Thomas Klikauer and Nadine Campbell for BuzzFlash: Right-Wing Populism Will Continue to Be a Threat to Democracy as Long as the Media Echo Chamber Dominates
January 8, 2021
Fox, loaded with “celebrity hosts,” represents the flagship of a right-wing echo chamber of television, radio and Internet sites (Gage Skidmore)
By Thomas Klikauer and Nadine Campbell
Seen from an etymological point, conservatism may well date back to conservativus meaning to keep, preserve, and maintain. In political terms, maintaining the status quo, for example, would have meant that water fountains still carry a Whites Only sign. Today, this looks outdated and stupid. The idea that conservatism is rather stupid did not escape the British philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Mill once said, conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
Today, some US Republicans might be embarrassed by the philosopher's conservatism-equals-stupidity statement. Yet, conservative ideology, its culture and mindset linger on. Conceivably, the election of Donald Trump signified a tectonic shift within US conservatism towards authoritarian populism. In some sense, this move might have also betrayed a few conservative principles.
Nonetheless, right-wing populism was elbowed in by snake oil salesmen, charlatans and media clowns because poll ratings skyrocketed, and elections were won. Three supporting mass media developments drove authoritarian populism and Trumpism: a) right-wing radio shock jocks; b) Murdoch's tabloid-TV; and finally, Internet bubbles with echo-chambers like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Without these, Trump's presidency would not have been possible. However, Donald Trump is more than a clownish version of American conservatism. His success marks a decisive shift towards right-wing populism, signifying a hostile takeover of American conservatism and the Republican Party. Right-wing populism and American conservatism are not contradictions. What bonds American conservatism and right-wing populism is a Machiavellian-like worship of power. This is what Trump delivered even though his triumph no longer implies a conservative ideology or virtues – or even sanity.
Within American conservatism, the enforces of ideological purity were often among the first to support Trump's right-wing populism. This didn't mark new policy achievements but a new way in which political culture was roughed up and changed from within American conservatism. Sadly, for traditional conservatives, the US president is still seen as a symbol of who the American people are. Globally, the USA became a mixture of bewilderment followed by distaste and – more kindly – a laughingstock. In other words, the very opposite of what American conservatism wants.
Beyond that, Trump's populism also shows that many conservatives are happy to inject a new level of toxicity into politics. It is done to win elections even if this means ignoring traditional conservative values. Having thrown this overboard, they happily moved towards a somewhat irrational loyalty to Trumpism. Perhaps a genuine conservative party would have never nominated an unprincipled TV-clown like Trump. But the Republicans did, and many will stick with Donald Trump until the bitter end and even beyond that.
Right-wing populism and Trumpism is no longer a political outlier with American conservatism. Authoritarian populism has corroded its core. It has replaced conservatism's national policy agenda with angry right-wing populism. It seeks to defend the indefensible. This has become possible as political polarisation moves forward, intellectual ghettos are established, opinion silos and echo-chambers are build and ossified.
The common ground between US Democrats and US Republicans is fast disappearing. As a consequence, political compromise becomes less practised - confrontations increase. Within American conservatism, political persuasion is replaced by a quasi-Trumpian test of loyalty. Even though Joe Biden might still have a few cross-party friendships, on the whole, they are also disappearing as the nastiness of scorched earth politics replaces them.
As tribalism reigns, conservatives who fail to join right-wing populism are denounced. They are abused as disloyal sell-outs, traitors and worse, as elitists – the ultimate insult among right-wing populists. Yet, American conservatism knows that the feared elites can not deliver election triumphs to the right. Beyond that, American conservatism is also afraid of its own future because the USA is becoming younger and more ethnically diverse. Potentially, this will deliver victory to the despised liberals.
Yet, American conservatism has taken on Trump's conspiratorial birthers, explicit racism, and many adjacent conspiracy theories such as the hallucination that Obama is a secret Muslim subverting Christianity. Keeping well inside the crypto-paranoid tradition of American conservatism, many conservatives have even embraced Trump's racism. Much of this is turbo-charged through the Internet's virtual-reality machine enabling conservative populists to believe and post whatever they wish even when it is at odds with reality.
Posting inside right-wing silos and echo-chambers enables the American Right to ignore the information coming from mainstream media. Adding to the power of right-wing populism, junk news propagating conspiracy theories have outperformed real news. False information is spreading through anti-social media faster than real news. This defines the Age of Anti-Social Media. Given the success of populism over policy, the Republican party has become the party of anti-reason targeting what conservative strategists call low information voters.
American conservatism and right-wing populism take advantage of the fact that an ignorant electorate will not hold an ignorant president to account. Core leitmotifs such as dumbing down and too dumb to fail, favour right-wing populism and Trumpism. They are only possible in a society that has withdrawn from mainstream media, that does not read books, and that does not think much. American conservatism and even more so right-wing populism thrive on stupidity and crackpotism even when this means embracing quacks, haters and anti-semites.
Much of this links rather neatly to the TV-host turned crypto-politician, Trump, who never had any real plans, policies, platform, and expertise in economics, foreign relations, and environmental issues. It worked as long as nobody expected anything from Donald Trump. But then came the coronavirus pandemic creating more American deaths than World War II. Still, not too many in the angry white male camp wondered about their president. In 2020, 74 million Americans gave their vote to Donald Trump with no Nietzschian Twilight of the Idols insight.
