Bipartisan Divide

A 25-year study conducted by the Pew Research Center concluded that American political values have become more polarized along partisan lines over the period. The increasing polarization exemplifies a growing dialectic that pits “conservatives” against “liberals.” According to an article in Politico, “While liberals might like to think of themselves as more open-minded, they are no more tolerant of people unlike them than their conservative counterparts are.”[1] As discovered by Mark Brandt, Geoffrey Wetherell and Christine Reyna in a 2013 paper published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, and in a recent psychological research study by the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), conservatives, liberals, the religious and the nonreligious are each prejudiced against those with opposing views. However, each group is about equally prejudiced.

This polarization can be traced back to 1996 and the founding of Fox News by Australian-American media mogul Rupert Murdoch, yet another protégée of Roy Cohn, and a member of the Cato Institute, founded by the infamous Koch Brothers. In 1994, Murdoch described a plan to Reed Hundt, then chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under President Bill Clinton, to launch Fox News as a radical new television network. Unlike the three established networks, who catered to the same centrist audience, Murdoch’s network would follow the model of the tabloids that he published in Australia and England. Hundt told Jane Mayer, “What he was really saying was that he was going after a working-class audience. He was going to carve out a base—what would become the Trump base.”[2] Hundt recalled the conversation. “This person’s made a huge mark in two other countries, and he had entered our country and was saying, ‘I’m going to break up the three-party oligopoly that has governed the most important medium of communication for politics and policy in this country since the Second World War.’ It was like a scene from ‘Faust.’ What came to mind was Mephistopheles.”[3]

The rise of the conservative “alternative” news sources can be traced back to the founding of the newspaper Human Events in 1944, Regnery Publishing in 1947 and William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review in 1955. But, according to Max Boot of the Washington Post, “it did not become a mass phenomenon until the debut of Rush Limbaugh’s national radio show, in 1988, followed in 1996 by the launch of the Fox News Channel and the Drudge Report.” Those remain three of the most popular outlets of the right, notes Boot, but they have been joined by radio hosts such as Mark Levin and Michael Savage, authors Ann Coulter and Dinesh D’Souza, and websites such as Breitbart, TheBlaze, Infowars and Newsmax.[4] Together, this network cultivated bigotry through paranoia about “political correctness” and “liberal bias” in the mainstream media, to channel pent-up frustrations towards what they called the “establishment,” to denounce “Big Government” in order to advance neoliberal policies. This agenda culminated in the rise of the Tea Party, a movement bankrolled by the Koch brothers and popularized by Fox News, founded by the man considered the “cornerstone” of the vast right-wing conspiracy: Rupert Murdoch.[5]

The networks of the conservative media and their financial backers constitute what Hillary Clinton first denounced as a “vast right-wing conspiracy” in 1998, when she appeared on NBC’s The Today Show in an interview with Matt Lauer, in response to a campaign designed to focus on accusations surrounding the Whitewater scandal, and the exposure of her husband’s various indiscretions. MSNBC described the comment as once-ridiculed but now taken more seriously by “many Democrats” who point “to the well-documented efforts by conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife to fund a network of anti-Clinton investigations.”[6] Clinton’s suspicions were based on a 332-page internal memo which documented an alleged “conspiracy commerce” of scandalous “fringe stories” about her husband Bill, and described the “Wizard of Oz” role played by Scaife.[7]

Scaife and the Bradley Foundation funded the American Spectator, a conservative US monthly magazine, which was the first to report Paula Jones’ claims. CNN stated in a study the news outlet conducted on Scaife, “If it’s a conspiracy, it’s a pretty open one.”[8] The magazine’s editorial staff had close ties to the right wing in Britain, in particular to the Conrad Black’s Hollinger Corporation’s Telegraph. The Telegraph employed Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who functioned as the paper’s Washington bureau chief. Evans-Pritchard, who claims to have been a close advisor to Paula Jones and her lawyers, wrote numerous articles and even a book about Clinton published by Regnery. Along with Lord William Rees-Mogg, former editor of the Murdoch-owned London Times, Evans-Pritchard was been in the forefront of the journalistic attack on Clinton.

