‘This Is a Flagrant, Egregious Violation of the First Amendment’
Longtime Donald Trump ally and former campaign operative Roger Stone says the grassroots efforts, now successful, to convince Fox News to part ways with Bill O’Reilly over sexual harassment allegations violate the First Amendment. Stone, a fan of conspiracy theories and dirty tricks, appeared on the alt-right’s favorite fake news site, InfoWars, and spoke with Paul Joseph Watson.
Watson, a purveyor of conspiracy theories like his boss, Alex Jones, has promoted the false and unproven claim that Hillary Clinton has Parkinson’s, and made many other false suggestions.
“They can’t argue on the basis of ideas, they can’t argue on the basis of issues, so they have to silence us,†Stone told Watson, speaking about liberals and the left. “They’re trying to do so through Facebook, through Google, through these kinds of campaigns being run against O’Reilly. Censorship to me seems to be fundamentally un-American. We allow everybody a voice. This is a flagrant, egregious violation of the First Amendment,†Stone falsely claimed, as Right Wing Watch reported.
Perhaps someone should remind Stone that the First Amendment protects Americans from government censorship, not activists who have the absolute right to speak their opinions. In fact, there seems to be nothing more fundamentally American than participating in an act of consumer activism.Â
Stone began by saying “there is an orchestrated campaign of smear against O’Reilly.” A better classification would be, “there is a grassroots effort to get Fox News to do what it should have done well over a decade ago.”
Stunningly, Stone suggests that Roger Ailes, with whom Fox News parted ways last year, wasn’t fired, but rather he just “picked up and left,” as if he had any choice in the matter.
Watson claimed that people on the left have no principles, a false claim.
He then “absurdly declared that ‘you very rarely see people on the right going after people on the left in terms of personal attacks,’ claiming that personal attacks have ‘not really been a tactic of the right,'” according to Right Wing Watch.
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Image: Screenshot via Right Wing Watch/YouTube