I don't know what to do but just keep repeating it so I don't go insane: the rise & eventual total domination of RW media is the single most significant political development of my lifetime and the entirely of the US political & media elite resolutely refuse to discuss or even acknowledge it.

February 18, 2026 - 02:51 UTC

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He’s not the most reliable source but David Brock, having been an orchestrator of all this, wrote that the predecessor to RW media was an effective astroturf movement lead by MRC and AIM to bully mainstream and local media into “fair” coverage.
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Essentially, 50 years ago the goal of journalism and commentary shifted from objective truth to “balanced coverage”.

Some news anchors will uncritically say “Well if I’m pissing off both sides I must be doing something right” because that has been the objective for decades.
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Thank you & please keep repeating it! In all the "what did Dems do wrong", no one addresses the elephants in the media ... the rw powerhouses that endlessly spread lies, lies and more lies.
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And the Russian infiltration of our society, Congress, media, and social media.
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📌📌📌
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Choose your own quote.

He had a lot of things that were ultimately rooted in truth. Unfortunately.

www.azquotes.com/author/5626-Joseph_Goebbels
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Yes x1000. I feel like it is discussed *less* now than it was in the blog era. RW control has massively increased since then and discussion of it has entirely disappeared. Crazy-making.
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When they were outsiders, banging on the gates, centrists could safely notice & decry. Once they took over, then they're the bosses ...
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It’s how he was able to brainwash his cult members. My sister’s home has Fox News on the TV all day every day.
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RW?
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Right wing
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This is correct and what Yglesias refuses to grapple with. What Dems did or didn’t do has practically nothing to do with what people thought the Dems believed and would do.
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Hi, Marxist here. The elite media and political class like this because consolidation of media suits the interest of the capital-owning class to which they belong. Not talking about it also suits their interests.

There's a class war, they decided to win it.
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But, David, don’t you know all media is liberal? That’s what the liberal media keeps telling us!
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They got there by pretending they were poor, weak, downtrodden and unfairly picked on by the left. Talking about their dominance admits that they're lying bullies. So the right won't talk about it, except to attack anyone who brings it up.
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Without a doubt, the media is responsible for at least 51% of this fascist nightmare
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Exactly
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Fox News is destroying this country
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“All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake "public opinion" for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.”

-V.I. Lenin
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““Freedom of the press” in bourgeois society means freedom for the rich systematically, unremittingly, daily, in millions of copies, to deceive, corrupt and fool the exploited and oppressed mass of the people, the poor.”
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For awhile TikTok was the only media environment which reliably swung left but the Democrats decided they actually wanted to sell it to an American capitalist because it was too far left for them
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The capitulation to "people's like Chris Rufo is baffling. He goes out and says "I'm going to make disingenuous statements about issue X to stir up a ruckus" then makes those statements and people go nuts, EVEN WHEN ITS POINTED OUT! Are people just valueless and looking for any excuse?
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I remember reading about a meeting that was put together by the right after gay marriage was legalized. And this was their strategy. Exploit trans groups. It wasn't a secret. It was the entire ball game. But I can't seem to find it again. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
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Can't believe that is true. All of the professionals in entertainment and law I know, many at the majors, acknowledge the successful takeover of too many major media companies by RW billionaire lunatics with visions of controlling the "message" while pillaging the field. Hanging on by fingernails.
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So is the rush of Big $$$ into political pockets after Citizens United as enabled by the Roberts Court.
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"... the entirely of the US political & media elite..." won't discuss it because (and this is evidence that) they are also captured.
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Yeah, I laughed at what Elon (and the Saudis, etc.) paid for Twitter, and while on the balance sheet it has been technically a loss, the usurpation of a popular social platform to twist it to their own benefit has paid them back handsomely in the larger scheme
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It's likey worth that much individually to many of the oligarchs who combined to finance that deal. They have all the money, numbers don't really seem to matter as long as they can maintain that.
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I really underrated how dumb/proud this particular kind of guy was. Real "I can wield the ring for good" hours over there.
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They dumped the entirety of my posts there when they moved from TW to X servers now none of the old links tend to work at all. 5 years of work just sitting on a takeaway archive and nowhere else to speak of.
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For awhile TikTok was the only media environment which reliably swung left but the Democrats decided they actually wanted to sell it to an American capitalist because it was too far left for them
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It turns out it doesn't matter how many people stop using it if the political and media elites stay on there
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Same with Washington Post. These people are rich enough to lose so many billions of dollars and not feel it
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They're gonna do it with tiktok too now that Trump allies own it
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Most Americans get their news from right wing media and I’m not sure they even know it’s right wing. I pity them too as fearing for your life from the threat of trans people, migrant convoys, kneeling nfl’ers, anti-facists, windmills and evil electric stoves must be awful.
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Did you know that trans athletes have been able to play in collegiate sports in 2013? AND YET this is only now an issue. Why is that? Why don't democrats ask themselves why that is? Why don't they understand that the GOP does not reflect public opinion, they MOVE it.
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💯

