PBS and NPR are shamelessly demonstrating their leftist broadcasting powers in the wake of going to Capitol Hill and lying about how they’re interested in “delivering unbiased, nonpartisan fact-based reporting.” (So said NPR CEO Katherine Maher.)
Both networks are now promoting leftist Yale professor and self-anointed fascism expert Jason Stanley to explain why he's leaving for Canada because America is sinking into fascism under Trump.
On Tuesday night, the PBS NewsHour awarded nearly seven minutes to Stanley's rantings. There was no opposing view from conservatives, which would begin with welcoming Stanley’s departure as making America a saner place.
Stanley is not "fact checked in real time" for claiming America is devolving into a fascist regime. Here's how PBS anchor Amna Nawaz began:
NAWAZ: Yale University philosophy professor Jason Stanley announced he's leaving not only his school, but the country, to teach at the University of Toronto in Canada. Stanley said he's making the move so he can — quote — "raise his kids in a country that's not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship." For more on his decision, Jason Stanley joins me now.
Nawaz displayed the covers of Stanley's two books on American fascism, and all the questions were softballs. It began like this:
NAWAZ: So you have authored two books on fascism. It's a topic you spend a lot of time studying. Your decision to leave has been framed as you fleeing the U.S. That's the word people are using. Is that how you see it?
STANLEY: No, but that has resonance with Jewish intellectuals fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s, so it's kind of interesting to see the use of that word.
Stanley's claim is that democracy ends when the government doesn't fund Ivy League universities where campuses are occupied by nasty pro-Hamas rallies, as if favoring Hamas is favoring democracy.
STANLEY: When Columbia folded, that's when I thought, OK, I'm just going to look at the probabilities of our institutions folding, of our democratic institutions folding. And by that, I mean not just the universities, but the media and our legal system. And I thought, well, maybe they can hold the line, but this is an opportunity. It's a great opportunity. And I think the probabilities are not in the favor of U.S. democracy.
On Tuesday's Morning Edition, co-host A Martinez tossed the softballs for 7.5 minutes as Stanley dropped the F-bombs. The F-word came out seven times, or about once a minute.
MARTÍNEZ: Wouldn't it be more helpful in that fight, Professor, for you to stay at Yale to fight that fight, as opposed to being in Canada?
STANLEY: I have Black Jewish children, and the attacks on DEI are an attacks -- are attacks on Black people. They're attacking Black history. They're targeting Black people in positions of power, and they're creating mass popular anger against Jewish people by taking Jewish people, by setting us up and saying, you know, we're the excuse for taking down democracy. And, you know, personally, I'm not going to risk my kids' safety for a political point. And finally, by leaving, I'm making a political point. I'm making the political point that I'm repeating history of Jewish intellectuals leaving a country in the face of a fascist regime.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, you've written two books on fascism, seeing that history as a cautionary tale. So how much did that play into your decision to leave?
STANLEY: Well, it's - it played into my decision because my work over the last decade has been calling attention to the rise of fascism in the United States. And you can only write so much. At some point, you have to do something.
The only question that suggested Team Trump's opinion to Stanley, that it's fighting campus anti-Semitism, drew Stanley's bizarre analogy that Team Trump harping on Islamist anti-Semitism is making Jews unsafe: "What's happening is like what Stalin did in Eastern - in the Soviet Union - setting up large groups of people for popular rage."
Trump can be both Hitler and Stalin. And PBS and NPR are fine with that -- in their "fact-based" and "nonpartisan" way.
PS: PBS also featured this radical professor on Amanpour & Co, as Clay Waters wrote here. That lasted 19 minutes. Stanley claimed "The history of this era will say that Jewish people were the sledgehammer for fascism."
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