A Democratic polling organization explored whether the party should try to woo Republicans through their propaganda organ, Fox News. The results are sobering evidence of the power of propaganda.
The finding the Daily Beast used in its headline was frightening — 78% of Fox News viewers think the Trump administration has accomplished more than any presidential administration in history. This is stunning in that, to the unbiased eye, it hasn’t accomplished anything at all, let alone more than, say, the Lincoln or FDR administrations. But more than historical illiteracy is at work here.
The broader, more important point, though, is that there’s a large gap between the opinions of GOPers who watch Fox and those who don’t. For example, 79 percent of Republican Fox News viewers said they believe people within the FBI and US intelligence agencies are trying to sabotage Trump, compared to 49 percent of non-Fox News viewing Republicans and just 8 percent of registered voters who did not watch Fox or identify as Republican. Similar gaps appeared for every issue sampled. You can find the full results at the link.
There was one area in which Fox Republicans outdid their non-viewing comrades — they were more likely to have heard about proposals like the Green New Deal, mainly because Fox endlessly demonizes it.
The report dryly concludes “this segment of the public is so vastly different from the rest, it may serve progressives best to focus their attention on everyone else.” What they didn’t say but should have: It’s time to repeal Godwin’s Law, because the parallels between Fox News and Joseph Goebbels are undeniable.