Roger Ailes of Fox News: 'Nazis' are running public radio [Updated]

Anyone who has watched Fox News personality Glenn Beck with any regularity has heard warnings of an end of life in America as we know it, specifically a Nazi-style takeover of the government. That could be the eventual endgame, according to Beck, if the big-government policies of the Obama administration go unchecked.

But in an interview this week, it was Beck's Fox News boss, Roger Ailes, embracing the Nazi rhetoric. And this time the target was National Public Radio. Speaking to the Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz, Ailes said NPR's bosses revealed their fascist stripes when they dismissed commentator Juan Williams.

"They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude," Ailes told Kurtz. "They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don't want any other point of view. They don't even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive."

The left-leaning media watchdog group, Media Matters, was first to note how Ailes seemed to be echoing Beck, or vice versa. Media Matters charged: "Fox's 'Nazi' rhetoric also comes straight from the top."

The group's online critique went on to cite the many times Beck has invoked the Nazis in taking on his liberal foes. In one instance last year, the report noted, Beck compared Obama's call for the expansion of the foreign service via a "civilian national security force" to Hitler's SS and brownshirts.

Although Beck and some other Fox hosts have leaned heavily on analogies to fascism lately, other media figures have invoked the same super-heated rhetoric in the past. Back in the 1990s, it was CNN founder Ted Turner who compared Rupert Murdoch to Hitler. Murdoch leads News Corp., which owns Fox News.

[For the record at 10 p.m.: A previous version of this post referred to the head of News Corp. as Roger Murdoch. It is Rupert Murdoch.]

After NPR chief Vivian Schiller spoke Thursday afternoon at the Annenberg School for Communication at USC, an audience member asked what Ailes might have meant to accomplish with his "Nazi" remark.

"I have no earthly idea," Schiller said. "I don't know what he was getting at. It was quite baffling to me to be perfectly honest. I think his words really speak for themselves."

Ailes apologized Thursday to the Anti-Defamation League, saying he had been "ad-libbing and should not have chosen that word."

He had not, however, apologized to NPR.

-- James Rainey
Twitter.com/latimesrainey

Photo: Roger Ailes, chief executive of Fox News. Credit: Reed Saxon / Associated Press

Comments

[PeriSoft]

'Roger Murdoch' eh? Copy editor on break today?

[UnFair and UnBalanced]

I am so sick of listening to feigned right-wing complaints about how unfairly they are being treated. They co-opted this from liberals about ten years ago and it growing stale. Petty complaints while Fox News is just a yellow journalism propaganda machine funded by Rupert Murdoch who, with some other rich vultures, want to undo the New Deal and turn us back into a land of the wealthy and the peasants. Good job so far.

[Katie]

It is taking less and less time for Godwin's Law to take effect nowadays.

[Anita Bonghit]

Nazis are "National Socialists" that kind of describes progressive Democrats and the actions the Democrat led Congress and Senate have taken in direct opposition to the will of a significant majority of the people. SEIU in purple shirts are very similar in tactics and attitude to the German "Brown Shirts" prior to WWII. The left has been very active in trying to silence any voices they do not agree with.

[Black Dog Clan]

If they're liberals, maybe the term should be Maoists or Ché-ists, or Marxists. Or Lennon-McCarthyists.

Nazis are for the right.

And we're always ad-libbing...

[Ken Erez]

LA Times,

I thought the name was "Rupert Murdoch," not "Roger Murdoch."
If you want to impress us with your reporting, then get your facts right first.

Ken
Liberal in Northern California

[Tim Haugen]

This seems to me like a case of the pot calling the kettle black...

[Patricia]

Is the guy off his meds or what? Crazy talk.

[Xmander]

You do realize that Sky in the UK, also owned by Murdoch, is attacking BBC in much the same manner. I think it is safe to say this is choreographed attempt to get rid of opponents. Not by being better at what you do (market mechanism) but by lying about your opponent. This tactic, of course, was used by the Nazis and anyone that has taken a basic psychology class would see what they are doing is called projecting (accuse the other of what you yourself are doing). The funny thing about the Nazis as a party is that they didn’t know they were Nazis (in todays terms), the funny thing about Murdoch and Ailes is they don’t know they are..........

[LMS]

It takes one to know one.