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by
Jen Senko
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December 13 - December 20, 2021
In the case of right-wing media, that echo chamber is deliberately constructed to stoke anger, fear, and hatred in its listeners and viewers.
After he discovered ultraconservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, my dad became 100 percent devoted to Limbaugh and his school of thought. And once Fox News appeared on his TV, he never wanted to turn it off. Without access to any other news sources, he lost his ability to think critically and question the lies he was being fed.
change the label from “New Republicans” to “Cult Republicans.” Cult Republicans share many of the characteristics of people in a religious cult—they subscribe unquestioningly to all the beliefs held by their media choices and their leaders, oblivious as to whether those leaders have their best interests in mind or not (mostly not).
Under Donald Trump’s administration, Cult Republicans dominated the political landscape, encouraged by a president who constantly lied to the American people, incited violence any time he felt it politically protected his power, and compromised not only America’s reputation worldwide but our national security.
no matter what political party you affiliate with, think carefully about the media you consume. Engage with a variety of news sources.
Question what you hear, especially if the content triggers emotions such as anger or fear.
Decades later, that smile would be little more than a memory as my dad transformed into a person I barely recognized—a person who raged more than he laughed, who viewed the unknown with suspicion, and who inexplicably railed against institutions like PETA that protected the welfare of the animals he used to love so much. So what happened to my dad?
No one knew why he said things like that, but he thought it was hilarious. I guess like a lot of dads, he was a horrible joke teller, but he didn’t need jokes—he was funny without trying. He was boisterous and loud and would talk to anybody, the natural life of the party.
Dad was creative when it came to fixing things,
Dad didn’t like the wasteful, throw-away mentality of most Americans,
On the rare occasions our family ate in restaurants, we’d have to look down the price list on the menu first before we picked something to eat.
But I wouldn’t have written this book if my dad had remained the same person he was in the 1960s and 1970s. Over the next twenty years, especially in the late 1980s and 1990s, Frank Senko as I had known him began to disappear.
He was replaced by a man I no longer knew, who disparaged the very social programs that had allowed him to create a successful life, who spouted virulently anti-“illegal alien” comments, and who constantly listened to conservative talk radio and watched Fox News on TV.
that my dad was internalizing the political opinions people like Rush Limbaugh espoused to the point where he was no longer forming his own opinions at all.
repeating conspiracy theories and blatant lies verbatim. And he turned his volcanic anger on anyone who dared to voice a different opinion or fact-check some of his claims.
to deliberately build a media machine designed to foster fear, anger, and division that would benefit their economic interests.
It provided social safety nets, gave GIs the opportunity to get an education or housing, and much more. The people loved these programs, while the free marketeers called it socialism.
FDR had the foresight to be concerned about how much influence media could have on people, largely because he could see the alarming creep of right-wing propaganda going on in Germany.
By the time he attracted the interest of Nazi Party leaders who invited him to join their ranks, Hitler had begun to understand the nearly limitless power of propaganda and how he could use it to further the Nazi Party’s agenda. A lot of the tactics we see now in the world of right-wing media are directly connected to the methods of the Nazi party, often to a chilling extent.
He focused on appealing to broad masses of people who are ruled not by reason but by sentiment and emotions.
propaganda “must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over,”
Hitler originally came up with an idea known as “the big lie.” As he put it, “the broad masses” are more likely to “fall victim to the big lie than the small lie,” because “it would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
Eventually, Goebbels made it “a treasonable offense to listen to overseas broadcasts”26 to make sure Germans were unable to access different points of view that might make them question the things they were hearing on Nazi radio.
especially if the lie was repeated often and propagated by what would appear to be official sources.
Constantly repeat just a few ideas using stereotyped phrases.
Continuously criticize your opponents.
Americans were not concerned about the propaganda campaigns in Germany, nor the cartoon-like character, Adolf Hitler. They laughed at his wacky antics and shrill voice. Many people, especially Americans, could not imagine him being taken seriously as a political influencer.
He made his special pancakes, tossing in pieces of whatever fruit in the house that were about to go bad. With lots of butter and syrup, we loved his pancakes anyway, in part because he made them with such joy, whistling away at the stove.
He asked my dad if he had any spare change for a cup of coffee. My mom stood back, looking like she wanted to walk away as quickly as she could. My father surprised us all when he called the man sir, had a little conversation with him, and handed him some change. Well, my Catholic self thought, that’s what Jesus would do. My dad treated the man like an equal. That moment made such an impression on me, I never forgot it.
The differences between the Democratic and Republican parties weren’t as stark back then, as
But after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, many White southerners, opposed to racial equality and integration, started looking for ways to push back.
Goldwater, in coming out against the Civil Rights Act, used a new strategy, at that time called Operation Dixie (later called the Southern Strategy), developed by and for Republicans to win White voters in the South by appealing to their racism and fear of change.
They were still fiercely grateful to FDR for helping pull the country out of the Depression and for providing social safety nets and giving GIs
opportunities that they
would not otherwise have had. They thought it...
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made them scratch their heads was the John Birch Society.
My dad said, “This is from that nutty Birch Society.” My mom looked at me and said, “Throw it out. Those people are kooks.”
“Birchers” believed in extremely limited government.
Claire Conner, a woman who grew up indoctrinated in the ideology of the John Birch Society and later authored the book Wrapped in the Flag: What I Learned Growing Up in America’s Radical Right, How I Escaped, and Why My Story Matters Today,
The Republican Party of today is nearly identical to the “nutty” John Birch Society.
After Goldwater’s defeat, the Right started planning to hit back hard any way they could to retake control of the national conversation. And over time and with patience and stealth, they did.
It was accepted that the point of the news was to be objective and report the facts, not to make a profit or cater to a specific audience. Cronkite,
my parents subscribed to the Newark Star-Ledger and LIFE magazine. On Sundays we would all sit in the living room after church and read.
read just one article in the newspaper. I did as they asked, but I never understood what I was reading.
That was true for me too. I was so confused about things. I remember wondering what the Iran Hostage Crisis signified.
They began to establish organizations to market the notion of “liberal bias”
“Basically, the idea of this group was to counter their feeling that the media was opposed to Nixon’s policies in Vietnam. That’s how it began, but you could see how the campaign to discredit the media in the eyes of the conservatives would lay the groundwork for a vast alternative media that would come later…
so they started to clamor for “fairness” and “balance” rather than objectivity.
Under the rubric of balance, the conservatives do better because the way the media now treats balance is there’s 99 percent of scientific consensus on global warming. One percent of scientists funded by the coal industry say that is not true. But they’re presented in a balanced way, giving credit to both sides. And
With constant accusations of being liberally biased, mainstream media eventually fell all over themselves trying to prove they were balanced, often at the expense of being accurate.
Ultimately, the New Republicans’ goal was to sell the majority of the country on policies that benefited billionaires and multinational mega corporations.
