Fox News inadvertently educated its viewers
A Fox News booker / producer may be in trouble after this guest inadvertently educated Fox News viewers on democratic socialism. Thor Halvorssen, a Venezuelan human rights advocate and film producer, appeared on Fox News Business. He was purported to appear as a liberal who was staunchly against Bernie Sanders’ Democratic Socialism and its ills. Unfortunately for Fox News, Thor Halvorssen was very nuanced and had a big surprise for the host.
The interview went badly from the beginning. She asked Halvorssen why socialism was a violation of human rights. His answer was perfect.
“Well let’s actually qualify that,” Thor Halvorssen replied. “Countries that do not violate human rights can have socialist governments and that is perfectly okay. I there are branches of government that exist, and separation of powers, and constitutional rights, you can have a country like Denmark, or Norway, or Sweden that often time have socialist governments, labor governments. That’s perfectly fine. The problem is when socialism is done under N authoritarian government or someone using socialism as a mask, takes control of the government, claim they are going to help the people, and ultimately end up looting the country.”
Having educated her viewers, the host then reverted to asking about the definition of the word. One should note that American dictionaries conflate the definition of socialism with communism. That is likely an intentional indoctrination methodology.
Again Thor’s answer was nuanced. He said people could take a historic definition of socialism, or an academic definition.
“Arguably many countries, many democratic countries have socialist policies,” Thor said. “Now there is a difference between having a socialist policy, having a socialist government, being a socialist. Some people, academically believe that socialism, communism, Marxism are the same thing.” Of course they are not.
Later in the interview Thor confessed that he donated the maximum amount possible to the Bernie Sanders campaign because he thought Hillary Clinton received too much money for dictatorships around the world.