Like a fox — how a TV channel is tearing America apart

 Klaus Marre

A news network that, instead of providing actual news, gives white, conservative viewers the news they want to hear, says journalist Klaus Marre about the US Fox channel in his article for the site ‘salon.com’, titled “Like a fox — how a TV channel is tearing America apart.”

A little over 20 years ago, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes concocted a profitable way to tap into the white supremacist ideology still bubbling below America’s surface.

They started a “news” network that, instead of providing actual news, gave white, conservative viewers the news they wanted to hear: that they, their families, and their values were under attack by minorities, women, liberals, socialists, Muslims, the media, etc. — and therefore their biases were justified.

It’s been a lucrative strategy. However, just making a buck wasn’t enough for them. They also wanted to shape the fortunes of the country they were dividing. Here, too, they had tremendous success.

And that is what is getting lost amid the outcry over Donald Trump’s latest round of racist tweets: The US president is often just parroting what he sees on Fox News. His racism and distorted view of reality are a direct reflection of what this conservative network decides to put on the air.

While regimes throughout history have used propaganda outlets to get the word out and spread their ideology, in the US it is now very much a two-way street. Fox News is both a tool and a puppeteer, manipulating events directly and indirectly. In many cases, the network drives the conservative agenda with its programming. Then, when Trump and his allies pick up on it, Fox News gives them a platform to broadcast that agenda with no fear of criticism or being fact-checked.

Then, with the message already amplified, Trump tweets clips from the network —primarily clips of its many conservative commentators — or tweets promotions for its shows.

The US president’s recent racist rants are a perfect illustration of how this works: Trump’s tweets directed at four Democratic Congresswomen in July followed an attack from Fox News host Tucker Carlson on one of them, US Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

Recently, the target of another racist Trump tirade was Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland. Again, the tweets seemed to have been triggered by a Fox News segment on the lawmaker’s district in Baltimore.

This symbiotic relationship between the US president and his favorite TV channel is also reflected in the revolving door between Fox News and the Trump administration.

Former White House communications director Hope Hicks now works as a senior Public Relations executive for the network’s parent company, Fox Corp. Just last month, she was joined by former White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah. In addition, former Trump campaign and administration officials, such as deputy campaign manager David Bossie and acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), appear on the network as analysts or contributors.

At the same time, lots of Fox News contributors and staff have found a home in the Trump administration. John Bolton was until recently national security adviser, Ben Carson is secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Morgan Ortagus is the State Department spokesperson. In addition Richard Grenell, Scott Brown, and Georgette Mosbacher, now serve as ambassadors respectively in Germany, New Zealand and Poland. And those are just some of the Fox News alumni currently serving in the US government.

The well-worn path between Fox News and the White House also includes the network’s former co-president Bill Shine, who worked as White House deputy communications director and left to take a job with Trump’s reelection campaign. Right-wing nutjob Sebastian Gorka was a Fox News contributor, then a deputy assistant to the president before going back to Fox News, and then leaving again. Mercedes Schlapp, a former Fox News contributor, first served as White House director of strategic communications and now works for Trump’s reelection campaign.

And all this only scratches the surface, because, through their programming and sometimes in person, the network’s top personalities, such as Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Carlson, or the Fox & Friends crew, are effectively Trump advisers. The only difference between them and official White House staffers is that they are not subject to any transparency and accountability rules — and they are paid better.

President Trump is not the only political figure getting cues from Fox News. Following the recent hearings from Robert Mueller, a clip made the rounds showing that the opening remarks of Representative Devin Nunes of California — the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee — exactly mirrored the rhetoric of Hannity.

For two decades, Fox News operated under the laughably false motto of “fair & balanced” until ending that charade in 2017. That’s like McDonald’s advertising the Big Mac as “the world’s healthiest food.”

In fact, the network has been a subsidiary of — and a driving force behind — the GOP and the alt-right for some time. Its viewers are presented with an alternative reality, and it’s no surprise that they vote accordingly. They don’t live in a land of facts but rather in a country of conservative make-believe in which Trump is a messiah.

