by Richard B. Simon
Writing in the Washington Post this weekend, former New York Times editor Howell Raines finally calls "Fox News" what it actually is -- a propaganda channel spreading lies and disinformation in the right wing's war against the Obama Administration. And he chastizes legitimate news organizations for allowing the cable channel to get away with it.
In case you hadn't noticed, Fox began airing the Glenn Beck program on January 19, 2009 -- the day before Obama's inauguration. Beck's first guest was the defeated Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. Before the media circus" and the "political bullcrap," Beck tells his audience (he's weeping, of course, ostensibly because he and Palin both have special needs children -- but it's an emotional appeal, designed to soften his audience), "she was my kind of leader."
Beck and Fox have spent the ensuing year poisoning the political discourse in this country. In the Bush years, Fox vilified anti-war, anti-Bush protestors. But in the Age of Obama, Fox doesn't only "report" on political discontent -- it creates it.
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Fox "news" hosts Sean Hannity, Beck, Greta van Susteren and others essentially created the Tea Party movement by accusing Obama repeatedly of racism, of crimes, anti-American sentiment, of violating the Constitution, of not actually being a U.S. citizen, of trying to turn the United States into the Soviet Union -- and of racism! Then by reporting on sparsely attended protests (where people praise Glenn Beck as The Only Person Telling The Truth, and portray Obama as a witch doctor, or as Hitler) and turning them through heavy media coverage into something with the appearance of a national phenomenenon. The media coverage on a national cable channel, of course, makes it a national phenomenon.
It's all a bit bizarroworld.
It certainly looks like Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes -- the foreign billionaire and "former" GOP strategist who own and run Fox -- saw how effective anti-Bush sentiment was at sweeping Democrats into power in 2006 and 2008, and decided to create an alternate reality (or, rather, perpetuate and mutate their existing alternate reality) in which every charge that had been leveled against the Bush Administration -- rightly, and with plenty of evidence from real journalists and real truthtellers -- would be aimed at Obama, and supported with lies, half-truths, and willful misinformation.
It was on Beck's program that we learned that the Obama Administration had within it, any number of "czars" who were extraconstitutionally-appointed Marxists -- as evidenced by the word "czar!" Never mind that the real Marxist Bolsheviks murdered the Czars. Fox's program depends not on informing its audience but on programming its uninformed audience.
That's how I came to read, in a long email exchange with a family friend (and, disturbingly, a military officer), that Beck had saved America from "Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones, a well-known activist here in the Bay Area who trains kids in Oakland who might otherwise have little opportunity, for jobs in the coming green economy.
If not for people like Glenn Beck, Van Jones the self-proclaimed communist and 9-11 Truther would not have announced his resignation as "The Green Jobs Czar" at midnight on a Saturday during a Labor Day Weekend (the slowest news timeframe there is- what a coward!). Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying, "The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Patrick Henry and many other Founding Fathers were considered a pain in the King of England's backside and were hunted for treason and to be executed on site for speaking out against what they considered were oppressive taxation (a mere 3 %) and onerous government conditions in the colonies. How many other unchecked Czars exist among the 48 and counting that were not required to undergo Senate confirmation? When I took my Oath of Office as an Officer in the United States Army it was to Support and Defend the Constitution of These United States, not the Communist Manifesto. What part of Limited Self Governing do you really think we are still operating under?
I knew this family friend was getting his information from Fox and Beck -- and nowhere elsse -- because no one else in the country has this misunderstanding about what a "czar" is. It's not a charge that emanates from anywhere else. A czar, in the U.S., is someone tasked with solving a particular policy problem. But in Fox's alternate reality, a czar is a Communist operative. And the presence of czars in the Obama administration is cause for violent revolution. And this is presented as "news".
Beck and others on Fox literally are fomenting violence against Obama, and calling for armed insurrection. They are either drinking their own koolaid, or really, really cynically and purposefully feeding poison to people who tune in to Fox because its editorial slant matched their own views -- and then they get cranked up into this terror about "the direction of the country."
If terrorism is the use of violence to whip up fear in order to effect political change, then Foxism is the use of fear to whip up violence in order to effect political change.
You certainly get the sense that "patriots" like Beck and Ailes and Murdoch would like to see Obama assassinated -- perhaps so that Sarah Palin can run against Joe Biden in 2012.
Some of the Tea Party folks are rightly angry about a long swing toward corporate control of our government. But then at just the moment when we actually do have a president and a government that might be disposed to do something about it, Fox steps in and plays to them -- promoting the rallies, then reporting on them as news (in the olden days, as Howell explains, this was called "yellow journalism".)
Beck has even essentially created his own cult -- following all the rules -- called "the 912 project" -- a reference to the 9/11 attacks -- based on 9 "principles" and 12 "values" that members are supposed to follow. Beck himself is the charismatic leader. "Progressives" are the "out group" to be vilified. Watch Beck's show and then read Nineteen Eighty-Four -- it's the 2 minutes hate, every day, for an hour. And it's presented as "news."
