INCITEMENT? Tom Brokaw Says Americans Must 'Take On' 'Common Threats' Like 'Poisonous' Alex Jones

MEGYN KELLY: This past week there's been a lot of conversation about our toxic political culture, largely driven by the shooting of a congressman and others on a baseball field in Virginia. Tom Brokaw joins us to share some of his thoughts about hate speech and the internet in these challenging times. Tom?

TOM BROKAW: Thank you, Megyn. This is not an easy assignment for a journalist, a father, a grandfather, a citizen to try to understand the deep, dark hate that's coercing through our country and the instruments that spread it with a keystroke. When the internet first arrived, like everyone else, I was bedazzled by its possibilities for good and those qualities have only become so much more effective and pervasive. But I was also quickly aware of the underside, the seizure on the net by hate groups of all kinds spreading their cancer of racism and violence. I did two documentaries at the turn of the century called The Web of Hate hoping to slow the trend. But the reach and the poisonous claims of Alex Jones and others like him and even establishment public figures would not be slowed. We cannot disrupt the irrational spread of hate by blindly blaming the other side or by looking away. The parents of Newtown, it is not enough to say I cannot imagine because unless we are the parents, we can never, ever share the unremitting pain, the lifelong loss and anger nor should they have to hear the cruel claim that it was a lie. No parent or grandparent in America today can escape the fear, the fear that it could happen again. We cannot allow the agents of hate to go unchallenged and become the imprint of our time. We'll always have differences, of course, but in our finest moments, we are a republic that thrives when it recognizes common threats and takes them on. That time is now again. This is the time of common threats requiring uncommon courage. It is a time to step up.