Is Fox news or propaganda?

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green just announced that “We need a national divorce . . . We are done.” Oh, good! Now, Lady Q-Anon, take your broken oath of office and resign from Congress. Shocking, crazy Marjorie is only the last of so many crazy people saying and doing shocking, crazy things during the last half-dozen years that you might wonder, “What’s happening?”

The rise of thugs like the Proud Boys, violent attempts to take over the government, hundreds of thousands dying unnecessarily of Covid, people supporting Vladimir Putin in his Nazi-like, barbaric invasion –what’s happening?

It’s almost all the work of Fox News and its many imitators. And now we know – Fox did it all knowing better but wanted the money. It was all about the Benjamins.

Democratic America suspected, but it didn’t know. Do you really, really believe Republicans can’t get Covid? That Jan. 6 was just a normal day? They reported falsehoods to keep their market share. Truth would be bad for viewer loyalty.

What Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit has shown us is truly historic and irrefutable.

Irrefutable like Donald Trump’s MAGA Republican assistants who told us how Trump was knee-deep into planning the Jan. 6 Capitol takeover attempt. Irrefutable when you hear Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson all confess they knew that Sidney Powell was reporting ballotstealing baloney.

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Irrefutable when you hear Rupert Murdock, head of Fox News, report he also knew about the lies and “I could have [stopped them], but I didn’t.” Murdoch defended allowing Mike Lindell of My Pillow to pontificate about his finding evidence of ballot theft as just an advertisement for pillows, saying, “It’s not about Red or Blue . . . it’s green.” Not news, but propaganda for profits.

Or listen to Suzanne Scott, head of Fox News Media, when she spoke to Murdoch the day before the Capitol riot. Should they tell viewers that election denialism was false? “Privately, they [Hannity, et al.] are all there [knowing that denialism is wrong], but we have to be careful . . . about pissing off the viewers,” she said.

There you have it; angry viewers ran Fox. Fox had long radicalized its viewers. Now Fox rode on the back of the tiger and couldn’t get off.

Unreal.

Were there consequences to these lies? Oh, yes. There were direct consequences of this particular lie, but also for so many other crazy, false Fox promotions that have hurt the nation. We always wondered if these news anchors really believed all the garbage they promoted.

Now we know: No.

Consequence: Conservative rage. Americans tearing each other apart. Talk of a “national divorce.” A violent attempted takeover of the national government, a state governor almost kidnapped and killed, election denial hysterics, Covid denial, the normalization of Jan. 6 where conservatives won’t even look at the evidence of the Trump actions to overturn constitu- tional processes, election workers threatened so severely that many have moved or resigned, armed men patrolling polling places in 2022 to prevent more cheating that didn’t happen. Consequences. I know conservatives in Fairfield who don’t believe that N-95 masking and keeping social distance makes any difference, and some that don’t believe in vaccinations – as if Republicans don’t get the deadly Covid disease. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died from that lie.

Now children aren’t getting vaccinated and they’re contracting measles. But the lies keep viewers angrily locked in and profits flowing. Yes, huge consequences.

Fox vociferously promoted “the Russia hoax,” ignoring the evidence that Russia helped Trump win in 2016. It never admitted that Robert Mueller found 10 instances when Trump probably obstructed justice. Trump obstructed justice to cover up evidence that even though there was no “collusion,” or “conspiracy,” there was lots of help from Russia.

Russia placed millions of ads on Facebook and Twitter. It hacked the Democratic Party campaign headquarters and gave the steal to WikiLeaks. Fox viewers still don’t know it.

Consequence: A new age of 1950s McCarthyism, only it’s not communists who are betraying America this time, it’s American Democrats. Another lie.

Fox lied and lied. Now there’s proof.

Jack Batson is a former member of the Fairfield City Council. Reach him by email at jsbatson@prodigy.net.