On Friday Fox News issued a statement defending host Laura Ingraham from allegations that she’d purposefully defended a known white supremacist and anti-Semite.
During a segment on free speech a day earlier, “The Ingraham Angle” host displayed a picture of white supremacist, anti-Semite and failed Wisconsin congressional candidate Paul Nehlen alongside those of other “prominent voices” who’ve been “censored by social media.”
Look:
To be clear, the graphic above is accurate. Every individual featured is prominent — i.e., well known — and has been silenced/censored on social media in one capacity or another. Moreover, according to Fox News the graphic was plucked from the Associated Press.
“It is obscene to suggest that Laura Ingraham was defending Paul Nehlen’s despicable actions especially when some of the names on the graphic were pulled from an Associated Press report on best known political extremists banned from Facebook,” FNC said in a statement.
“Anyone who watches Laura’s show knows that she is a fierce protector of freedom of speech and the intent of the segment was to highlight the growing trend of unilateral censorship in America.”
And therein lies the key problem, according to Ingraham’s critics. They feel as if her decision to include Nehlen in a segment about free speech amounted to a tacit endorsement of his bigotry.
See some of the backlash on social media below:
Just a reminder that Paul Nehlen is a racist and if you’re defending him that’s what you’re defending. Cc @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/kQJRtmecLe
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) May 31, 2019
Last night on her Fox News program, @IngrahamAngle defended Paul Nehlen who once tweeted this.
And this is relatively tame compared to his other commments/rhetoric. pic.twitter.com/C4JxPE5OQJ
— Yashar Ali ? (@yashar) May 31, 2019
Here’s Paul Nehlen. The guy on his shirt? Pittsburgh synogogue shooter rod bower.
Paul Nehlen is a neo-nazi.
You really think this is the kind of person Fox should be signal boosting? pic.twitter.com/HRgF06SfoP
— RadicalAustralianism???? (@RadicalAus) May 31, 2019
I’m not in favor of boycotts but if you were going to do boycott of anyone, last night @IngrahamAngle defended Paul Nehlen who said, “I’m not opposed to someone leading a million Robert Bowers to the promised land.” Bowers is the man who killed 11 people in Pittsburgh synagogue.
— Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) May 31, 2019
Paul Nehlen was outed as a raging white supremacist over a year and a half ago. Since then he’s gone even further down the rabbit hole, calling for a violent race war.
But @IngrahamAngle & Fox News is calling him a “prominent conservative” https://t.co/YfmCBSrc16
— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) May 31, 2019
The host disagrees with this line of thinking.
“Retweeting screenshots of despicable old tweets by racists and/or anti-semites must make those racists & anti-semites very happy,” she tweeted Friday afternoon. Unfortunately it does zero to elevate the debate in America,” she tweeted Friday morning:
Retweeting screenshots of despicable old tweets by racists and/or anti-semites must make those racists & anti-semites very happy. Unfortunately it does zero to elevate the debate in America. cc. @CNN
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) May 31, 2019
Her point was that Nehlen’s past remarks — many of which are indeed bigoted to the extreme — are irrelevant to the broader discussion about free speech, which she and other conservatives would argue should be enjoyed by every American, regardless of his or her specific beliefs.
Like English comedian and actor Ricky Gervais has repeatedly tweeted in the past couple of months, “If you don’t believe in free speech for people who you hate, fear and disagree with, then you don’t believe in free speech.”
We can’t let “Free Speech for all” become “Free Speech for all unless someone says something someone else doesn’t like.”
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) January 13, 2019
If you don’t believe in free speech for people who you hate, fear and disagree with, then you don’t believe in free speech.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) February 3, 2019
If you don’t believe in free speech for people who you hate, fear and disagree with, then you don’t believe in free speech.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) May 10, 2019
However, criticism of Ingraham hasn’t just been limited to the left. Some conservatives have pounced as well because, while the segment that included Nehlen had been about free speech, it’d specifically been about “Democrats’ desperate push to shut down the right” and “and “How far will the left go to silence conservatives,” as seen in the chyrons below:
The juxtaposition of these chyrons with Nehlen’s pic suggests that Ingraham believes the failed Wisconsin congressional candidate is a conservative. He’s not.
“The conservative GOP kicked Nehlen out of the GOP,” one proud Trump supporter explained on Twitter. “He is NOT a prominent conservative voice. Democrats are all racists. If anything he’d fit in much better with them. But, yeah, somebody goofed, on that I agree.”
The conservative GOP kicked Nehlen out of the GOP. He is NOT a prominent conservative voice. Democrats are all racists. If anything he’d fit in much better with them. But, yeah, somebody goofed, on that I agree. But to say Laura Ingraham and Candace Owens are white supremacists?
— The Great Deplorable Henry ☕️❌❌ (@hammy413) May 31, 2019
“But to say Laura Ingraham and Candace Owens are white supremacists?” he added.
That too is a valid point. Both Ingraham and black conservative activist Candace Owens have repeatedly been smeared by the left as white supremacists, as bizarre as that sounds.
This, however, speaks to the host’s broader point, which is that the left has been trying for the longest time to smear and silence those voices “who believe in border enforcement, people who believe in national sovereignty,” etc. Those who hold conservative viewpoints, basically.
That said, should she have included Nehlan among those voices? Probably not, though she’s not wrong to point out that free speech applies to every American, even the bigoted ones.
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