Is Bill O’Reilly Really The Spokesperson For White Supremacy? [Opinion]
On Tuesday evening, The O’Reilly Factor talked about the “real” reasons for the left wanting to abolish the electoral college. This author wrote a report on the show for the Inquisitr and thought of Bill O’Reilly’s statements as controversial. However, there were never any indications that Bill O’Reilly was speaking as a white supremacist who wants whites to rule, while keeping minorities repressed.
“After Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, the left is demanding that the Electoral College system be scrapped,” transcripts of the show at Fox News reveal Mr. O’Reilly explaining, adding that there is a “hidden reason” for this.
O’Reilly explained that the state of California provided the winning popular vote margin. He noted that if the Electoral College were abolished, candidates would just campaign in the largest states and cities in order to rack up enough votes.
“That’s what the left wants because in the large urban areas and blue states, minorities [who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats] are substantial,” O’Reilly continued, and added that if this happened, we would have targeted populations instead of a national election.
Bill O’Reilly noted that newspapers such as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have editorialized getting rid of the Electoral College.
“By overwhelming majorities, Americans would prefer to elect the president by direct popular vote, not filtered through the antiquated mechanism of the Electoral College. They understand, on a gut level, the basic fairness of awarding the nation’s highest office on the same basis as every other elected office — to the person who gets the most votes,” wrote the New York Times editorial board.
Controversially going where other pundits wouldn’t dare, O’Reilly concluded that all of this was about race. He talked about the concept of “white privilege” and how the left sees it as an oppressive force that must be done away with. In other words, he talked the truth, whether you agree with the left or not. O’Reilly also talked about how the heart of liberalism is based on race.
Of course, the heart of liberalism is based on more than just race, and Bill O’Reilly could have clarified that more. But the fact that Mr. O’Reilly was accused of being a white supremacist is not only inaccurate, but it paints a cartoonish and stereotypical view of liberals. Fusion was one of the sites that accused O’Reilly of singing the praises of white supremacy. Vox inferred that O’Reilly argued for the Electoral College because it keeps white voters in power.
“Along the way, you might expect some sort of ‘to be sure’ paragraph to clarify that of course O’Reilly believes the votes of minority voters in California are equal to white rural voters in the Midwest. But it never comes. He instead mocked the idea of fighting against white privilege.”
While the right constantly takes comments from left-wing commentators out of context, this article is proof that the left wing does the same. O’Reilly never inferred that minority voters in California aren’t equal to white voters. He simply stated that if we got rid of the Electoral College, all candidates would have to do is campaign in the biggest cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston in order to rack up the most votes. It just so happens to be that those cities are overwhelmingly made up of minorities.
Bill O’Reilly has been problematic in the past, and he still gets things factually wrong from time to time. But he is not a white supremacist, and the fact that he is being called one is part of the reason why Donald Trump was elected — people are tired of the false narrative that anybody who dares speak their minds against a leftist point of view is automatically a Nazi, a racist, or a white supremacist. There are important liberal causes to fight for, but extreme accusations like the ones leveled at Bill O’Reilly hurt these causes in the long run.
[Featured Image by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images]