An investigation launched against the American Spectator by the Justice Department for alleged witness tampering in the Whitewater investigation, led to revelations about the “Arkansas Project” a campaign by Scaife to discredit the Clintons by funding investigative reporting at several conservative media outlets. The project not only accused Bill Clinton of financial and sexual indiscretions, but also that the Clintons collaborated with the CIA to run a drug smuggling operation out of the town of Mena, Arkansas and that Clinton had arranged for the murder of White House aide Vince Foster as part of a coverup of the Whitewater scandal. According to the White House memo, these conspiracies spread from conservative think tanks to British tabloids, and then to the mainstream press, like the Washington Times and Wall Street Journal.[9] Congress ordered inquiries and suddenly the rest of the mainstream media began covering it as a legitimate story. Following a series of financial shortfalls, the American Spectator was purchased by Philadelphia Society member George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty. In 2003, former book publisher Alfred S. Regnery, the son of AFC and ASC member Henry Regnery, and founder of Regnery Publishing, became the magazine’s publisher. (See “Meese Commission” in chapter “Sex Lies and Wiretaps).

Fox News

Murdoch has had full control as Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, now the world’s second-largest media conglomerate, and its successors, News Corp and 21st Century Fox. Its major properties include The Times, The Sun, and the now-defunct News of the World—which was the subject of a phone hacking scandal—The Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins, and the Fox Entertainment Group. “Much more so than any liberal outlet does for its side,” explains Paul Waldman, “Fox sets the tone for the entire conservative media, and even the entire conservative movement.”[10] As of February 2017, Fox hit a ratings milestone in cable news by marking 15 years as the most-watched news channel, Nielsen data revealed. Fox currently has 13 of the top 15 programs in cable news in total viewers and seven out of the top ten programs in the 25-54 age demographic. The O’Reilly Factor dominated all categories as the number one program in cable news. Tucker Carlson Tonight was the number two and Sean Hannity was number three.[11] According to Waldman, the fuel that drives Fox’s conservative agenda is anger. He comments:

After watching Bill O’Reilly rant every night about how immigrants are destroying our culture, black people need to pull up their pants and stop committing crimes, political correctness is killing us, the white man is oppressed, and America was a heck of a lot better when he was a kid, who else would they have voted for?[12]

As a modern-day Randolph Hearst, Murdoch is a peddler of tabloid news, what H.L. Mencken criticized as “debauched journalism,” using shock, sensationalism and scandal as a Trojan Horse to carry forward his political agenda. As stated by Brad Friedman in The Guardian, “It must be stated over and over again: the Fox News Channel is not a news channel. It’s a Republican party propaganda channel.”[13] According to Anthony Collings in Capturing the News, Fox News should be called Faux News.[14] As David A. Bell wrote for The Nation, Fox is not fake news, “It is a blatantly ideological distortion of real news.”[15] As revealed by Media Matters, Fox has been also been responsible for numerous “egregious examples” of outright distortion.[16]

According to the documents from the Reagan library, Roy Cohn’s relationship with Murdoch apparently developed around their mutual commitment to Israel, with Murdoch being honored in 1982 as “Communications Man of the Year” by the American Jewish Congress (AJC).[17] Murdoch, who has tended to enforce a pro-Israel bias in the publications he owns,[18] is a close friend of Ariel Sharon, has heavy investment in Israel, and is a strong supporter of Israel and its domestic policies.[19] Jacob Rothschild, a close friend of Murdoch since the 1960s, served as deputy chairman of Murdoch’s BSkyB corporation from 2003–2007. Murdoch has a seat on the Strategic Advisory Board of Genie Oil and Gas, having jointly investing with Rothschild in the company which conducted shale gas and oil exploration in Colorado, Mongolia, Israel and, controversially, the occupied Golan Heights.[20]

Nevertheless, Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who is ranked by Forbes as the world’s nineteenth wealthiest person, is a very close friend of Murdoch and his family, and was News Corporation’s second largest shareholder until 2014.[21] Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “twentieth hijacker” involved in 9/11, named bin Talal, along with Turki bin Faisal and Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, as one of the financiers of al-Qaeda.[22] Known affectionately to the Bush family as “Bandar Bush”, Bandar was Saudi ambassador to the United States and then head of Saudi intelligence. In 2002, it was revealed that Alwaleed had contributed $500,000 to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood front that has boasted of influence over Fox entertainment programs.[23] In 2010, bin Talal announced plans to launch a new Arabic television news channel in partnership with Murdoch’s Fox network, to compete with Al Jazeera.[24]

It was Reagan’s initial FCC chairman Mark Fowler’ deregulation of the industry and approval of Murdoch’s acquisition of local TV stations that allowed him to form his fourth major network: Fox.[25] In the following decade, in 1996, Fox established the Fox News Channel, which Murdoch boasts that he launched as a counterbalance to the “liberal bias” of CNN. Murdoch hired former Republican Party media consultant and CNBC executive Roger Ailes as Fox News’ founding CEO. Ailes was a media consultant for Republican presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, and for Rudy Giuliani's first mayoral campaign.

