Comedian Russell Brand condemned Fox News as a “fanatical terrorist propaganda organization” during a heated, 10-minute tirade recorded on video and uploaded to the web this week.
The 39-year-old British stand-up comic-turned-actor is now making headlines for the video footage, which was uploaded to his personal YouTube channel on Tuesday this week under the title: Is Fox News More Dangerous than Isis?
Throughout the duration of the clip, Brand responded with sheer outrage to recent remarks made on-air by Fox host Jeanine Pirro, a former prosecutor, who said during a broadcast of her program last weekend that the United States should bomb Iraq en masse in order to eliminate the growing insurgency there that has cause an international crisis.
“When they do these bombings, it creates more insurgents, that’s what creates them,” Brand responded. “Don’t think of a bomb as going down there and destroying stuff, think of it as like a seed that goes into the ground, and grows insurgents out of it, it creates more terrorism, doing it.”
From there, Brand continued to counter Pirro’s claims by juxtaposing clips from the broadcast in question with his own responses. Whereas the Fox host said that any agreement reached between the US and Iran to remediate the insurgency would be on par with cutting “a deal with the devil,” Brand blasted her for alleging as much.
At one point, Pirro says during the episode that the group credited with the recent string of attacks across Iraq, ISIS, is a “fanatical religious terrorist organization.”
“So is Fox News,” Brand fired back. “It’s a fanatical terrorist propagandist organization. This isn’t reasonable, is it? Like the way she’s talking? ‘Bomb them! Bomb them!’ She’s worse … She’s the savage, she’s totally espousing savage values.”
“It’s invective, just incendiary language, just volatile combative, angry language. That – I’m not being sensational – that is more dangerous than ISIS,” he added. “That’s attitude. That’s far-reaching. That’s affecting millions and millions of people.”
Some, including Fox commentators, quickly came to Pirro’s defense as Brand’s remarks began to go viral.
“If he feels that ISIS is harmless, he should go there and hang out with them. They would behead him faster than you could say Arthur. His worst movie,” Greg Gutfeld responded during a recent episode of Fox’s The Five program.
Days earlier, RT caught up with Brand during an anti-austerity rally in London in which he again condemned the mainstream media, that time targeting BBC.
“I think that the mainstream media likes to control the parameters of debate so important ideas never reach mainstream ideology. Because if people knew what was happening, they wouldn’t tolerate it; if people knew how exploited they were. Ignorance is a necessary ingredient for oppression,” he said.