Fox News host Greg Gutfeld compared college students pushing for fossil fuel divestment at their universities to "radical Islamists" on Tuesday and branded them anti-American for wanting their schools to cut financial ties to oil companies.
"Remember how the goal of the radical Islamists is to force existence back to a time when Mohammad walked the earth?" Gutfeld said. "The only difference between them and the divestors is the radical Islamists cut to the chase."
Gutfeld, co-host of "The Five," was picking up on a report in the National Review about the divestment movement, which notes that students at 256 campuses are calling for their universities to drop investments in fossil fuel companies from their respective endowments. The National Review has labeled the movement, led by environmental activist Bill McKibben, as a threat to America's free enterprise system.
"But I endorse this divestment movement, and would like to see Harvard -- where the students favor divestment overwhelmingly -- give up oil entirely," Gutfeld said. "Let the kids and their idiotic professors freeze their Marxist asses off next winter."
Most colleges have resisted calls to abandon their fossil fuel stocks, wary of seeing lower growth on their endowments, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. Even as the stock market recovers from Great Recession losses, college endowments remained mostly flat in FY 2012. But the movement hopes it can generate enough political pressure that colleges have no choice.
Unity College in Maine, Hampshire College in Massachusetts and Sterling College in Vermont have all divested from fossil fuel stocks, McKibben recently wrote in Rolling Stone.
"In the near future, the political tide will turn and the public will demand action on climate change," Stephen Mulkey, Unity College president, wrote in a letter to other college administrators. "Our students are already demanding action, and we must not ignore them."
Gutfeld insisted the campaign is part of an ideology that's "killing America" and mocked student hunger strikes, saying "they could stand to lose a few pounds."
Co-host and former Bush press secretary Dana Perino called the movement "asinine," and Andrea Tantaros called it the "stupidest thing" she's ever seen.
[h/t BuzzFeed]
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