. History will not look favorably upon this period and the Democrat legislation that led to it.

[TheBlackCat]

Last part:

You completely dismiss the latent racism of the south as innocuous and contained to only a few "old farts" in your words, which shows me that if you are living in the South, then you have no friends who are black, gay, Jewish, or pretty much of any minority what so ever. I am only in my twenties, and guess what, I saw bigotry every single day by your precious little Christian soldiers in the South. You claim that LIBERALS actually have lower expectations of blacks- really? I'm pretty sure a place where blacks are routinely referred to, openly, as "monkeys" has a lower expectation of blacks than one that has affirmative action.

So again, all your arguments are coached in completely theoretical terms. You are obviously someone who has never actually known anyone who experienced bigotry, you obviously have never lived in a poor neighborhood, obviously have never traveled the world, obviously haven't spoken to anyone outside your own region regarding their public education, obviously have never actually had a medical crisis in the United States, etc.

So keep spouting your armchair doctrine all you want. I've lived all over the world, from Mexico to Alabama to Amsterdam. I've got friends of all different stripes from all different places. I have worked extensively with government and private health programs side by side and been able to compare the two. I actually have some real world experience, and you don't have a clue.

[flossophy]

I've only been to the south a handful of times... I know rac|sm still exists. It will take a few generations for it to disappear. Unfortunately the government can't legislate ha`te out of people's minds.

You're missing my point about low-expectations. Consider the political class coming up with these laws designed to help the lower classes. They're idealists, elites, well-educated... they drafted those social programs thinking that the lower classes were not smart enough to take care of themselves, therefore they needed the government to come in and help them. While that may be a nice thing to do... it had created a class of dependents, relying on the government to provide for their existence... an unintended consequence.

This is an unhealthy relationship between citizen and government. It is prone to abuse by both the citizen and the politician wishing for their vote.

I'm more traveled and more studied than you assume.

[TheBlackCat]

TRULY LAST POST - and I apologize for the length:

Here's what REALLY gives you away as a phony intellectual: black and white thinking. And I'm not claiming there aren't plenty of liberals who do the same thing.

Anyone who is a truly worldly person understands that almost nothing in this world is wholly good or wholly bad. There are good aspects of capitalism and good aspects of socialism. There are wealthy people who benefit our society and wealthy people who seek to undermine it. There are some things which are better privately run and some things which are better public run. There are some aspects of business and government which NEED to be regulated and other aspects which need as much autonomy as possible.

But there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that private industry has done which has shown that it is any less corrupt or any more benevolent than the government. I don't think government = good and privatization = bad. I think absolute power corrupts and that a politician and a CEO are equally vulnerable to that corruption.

Any person who is TRULY well read, who has TRULY gone out and experienced the world, who has TRULY sought to surround themselves with diverse people not only ethnically but economically and politically, understands that there is almost never some clear line between good and evil and right and wrong. Delineating the world into good and bad, black and white thinking is both intellectually lazy and morally dishonest.

[flossophy]

I enjoyed your response. It's not too often that someone writes so much.

Just to clear something up: capitalism is not an ideology, like socialism is.

Socialism is simply state-run capitalism. It resembles a statist religion, which rejects economic science.

The wealthy people who benefit our society are the capitalists and philanthropists.

The wealthy people who seek to undermine it are the arrogant s0cialists... like George Soros, who single handedly tanked the Malaysian currency, and has profited from shorting the markets. He is one of the largest contributors to the Democrat party and pr0gressive organizations. If the GOP had such an ugly character funding them, I'd protest it.

It's always been about good regulation vs bad regulation... not regulation vs deregulation. Although sometimes deregulation is necessary for markets to function properly.

Regarding health care... I recommend this NPR debate.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6263392

"Is the Government Responsible for Health Care?"

It might offer some other diverse points of view on this topic.

[flossophy]

Faux is deadly to the Left.

consider this: the objectivists are the enemy of the subjectivists... but the objectivists don't want the subjectivists to go away... they just want to bring them down into the realm of the market... we can have fun with it...

c o i n e d .

[TheBlackCat]

I'm a little hazy on your point- are you saying that you side with objectivists?

You do KNOW what actually happened to Ayn Rand don't you, and how she completely denounced her entire objectivist philosophies and declared the whole thing a failed experiment, even cutting off all funding to her own objectivist schools, right?

Oh, by the way, I saw your comment about how public schools are inherently horrible even when well funded because they're government run.

Uh, come to New England. Our public schools are ranked higher than most of our private schools. Boston Latin Academy and Brookline High are far and away the best schools in the Boston area and they are public.

Oh, also, how well the schools perform IS directly proportional to how well they're funded. For instance Newton High and Brookline high are both in Jewish communities where the citizens have continually voted for propositions that up taxation in order to put more money into education.

I went to a public school in Massachusetts and my education was FAR better than my husband's from a private school in Georgia. Many kids in my school went on to ivy leagues, and most people I went to high school with are now in highly skilled job sets (doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc). And I didn't even go to a top rated school in Massachusetts.

Also, Vermont, hat liberal bastion, is rated #1 in education in the country, and has a great and well funded public school system.

[flossophy]

My point: is that we should recognize what the objectivists in society are saying, instead of disparaging them.

