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In August 2014, police officer Darren Wilson shot unarmed Michael Brown, sparking months of protests in Ferguson, Missouri and other American cities and capturing worldwide media attention. This article presents a critical discourse analysis of Fox News Channel’s segments from August 2014 to March 2015. It systematically uncovers themes and larger discourses within five major areas: blaming black victims in the characterisation of Michael Brown and his shooting death, blaming black leaders, blaming the black community, attacking the black protesters and their movement against police brutality, and discrediting attempts to address issues of racism as the ‘politics of racial division’. Several major emergent discourses include: the criminal black (wo)man, blaming the victim, projection of racism on minorities, denial and counterattack, minimisation of racism, redistributing responsibility, personal responsibility, and deadbeat dads and unwed mothers. The author argues that Fox News in perpetuating these racist discourses helps to obstruct the addressing of racism in the criminal justice system.

Existing literature demonstrates disagreement over the relationship between hate crime and terrorism with some calling them “close cousins,” whereas others declare them “distant relatives.” We extend previous research by capturing a middle ground between hate crime and terrorism: extremist hate crime. We conduct negative binomial regressions to examine hate crime by non-extremists, fatal hate crime by far-rightists, and terrorism in U.S. counties (1992-2012). Results show that counties experiencing increases in general hate crime, far-right hate crime, and non-right-wing terrorism see associated increases in far-right hate crime, far-right terrorism, and far-right hate crime, respectively. We conclude that hate crime and terrorism may be more akin to close cousins than distant relatives.