In recent years, the United States has witnessed a disturbing rise in far-right extremism – a kind of societal “rot,” as I’ve come to characterize it, marked by conspiracy theories, political violence, and a breakdown in commonly shared facts. This trend is no accident or mere grassroots phenomenon; it has been abetted by powerful media forces, notably Fox News and related outlets, which have amplified fringe narratives into the mainstream. Observers ranging from extremism experts to media scholars point out that this toxic spread is not only a political or cultural issue, but also a symptom of late-stage capitalism – a media economy that monetizes outrage and division at the expense of truth. The result is a dangerous collapse of collective reality, where large segments of society no longer agree on basic facts, eroding the foundation of democracy.

Fox News and the Mainstreaming of Extremism

From its founding in 1996 by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, Fox News positioned itself as a brash alternative to mainstream media. Over time it became the most-watched cable channel in America, wielding enormous influence over its audience’s perceptions. Critics argue that Fox hasn’t merely reflected a conservative viewpoint, but actively shaped and radicalized it. The network has a documented history of airing misleading or outright false claims that align with far-right talking points – from sowing racial fears to promoting conspiracy theories – thereby pushing the Overton window of acceptable discourse rightward. For example, back in 2009 Fox pundit Glenn Beck infamously claimed on-air that President Barack Obama had “a deep-seated hatred for white people,” essentially calling the first Black president a racist. Such incendiary rhetoric on a major network lent highly-visible legitimacy to extremist narratives that had previously lurked on the fringes.

Media scholars note that Fox occupies a central node in an increasingly insular right-wing media ecosystem. Yochai Benkler of Harvard, who has studied media polarization, observes that since Fox’s launch in 1996, the conservative media ecosystem has grown into a “propaganda network” largely separate from the rest of the press. Unlike the broader media (center to left), which still shares a baseline of facts, Fox and its allies form a distinct cluster that runs with its own narratives. Benkler points out that “almost nothing here existed before Fox was created in 1996” – the rise of partisan talk radio after the Reagan-era repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, followed by Fox and later digital outlets like Breitbart, created a new self-reinforcing echo chamber on the right. Within this bubble, audiences seek ideological reinforcement rather than factual news, and Fox obliges to hold their loyalty. Empirical studies have even found that exposure to Fox can measurably shift viewers’ beliefs and behaviors. In one experiment, conservative Fox viewers who were paid to watch CNN for a month became less likely to endorse certain false or partisan views – indicating that Fox’s influence had been making them misinformed compared to other news consumers. Polls consistently show Fox audiences disproportionately believe falsehoods (for instance, that the 2020 election was stolen or that COVID vaccines are harmful) relative to the general public. Former President Joe Biden reportedly described Murdoch, Fox’s owner, as “the most dangerous man in the world” for his network’s corrosive impact on American society.

Crucially, experts on extremism warn that this media-driven delusion is not harmless – it can, and does, fuel violence. According to the Anti-Defamation League, right-wing extremists committed about 75% of extremist-related murders in the U.S. over the last decade. Perhaps the most notorious recent example was the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters. That deadly insurrection was driven by the “Big Lie” – the baseless belief that the 2020 election was stolen – a claim propagated relentlessly in right-wing media. One convicted January 6 rioter explicitly blamed Fox for his radicalization, saying he “bought the lies sold to him and millions of others” about a stolen election and was “led to believe” his duty was to rally for Trump. Media analyst Brian Stelter noted that the Capitol riot was the culmination of “months and months” of lies fed to people via TV. In short, the feedback loop of falsehoods and fear-mongering created by Fox and its peers has encouraged some listeners to move beyond extreme opinions into extremist actions.

A Timeline of “The Rot”: Key Moments in Media-Fueled Extremism

To truly understand how we arrived at today’s fractured reality, it’s helpful to chart a brief timeline of the rot – pivotal moments over the past few decades when the media, especially Fox News, turbocharged far-right movements or conspiracy theories. This timeline illustrates how fringe ideas migrated into Republican mainstream discourse, each episode laying groundwork for the next.

