PBS Guest Likens Conservatives to Osama bin Laden on Immigration

On Friday’s Tavis Smiley show, on display for PBS viewers was the latest in a parade of mostly left-wing guests getting to promote their liberal views as author Sasha Polakow-Suransky of the Open Society Foundations promoted his book — Go Back Where You Came From — that was critical of right-wing political movements in Europe and in the U.S. reacting against too much immigration.

At one point in the interview, he went into hyperbole as he suggested that right-wing politicians are just a step away from being like Osama bin Laden as he pointed out that an outright bin Laden would not be able to get elected.

After tying together the success of Brexit in the UK, the election of Donald Trump in the U.S., and the increasing power of right-wing parties in Europe like that of former French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, the liberal author got around to making an analogy between right-wing politicians and bin Laden:

So what I’m saying is that this isn’t necessarily going to happen tomorrow, but this is a worrying trend that we see because people are voting for these sorts of politicians, and they’re able to appeal — as I said in the New York Times op-ed — they’re able to appeal to voters in a way that a radical Islamist never could.

He added:

You know, no one’s going to vote for an Osama bin Laden character if he were running in this country or France, but someone can come up and say, “We are the natives — this is our country — this is for us — and we don’t want anyone else in it,” and people are going to listen, and they’re going to vote. And that is what scares me. I feel that these people are able to get enough support and enough popularity to the point that they could actually dismantle some of the institutions that make our society democratic.

Even though some liberals have admitted that assimilation is a legimiate concern regarding immigration, host Smiley provided no pushback against his liberal guest.

(First reported by mrcNewsBusters)  https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/brad-wilmouth/2017/10/31/pbs-guest-likens-conservatives-osama-bin-laden-immigration  (November 1, 2017)

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