As seen in the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, and the recent Coronavirus pandemic, conservatives have consistently failed to deliver. Much of this comes with substantial human costs. Yet, as long as the holy trinity of talkback radio, Fox News and Internet echo-chambers keeps the perpetual outrage machine going white working-class loyalty is assured, and the future looks bright for right-wing populism. At this point, right-wing populism and Fox's strategy coincides. Right-wing populism is bad for the country, but it is good for ratings – both politically and in terms of Fox's advertising revenue.
Fox, as well as right-wing echo-chambers reward the loudest and most reckless voices. Whoever is the rowdiest and the shrillest will lead the pack. The pack leader will become the polarising messengers of the right. Right-wing populists know that Trump's audience pays attention to the most polarising outcry. Right-wing media outlets megaphone this while simultaneously offering a different conception of facts. Pro-Trump media are set against those media accused of having a liberal media bias – the nattering nabobs of negativism and lame-stream.
Increased polarisation also impacts on Christian fundamentalists – a significant pool of voters for right-wing populism. Populists know that evangelical Christians are mostly poor, uneducated, and most importantly they are receptive to propaganda and easy to command. As Garry Kasparov once said, the point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth. The Republican Party's right-wing populism thrives on this even though there is not much critical thinking to annihilate and truth to twist inside the Christian right in the first place.
Overall, right-wing populism is not about truth. It is about something that seems like the truth. It is the truth populism wants to exist. L'idée fixe that there can be one's own version of the truth is nothing new for the Christian right. What is new is the power of the evil media trinity of talkback radio, Fox and Friends, and Internet-based echo-chambers. They mass-manufacture consent and something Stephen Colbert calls truthiness. All of this works towards keeping the Christian right on board. Talkback radio alone delivered a 3-to-1 advantage to Trump's 2016 election victory and the 74 million who voted for Trump in the 2020 election.
As long as the holy trinity's self-appointed explainers cover for Donald Trump, right-wing populism is fine. It is okay even when Trump mocks former POW, John McCain. It does no longer matter that the president of the Republican party – who never served in the military – questions McCain's status as a war hero. Conservative principles like these are no longer the point. They have been replaced by the ideology of illiberalism, xenophobia, racism and outrage.
Racism, nationalism, and populism have overtaken conservatism in terms of mass appeal. Trumpism and right-wing populism have taken the radical fringe of the Republican party into the centre. This is the populist version of conservatism spiced up with an explosion of hate. It has gone so bad that even the Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer – modelled on Hitler's Der Stürmer – announced, vote for the one man (Trump) who actually represents our interests.
It is not just the extreme right-wing but also right-wing populism that believes that America is under siege. It pushes an us-vs-them, red-vs-blue, and good-vs-evil agenda. Worse still, right-wing populism and American conservatism believe that leftism is a terminal cancer in the American bloodstream and soul and that the radical right needs to destroy this cancer before it destroys us. This is the language of fascism.
Highly receptive to such crypto-fascistic and Armageddon-like demagogies is the Christian right that continues to be a significant pool of voters for right-wing populism. In 2016, for example, it was found that 76% of white evangelical Christians thought that a presidential candidate's personal morals are no longer relevant – great news for the woman abusing Donald Trump.
The fact that a Playboy cover featuring Trump with a provocatively posed model who was in prison for cocaine trafficking no longer matters to the Christian right. What also doesn't matter is that Donald Trump is indifferent to the basic tenets of the Christian faith. Trump once said about his adherence to the Christian communion and faith, I drink my little wine and have my little cracker, and I feel cleansed. Beyond that, some in the Christian right may well believe what Prosperity Gospel breaches, God wants people to be rich! – Donald Trump has achieved that.
More importantly, exit polls in the 2016 election suggested that 80% of the white Christian right support Donald Trump while Bush "only" got 78% in 2014. The slight rise in Trump's support and the increasing irrelevance of faith when it came to Trump are explained because right-wing populism has managed to give politics primacy over the Christian faith. The white Christian right happily surrenders their moral values in order to achieve short-term political victory – a Faustian bargain.
The second reason why the Christian right marches in lockstep with right-wing populism is the fact that cohorts of rather convincing TrumpXplainers in Fox, talkback radio, social media, etc. offer interpretations, explanations, and translations of Trump's often somewhat incoherent allegations. They give Donald Trump the aura of plausibility explaining what he allegedly meant to say.
Overall, American conservatism and right-wing populism do well as long as the holy trinity of talkback radio, Fox, and social media put their tractor beam onto susceptible people. In the end, right-wing populism is not contrary to American conservatism. Instead, right-wing populism is a coherent modification of American conservatism. It is something that has always existed within conservatism.
In recent years, it was brought to the fore by Donald Trump, talkback radio, Fox, and the rise of echo-chambers. Perhaps US Senator Mitch McConnell is a near-perfect example of pretending to be a true conservative while aligning himself with whatever ideology comes along as long as it delivers power inside the democratic apparatus. For progressives, on the other hand, democracy has value in itself. It is a political philosophy as much as a goal to aspire to. For conservatives, democracy is a means to get into power. Right-wing populism assures power – to the detriment of the people.
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