Bill O’Reilly claims white supremacy isn’t rising, immediately gets schooled

Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly was schooled on Twitter after denying that white supremacy is increasing in the US.

After President Joe Biden said that his Justice Department will “focus on how to deal with the rise of white supremacy”, O’Reilly wrote: “Mr Biden says there is a “rise” in white supremacy. Where?”.

Twitter was quick to jump on O’Reilly’s question and provide a number of answers.

The tweet quickly got more replies than it did retweets.

Many of the people who jumped to their keyboards to reference a growing problem of white supremacy in the States used the recent Capitol insurrection as a reminder, showing photos of rioters with Confederate and Nazi flags.

The Department for Homeland Security warned in a report last year that white supremacy was the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland”.

Chad F Wolf, Trump’s then- acting secretary of homeland security, said: “I am particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years.”

O’Reilly’s controversial tweet was a reaction to Biden calling white supremacists “demented” and “dangerous”. Speaking at a CNN town hall, the president added: “I would make sure that my Justice Department and the Civil Rights Division is focused heavily on those very folks.”

O’Reilly’s Twitter feed became awash with people stating that if he couldn’t see white supremacy, he simply wasn’t looking hard enough.

Many people also took the opportunity to remind O’Reilly of his own history of racist comments, who was let go from Fox News in 2017 after a career littered with numerous accusations of sexism, misogyny and racism.

While working for the conservative network, more than 60 advertisers pulled their sponsorship from the show. One woman alleged that O’Reilly leered at her and called her “hot chocolate”.

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