Rupert and Rush are responsible for so much of this shit.
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Been screaming about this since 2001, only to watch it get worse and worse
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My main man, rush, proved to the world how dumb the American people can be.
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The murdochs require caged. Their hyper media whores are the root of so much damage to our fragile USA liberties. Criminal level.
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I know. Feel exactly the same. I think it was unfortunately inevitable though when Trump won this last time. It was a battle between capitalism and full fascism, and fascism won. Capitalism wasn't strong enough and got fully captured -- maybe willingly. This is part of what was on the line in 2024
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Capitalism has NEVER been at war with Fascism. Get a grip.
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from "Steve Jobs", by Walter Isaacson, 2011

Jobs met James Murdoch--he said--
"You're blowing it with FOX News," Jobs told him over dinner. "The axis today is not liberal and conservatives, the axis is constructive--destructive, and you can't cast your lot with the destructive people.
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Fox has become an incredibly destructive force in our society. You can be better, and this is going to be your legacy if you're not careful." p.508

I believe James was bought out. His brother now runs FOX News.

Steve Jobs
1955-2011
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I've been asking for 11 yrs, how does a Democracy survive when a major "news" network (and now many imitators) sells lies, outrage, hatred and division for profit? Plus, l/w billionaires cure disease etc. BUT r/w billionaires buy media platforms to protect their wealth & dirty industries via lies.
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🧵 👇🏻
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Journalism in America requires reverence for the Constitution; media in America, not so much.
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I often think a Dem president needs to point out “this insane thing going around today on RW media” on a daily basis making it part of a larger picture that people can understand
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The excellent civil war history Battle Cry of Freedom meticulously accounts how the rise of a new technology (newspapers) empowered wealthy slavers to gin up race hatred + panic among poor whites so they would fight and die to protect the slaver’s wealth. I think of that maybe three times a day.
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This is a big guess, but maybe the selling out of our information sources to right wing narratives is just the cost our billionaires are willing to pay to get tax cuts and deregulation?
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UK too.
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Roger Ailes explicitly made this his lifelong mission while working in the Nixon White House.
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Accelerated by the impending Ellison takeover of CNN (don’t kid yourself — Trump’s fluffer Carr will block Netflix, should WBD not go with Paramount).
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👍
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In a nation where speech is money, and where the billionaire class owns the media, there is little chance to change this dynamic. But that doesn’t mean that we can stop. Imagine if we had a free press, what would they be absolutely hammering right now?
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I blame internet.
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💯 I've been saying it over & over again too, but it seems like voices in the wilderness, & I'm just a regular peanut gallery concerned citizen. And it gets worse every day - seems to be accelerating even. The way I phrase it is that we need a moonshot kind of counterpropaganda offensive in this /1
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country or we're toast. Anyway, just subscribed to volts.wtf. Independent media would play a major role in a counterpropaganda offensive but we have to figure out how to scale it, and what all else such an offensive would entail. /2
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as we know, a lot of NYT op ed paychecks depend on the kayfabe
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Hard to discuss what you get paid not to discuss.
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I’m reading Reaganland & understanding how far back the media rot goes. Even the “liberal” media are complicit.
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Nixon too
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Eternal obeisance to Mammon is all that this country knows, that religion runs deep in America's veins.
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I feel like the fragmentation of the infosphere is the only thing saving us at present - though it is fragmented within platforms owned by oligarchs, making that fragmentation fragile.
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💯 💯 💯 I can’t like this enough ☝️☝️
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Red alert 🚨 for democracy
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When it gets to the US, watch the excellent British series, The Hack. It reminds us of the sheer depravity of the Murdoch media machine in England. Americans are swallowing it whole.
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Because it benefits them! They’re in on it
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Fox News by itself is the worst thing that ever happened to the 'discourse' in our now-wildly-fucked-up country. That's not even counting RW radio saturation.
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in particular focks news, but also specifically lush rambow, in the beginning
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Having the owner of X with a personal vendetta on trans issues has a lot to do with the RW obsession. They’re obsessed w him and he uses them to push his hateful agenda. Trans anything is close to the top of his hit list.
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In my most sympathetic moments, I assume they believe: whoever dominates the media ecosystem will win, the right-wing's domination cannot be contested by any left/liberal coalition, but it might be able to stem some bleeding, and this cannot be acknowledged for fear of hemmorraghing more support.
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That is, centrist liberals are full-on pessimists/cynics about voting and people power, etc. "Democracy" is the tail of the dog of capitalism and technocratic property rights.
The only way the people win is when the wealthy self-immolate.
It's an ethos, to be sure.
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Correct. 25% of this country are reprobates and bullies like the people they vote for, deplorables if you will. But the other 25% are decent people who have been brainwashed and RW media is responsible.
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Including the internet. They have 90%+ of corporate TV and print news, and now basically the entire internet outside Wikipedia.
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Yup. And they own most of the LLMs.
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Pssssst… it’s because they’re the elites. Fox News is going to look like Sesame Street by the time they’re done.
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