Fox News Notes Communist Past of the 'Green Jobs' Czar

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The administration’s “Green Jobs” czar, Van Jones, has a “very checkered past” deep-rooted in radical politics, including black nationalism, anarchism, and communism. The broadcast network newscasts have mostly failed to report on Mr. Jones’s past political affiliations which are lock-step with the network’s downplay of coverage regarding President Obama’s associations with the former radical and terrorist William Ayers during the election.

At 6:47 a.m. EDT on the July 10 edition of “Fox and Friends,” Americans for Prosperity Policy Director Phil Kerpen, told interviewer Brian Kilmeade that Jones is “somebody who was involved in radical politics in San Francisco, “who was self-admittedly “radicalized in jail” and found “Communism and anarchism.” Kerpen compares Van Jones’s Communist past with his new quest for environmentalism and the creation of green jobs:

I think it’s pretty instructive what his past is...it’s the same sort of philosophy, the idea that government ought to be reordering society in accordance with some utopian vision that failed with communism and socialism, and will fail with this green jobs idea.

In an April 12, 2009 World Net Daily article titled “Will a “red” help blacks go green?”Aaron Klein reports that Jones himself stated in a 2005 interview his environmental activism was a means to fight for racial and class “justice,” and that he was a “rowdy black nationalist,” and a “communist.”

Because the administration’s “czars” do not go through congressional confirmation, and are therefore not scrutinized or vetted, many Americans have no idea who they are or where they come from.

Kudos to Fox News for bringing Van Jones’s controversial past and political ideology to light.

The following was aired on the July 10 edition of Fox and Friends:

BRIAN KILMEADE, co-host, “Fox and Friends”: Phil, we have a czar, he’s a green jobs czar, he’s Van Jones, he’s got a deep history in communism.

PHIL KERPEN, AFP Policy Director: He does. He has a very checkered past. This is somebody who was involved in radical politics out in San Francisco, California. He was arrested during a demonstration/riot following the Rodney King verdict. And he said himself that he was radicalized in jail, that he found communism and anarchism. And then he started a pretty radical, kind of communist, socialist, utopian group that was supposed to end all racism though central planning. And then he decided that the real path the sort of progressive nirvana, was the this green jobs idea.  I think its pretty instructive what his past is, I am not just trying to smear the guy, but I think it’s the same sort of philosophy, the idea that government ought to be reordering society in accordance with some utopian vision that failed with communism and socialism, and will fail with this green jobs idea. We are imposing a top-down vision.

GRETCHEN CARLSON, co-host: And more importantly for America Phil, is the fact that we already have an Energy Secretary, who by the way had to go through Congress to be approved. And the reason that these czars, you don’t know anything about them, is because they don’t have to go through that process.