America's Right-Wing Propaganda Problem Might Be Terminal

[kerry-is-my-prez]

To be clear, millions of Americans adore the racism, sexism, and authoritarianism Donald Trump is selling. They applaud the vitriol, mockery, and trolling of their ideological enemies. Millions of Americans signed up for Trumpism with clear eyes about the vast horrors to come.

https://www.damemagazine.com/2025/01/02/americas-right-wing-propaganda-problem-might-be-terminal/amp/

-snip-

Whether it’s lowering the tax rates of billionaires, stripping away consumer-protection standards, destroying the environment, or decimating labor rights, Republican policies historically aren’t very popular. Which is why Republicans have spent generations undermining academia, education, journalism, and expertise itself. 

-snip-

While right-wing propaganda has its roots in the 1930s, it wasn’t until the ’70s that Republican thought leaders truly began seeding the notion that any media criticism of Republican policy exhibited a “left-wing bias” and should be discarded as unreliable. In reality, as media critic Parker Molloy notes, most mainstream U.S. journalism skews center-right.

Discrediting criticism of right-wing ideology wasn’t enough to convince the electorate to repeatedly rally against their own best self-interests. So by the 1980s, Republicans dedicated themselves to building their own alternate reality, pseudo-journalism media empires. Fox News, one of the most effective right-wing propaganda empires ever constructed. Fox News—routinely treated as a legitimate news organization by Democratic and Republican officials alike—joins Sinclair in blaming the entirety of U.S. societal ills on one thing: a failure to adequately coddle affluent white male power. 

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. Eating mental Bullshit for 50 years.

Does it make your mental tastebuds atrophy?

[Emile]

2. When people don't like themselves they

rely on putting others down as a means of feeling better.

[Woodycall]

5. If you can convince the lowest white man...

“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
― Lyndon B. Johnson

[Emile]

11. Exactly

[mn9driver]

3. The right wing propaganda problem is indeed a terminal condition.

The multi-billion dollar industry has become very effective at shouting down reality. And the first amendment will keep it that way. Unless something changes, we are on a fast track to a one party State.

[NJCher]

7. I think their

Biggest asset is people who exaggerate their success and hand over the country with only a whimper of protest.

Never could figure out why people make it so easy.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

9. It's a gigantic problem. It won't be overcome easily.

It took the Republicans years to get to the point where they could finish it up. Ironically, the original group that put it into motion is out of power and replaced by a bunch of crazies - the MAGATs.

[markodochartaigh]

4. I think that right-wing propaganda can certainly

be traced farther back than the 1930's, certainly to the Know-Nothings of the 1850's.


https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/immigrants-conspiracies-and-secret-society-launched-american-nativism-180961915/

[Karasu]

6. It's BEEN terminal. The fact that Fox News and talk radio weren't enough and now we have Newsmax, OANN, RW Youtube,

and brain-rotting podcasts like Rogan says a lot. The country seems to eat up this shit like nobody's business with no end in sight, and as they all try to out-conservative each other for pieces of the same fucking pie, they make money hand over fist from all this idiocy. It's amazing how despite all the competition, they all somehow manage to stay in business. Their audience is as fucking insatiable as they are crazy.

Being an RW talking head in this country has to be one of the most mindless jobs in the fucking world.

[William Seger]

8. Yes, and Rush Limbaugh paved the way for Fox by showing that reactionary anti-liberalism could be profitable

[GoodRaisin]

10. The propaganda business must be lucrative with new RW networks popping up all

over the media now. Guess advertisers love them, giving them access to the stupidist market on the planet.