There are media appearances that go wrong and there are media appearances that go exactly as designed for both parties simultaneously, and the DSA co-chair’s Fox News appearance Wednesday produced the second kind, in a segment that Fox News described as alarming and the DSA almost certainly described as excellent promotion.
The Democratic Socialists of America co-chair appeared on Fox News on Wednesday, per Fox News, and cited Martin Luther King Jr. as a socialist, noting that King’s 1964 book “Why We Can’t Wait” advocates for a guaranteed income and economic redistribution programs that King called a kind of “Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged.” King did write this. He did advocate for it. The DSA co-chair presented it as evidence of socialism’s American lineage, which it is, and as justification for the current progressive wave, which it was intended to be.
Fox News covered the appearance as evidence of the Democratic Party’s alarming leftward drift, which produced national coverage of the DSA’s argument, distributed to Fox News’s audience of millions, at no cost to the DSA. The DSA appeared on Fox News. Fox News amplified the message to its audience. The segment was titled to suggest alarm. The content was a socialist making a case for socialism on a platform that reaches the people the socialist most wants to reach.
The appearance follows Mamdani’s “Inshallah” moment, which Breitbart covered as alarming theological politics, distributing it to millions of Breitbart readers, who are also the people Mamdani most wants to discuss his politics with. The pattern is now: the DSA or its allies say or do something, conservative media covers it as alarming, and the thing is covered. The coverage serves as the megaphone.
King’s 1964 advocacy for guaranteed income has been documented by historians for decades. The DSA cited it on Fox News Wednesday. Fox News broadcast it. The segment is currently generating this article.
When a socialist cites MLK on Fox News and Fox News covers it as alarming, and the coverage distributes the argument to millions of people, who exactly is winning the media strategy?
Sources
Fox News: Democratic Socialists co-chair cites MLK as socialist
Raw Story: Republican’s ‘thinly veiled call’ to ‘kill’ progressives triggers calls for ouster