• 1987: The Fairness Doctrine – a rule requiring balanced coverage of controversial issues on public airwaves – is repealed during the Reagan administration. This paves the way for openly partisan media. Soon after, right-wing talk radio explodes in popularity (e.g. Rush Limbaugh), monetizing outrage and sowing distrust of “liberal” institutions as a profitable format.
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• 1996: Rupert Murdoch launches Fox News Channel, hiring Roger Ailes to craft a conservative media juggernaut. Fox markets itself as “Fair & Balanced” but in practice serves an explicitly partisan narrative. This marks the birth of a 24/7 propaganda outlet on the right that soon dwarfs any equivalent on the left.
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• 2009: With Barack Obama’s presidency underway, Fox News goes beyond commentary and actively organizes and promotes the Tea Party movement. Starting in early 2009, Fox hosts hyped up Tax Day anti-government protests for weeks, even branding them “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties.” Hosts like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity served as on-air cheerleaders, broadcasting live from rallies and urging viewers to attend (“It’s free, you don’t want to miss it!”). This extraordinary media boosterism helped transform a scattered grassroots anger over taxes and the recession into a cohesive national movement of the right. Fox’s promotions were invaluable in the Tea Party’s infancy, giving conservative viewers a sense that “people like them” were rising up and that Fox was leading the charge. The Tea Party, with its anti-government, anti-Obama fervor (tinged with nativism and racist under-and-overtones), foreshadowed the further radicalization to come.
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• 2010–2011: Fox News helps mainstream the “birther” conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in America (and thus illegitimate as president). Prominent birther Donald Trump was given a steady platform on Fox. In early 2011, Trump appeared on Fox & Friends musing “I’m starting to wonder…whether or not [Obama] was born in this country,” without pushback. Fox even hired Trump as a weekly guest commentator during this period, effectively normalizing his conspiracy rhetoric. Hosts like Greta Van Susteren and Sean Hannity gave Trump free rein to spout birther lies on their shows. By incessantly airing these unfounded claims, Fox injected a fringe, racist trope (which lurked in “dark corners” of the internet) into millions of households, undermining faith in the presidency and stoking the base’s nativist grievances. This convergence of Fox and Trump around a conspiracy set the stage for Trump’s political rise and the post-truth politics that followed.
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• 2014: In April, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy engages in an armed standoff with federal agents over illegal cattle grazing on public land. Fox News (especially Sean Hannity) lionizes Bundy as a folk hero standing up to “out-of-control” government overreach. Night after night, Hannity championed Bundy’s cause, effectively sanctioning armed resistance to federal law enforcement. This sympathetic coverage continued until Bundy’s own racist comments (suggesting Black people were better off under slavery) became public, embarrassing his Republican defenders. Hannity eventually distanced himself from Bundy’s remarks – calling them “repugnant” – but still lamented that the outrage over racism had distracted from the “legitimate issue” of government overreach. The incident revealed an ugly nexus between anti-government extremism and racial animus on the far right. Fox’s role in elevating Bundy emboldened militant anti-government groups (many of whom later showed up at events like the 2016 Oregon wildlife refuge takeover and years later, the Capitol riot).
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• 2015-2016: The rise of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign sees Fox News play a complex but crucial role. After a brief clash with Trump (e.g. candidate Trump attacking Fox’s Megyn Kelly in 2015), the network largely falls in line behind him as the GOP frontrunner. Fox provides Trump with billions of dollars’ worth of free publicity and amplifies his populist, nationalist message. Studies later showed that a Breitbart-centered online ecosystem aggressively pushed Trumpist themes (immigration, “America First” trade, Clinton conspiracies), and Fox News then magnified those narratives to the broader conservative base. For example, Trump’s talking points on immigration and jobs – initially fringe positions – got extensive, often favorable coverage on Fox, while Clinton’s coverage focused heavily on manufactured “scandals” like emails. In essence, the 2016 election showcased a “propaganda feedback loop”: partisan outlets hyped extreme or false stories (Clinton’s alleged crimes, etc.), Fox picked them up, and mainstream media was often forced to address them, setting the agenda around misinformation. Trump’s unexpected victory, boosted by the narratives circulating in the right-wing media sphere, further cemented Fox’s status as kingmaker.
