The Monster They Have Wrought: Fox News, Trumpism, and Festering Fascism
“Walk through this with us senator,” a noticeably flummoxed Sean Hannity asked guest Senator Tom Cotton. They were discussing federal troops possibly being dispatched around the country by President Donald Trump, the move a provocation of protesters and Americans everywhere. A provocation that could lead to widespread spilling of blood. “When…if, federal troops are brought in…and then, of course, the mayors, the governors, they’re not stopping the anarchists, and there’s chaos in the streets, and the leading, uh, you know, the the people leading some of these movements…there’s been 156, I believe, arrested, because of the Department of Justice…and then they have to fire, uhhhhh…to protect themselves or others…who gets the blame for that?”
Cotton didn’t even hesitate. “Well, ultimately the blame lies with criminals…”
It was a staggering moment of clarity for Fox News, an organization that has spent the last twenty-four years serving as a propaganda organ for the Republican Party by peddling paranoia that white Americans are the victims of a massive conspiracy and need to be ready for war. This has been an effort to ensure Republicans continue winning elections while wealthy men like Sean Hannity can continue profiting with minimal interruption. The plan was always to keep the American Right simmering with rage and fear and lining up at the polls.
What has happened, unfortunately, is that Fox News has created its own alternate reality where viewers not only believed they were under attack but were primed and ready to carry out preemptive violence to protect themselves. This has created a fascistic movement behind Donald Trump, who now gets cheered wildly and worshiped for simply drinking a glass of water. As tried and true Republicans who benefited from the stagecraft watch in horror at the monster they have unleashed, American teeters on the edge of a bottomless abyss.
Watching Sean Hannity, a political hack who gained his fame at Fox for his head of hair and provocative style, realize he was talking to a full-blown, unrepentant fascist in Tom Cotton was the kind of horrifying clarity that summed up all of Fox’s history and consequences. Cotton, who has compared protesters to the Confederate traitors who attacked Fort Sumter in 1861, thereby branding them as treasonous and deserving death, has used this moment to further his status as a proud fascist who not only pushes for blood in the streets but appears to relish in the idea.
This is a man who will not hesitate to use the full-force of the United States military and state to crush any dissident he finds disagreeable. From the beginning of the Black Lives Matter protests, he has called for troops to crack down on peaceful assemblies, deny Americans their freedoms, and ultimately flood the streets with innocent blood. Seeing him on Hannity Tuesday night was a reminder that where the cable news mirage ends, fascism begins.
It has been a dance for decades now. Fox prides itself on its “we report, you decide” mantra, but the decision its viewers have repeatedly made should worry everyone. Devotees of propagandists like Hannity and Glenn Beck have taken the invisible war into the real world, engaging in shootouts with police, mass shootings, murders, and untold numbers of planned crimes. It isn’t enough that they have shamelessly aided the Republican Party in their elections and legislative goals, but the conspiracy narrative they have sold their viewers has infected the party itself, resulting in the Tea Party Movement, a radical shift right in the Obama Years, and now this moment of Trumpism, which elevated a TV huckster to president and indulged him like a crowned savior.
The story Fox News has told is a primer for radicalization and violent fascism. Like other authoritarian movements, media and weaponized conspiracy theories have laid the foundation for preemptive violence, or what acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf characterized as “proactive” arrests against protesters and liberals. They have defined a threat in liberalism, claiming that Democrats and their supporters are traitors and obsessed with destroying the country. Their viewers believe their lives and the lives of their families are at stake. When that fear festers, it incubates and activates fascistic beliefs and spurs violence.
Unfortunately, Sean Hannity is a chameleon. He has no ability to understand movements or ideologies, but he is an expert at blending in with them and recognizing the shifting of tides. His brief fumbling with Cotton was a momentary stumble. Soon, he’ll throw in his lot with Cotton and others like him who understand and embrace fascism in totality, becoming their biggest cheerleader and steering the propaganda in that direction. And, like we’ve seen already, the movement will only continue to gather steam.
Jared Yates Sexton is the author of American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed its People, available for pre-order from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Politico, and elsewhere. He currently serves as an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.
