April 1-2, 2009: Fox News Host Asks if Obama, Congressional Democrats Support ‘Marxist’ ‘One-World’ ‘Global-Justice Jihad’

Former Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, president of the Party of European Socialists, writes a Wall Street Journal op-ed that advocates a greater level of communication and cooperation between governments to address the global economic crisis. Rasmussen writes in part: “We must keep up the pressure by demanding a globalization that works for everyone, and forge new alliances and new lines of communication across national boundaries. We must develop new, progressive ways to achieve global justice.” He advocates the expansion of European “state health care, social housing, education, unemployment support, and other universal, tax-funded services” to “the developing world, where according to the World Health Organization between 200,000 and 400,000 additional children will die each year due to the global economic downturn.” He calls free-market capitalist ideology “simplistic” as “championed by Reagan, Thatcher, and their ideological heirs,” and a failure “on a momentous scale.” The next night, Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly attacks Rasmussen as advocating a Marxist solution, and espousing a “one-world” view. O’Reilly says: “Well, Karl Marx could not have said it better. Global justice requires that a one-world government seize private property and distribute it so that every human being has roughly the same amount of resources. The Denmark guy’s vision is nothing new, but it’s now being recycled as justice.” O’Reilly says that “[s]ome believe Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), and President Obama himself are sympathetic to the one-world, global-justice view,” and concludes: “Key question: Where does Barack Obama stand? Are the right-wing pundits correct? Is he down with the global-justice jihad? There’s no hard evidence to suggest that he is, but he has not repudiated the false vision either. Until President Obama does, speculation will rage.” [Wall Street Journal, 4/2/2009; Media Matters, 4/10/2009] O’Reilly is following recent, similar claims by Fox News guest Alex Jones (see March 18, 2009), Fox host Glenn Beck and his guests (see March 17, 2009 and March 24, 2009), and Fox News contributor Charles Payne (see March 24, 2009).