Your assertion about Ayn is completely untrue... it's simply the left's distorted narrative of her.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand

I'm not worried about the wonderful public education system in Vermont... I'm worried about the failing public schools in the inner cities. Those schools have been churning out an underclass for decades. We're going to continue to have problems with crime and poverty if we do not address this social crisis of failing public schools.

[JohnBryansFontaine]

14 POINTS OF FASCISM

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause

4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism

5. Rampant sexism

6. A controlled mass media

7. Obsession with national security

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together

9. Power of corporations protected

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts

12. Obsession with crime and punishment

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption

14. Fraudulent elections

[flossophy]

Fas|sm was National S0cialism / Pr0gressivism... which produced all of the problems listed above.

[cim wright]

Once again you fail miserably with your false definitions. Fascism is basically a right wing phenomena but there are many different flavors. Nazism was right wing and authoritarian. This is just the plain well known facts. I bet you love the discredited author Jonah Goldberg.

Here have fun:

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2009/04/glenn-becks-liberal-fascism-hour.html

[peter777]

The right wing Repubs are closer to being fascists than any other group in this country. They want unregulated capitalism under a dictatorship (a presidency without checks and balances). The problem with Fox News, besides having adherence to a strict ideology, is that the staff is relatively uneducated, lacking in many cases in depth study or background in economics, history, government, and sociology. A number of their shows are anchored by persons without degrees, starting with Hannity and Beck. This leads to simply ideologically stuff to feed a admiring set of consumers, whom they manipulate. Their leading all these people to tea-bagging (what dumb radio jock thought of that name for it?) is the best illustration of their mischief.

[flossophy]

The Fasc|sts want to REGULATE and CONTROL capitalism... what is so hard to understand about this? Why do so many people attribute this phenomenon to the Republicans? It is the Democrats who want to do this... geez, kids... open your eyes.

peter triple seven gets all of his information from one isolated ideological source... and it shows.

[cim wright]

Corporatism (fascism) is when the corps control the government. They buy the politicians they want and use the media to get them elected. They get regulations and deregulations they want through there bought and paid for politicians. You keep getting the most basic of definitions completely bungled up.

[care4mypeeps]

Another call from a reporter at FOX NEWS to wake up and start fighting.

Oh well we need to pray because some cazy Nut will follow the drum beat and do the unthinkable.
I pray not and hope FOX wil begin to reign their people in or else they are planning the uprising with the Rest of the Republicans.

[JoeBear55]

Silly me, I was under the impression journalists report the news, not make the news

[HopeGrenade]

Wow. I haven't seen so many white people since the last KKK march!

[bryansmith]

Though he is wrong, at least he is operating with a partially correct definition of (economic) facism...which is more than I can say for most people...

I was, however, unaware that it was a "reporter's" responsibility to lable the country facist

[omobob]

"a partially correct definition" is a wrong definition. It’s throwing out a right-wing smear against the wall of misintormation to see if it sticks, Get out your dictionaries, people.

[rblaquinta]

If I did not know what month it was i would say its October, 2008....and I am watching a Palin rally!!!!!

[RobChattaTN]

its so hard to admit defeat...
some are 'clingers' for a long time!

[CactusTom]

If Fox is against fascism, then I suppose Hitler must have been against fascism too.

[NTexasHillbilly]

HUNDREDS gather in Boston! Yep. Fewer than 1/2 of 1% of republican voters teabagged yesterday. Says a lot.

[mongoose63124]

estimated to be about 600k throughout the US, id say for a grassroots campaign thats pretty good

[tiare75]

This was not a "grassroots" campaing...this was promoted by Fox...Grassroots implies that it was set up the people, for the people...this was by Fox for Fox...

[turningpoint]

You're either a gullible F00L or a L1AR. Only 60,000 voted repiglican in November. Now you believe, or expect us to believe that 10 times as many came out to tea-bag each other?
Right.

[bryansmith]

And the other 99.5 percent daydreamed about making lots of money

[Thomas Bailey]

Somebody needs to take this poor ill-informed "reporter" aside and school him on Socialism, Fascism And Their Inherent Differences 101 stat. Don't they know that when the fascists came to power toward the middle of the 20th century, the very first people who were rounded up, imprisoned and murdered were actually -- drum roll please -- socialists? Those at FOX really need to make their mind up at some point or other. One simply CANNOT BE a socialist and a fascist at the same time.

It would be like being a FOX News reporter and a thinker at the same time. It would be a ghastly violation of the laws of Physics.

[Annieke]

So first Obama is a socialist and now his government stads for facism...

I think some peope at Fox need to follow a few lessons in Political Science and Philosophy.
That would teach them that socialism and facism differ almost as much as possible within the field of political systems.

[aliceinks]

Keep bashing the middle American. lol 2010 is just around the corner. ; -)

[umbrage-taker]

I love reading al these posts, as do most of the readers of this site, but

PLEASE POST YOUR COGENT COMMENTS ON THE FOX NEWS SITE ALSO!

Here you are preaching to the choir. We love it, but on the Fox site or some other right wing site you might actually convince someone else. I know all kinds of people visit Salon. It's terrific and a place for a good discussion some of the time. If all you want to do is rant, this is also a good place. Dont rant & rave on the Fox site, that just riles people up and you don't want a Beck-head too mad at you?!, but if you have a convincing well stated position you might win somebody over. It's worth a try.