In 1987 and 1988, Ailes was credited along with Southern Strategy pioneer and master “dirty tricks” politics, Lee Atwater, with guiding George H.W. Bush to victory in the Republican primaries and the later come-from-behind victory over Michael Dukakis. Bush started campaigning under the suspicion of the Iran-Contra scandal. “Republicans in the South could not win elections by talking about issues,” Atwater explained. “You had to make the case that the other guy, the other candidate, is a bad guy.” Among other tactics, Atwater used the infamous “Revolving Door” commercial about Massachusetts prison furlough of Willie Horton, a black murderer later convicted of rape. During that campaign, future President George W. Bush took an office across the hall from Atwater’s, and the two became “great friends.”[26] Reflecting on his and Ailes’ contribution to the effort, Atwater said, “I have been in politics for quite a while, and I have worked with everybody in our business… He simply is the best. Roger and I are soul brothers…”[27]

Dark Genius, an Ailes biography by Kerwin Swint, traces the history of Fox News to Ailes’ involvement in a national conservative television news network, Television News Inc. (TVN), funded by conservative brewer Joseph Coors to counter the “liberal” media. TVN came into being around the same time as the Heritage Foundation, founded by Coors, Jack Wilson and Paul Weyrich. Coors appointed Wilson as TVN’s first president. Along with Wilson and Roger Ailes, Weyrich was a powerful force in the network. The project was designed to inject a far-right slant into local news broadcasts by providing news clips that stations could use without credit and for a fraction of the actual costs of production. Thus, Wilson explained, TVN would “gradually, subtly, slowly” inject “our philosophy in the news.”[28] The network was, in the words of a news director who quit in protest, a “propaganda machine.”[29] Swint has shown that such Fox News slogans and buzz phrases as “Fair and Balanced,” “We Report, You Decide,” and “We’re an alternative to the ‘liberal’ media” were derived from the mouths of TVN’s founders.[30]

 “He is Fox News,” says Jane Hall, a decade-long Fox commentator who defected over Ailes’ embrace of the fear-mongering Glenn Beck. “It’s his vision. It’s a reflection of him.”[31] “Murdoch has almost no involvement with it at all,” says Michael Wolff, who spent nine months embedded at News Corp. researching a biography of the Australian media giant. “People are afraid of Roger. Murdoch is, himself, afraid of Roger. He has amassed enormous power within the company – and within the country – from the success of Fox News.”[32] According to Rush Limbaugh, a “dear friend” of Ailes, “One man has established a culture for 1,700 people who believe in it, who follow it, who execute it,” Limbaugh once declared. “Roger Ailes is not on the air. Roger Ailes does not ever show up on camera. And yet everybody who does is a reflection of him."[33]

Regnery Publishing

Alfred S. Regnery, the son of Henry Regnery, became president of Regnery Publishing from 1986 to 2003. Alfred has also served as chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) and as trustee of the Philadelphia Society. In 1983, Edwin Meese asked Alfred to informally head the administration’s anti-pornography campaign, when he was in the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). This was despite the fact that in 1976, Alfred and his wife fabricated an incident which they reported to the police, claiming that his wife, who was eight months pregnant at the time, “had been raped by a white male and a black male and had been stabbed.” Shortly after the alleged assault, the police searched Regnery’s home and found a cache of pornography, including “several catalogues for various prophylactic devices and erotica.” The police also reported finding “a book with numerous color photos of various sexual gratification, including oral sex and placing of objects into the vagina,” a German sex magazine, and a copy of Penthouse. [34]  In the 2000s, Alfred left his post as president of Regnery Publishing to become the publisher of The American Spectator. Alfred was succeeded by Alex Novak, son of Robert Novak, infamous for outing CIA agent Valerie Plame.

One of Regnery’s publishing lines is the Politically Incorrect Guide (P.I.G.) series, which present conservative commentary of issues such as the American Civil War, the British empire, the Roman Catholic Church, Islam, immigration, and climate change. Regnery Publishing has had over 60 books reach the New York Times bestseller list. Regnery has also published Oliver North, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Robert Spencer, David Horowitz and Oliver Stone. Coulter was also published in Human Events, originally financed by Henry Regnery, which had also published the works of Murray Rothbard, and other pioneers of the libertarian movement. Regular writers for Human Events included Robert Novak, Pat Buchanan, as well as Newt Gingrich, Paul Craig Roberts and Sean Hannity. Paul Craig Roberts has contributed columns to Willis Carto’s American Free Press (AFP), which continues in the spirit of the Liberty Lobby’s The Spotlight. The magazine has also run columns by Joe Sobran, James Traficant, and Ron Paul. Writers for the newspaper also include Michael Collins Piper and James P. Tucker, Jr., a longtime Spotlight reporter known for this coverage of the Bilderberg Group. AFP focuses on conspiracy theory, nationalist economics, and anti-Zionism. It continues to promote alternative theories to the 9-11 attacks and support presidential candidates favoring individual liberty.

