This is sort of a chicken-and-egg thing that I first considered about Trump. Republicans seem to be going along partly (though not entirely) they are terrified of his voters. But would Trump have that kind of force if it weren’t for conservative media? Did they “make” Trump?
That led me to wonder about other aspects. Would we have more than 18 months to solve climate change (that’s another thread) if it weren’t for conservative media telling their audience that it’s all a fraud? Would we have stricter gun laws by now? And so on and so forth.
Basically, I’ve seen left-leaning people argue that Rupert Murdoch or Sinclair Media or what have you have used their influence to tilt the scales, and I’m wondering how much they could practically have done that. If Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and Murdoch never existed, exactly how different would the political landscape be today?
In short, is today’s brand of conservatism only (as) popular due to the force of media?
I think conservative echo chambers play their role but I think the big factor is the gop going out of their way to appeal to white racists and white authoritarians.
86% of whites who scored highest in authoritarianism voted for trump. And white evangelicals are largely a white authoritarian movement.
I think that deserves more blame. The conservative echo chamber has a role but it’s mostly been to solidify and energize the white authoritarian base of the gop.
I think it’s safe to say Clinton would have won if Fox News, Murdoch, and Limbaugh didn’t exist. Sure, Trump’s base eats up that propaganda, but his base didn’t put him over the top. He won the election because several thousand voters in the upper Midwest who voted for Obama either stayed home or voted for Trump in 2016. There are probably not very many authoritarian evangelical white people in that group. They’re going to vote R no matter what. It’s the swing voters who were influenced by the actual fake news from those media sources, along with Russian bots, who made the difference.
That conservative echo chamber does however have another quality: what the conservatives do not know can’t hurt them. Conservative media does help Trump and conservative politicians thanks to what they omit telling their viewers.
I do remember recently a commentary of a Fox viewer that was surprised to find out that there was evidence of Trump’s malfeasance in investigations like the Muller one.
The propagated ignorance then minimizes any desires from conservatives to demand the respect of silly things, like the rule of law [/sarcasm] if it goes against their leaders.
In the past I commented that it was bad to have a press that served as a stenographer for a president, (as the press (not just the conservative one) did with Bush on the lead up to war in Iraq) but it can get worse if the president of the US and Republican congress people are the stenographers of conservative media.
Nope, because what you are doing here is the fallacy of shooting the messenger, a very easy way to avoid dealing with what they report, so their points stand.
I’m kept up at night by sad, torturous thoughts of my sweet sweet dog’s last day on earth. Conservative media is very far down my list of actual, everyday sleep loss. They are more of a wide-awake nightmare issue.
Yes, I think this is very true. People always talk about “Trump” voters as if they were a single, monolithic demographic, but probably it was a specific, limited sub-set in those key states who put him over the top. (The rest are either knee-jerks who always vote Republican no matter what or simply unprincipled opportunists.) I bet, too, that this sub-set doesn’t care that Trump is racist and misogynist, because that was obvious from the start, so for those who want to get rid of Trump, bemoaning his racism and misogyny is a waste of time. Instead, that small sub-set of his voters simply fell for Trump’s bullshit act of being a populist outsider successful businessman, etc., who would “drain the swamp” – all of it a bogus performance, just like on The Apprentice. That’s the lie which conservative media most wants to perpetuate. The way to defeat Trump in 2020 is to aggressively expose that lie and his venal corruption to that small demographic (the rest of his supporters–the knee-jerks, the ethno-nationalists, and the opportunists–don’t care that he’s a corrupt fake). Trump won in 2016 because the mainstream media focused almost entirely on his racism and offensive statements (which don’t bother any of his voters), rather than reveal that he’s just a fake. If they do the same thing in 2020, he will win again, thanks to the Russians and the echo chamber.
No, Conservative ACTIONS are what keep us up at night. The hate, the shitting all over the poor, non-white people, the environment, the hypocritical and harmful laws they pass, etc.
And I’m asking whether those actions are primarily spurred by “people being lied to,” and if they’d be decent people (or at least more quiet) if it weren’t for the “lies.”
I think you are confusing cause and effect. Fox News and media like Rush Limbaugh came into existence because there was a large underserved market. Most MSM slants to the left. Rush and Fox News and AM talk radio recognized that and created a product that addressed that market. They would not have succeeded if the market did not already exist.
All this stuff about lies and racism is self-serving cherry-picking by the left, and sour grapes at losing elections.
Do you really, truly believe that “all” accusations of lies and racism on the right are “self-serving cherry-picking” by the left? Or is this just hyperbole?
In answer to the OP: yes, if there were no right-wing news media outlets, blogs, books or lectures, it’d be easier for liberals to get their goals achieved.
Not sure they’d sleep better at night, as leftist factional infighting would get much noisier than it is now.
And you’re ignoring the feedback effects that the media has. Yes, the conservative market was underserved at that time. I was part of that market, then.
But it’s also clear that the new conservative media has been instrumental in pushing most conservative voters farther and farther right over time. The conservative movement as it exists now is virtually unrecognizable to me now. It supports virtually none of the values I actually have, values that I had back then.
The anti-vax mommy-blog movement came into existence because “the MSM” wasn’t reporting on the dangers of vaccines and people were hungry for products that addressed that market, but that doesn’t mean the existence of those blogs didn’t make the situation a lot worse.
Yes, there always will be a market for manufactured self-aggrievement–Limbaugh et al have artfully exploited it into one of the biggest cash cows in media history.
And Democrats have gone further and further to the left. I don’t think that can be blamed on the media.
Sure, there’s a feedback loop. But the answer to the question in the OP is No, Fox News and AM radio are not the source. IMO.
This is kind of the thing I was talking about. Equating the entire conservative movement to a conspiracy theory rather misses the point. Because, you know, it’s not.
And WADR and not speaking of you in particular, the attitude that conservative thought is nothing but conspiracy theories and racism and stupid is what made, and makes, conservative media appealing. Because unfortunately it is increasingly rare to be able to discuss either liberal, or conservative, policies non-dismissively, with anyone who doesn’t already buy into either.
I think it is a loss when one cannot discuss liberal policies with a conservative, nor conservative policies with a liberal. They are both trying to de-platform each other.
Good thing I never said it was. I was merely pointing out that “there’s a market for these ideas” doesn’t justify opportunists pouncing on that market, nor does it absolve them of responsibility when those ideas spread. There was a market for anti-vax propaganda, but that doesn’t mean Jenny McCarthy isn’t a shitbag for giving that propaganda a celebrity endorsement and spreading it far and wide.
See, that’s a perfect example of how they’ve pushed you so far to the right, because to an unbiased observer, you’re just repeating a talking point that is simply false. There were always a few Democrats who advocated for leftist positions, so that hasn’t changed at all, but more importantly, the actual policy positions of the party have barely moved at all in my adult lifetime, and most of the actual movement has been away from the left. For instance, they are by far the more fiscally responsible party now, which used to be the standard conservative position. For another example, they actually implemented the ACA, which was modelled on a Republican healthcare plan that enshrined for-profit insurance companies as the center of a government healthcare plan. That’s no way any honest argument can be made that this was “moving left”.
They only look like they’re moving “further and further to the left” because of how far you’ve moved to the right.