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• 2017-2018: With Trump in office, Fox News increasingly becomes state-media-like in defending his administration and attacking perceived enemies. Fox hosts promote the idea of a “Deep State” – a shadowy liberal cabal in government – allegedly sabotaging Trump. Nightly shows by Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Hannity indulge various conspiracy theories (e.g. that special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is a coup, or that Ukrainian election interference, not Russian, was the real 2016 story). During this time, Fox also fanatically covers immigration in apocalyptic terms, mirroring Trump’s hardline. In fall 2018, as midterm elections near, Fox and Trump combined to whip up fear about a migrant “caravan” moving through Mexico. Commentary on Fox suggested the caravan might be an “invasion” funded by liberal billionaire George Soros, falling in line with a classic anti-Semitic conspiracy trope. Tragically, these claims have had violent consequences: in October 2018, a white supremacist motivated by belief in an impending immigrant “invasion” and Jewish conspiracy, murdered 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue. It emerged that just days before, Lou Dobbs’s show on Fox Business aired a guest who outrageously claimed the migrant caravan was being funded by the “Soros-occupied State Department.” Fox apologized only after the massacre, when it became clear the shooter had absorbed similar ideas about a Jewish-driven refugee plot. The network’s reluctance to acknowledge its role was telling. And when another far-right terror attack struck in 2019 – a gunman’s manifesto citing “replacement” theory as motivation to kill Latine immigrants in El Paso – Fox personalities again deflected blame and moved to downplay how often their own rhetoric mirrored the shooter’s worldview.
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• 2019-2021: Fox’s Tucker Carlson pushes the “Great Replacement” theory, the white supremacist notion that elites are deliberately replacing white Americans with immigrants, to his massive audience. A New York Times investigation found Carlson invoked replacement theory in over 400 episodes of his show in just a few years. He framed it as Democrats “importing a brand-new electorate” to dilute real (read: white) Americans’ votes. Despite the Anti-Defamation League pleading with Fox to stop platforming this hateful and dangerous theory, executives did nothing. Down the road in May 2022, when a white gunman in Buffalo massacred 10 Black shoppers and was found to have explicitly cited “replacement” ideology, Fox conspicuously avoided mentioning the motive on air. Media observers noted Fox was in a bind – how could it condemn a racist conspiracy theory that its top star had mainstreamed? This silence spoke volumes about the network’s complicity in normalizing extremist ideology in American households across the country..
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• November-December 2020: After Joe Biden wins the presidential election, Fox News hosts and their guests aggressively promote Trump’s false claims of election fraud. Primetime shows invited Trump-aligned lawyers (Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani) who spun wild conspiracy theories – from voting machines flipping votes, to fantasies of deceased Hugo Chávez rigging the count – all presented to angry viewers as plausible truths. Internally, Fox journalists knew these claims were bogus. In fact, recent court filings in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case revealed that many Fox hosts, producers, and even Murdoch himself privately derided the fraud allegations as “crazy,” “insane,” and “BS.” “Sidney Powell is lying,” Tucker Carlson texted a colleague during this period. Yet, on air, these same personalities continued to lend credence to the lies, or at least failed to challenge them, in a dedicated effort to keep their audience from defecting to even more conspiracy-friendly channels like Newsmax. This cynical amplification of the Big Lie had dire consequences and ultimately set the stage for the January 6 Capitol assault.
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• January 6, 2021: The Capitol insurrection occurs, a shocking attempt to overturn a democratic election by force, fueled by misinformation and extremist fervor. In the immediate aftermath, text messages (later made public) showed that even some Fox hosts were alarmed that the president needed to call off the rioters – evidence that they knew the gravity of what had been unleashed. But Fox’s tone on-air quickly shifted. Within weeks, hosts and guests downplayed the violence, floated alternate narratives (that leftist “antifa” or the FBI were secretly to blame), and worked to sanitize the event to align with the base’s sentiments. The collective reality around Jan. 6 split: most Americans saw it as an insurrection and an assault on democracy, while many in the Fox-sphere came to see it as either justified protest or even a non-event. Fox’s Tucker Carlson even produced a revisionist documentary claiming Jan. 6 was a “false flag” orchestrated by federal agents, an extreme conspiracy theory unsupported by evidence.
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• April 2023: Facing a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for spreading election lies, Fox News abruptly settles for $787.5 million – an enormous sum that implicitly acknowledges wrongdoing. Revelations from the case were damning: Dominion unearthed emails and messages confirming Fox executives and hosts knew the election-fraud claims were false but pushed them anyway. Rupert Murdoch admitted in deposition that Fox anchors “endorsed” bogus stories about Dominion. Why would a news organization do this? The short, blunt answer: fear of losing viewers and profit. As Fox CEO Suzanne Scott and others noted, after Fox correctly (and accurately) called Biden the winner in Arizona on Election Night, ratings dipped and many angry MAGA fans fled to competitors like Newsmax. Carlson warned that Newsmax’s “alternate universe” coverage could be “devastating” to Fox if they didn’t win back Trump voters’ trust. So Fox began “planting flags” to signal loyalty to the stolen-election narrative, even if it meant promoting lies. In short, Fox put profits over truth, pandering to what its audience wanted to hear regardless of its grounding, or lack thereof, in truth. This episode lays bare the deeper pathology: the incentives of late-capitalist media can actively encourage disinformation, at incalculable cost to democratic society.