Not surprisingly, the Fox network’s right-wing propaganda is having an impact. A 2017 study published in the peer-reviewed American Economic Review estimates that if Fox News had not existed in 2000, the overall Republican presidential vote would have been 0.46 percentage points lower. Just as a reminder, George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes. It’s not a stretch to argue that the network put a Republican in the White House that year —for the first time.

In 2004, this “Fox effect” had jumped to 3.59 percentage points and in 2008 it was 6.34 percentage points.

It’s only gotten worse since then. A study in 2012 by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind showed that people who did not follow the news at all were more informed than people who watched Fox News.

Since then, the network’s misinformation campaign has reached new heights, culminating in the election of Trump.

And after his inauguration, Fox News basically became a part of the White House communications department. Its coverage now is every bit as partisan and deceptive as that of Pravda and TASS in the old Soviet Union.

While Fox News likes to cloak itself in a mantle of patriotism, it actually does Americans a great disservice. Its coverage is often blatantly racist, it hypes an anti-immigrant agenda, and it exploits other divisions in society.

For example, in 2018, when a group of asylum seekers made its way toward the border ahead of the midterm election, Fox News covered the “caravan” as though it were a harbinger of the end of days. When an immigrant commits a crime, Fox News covers it endlessly, but the threat of radical white supremacists is hardly discussed.

The ad nauseam coverage of the danger immigrants supposedly pose stands in stark contrast to the coverage of an actual threat to the US: the interference in its election by outside forces.

Here is the bottom line: People getting their information from Fox News and Trump’s Twitter account are increasingly detached from reality and facts. In turn, this is leading to their ideological radicalization, which is not only troublesome, but also potentially dangerous, for example if Trump loses the 2020 election and refuses to leave — claiming that his victory was stolen.

Fox News, simply put, is a right-wing propaganda tool, not a serious media outlet that deserves to have the name “news” in its name. However, for reasons of clarity, we refer to it as a news organization and use the name Fox News, however misleading it may be, in this editorial. It should also be noted that a handful of people and a small share of the programming is dedicated to something that could even remotely be referred to as “objective.” And when that happens, Trump is quick to call them out over it.

Trump’s tweets are not just diversion, but part of fascist agenda

Curtis Johnson

The US president who is racist to the very core and openly insults non-white citizens, is dividing and disintegrating the American society.

Stay with us for an article in this regard by research scientist, freelance writer, and environmental activist, Curtis Johnson, who fights for justice for families of those murdered by police, in his article for the ‘Truthout’ site, titled: “Trump’s Tweets Are Not Just Diversion, but Part of Fascist Agenda”.

Of course, Donald Trump is a racist. His tweet attacks telling four Democratic congresswomen of color to “go back to their broken and crime infested” countries are only the latest ugly examples of a consistent, unbroken pattern. As Washington Post journalist Eugene Robinson rightly noted, Trump’s comments to Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar are not different from the white segregationists screaming “Go Back to Africa” at Black students as the U.S. integrated public schools in the 1960s.

And then got even uglier. It could have been taken from a Nazi rally at Nuremberg: Trump singled out Ilhan Omar for special attack at a North Carolina rally and the crowd responded, chanting, “Send her back! Send her back!” After unleashing this viciousness, Trump pretended to be unhappy with the chants the next day, only to reinvigorate and heighten his assaults on the four the day after.

Racism is woven into Trump’s worldview and his political brand. In 1989, Trump took out ads in all four New York City dailies calling for reinstating the death penalty right after the arrest of innocent Black youths in a vicious rape and beating. After the ad, the “Central Park Five” were coerced and beaten by police into confessing to a crime they didn’t commit. Trump told Larry King in an interview at the time, “Maybe hate is what we need if we’re gonna get something done.” Trump would become a leading advocate of the “birther” movement that claimed Barack Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. After the far-right Charlottesville rally in 2017, Trump gave political cover to the white supremacist assaults, claiming there were very fine people on “both sides.” Trump ranted about why it was always immigrants from “shithole countries” coming to the U.S., instead of white majority nations like Norway. He referred to undocumented Mexican and Central American migrants as criminals, rapists and “animals.” Now his regime is acting on this rant, viciously stealing migrant children from their parents at the border and locking them in cages to suffer without proper food, sanitation and care. Yes, this is all racist, and the list could stretch to pages. People with minds that think and a sense of justice and history have known this for a long time.

