I’ve been waging a quixotic campaign for years to out Rupert Murdoch as a greater danger to democracy than Donald Trump. Here, for example is what I wrote in this respect in “Political Ads: Twitter, Facebook, Fox News: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. And Then There’s Google,” November 6, 2019:
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Rupert Murdoch can fix all that is wrong with Fox News with one phone call. Yet he seems perfectly content to preside over a propaganda machine that would shock even Joseph Goebbels with awe. But it betrays the conspiracy among media honchos that other networks go after everyone at Fox except that old fox himself.
So here’s to mainstream and social media pillorying Murdoch mercilessly for acting as Trump’s willing propagandist. It’s bad enough that his Fox News makes Putin’s RT worthy of comparisons with the BBC.
But, his anchors present propaganda with such religious conviction, their gullible viewers can be forgiven for accepting it as coming from Cronkite’s mouth to their ears. And don’t get me started on all the captains of industry who blithely associate with Murdoch, when they should be treating this Trumpian Goebbels like a pariah.
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This is why I am so heartened that cartoonists like Kal Kallaugher (and Jim Carrey) are now lampooning Murdoch so ignominiously.
Unfortunately, the propaganda-spewing tools who work at Fox News and the MAGA-rioting fools who watch it just don’t care. This is why Murdoch fully expects the division and strife he’s injecting into the mainstream of American politics to pay off.
And so he will continue pitting Republicans against Democrats until their battles make the 1000-year battles Sunnis and Shias have been fighting for the soul of Islam look like schoolyard brawls. That trajectory unalterably set, or mission accomplished, Murdoch will then board his private jet to fly back to his native Australia, slip a shrimp on the barbie, and laugh his ass off until he dies.
But, until then, I say let’s make his life a living hell, by treating him like an even bigger social pariah than Donald Trump. Because these two self-important, petty-minded, and utterly sociopathic bastards are far more birds of a feather than you probably realize.
Except that, while Donald is a narcissistic buffoon above all else, Rupert is a diabolical tycoon.
Related commentaries:
Jim Carrey… Fox News…