US Fascism Has Arrived Thanks to 30 Years of Right-Wing Talk Radio Dominance

I think NPR does a good job providing talk radio type material that isn't repellant to people with critical thinking skills.

Do you consider their offerings substantially different than talk radio?

There were literally American Nazi rallies in the 40s and plenty of pro fascism movements after that.

The big shift from Truman to Trump has been the number of domestic residents benefiting from our fascist policies. That number is shrinking year after year.

Half a century ago, you could talk to a rising tide carrying all our ships. Did that tide come from blood spilled in Africa, the Middle East, and the Pacific Rim? Sure. But that wasn't our problem.

Now we're seeing the kind of brutal police tactics reserved for Vietnam and Iraq show up in Florida and on the Columbia University campus. We've got paramilitary goons targeting Haitians in Ohio, rather than in Haiti. We're increasingly reliant on prison labor to do the work of historical migrant labor. Our agitation against China isn't generating jobs in the MIC nearly as fast as it's killing jobs in the civilian sector.

If you’re part of the privileged group fascism is selling you safety, normalcy, and tradition.

A big goal of the AI Revolution is to shrink the number of people the Executive tier have to pay in order to keep their positions. And even executive positions are consolidating as businesses merge and buy one another out.

It's terrifying everyone, and Trump is just the guy who figured out how to sell traditional Republican voters a way out. Traditional Republican leaders only know how to preach austerity and justify poverty.

The key point is they are selling BULLSHIT. Even if you are of the right color / party, you are one misstep away from being burned at the stake.

That's what most of these MAGA morons don't realize, they aren't going to be the rulers, they'll be cannon fodder for the 1%, and even part of the 1% IE Muskrat will have to watch their backs.

Fascism benefits no-one in reality... Even the leaders of the movement are constantly watching their backs because their allies are scumbags like themselves.

Rush Limbaugh and his gross career owes its entire existence to that. He is someone who believes that drug dealers and smugglers need to be shot without trial... and he himself was a drug dealer when he was hard for cash.

Tells you a good deal of what kind of person we're dealing with here.

And Clinton put the final nail in the coffin with the telecom Reform Act.

Hold my beer!

-The Telecommunications Act of 1996

Is an NPR program like 1A talk radio? I listen to that and many people who are traveling often do. It's not leftist, but it's decidedly anti-fascist simply by reporting the truth and bringing on experts to explain things. Two co-workers of mine have told me that they used to listen to NPR before "it got all political"- meaning they heard things they didn't want to be true. That's a bit of a tangent but these two people wouldn't listen to Rush Limbaugh or whoever took his toilet throne.

I assume since podcasts aren't on the radio they don't count as talk radio right? But discussion podcasts have blown talk radio away and there are so many flavors to choose from.

The GOP excels at informing the uninformed and giving false hope to downtrodden.

The milk and meat industry lost their shit when soy milk companies started calling their product "milk." The same outrage should be spent on these "news" organizations.

Anything presented as news should be kept separate from opinion. If it's news, you should be able to defend it like it was said under oath.

Personally, I would love it if news channels had to distinguish opinion content from news by removing the word news from the screen and replacing it with the word opinion. That or some other clear and unmistakable signal to the audience should be there to establish whether the station is going on record and asserting facts or whether this is some talking head spewing bullshit.

Speaking of regulation, their hateful opinions getting such a far reach is a direct result of the telocommunications act of '96

Isn’t that how we got the national treasure that is Rachel Maddow?

It needed better talent. Thom Hartmann was the sole survivor because he's actually listenable. Randi Rhodes and Ron Reagan were just shit. But progressive talk can be done well. Stephanie Miller is hilarious when she has the right crew, but she has a penchant for self-owning. She gave us John Fugelsang, who is just brilliant.

Guess my age:

I put on cable tv sometimes for background noise. I've got a free hookup.

I stream shows.

I've been pirating media since I was 13 years old.

I own a car, but I'm American and outside of the cities that have decent public transport.

I use the radio to listen to public radio. I could stream NPR just as easily but I travel a lot and check out local public radio.

I use Bluetooth to listen to podcasts and music.

I don't like Spotify much, and I suppose I have a YouTube account but I've never posted anything.

Profile me!

Car use wouldn't be a good metric in the US (maybe more so in other countries). It's too necessary in most places. But otherwise I agree.

Talk radio is a bastion of old white men. Trying to sway it is a lost cause. The only hope is out lasting their deaths.

If Harris wins I think we have good shot of things moving back towards sanity, especially if she lasts two terms.

That’s why we need to defend cbc

You’re free to leave. Because blanket statements and false accusations might work in your favor elsewhere.

Podcasting is the better space to get going.

Joe Rogan and other right-wing cranks.

Also tictoc.

A significant part of the rise of fascism in Europe among young people.

Anyway I do like podcasts, and it's full of good content (and so is tiktok presumably) but neither are lacking right-wing content.

Getting young folks off the incel pipeline is going to be really tough in today's environment.

Incel is the new fat. Most of society immediately treats them like scum that did it to themselves. In a lot of cases both fat people and incels are at fault, but trashing them isn't going to fix the issues.

Your need to understand them and how they got there to try and change them or at least reduce new ones from being created. Not just hate them.

Agreed

We've tried this for a long time, to varying degrees of success, with public radio. I don't mean NPR although that will usually be a decent portion of local public radio.

I travel all the time. All over the US, although lately it's been limited to the middle/north east coast and Midwest. It's pretty fun to tune into the local public radio if you're close enough to get a signal. They can be really insightful like WAMU in DC about local stories.

They can be terrible like my local station that can only afford to run 1A (which is a good show) and a few localish music shows. The rest of the time is literally filled with fucking classical music. It's painful to listen to. Sorry to all the Bacchists and Mozartists out there but this shit sucks.

Anyway, check out the low end of the FM dial when you're traveling, you might collect some stations you like that you can stream later.

The writer of the article, Thom Hartmann, was deeply involved in that. Sounds like he can't let go of a bad idea.