Trump’s deceptive slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ actually means “Make America White Again”.

The problem is deeper than Trump’s personal racism or even that these types of things are now being said and done from the highest office in the land, as dangerous as that is. In the wake of the House vote condemning Trump’s tweets, Trump and his defenders deny he’s a racist and say “the Squad,” as the four congresswomen have been named, are vicious anti-Americans who “hate our country” and should “just leave.” Never mind that all of “the Squad” are citizens of the U.S., duly elected representatives, and three of the four were born in the U.S.

The Trumpian project is seeking to redefine those who deserve the right to stay in the U.S. and remain citizens as those who swear unquestioning allegiance to Trump and his vision of the country and the world. A central part of Trump’s program involves slamming back people of color and women, and interning or expelling people from other countries, particularly poor, oppressed countries comprised of mainly non-white peoples. To Trump and his ilk, “Make America Great Again” is about returning to a past where whites were openly dominant without apology, where women “knew their place,” and where (white) people of “good will” didn’t have to suffer to hear Spanish being spoken around them.

Trump’s speeches and tweets are appealing to and cohering the most backward sections of the U.S. society into a force, including those that harbor deep resentment at having to worry about being confronted for spouting racist belief. Many of these people have a deep fear about losing what they claim “our America” to the so-called “foreigners”, the alleged “socialists” or the Black people. This is Trump’s base; many who want simple answers find their “truth” in conspiracy theories, and harken back to a mythical time of peace and harmony without the need for a lot of complicated thinking or debate about evidence; a past where the “white Christian” identity of the U.S. stood unchallenged.

Make no mistake, the Trump project intends to make white supremacy, white nationalism, misogyny, and unbridled American chauvinism the basis of what rules in this country and what it inflicts on the rest of the world. When Trump pardons and extols a war criminal like Michael Behenna, an Army first lieutenant convicted by a military court of executing a bound and blindfolded Iraqi prisoner during an interrogation in 2008, this is a sign of what’s to come.

Without a doubt fascism is at the heart of Trump’s program.

In the wake of Trump’s tweets and the House vote, many liberal pundits and Democrats are condemning his tweets, but saying either Trump is just trying to fire up his base for the 2020 election, or distract from other things. In a press conference, the four Democratic Congresswomen rightly condemned Trump’s racism and xenophobia, but also echoed the view that Trump’s tweets were meant to distract from issues of “larger concern to the American people,” including the inhumane treatment of immigrants at the border.

What is being missed is that there is a logic at play in Trump’s tweets. The racist tweets and attempts to marginalize and turn hatred toward “the Squad” is connected to the devastation his regime is imposing on innocent asylum seekers driven to escape their home countries. It’s connected to his attacks on the press as the enemy of the people, his regime’s refusal to cooperate with congressional subpoenas to testify, his flouting of the law and attempts to destroy it by executive order, and turning the Justice Department into a tool of presidential protection and prosecution of political enemies. It’s connected deeply with all of the rest of Trump’s racist attacks on professional athletes and public figures. And it’s connected to a broader Republican agenda to outlaw abortion, and positioning to again suppress the vote to guarantee victory in 2020. It’s connected to his slash-and-burn destruction of the environment at a time of global crisis. It’s also connected to Trump openly preparing his base to come out into the streets in the event of a move to impeach him or if Democrats would win the 2020 election. It’s connected to Trump’s lovefest with dictators around the world and floating out maybe he should indeed be president beyond two terms. Sure, there is diversion involved in Trump’s moves and tweets at times, but what is not being confronted is that all these things, including diversions, are elements of and in service to, an overall fascist program.

Trump and his allies in the Republican Party and at powerful levels of the ruling class are hammering into place a transformation of U.S. society and rule from an already oppressive capitalist “democracy,” to an openly authoritarian or fascist society where obedience and allegiance — especially to “the leader” — are demanded, and where opponents are crushed. This is a nightmare future with potentially genocidal implications. Right now, many are beginning to get a sense of this, but it needs to be fully confronted by many more. Then, people’s actions must flow from this understanding.