While by no means exhaustive, this timeline intends to highlight a through-line: At each juncture, Fox News and the wider right-wing media injected accelerant into the fire of extremist populism, helping fringe ideas mutate into mainstream Republican orthodoxy. Grievances around race, immigration, guns, religion – all were stoked and televised. Each wave (Tea Party, birthers, “patriots” vs. feds, Trumpism, Stop the Steal) built upon the last, cultivating a base increasingly distrustful of any information not from within its own echo chamber.

Late-Stage Capitalism and the Monetization of Misinformation

It is vital to recognize that these distortions of truth did not happen in a vacuum – they are enabled by economic choices and incentives in the media industry. Fox News is not just a political actor but a for-profit corporation, and its business model has been to capture and retain the devotion of a segment of viewers (conservative, often older Americans) and sell their attention to advertisers. Outrage, fear, and partisan fervor keep eyeballs glued to the screen; nuanced reporting that might contradict audience preconceptions risks losing those eyeballs. Thus, in a late-stage capitalist environment, a network like Fox effectively sells confirmation bias as entertainment. If maintaining a loyal viewership means validating false beliefs (e.g. that an election was stolen or a pandemic is a hoax), then there are enormous pressures to do so – especially when competitors on social media or smaller channels are willing to go even further down the rabbit hole.

The Dominion case evidence provides a stark illustration of these dynamics. Even as Fox executives knew they were spreading “really crazy stuff” about election fraud, they feared the “wrath” of their market, i.e. their viewers, if they told the truth and lost audience share to competitors. In one internal email, Rupert Murdoch lamented Trump’s crazed conspiracies yet noted Fox should not “antagonize” the Trump base, while CEO Suzanne Scott talked of rebuilding trust with viewers who were in “the five stages of grief” over Trump’s loss. Tucker Carlson privately blasted Trump’s post-election behavior as that of a “demonic force” and said he “hates him passionately,” but publicly Carlson continued to defend Trump’s narrative – because that’s what much of the Fox audience demanded. As Dominion’s lawyers argued, these communications show Fox chose to “spread and endorse” allegations it knew were false. But why? To keep ratings and stock prices high. In other words, the truth was bad for business, so the truth was sacrificed in the name of profit.

Media critics often describe this as the “outrage industry” or the selling of sensationalism. Fox News perfected it on cable, and now social media platforms do similarly on a global scale, using algorithms to boost whatever keeps users engaged (frequently extremist or conspiratorial content). Indeed, Yochai Benkler and colleagues found that the surge in polarization since the 1990s correlates more with media changes (like Fox’s rise) than with the internet itself – surprisingly, the most polarized demographics are those who consume talk radio and cable news the most (typically older Americans), not the youngest social-media natives. This suggests the fragmentation and radicalization of U.S. political culture has been driven significantly by media business strategies, not just by random online misinformation.

Fox Corporation’s pursuit of profit and market dominance exemplifies late capitalism’s excesses: the public good (an informed citizenry) is trumped by the profit motive. In earlier eras, news was seen as a loss-leader or a public service obligation by networks. Today, it’s a cash cow of its own. Fox earns billions annually by telling a segment of Americans what they want to hear, while fact-based journalists are laid off and local news dwindles. The result is a media ecosystem vulnerable to what some call “truth decay”, where facts become optional. When reality itself becomes just another product to be packaged and sold – often segmented into a liberal version, a conservative version, etc. – the very notion of an objective, shared reality starts to crumble.