Beck goes so far as to criticize Republicans -- enough that even his own network-mates pretend to believe that he is equally opposed to both parties.
But seriously. He's not fomenting violence against conservatives.
He only criticizes Republicans to inure himself against the charge that he's merely a shill for Republicans.
Because when your job is to vilify -- perhaps to the point of violence -- a government that is, for the time being, controlled by Democrats, then -- in a system of only two parties -- who will be the beneficiary?
Yet Fox viewers think they're getting more than one side of any given story because, for example, their weekly news roundtable includes two analysts -- Juan Williams and Mara Liasson -- who report for National Public Radio.
In Foxworld, NPR is a liberal organization, so Williams and Liasson read to Fox viewers as representatives of the liberal worldview -- and so Fox is inured to the charge of one-sidedness. Never mind that if you listen to what Williams and Liasson say (and they are, pointedly, an African American man and a caucasian woman), they are very clearly both political conservatives.
Or, at least, they play one on TV.
The fallout is that Fox viewers are 1. spared exposure to other views, 2. led to believe that they have been exposed to other views, and therefore 3. kept trapped in an alternate reality.
Step one for becoming a cult leader (according to the social psychologists Pratkanis and Aronson in Age of Propaganda) is
The first step in creating a cult is to construct your own social reality by eliminating all sources of information other than that provided by the cult ... The second step in constructing a social reality is to provide a cult's-eye view of the world. This picture of the world is then used by members to interpret all events and happenings ... Repeat your message over and over again. Repetition makes the heart grow fonder, and fiction, if heard frequently enough, can come to sound like fact. (307)
Next, create a granfalloon.
The granfalloon technique requires the creation of an in-group of followers and an out-group of the unredeemed. The technique allows you to control members by constantly reminding them: "If you want to be a chosen one, then you must act like a chosen one. If you are not chosen, then you are wicked and unredeemed. To be saved, you must act like you are supposed to act." (309)
And so, we have Beck's "9 Principles" and "12 Values", to remind the chosen to act like the chosen -- and to vilify those who, by definition, do not:
9 Principles, 12 Values
The 9 Principles
1. America Is Good.
2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
God "The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained." from George Washington's first Inaugural address.
3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
Honesty "I hope that I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider to be the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man." George Washington
4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
Marriage/Family "It is in the love of one's family only that heartfelt happiness is known. By a law of our nature, we cannot be happy without the endearing connections of a family." Thomas Jefferson
5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
Justice "I deem one of the essential principles of our government… equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political." Thomas Jefferson
6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
Life, Liberty, & The Pursuit of Happiness "Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely to give him comfortable subsistence." Thomas Jefferson
7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
Charity "It is not everyone who asketh that deserveth charity; all however, are worth of the inquiry or the deserving may suffer." George Washington
8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
On your right to disagree "In a free and republican government, you cannot restrain the voice of the multitude; every man will speak as he thinks, or more properly without thinking." George Washington
9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.
Who works for whom? "I consider the people who constitute a society or a nation as the source of all authority in that nation." Thomas Jefferson
The 12 Values
* Honesty
* Reverence
* Hope
* Thrift
* Humility
* Charity
* Sincerity
* Moderation
* Hard Work
* Courage
* Personal Responsibility
* Gratitude
(emphasis added)
Of course, the Granfalloon depends on followers believing that the out-group -- progressives -- do not share these values -- and are therefore the enemy.
And this is "news".
The ultimate goal appears to be to make Sarah Palin president. Palin
Or perhaps Fox only wants Palin to be a candidate and to be defeated. The network feasts at the power trough when Republicans are in power -- but it's a cash cow when Democrats lead. So maybe the network's money men want to set Palin up to fail -- because another seven years of Obama will mean another seven years of big profits for
Or maybe Fox really does want Palin to be president. She would be an easy mark for the corporations who seek to prevent the United States from exercising its national sovereignty over their affairs.
The sick part is that the "Tea Party" people, whose middle class rage is largely understandable, but who seem to be largely uninformed or misinformed -- or at least to have little context in which to understand who is doing what in American politics and governance -- are being led to try to throw out the bums, when throwing out the bums would mean replacing them with Republicans, whose politics wrecked the economy, shipped the jobs overseas, and ravaged the middle class in the first place.
And so these self-styled "patriots" take their marching orders from a foreign-owned corporation, and join the "912 Movement" and pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor ... to restore the Republicans to power.
And the moment that happens, we will see the Glenn Beck show disappear -- or at least metastasize once again, along with the rest of Fox, back into the pro-government Voice of the Conservative Revolution!
And those mere animals who drank the tea and yet remain yet less equal than other animals will look through the window, and the pigs and the farmers will be drinking and eating and arguing together, all red-faced and triple-chinned, and once again, it will be impossible to tell them apart.
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Also of interest today, Frank Rich's column on Bushist deadenders' current putsch to rewrite history.
Why don't honest journalists take on Roger Ailes and Fox News? By Howell Raines
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