Bill O'Reilly's been on a hell of a tear this week attacking the Occupy Wall Street movement. On this Monday's show, he was calling them "terrorists" because a protester was giving him a hard time while watching a show on Broadway. Our friends over at News Hounds have more on that and O'Reilly's double standard when it comes to what sort of protesters he likes.
May 22, 2012

Bill O'Reilly's been on a hell of a tear this week attacking the Occupy Wall Street movement. On this Monday's show, he was calling them "terrorists" because a protester was giving him a hard time while watching a show on Broadway. Our friends over at News Hounds have more on that and O'Reilly's double standard when it comes to what sort of protesters he likes.

And never mind the hypocrisy of someone like Bill O'Reilly having the nerve to call protesters "terrorists" when he's done his best to inspire a few actual terrorists of his own as Dave Neiwert wrote about here: Bill O'Reilly has Dr. George Tiller's blood on his well-stained hands.

This Tuesday, he followed up as promised and here's how Fox's blog, Fox Nation promoted the piece tonight: The O'Reilly Factor: The Architects of The Occupy Movement:

Bill O’Reilly Asks: Who is Backing the Occupy Protesters and Why Won’t President Obama Repudiate the Movement?

Thousands of protesters and members of the Occupy movement hit the streets of Chicago during the NATO summit. 90 people were arrested and dozens were injured including a police officer who was stabbed. Tonight on The O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly looked further into who is really behind the movement, which he notes is now very well organized. He called it a “hardcore, far-left movement designed to cause as much trouble as possible.”

He found that the movement is being run out of Washington, D.C. in offices belonging to the Institute for Policy Studies. The director of the Institute is John Cavanagh, a longtime liberal activist and his nonprofit accepts money from George Soros through the Tides Foundation. O’Reilly also reported that the Service Employees International Union headed by Mary Kay Henry is paying rent for the OWS crew in D.C. at about $4,000 month.

O’Reilly stated, “It is long past time for President Obama to condemn the anarchistic element of the occupiers, which is now dominant. Instead, the president falls back on protecting freedom of speech platitudes. Sure, tell that to the Chicago cop who got stabbed, Mr. President.”

The Institute for Policy Studies' John Cavanagh responded to O'Reilly's attacks on their organization and Occupy Wall Street later that same evening here: The Nonsense Zone:

The Institute for Policy Studies is honored to join the long list of respected individuals and organizations that Bill O’Reilly has attacked on his Fox News show. During the opening segment of his May 22 tirade, O’Reilly attacked us for serving as the Occupy movement's "headquarters." He even implied that some central figure is making decisions about what color Occupy "agitators" should wear. These are hilarious claims about a movement that defiantly makes decisions through the direct participation of all of its members, rather than in a top-down process. And that would include fashion choices.

We don't know how O'Reilly and his colleagues cooked up their theories. They didn't bother to contact us before staging this attack. But IPS is nevertheless grateful for this opportunity to showcase our proud history of public scholarship on inequality, peace, justice, and the environment.

We have worked on the issue of inequality for two decades. We host one of the leading web sites for facts, figures and analysis, www.inequality.org. Our annual Executive Excess report, now in its 18th year, garners major mainstream media coverage on the growing gap between CEO and worker pay. Recently, IPS was invited to give testimony on this research to the Senate Budget Committee. IPS is also doing a great deal of research on the transition away from a speculative Wall Street economy to a green and demilitarized Main Street economy.

IPS researchers were very pleased when the Occupy encampments raised awareness of the growing problems with extreme inequality and how war spending fuels the economic crisis. During his broadcast, O’Reilly claimed that the Occupy movement is no longer about inequality. He's wrong. This movement continues to highlight the great divide between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, and it continues to draw attention to how a casino Wall Street has crashed our economy and corrupted our politics. The Occupy movement has brought these vital issues into dinner conversations across this country.

Starting last fall, IPS conducted workshops on inequality, environmental justice, and ending wars, with Occupy DC. We offered to let them use our space for meetings when the weather was bad or on weekends. Two weeks ago, IPS offered them space in our offices where they are producing an online newspaper called DC Mic Check. SEIU, the dynamic union of janitors and other service workers, has made a contribution to help us cover the costs.

IPS is an independent, nonpartisan, and non-profit organization. For nearly half a century, we have worked with and provided research and analysis to a diverse set of social movements, unions, and others for peace, justice, and the environment. Thank you, Bill O’Reilly, for putting us in the spotlight.

During his follow up to the Talking Points Memo which the IPS responded to, O'Reilly brought in Monica Crowley and Alan Colmes and it just got worse from there with the list of who is supposedly organizing the movement now. Of course it also included Van Jones, George Soros, and some plot between them and the White House and the unions to promote their evil, Socialist agenda and to make sure President Obama is reelected according to Crowley. Alan Colmes did actually bother to point out that the movement is not too fond of President Obama either, but that did not stop Crowley from promoting her conspiracy theories.

I find these sort of segments particularly amusing from Fox because they pretend no one has any collective memory of how they covered the movement to begin with. At first, they completely ignored the protests and just didn't cover them at all and hoped they would go away and no one would notice. Then once they could no longer ignore that there were large numbers of people protesting across the country, they went into damage control mode with trying to delegitimize them. Now they've moved all the way over to the movement being orchestrated by the White House and their allies to somehow drum up support for their agenda. Quite a 180 with the spin involved.

And to no one's surprise when it comes to the type of hyperbole we regularly hear from O'Reilly when it involves anyone he doesn't like, O'Reilly wrapped things up by warning that if the movement is allowed to continue "someone's going to get killed." Ignoring that the people who have primarily been on the wrong side of the violence during these protests have been the protesters and not the police. And of course ignoring that he is the last person in the world that should be talking about anyone being responsible in any way, shape or form for someone else being killed.

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