The Brainwashing of My Dad: How the Media Was Used for a Right-Wing Revolution

 A summary (it was originally in Finnish, so a few odd bits of grammar and vocabulary may remain).

Jen Senko's book was published 2021 and went unnoticed by many. After all, there were dozens of books in the wake of Trump's term that described the MAGA movement and Trump supporters. However, this book focuses more broadly on how the 2016 election came about, and how Fox News played a central role in it. They started their propaganda against the left some twenty years ago with a cable TV program that looked like a news channel. The movement was also helped by Rush Limbaugh and talk radio hosts like him. Rush could talk for hours on end without any guests.

The book describes the author's dad Frank in the midst of all this. His whole character became angry and racist for a long time. However, reading the book is rewarding, as Frank finally realizes his mistake at the age of about 90. The film of the same name, produced by Jen Senko, is available to watch on Amazon or YouTube. Frank's change began just when Rush Limbaugh began broadcasting his program to the entire national network. Frank did not discuss politics much with the family when he was younger and had always voted Democratic before that.

Now he had changed his mind almost immediately after retiring. There was time to listen. The whole talk radio industry was taking off from the mostly uncontrolled radio broadcasting that Reagan had allowed by the FCC. The technology was ready to broadcast AM broadcasts across the country, and Limbaugh had many competitors. Everyone was chasing the same audience, white males who had time to listen, and daily life might not have been so interesting. Limbaugh pointed out who was to blame for their situation: liberals, feminists, and foreigners. Rush also began to hate science, so there was no evidence that nicotine was a drug, or that smoking was a risk. He preached this and more to his followers.

The Democrats did not have a similar radio show to incite hatred against the right. The Tea Party was in full swing in politics, and libertarians even went as far as Congress to declare that the federal government had too much power. The book describes the target audience of Fox News. Cable television or satellite dishes reached all rural areas, and it became the only source of information for millions. Frank in the book got more content to follow in his life from Fox News. His wife had to flee to another part of their house while he spent hours blasting the programs.

The book emphasizes Fox's role during the pandemic. The misinformation it spread about vaccines and disease treatment reached Fox viewers, who tended to believe everything they heard. The Fairness Doctrine of radio and television was intended to give all parties a voice to broadcast, but here it was clearly detrimental to society. Fox owner Rupert Murdoch had gained quite a bit of power at that point. The Telecommunications Act, passed by Congress in 1996, allowed the same company to own newspapers, television, Hollywood film production, Internet news, everything possible under one roof. They could each have a CEO, but Murdoch controlled them all. When the target audience is the same, the company is in a monopoly position.

Much of the country has other channels available. But when news channels started reporting what Trump said on Fox, for example, they unknowingly boosted Fox's ratings and revenue.

 Senko's book focused on this single Fox News viewer. The role of the media in manipulating well planned political concepts was made clear in the book. But what makes people believe in conspiracies in general? Jan-Willem Van Proojien has written a book on the subject called “The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories”.

The short book goes through familiar examples from the right and other more violent single-issue groups. The general idea is of our own group and its opponent, a powerful and secret conspiracy that controls our lives. Humanity has always had a tendency to do this. We look for some kind of factor, an “agent,” if we cannot otherwise explain some events. Fear is also always present when conspiracies are invented. Something in life makes a person afraid of an external entity that they can do nothing about. People who preach the threat of conspiracies spread fear. If the conspiracy is not stopped, the victim/believer is depicted as committing some type of violence themselves.

The left may have its own conspiracy theories. It happens in South American countries, for example, where there is a dictatorship, and everything negative that happens in a country must somehow be blamed on the dictatorship.