The Collapse of Collective Reality

One of the gravest consequences of this dynamic is the loss of a collective reality – a baseline of common facts that citizens across the spectrum accept, even if they disagree on interpretation or policy. The United States today is often described as living in “two separate realities.” Nowhere is this more evident than in surveys of beliefs. For example, a year after the 2020 election, polls showed roughly two-thirds of Republicans believed the election was stolen – an outright falsehood – while over 90% of Democrats believed the election was legitimate. Americans were, essentially, split into factual universes defined by party identity and media diet. As noted, Fox News viewers are far more likely to believe a host of false narratives (from election fraud to conspiratorial takes on COVID-19) than those who rely on other sources. This extends to climate change, where studies have shown Fox audiences are more likely to doubt the scientific consensus; to vaccines (a 2021 poll found vaccine refusal and Fox viewership closely correlated); and many other issues.

On the flip side, people who unplug from that ecosystem often undergo a stark reorientation. In the earlier-mentioned media experiment, after a month of watching CNN, former Fox viewers came to accept that COVID-19 was a serious threat and that police violence against black Americans was a problem – positions they had dismissed under Fox’s influence. Tellingly, when these participants returned to Fox, many of their attitudes reverted, showing how powerfully reinforcing the Fox worldview can be. It’s as if two neighbors in the same town can inhabit parallel universes – one thinks the local school board is run by child predators and Marxists (having heard this on primetime TV or Facebook groups), the other finds that idea absurd. They cannot even agree on basic reality, making rational discourse or compromise extraordinarily difficult – how can the unreasonable be reasoned with?

Fox News did not cause all of this alone, of course. Social media, talk radio, and other factors (including polarization rooted in identity and geography) all contribute. But Fox acts as a critical bridge between the wildest fringe ideas and a mass audience. It provides a sheen of quasi-respectability and repetition that cements alternate reality for tens of millions. The network often cherry-picks facts or frames stories in misleading ways to create an impression (for instance, downplaying January 6 as a minor protest while hyper-focusing on isolated incidents of left-wing unrest). Over years, such coverage can literally rewire how viewers interpret events. As a result, we now see phenomena like QAnon – an extreme conspiracy theory – finding sympathetic mention or at least non-denouncement in conservative media and politics. Several Republican candidates who espoused QAnon-like ideas have been given airtime on Fox or were tacitly defended as just raising “questions.”

The social and psychological impact of living in a media bubble is profound. Relationships and families are strained as people cannot even agree on what is real. Democracy itself is imperiled when a large minority is convinced that the other side is not just wrong but illegitimate or evil, based on distorted facts. If heavily partisan media is a “gateway drug” to extremism by introducing viewers to more and more extreme ideas over time, Fox can be characterized as the entry point for right-wing extremism by stoking anger and distrust, which then leads some down further rabbit holes online (to InfoWars, 4chan, etc.). While most Fox viewers do not become violent, the normalization of hateful or conspiratorial thinking in that space increases the odds that a few will take drastic, homicidal, “patriotic” action. Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly warned since 2020 that violent extremists motivated by racist or anti-government ideologies (which align with far-right extremist narratives) pose the most lethal domestic terror threat – exceeding that of any foreign terrorist group today.

The Fracturing of the Social Contract

Beneath the epistemic chaos and media polarization lies something even more foundational: the slow but steady disintegration of the social contract. For generations, Americans operated, however imperfectly, under a basic understanding that certain public goods would be protected, that rules would apply evenly (or at least aspire to), and that institutions would, over time, work for the people. That expectation has been profoundly shaken. Late-stage capitalism has gutted much of what once gave people a stake in that contract: stable jobs, affordable housing, accessible healthcare, and faith that one’s vote or civic participation could actually move the needle. Instead, many Americans now experience extraction where they once expected support: rising costs, stagnant wages, privatized services, and a government seemingly captured by elite interests. This has fostered a cultural environment of pervasive distrust, where many no longer believe the system will, can, or even should protect them.

And when the foundational promise of fairness and reciprocity collapses, people don’t just disengage. They become vulnerable to alternative narratives in seeking a new context. Misinformation thrives not just because of bad actors or algorithms, but because something vital has broken between people and their institutions. Fox News and its ilk offer not just ideology, but the feeling that someone is telling the “truth” about how rigged everything is against them. That someone is finally saying that which others are afraid (a line common among the MAGA crowd since 2015). And in a context where the real social contract is in tatters, that message lands hard, even if it’s wrapped in lies and anti-democratic values. A recent survey found that more than 70% of Americans across the political spectrum believe “the system is rigged,” a stark expression of this distrust. And when this foundational pact is breached, people don’t just withdraw. They seek new narratives, contexts that will readily validate their struggles and worldviews. Extremist or conspiratorial frameworks often step in eager to fill the void, maliciously misattributing the root of their audience’s problems to vulnerable scapegoat populations. Fox News and other populist outlets thrive not only by pushing content but by conveying the feeling that they’re revealing hidden truths about a rigged system—a message that resonates powerfully when the real social contract has already frayed.

