On the November 28 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, host Bill O'Reilly pointed to “a very secret plan” by the “secular progressive” movement, which he said aims to “diminish Christian philosophy in the U.S.A.” It is a plan he links to his perception that many now avoid the holiday greeting “Merry Christmas.” O'Reilly's disclosure of this “secret plan” was followed the day after by a rant on his radio show against the “hateful liars” who “spit out” “blatant propaganda” that is “picked up by the mainstream media, and rammed down the public's throat.”

According to O'Reilly, the “secular progressive” movement has three elements:

• First, progressive financiers George Soros and Peter Lewis “pour money into the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union], they pour money into the smear websites, you know, they buy up a lot of media time.”
• Second, “the ACLU is their legal arm. ... [T]he ACLU runs around the country suing everybody and intimidating people.”
• Third, “the smear websites are their media arm.”

O'Reilly said these three elements operate “in tandem”:

O'REILLY: [Y]ou use your left-wing smear websites to go after anybody who stands up for Christmas. If you stand up for Christmas, they come after you. So the tandem intimidates. The tandem intimidates. Suing on one hand; smearing on the other hand.

The result? According to O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: In every secular progressive country, they've wiped out religion ... Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, all of them. That's the first step. Get the religion out of there, so that we can impose our big-government, progressive agenda.

Media Matters has already documented O'Reilly's theory that Soros and Lewis are “the money men behind the secular curtain.” In fact, he has called for a “coalition of the willing to fight against this secular movement” and has posted an online list of “media operations [that] have regularly helped distribute defamation and false information supplied by far left websites.”

Then, on the November 29 broadcast of The Radio Factor, O'Reilly continued his condemnation of “blatant propaganda spit out there on a daily basis by hateful liars, picked up by the mainstream media, and rammed down the public's throat.” This time, referencing media coverage of the Iraq war, O'Reilly exclaimed, “It's dishonest, it hurts the country -- and I'm going to bring those people down. Mark my words.” Further explicating his “coalition of the willing,” O'Reilly continued, “And that's what I was talking about last night [on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor] in the coalition of the willing. We're going to go after those people where they live.”

From the November 28 broadcast of Fox News' The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: Now the reason this is happening is because of the ACLU and George Soros, Peter Lewis. Just a reminder: George Soros and Peter Lewis are the far-left, secular progressive billionaires who have funded -- they pour money into the ACLU, they pour money into the smear websites, you know, they buy up a lot of the media time. And they basically want to change the country from a Christian-based philosophical country to a secular progressive country like they have in Western Europe. OK? Now, the ACLU is their legal arm, and the smear websites are their media arm. And they pour a lot of money into both. And the ACLU runs around the country suing everybody and intimidating people.

[...]

O'REILLY: And in tandem, you use your left-wing smear websites to go after anybody who stands up for Christmas. If you stand up for Christmas, they come after you. So the tandem intimidates. The tandem intimidates. Suing on one hand; smearing on the other hand. And the store CEOs, they got it. We don't want to get involved in that. We don't want to be sued. We don't want to be smeared, so we're going to say “Happy Holidays.” Intimidation and lawsuits; the combo has worked. In Denver, they were going to ban a Christmas parade -- they don't call it Christmas parade anymore, but we can't have anything that shows anything about Christmas. Well, that, you know, has been knocked out. Now, I think, they can have one float or something. We're going to cover that. And in Boston, you saw what happened.

[...]

O'REILLY: Well, that's right. I mean, if there's anything The Factor does it's bring the big picture to people so they understand what's going on, and -- because it isn't in a vacuum. I mean, the ACLU and George Soros and these websites don't operate day to day without a plan. There is a plan.

MIKE JOHNSON (senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund): Sure, there is.

O'REILLY: There's a very secret plan. And it's a plan that nobody's going to tell you, “Well, we want to diminish Christian philosophy in the U.S.A. because we want X, Y, and Z.” They'll never ever say that. But I'm kind of surprised they went after Christmas because it's such an emotional issue.

JOHNSON: Well, it is. But I think they did not count on the fact that they would be exposed as they have been. You had my boss on a few weeks ago on your program, Alan Sears --

O'REILLY: Right.

JOHNSON: And he wrote the book ACLU vs. America [Broadman & Holman, September 2005] --

O'REILLY: Right.

JOHNSON: Which, by the way, went to number 22 on Amazon the following day, Bill. Thanks. But that's helping get the word out. And he shows in the book, he documents -- he goes back 80 years to the founding of Roger Baldwin, and he shows how this was a -- is a very deliberate plan of action --

O'REILLY: Sure.

JOHNSON: -- and strategy they've had.

O'REILLY: In every secular progressive country, they've wiped out religion.

JOHNSON: That's right.

O'REILLY: Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, all of them. That's the first step. Get the religion out of there, so that we can impose our big-government, progressive agenda. Hey, merry Christmas, Mike. We appreciate it. Keep us posted --

From the November 29 broadcast of The Radio Factor:

CALLER: And I think that, you know, when you talk about the people in America who are spewing this filth, you know, that's arising from pure ignorance --

O'REILLY: No, it's not. No, no, you're wrong. It's arising from hatred. Here's the point. You can dissent about the war and feel it is not a good policy for America and they screwed it up. And that's absolutely legitimate dissent. Absolutely legitimate. OK? But you can't accuse Bush and Cheney of lying purposely to get people killed, because they wanted Halliburton to make money. You can't do that unless you have proof. Once you start down that defamation lane, then you have to be held accountable for what you say. That's what I'm talking about. Not honest dissent. I'm talking about blatant propaganda spit out there on a daily basis by hateful liars, picked up by the mainstream media and rammed down the public's throat. That's what I'm talking about. And you know who I'm talking about too. You know the newspapers that do it, you know the radio people that do it, you know the TV people that do it. And you should be as angry about it as I am. It's dishonest, it hurts the country, and I'm gonna bring those people down. Mark my words. I'm gonna take 'em down, because nobody else will. I'm gonna do it. And that's what I was talking about last night in the coalition of the willing. We're gonna go after those people where they live.

If mainstream media continues to run out this slander and run out this defamation, I'm gonna name the name, put their face on television, and tell you about it on the radio. So you walk away from them, so they fail in the marketplace. Enough's enough. We got people with lives on the line. We got people wanting to kill us where we live. And we gotta put up with this kind of crap on the Internet funded by George Soros? Not gonna happen. No spin zone. I'll be right back.