Fox News’ Erick Erickson, deemed America’s “Most Powerful Conservative,” calls gay people terrorists, hours after terrorists strategically slaughtered 12 people in Paris.
Late last month, The Atlantic named RedState founder and Fox News contributor Erick Erickson the “Most Powerful Conservative” in America. Erickson is a Louisiana native who lives in Georgia. His meteoric rise to fame on the far right defies comprehension, but it likely is tied to him seemingly having no personal internal editor, allowing him to blurt out what’s on his mind without considering repercussions. The Tea Party loves that.
Yesterday, three radical Islamic extremists hunted down journalists at the iconic French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo, which is known worldwide for its unrelenting mocking of religious extremism. The terrorists slaughtered its editor and staff, after asking for each by name. Just hours after that news broke, Erickson recorded and published what sounded like a commentary on the attack that left 12 dead and 11 more wounded.
“A publisher published something that offended. It mocked, it offended, and it showed the fallacy of a religion. It angered,” he told listeners. “So the terrorists decided they needed to publicly destroy and ruin the publisher in a way that would not only make that destruction a public spectacle, but do it so spectacularly that others would think twice before publishing or saying anything similar.”
Sounds just like a commentary attacking the horrific acts of terrorism in Paris, doesn’t it?Â
“The terrorist wants to sow fear,” he slowly continued, as his published text reads. “The destruction of an individual is not just meant to be a tool of vengeance, but a tool of instruction. It shows others what will happen to them if they dare do the same. It is generates self-regulating peer pressure. Others, fearing the fall out, will being to self-police and self-regulate. They will silence others on behalf of the terrorists. Out of fear, they will drive the ideas from the public square and society will make them off limits.”
Erickson concludes, “The terrorists did what had to be done to publicly destroy and ruin the offender.”
So they demanded the Mayor of Atlanta fire the Chief of the Fire Department for daring to write that his first duty was to “glory God†and that any sex outside of heterosexual marriage was a sin.
And the terrorists won in Atlanta.
You can bet Erickson was quite proud of himself for that twist.
And for calling gay people terrorists.
In case you’re unsure what happened in Atlanta, Georgia, the fire chief was fired this week after he published a religiously-themed book that among other things, calls gay people “unclean,” and likens them to pedophiles and people who have sex with animals.
Mayor Kasim Reed made clear that he fired Kelvin Cochran not for the content of the book – although that seems like sufficient grounds – but for not consulting with him before publishing it.
Erickson wants people to believe that Cochran was fired for his religious beliefs, to fit the religious right’s narrative that they are being persecuted, even if they’re not.
And it seems he’ll say just about anything to make people believe that – even that gays are terrorists.
UPDATE: Just to be 100 percent clear on Erickson’s intentions, the description for the Soundcloud audio, presumably written by Erickson since it says it was, reads: “Erick ties together the terrorist attack in France today with the firing of the Atlanta Fire Chief.”
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Image, top, by Gage Skidmore via Flickr
Hat tip:Â Joe Jervis
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