Former Neo-Nazi Accuses Fox News of Radicalizing Americans: ‘They Say The Same Stuff I Used to Say’
Frank Meeink, a former neo-Nazi recruiter, told CNN’s Pamela Brown he thought that Fox News had “completely radicalized” many Americans, accusing them of using rhetoric similar to “the same radical stuff” he used to say.
Brown opened the segment mentioning the recent news that a man arrested for his alleged actions during the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection was an appointee in the administration of former President Donald Trump. At the time of the riot, Federico Klein was working for Trump’s State Department and had a top secret security clearance.
“How does a person become so radicalized and so lost in the conspiracy rabbit hole that he attacks the very government he is working for?” Brown asked, before introducing Meeink as someone who had become a “notorious leader in America’s neo-Nazi underground” as a teen, and served time in prison for violent crimes. Meeink later renounced his white supremacist beliefs, writing a book about it titled Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead, and has testified before Congress about how to fight racism and extremism.
Meeink said that he was concerned about extremism attracting government employees like Klein, as well as police officers, noting that several law enforcement officers had been charged in the Capitol riot. “So I think for us to stop the radicalization, we need to stop giving Americans red meat to fight over and let’s get true, real police reform,” he said.
Brown then asked him about the election conspiracies that fed the extremism that led to the Capitol riot, and what he thought was driving it.
“It’s fear and narcissism and that fake patriotism, that’s just nationalism wrapped up again with worshipping an idol,” Meeink replied, before turning the topic to Fox News.
“Fox News has completely radicalized so many Americans,” he said. “If you look at Fox News and then you compare that to hate radio from Rwanda, and what started that civil war, there’s comparisons there. We have to know that a lot of our fellow Americans, our fellow children of God, have been radicalized by a network of news.”
“As a former radical, I can tell you, from watching Fox News all day, I can show you where they’re saying radical stuff that I used to say,” he continued, saying that he used to have a neo-Nazi television show and “they use the same stuff, instead of when I would say ‘Jews,’ they say ‘Big Media.’ They just swapped out a couple of words here and there.”
Brown asked him if he thought that the QAnon conspiracy movement was a domestic terrorist threat.
“Absolutely,” Meeink replied. “The neo-Nazi stuff that I belonged to is manifested in the QAnon, in the Proud Boys…when I see what I used to be, I see it in QAnon, I see it in the Proud Boys. Racism always just recycles itself. We can’t be the KKK anymore, so they can’t be neo-Nazi anymore. Now they are Proud Boys. It’s remarketing hate.”
Hate might change labels, but was still the same, Meeink concluded. “It’s just people that are wrapped in fear, and they are scared, and egos. That is exactly, you see — ‘Trump 2020!’ It’s all ego. We have to hope that some of our fellow Americans will start to see that.”
Watch the above video, via CNN.
