The Rise of Neo-Fascism and Neoliberal Mass Distraction: Vilifying Murdoch.

 

A New York Times essay entitled: How Rupert Murdoch’s Empire of Influence Remade the World (3 April 2019) tried to explain that the rise on global rightwing populist movements and governments, including Trump’s America, is the result of Murdoch’s media empire. Part 1 of the piece if entitled:  “Imperial Reach Murdoch and his children have toppled governments on two continents and destabilized the most important democracy on Earth. What do they want?” While it is true that in the late 20th century and until today, Murdoch is the new citizen Kane, it is a myth that in the USA and around the world, rightwing populism under the neoliberal political economy is a Murdoch byproduct, as though the Murdoch corporate media outlets operate outside and against the political economy of which the New York Times and bourgeois liberal media outlets are integral parts.

The entire institutional structure of neoliberal capitalism is responsible for the current neo-Fascist global trend, most notably in the US. The political economy under which most countries operate find expression in the political arena through an ideological/political model committed to pluralism and diversity with a modicum social safety net as a remnant of the welfare state as forged under Keynesian policies since the Great Depression in order to strengthen and stabilize capitalism. However, the current neoliberal political economy also finds expression in a more nationalistic, racist, xenophobic and authoritarian ideological/political model which promises to deliver optimal capital concentration by suppressing the class struggle through various means including force, but mostly mass distraction with identity politics that divide and rupture any possibility of class solidarity.

There are inescapable contradictions in the neoliberal political economy. Above all, the promise of rising incomes for all, when in reality income inequality and downward social mobility amid capital concentration is an integral part of the structure. The world’s billionaires are growing richer at the rate of $2.5 billion per day! The world’s top 26 billionaires own $1.4 trillion, or as much as 3.8 billion people out of a total 7.5 billion people. While Murdoch’s media operations are responsible for manufacturing news, paying off politicians and other officials, wire-tapping phones of adversaries, as was the case in July 2011 in England, the neoliberal structure on a world scale, which has resulted in the rise of neo-Fascism, is symptomatic of a malignant system on a world scale.

Murdoch became a multi-billionaire and kept spreading his influence globally through the media empire as a result of his political links that invariably involve various levels of corruption within the political economy it serves. By pushing an extreme right-wing agenda and presenting his media empire as 'pro-market', and cleverly manufacturing news through populist rhetoric and scandal-style news reporting, Murdoch made himself the darling of conservative politicians and conservative businesspeople who back the operations through advertising, stock purchases and loans.

However, in a bourgeois society, the public is 'consuming news' from corporate media and/or state-backed media representing the same institutional structure of which all corporate media are a part. 

The ‘liberal’ American media, including the NYT, helped to elect Trump in 2016, simply by glorifying him in constantly presenting stories about the “outsider hero-billionaire” personality cult defying insider professional politicians. The same ‘liberal media’ vilified directly or subtly New Deal Democrat Bernie Sanders, in favor of the Wall Street-Cold War Militarist Democrat Hillary Clinton. Even as the New York Times and other media outlets are vilifying the Murdoch rightwing populist neoliberal propaganda machine today, they are just as quick to dismiss any Democrats candidate who reverts to New Deal principles and policies because such policies threaten profits of Wall Street and defense contractors.

This is not to say that I can tolerate anything that comes out of any Murdoch media outlet and that I would not prefer to read the New York Times, if those were the only two choices before me. In our time of online news outlets and scholarly analysis from various blogs with credibility, people have choices, assuming they want to do the research. The choice that the NYT wants people to accept is between the Murdoch world of neo-Fascism promising to deliver best results for capitalism, on the one hand, and the pluralist/diversity political model of neoliberal capitalism, on the other. In short, neoliberal authoritarianism, or neoliberal pluralism. Either way, the working class and middle class will continue to suffer downward socioeconomic mobility because the neoliberal political economy remains unchanged.