Despite the shockwaves rippling across divided America day after day, the cultural fragmentation and media distortion we see today aren’t actually anomalies. Looking closer, they’re the predictable outcomes of a social contract that has, in many ways, already collapsed for millions of people. Until that collapse is acknowledged and structurally addressed, any efforts to rebuild truth or collective reality will struggle to take root.

Media, Extremism, and the Road Ahead

Scholars who study domestic extremism, media, and democracy have been raising alarms and connecting the dots on these issues. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a leading expert on radicalization, often emphasizes how extremist groups prey on feelings of grievance and loss of status; media narratives of “your country is being stolen” or “you can’t say anything anymore without being canceled” feed into those grievances. Kathleen Belew, a historian of the white power movement, notes that what was once a fringe subculture of armed militias and white supremacists has found cover and comfort in mainstream political rhetoric since the Tea Party and Trump. Effectively, extremists learned to “blend” with and piggyback on mainstream conservative causes, creating a plausible deniability of radicalization and enabling the spread of fringe ideas and attitudes. The line between an angry conservative voter and an anti-government militiaman has blurred, in part because the media ecosystem blurs it – treating militiamen as patriots, or neo-Nazi talking points like replacement theory as just mainstream immigration commentary.

Media scholars like Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Brendan Nyhan have documented how repeated exposure to false claims can create “belief echoes” that persist even after debunking. In the Fox universe, debunking rarely even enters; false claims are reinforced rather than refuted. The result is what some call “collective delusions.” When millions share a delusion (e.g. the cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles that QAnon talks about), it functions as a kind of mass hysteria, but orchestrated and monetized by savvy players.

Human rights advocates also weigh in. A 2017 Human Rights Watch report on the rise of populism observed that “in the West, many people feel left behind by technological change, the global economy, and growing inequality… There is an increasing sense that elites ignore public concerns,” and in this cauldron of discontent, demagogic politicians flourish by scapegoating minorities and immigrants, with truth often becoming a casualty. This succinctly captures the context in which Fox’s narratives thrive. Economic inequality and cultural change breed anxiety; media like Fox then channel that anxiety toward fear and anger at target groups (immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ people, “socialist” Democrats, etc.), often through a lens of nostalgia and nationalism. It’s a powerful formula that has eroded the liberal democratic norms of truth and tolerance.

Even some conservative voices have expressed worry. Longtime Republican strategists, like the authors of the 2012 GOP post-mortem, warned that the party’s media echo chamber was narrowing its appeal and cutting supporters off from reality. More recently, GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney blasted Fox News for spreading the Big Lie, saying it had deceived its viewers. These intra-party critiques underline that the problem is not merely ideological bias, but it is the whole unadulterated abandonment of factual discourse. When one party’s base operates on a fundamentally false set of beliefs, the normal mechanisms of governance (compromise, evidence-based debate) break down.

The rise of the far-right rot, manifested in extremist violence and a fractured factual consensus, is inseparable from the story of Fox News and allied media exploiting divisions under a profit-driven model. The collapse of collective reality is both a cause and effect of this process: it creates an audience ripe for exploitation and is further worsened each time that exploitation occurs. The road back from this precipice is challenging, but it begins with recognizing the problem: When media power, political extremism, and capitalist incentives collide, the result is toxic to democracy. Only by confronting that truth and enacting bold changes to how we inform ourselves can we hope to restore a healthier discourse.

Welcome one and all to the Misinformation Age, where truth isn’t just obscured but is actively competed with and drowned out by louder, simpler lies that are easy to swallow. Where “engagement” becomes more valuable than communicating and understanding. Where reality itself feels fragile because nothing sticks long enough to be believed in together, and our systems – economic, social, ecological, informational – are buckling under their own contradictions.

“However, when the social tie begins to slacken and the state to weaken, when particular interests begin to make themselves felt and sectional societies begin to exert an influence over the greater society, the common interest then becomes corrupted and meets opposition…” — Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book IV, Chapter 1

Posted 27 June 2025.