Islamophobia on Fox News: Delusional "Fox and Friends" pundit Bo Dietl equates Muslim communities with "motorcycle gangs up in the Bronx"

Dietl called it "baloney" for critics to say that his push for targeted surveillance is dangerously Islamophobic

Published April 6, 2016 8:35PM (EDT)

Former-NYPD detective and Fox News's current go-to advocate for police profiling Bo Dietl already expressed his support for Ted Cruz's decidedly Islamophobic proposal to "patrol" Muslim neighborhoods, announced in the days following the ISIS attacks in Brussels last month.

But in case you forgot how uninformed Dietl really is, he returned to "Fox and Friends" Wednesday to offer a refresher course in racial discrimination.

In response to a lobbed-over-the-plate setup question from host Brian Kilmeade regarding security forces' "best asset" in surveilling crime in Muslim neighborhoods, Dietl again harped on infiltration via "undercovers."

"It's the same as anything," he said. "If we're infiltrating Italian mobsters that are hanging out in Italian restaurants, then you use Italian undercovers. If I'm looking for the old Irish Republican Army running guns back to Ireland, I'm going to go into an Irish community."

Dietl called the notion that one shouldn't equate entire communities of Muslims with a small minority of sleeper cells, "baloney."

"People are coming into our country through our southern border, people are here," he added. (Scattered reports account for almost a dozen confirmed cases of illegal immigrants from Muslim countries — Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria — captured at the U.S.-Mexico border. No credible report, however, found any of them to be ISIS-affiliated.) "I want to know from the good Muslim Americans what's going on in the community."

"I'm not looking for watchdogs all over Muslim communities," Dietl clarified, before creating a false equivalency between supposed "Muslim communities" and biker gangs.

"I'm looking for the same interaction that we have when we're looking for gangs up in East Harlem, or motorcycle gangs up in the Bronx that are causing all kinds — of selling guns," he said.

Ask your doctor if you're healthy enough to watch the full interview below, as it may cause hypertension:

(h/t Media Matters)


By Brendan Gauthier

Brendan Gauthier is a freelance writer.

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Bo Dietl Fox And Friends Islamophobia Muslim Communities Ted Cruz