Any regime where it is legitimate and right to characterize whole nations as shitholes and entire peoples as rapists, murderers and animals; to lock up children with no regard for their health, or the terror and harm it inflicts; and then double down on this even when children die in their custody — is headed toward fascism. Any regime that whips up hatred and fascist mobs to verbally threaten and even attack the regime’s political opponents, as Trump has done repeatedly, is a regime seeking to cement fascist rule.

After the “Send her back!” chants in Trump’s North Carolina rally, Jason Stanley, author of the book “How Fascism Works”, tweeted, “I am not easily shocked. But we are facing an emergency. Journalists must not get away with sugar coating this. This is the face of evil.” In his book, “The Anatomy of Fascism”, author Robert Paxton says fascism is more plausibly linked to a set of “mobilizing passions that shape fascist action than to a consistent and fully articulated philosophy. At bottom is a passionate nationalism” and a conspiratorial view of history as a fight between good and evil “in which one’s own community or nation has been the victim.” This would be an accurate description of any Trump rally speech. Paxton says, “Fascists need a demonized enemy against which to mobilize followers, but of course the enemy does not have to be Jewish. Each culture specifies the national enemy.”

In Trump’s U.S., the enemy started as Muslims and immigrants from oppressed countries. Now it’s spread to include other non-white people, and political opponents the fascists call “anti-American,” even those who believe in the U.S. but just oppose Trump. It’s very important to recognize the Nazi elements being given life and scope by Trump. We would fail to heed at our own peril, for example, the murders of 11 people carried out at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh who targeted the temple for its support of immigrants, using Trumpian language about the immigrant caravan “invaders.”

These ugly comments by Trump from the highest office in the land are a disgrace, and an exposure of the true character of U.S. democracy. Trump is attempting to cement an unbridled white supremacy, a nativist and fascist form of rule. But this is built on the bloody and ugly history of the U.S., from its establishment in slavery, to its genocide of Native people, down to today with the routinized murder of Black, Brown and Native people, the caging and family separations of migrants and denial of legal rights, the mass incarceration of millions of overwhelmingly people of color, the genocidal wars in southeast Asia, the mass slaughter in Iraq. For the U.S., violence is, as H. Rap Brown famously said in the 1960s, “as American as cherry pie.”

We have been counseled by leading Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and liberal TV pundits like Rachel Maddow to first put our hopes into Robert Mueller, then to throw all into the 2018 blue wave, then to rely on the federal prosecutors of the Southern District of New York, then to wait with bated breath the outcome of hearings in the House, all in hopes of stopping Trump. These hopes — illusions — have fallen, one after another. People will vote, and probably they even need to in these circumstances, but relying on this to stop Trump and fascism is a fatal mistake. The only “out” in this situation, given the seriousness of the threat and the antagonism Trump has for Constitutional norms, is for people to mobilize, connect with each other and increasingly build up our organized, collective resistance, in the streets and every sphere of society.

It’s time to confront the fact that the Democrats will not stop this, especially if left to their own devices. They have neither the will nor the audacity to do so. They are another ruling class party, more invested in maintaining the social order than weathering all the upheaval involved in really confronting Trump. And this is the case despite the fact that they themselves will likely be sacrificed by Trumpian fascism. But a massive uprising by the populace could break the inertia, and even potentially impact the vigor with which sections with power oppose fascism.

There are some hopeful signs of increasing resistance, in the protests against concentration camps; in global student strikes to address the climate crisis; in the Extinction Rebellion movement worldwide, including the U.S.; in the resistance to Trumpian thugs; and in the Refuse Fascism movement. But all this and much more is needed, and it needs to be taken to an entirely different level. People of conscience in the arts and sciences, entertainment, in the medical and legal realms, religious communities and people broadly, who still deeply care about justice, could be drawn in. Links need to be made, political unity hammered out to the advantage of all, and new forms created so that millions eventually get drawn into the streets and all parts of society, in ongoing protest that doesn’t stop until Trump and his dangerous regime is pushed aside. Time is short.