Malkin is a Fox News Channel contributor and has founded the conservative websites Twitchy and Hot Air. Noted Islamophobe Robert Spencer directs Jihad Watch which he founded in 2003. Spencer also co-founded Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) with Pamela Geller in 2010. Both organizations are designated as hate groups by the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Geller is known for her anti-Islamic writings, opposition to the proposed construction of an Islamic community center near the former site of the World Trade Center, and sponsorship of the “Draw the Prophet” cartoon contest in Garland, Texas.

David Horowitz, who from 1956–75 was an outspoken adherent of the New Left and a close friend Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, later rejected leftism and founded Students for Academic Freedom to oppose what he believed to be political correctness and leftist orientation in academia. Founded in 1988, the David Horowitz Freedom Center is one of the main organizations that “helped spread bigoted ideas into American life,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.[35] The Freedom Center was established with funding from groups including the John M. Olin Foundation, the Bradley Foundation and the Scaife Foundation.[36]

However, Regnery has been in the habit of creating bestsellers by artificially boosting sales, a practice that is common among conservative booksellers. SarahPAC spent $63,000 to purchase Going Rogue, and according to a Federal Election Commission filing, America By Heart was offered to donors with a $100 contribution.[37] Mitt Romney boosted sales of his book by requiring various schools, think tanks, and institutions to buy thousands of copies in exchange for his speeches.[38] When Regnery published Mark Levin’s 2009 book, Liberty and Tyranny, the Senate Conservatives Fund PAC spent $427,000 to buy copies which they distributed to donors who gave them $25 or more to elect conservative candidates.[39] The Conservative Books Club gave away copies of Ann Coulter’s book Godless: The Church of Liberalism if you bought two other books.[40] Regnery donates books to nonprofit groups affiliated with Eagle Publishing, which also owns Regnery, and gives the books as incentives to subscribers to newsletters published by Eagle. Though Godless retails for $27.95, a free copy was available with a subscription to Human Events, which publishes Coulter’s articles.[41]

Breitbart

In February 2017, Regnery published How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, by Joel B. Pollak, a Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News, who was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016.[42] Politico also confirmed that a large part of the funds provided by the David Horowitz Freedom Center to Jihad Watch came from Chernick, whose husband, Aubrey Chernick, was also a friend of Breitbart’s founder, Andrew Breitbart.[43] A fellow at the Freedom Center is Ben Shapiro, who was editor-at-large of Breitbart between 2012 and 2016, and serves as editor emeritus for The Daily Wire, which he founded, and hosts The Ben Shapiro Show.[44]

Breitbart was heavily funded by CNP member Robert Mercer, an American computer scientist, a developer in early artificial intelligence, and co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund. Mercer first joined the Koch brothers conservative political donor network in 2010, attending their semi-annual seminars, which provide a mechanism for right-wing millionaires looking for effective ways to coordinate their financial spending. The Mercers, explained Jane Mayer, “admired the savviness of the Kochs’ plan, which called for attendees to pool their contributions in a fund run by Koch operatives.”[45] The fund would strategically deploy funds for political campaigns across the country. The Kochs do not reveal the identities of their donors, or the size of contributions, but the Mercers reportedly began donating at least a million dollars a year, eventually contributing more than twenty-five million.[46] But Robert and his daughter Rebekah decided to establish their own political foundation, the Mercer Family Foundation, which has donated to a variety of conservative causes. In 2015, the Washington Post called Mercer one of the ten most influential billionaires in politics.[47] In addition an estimated $32 million spent on political campaigns as of 2016, Mercer has invested millions of dollars in the CNP, Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Media Research Center, Reclaim New York and Government Accountability Institute.

The New York Times described Breitbart News as, “The opinion and news site, once a curiosity of the fringe right wing, is now an increasingly powerful voice, and virtual rallying spot, for millions of disaffected conservatives who propelled Donald J. Trump to the Republican nomination for president.”[48] Breitbart has since been phenomenally successful, becoming the 29th most popular site in America with two billion page views a year. It is bigger than the Huffington Post. It’s the biggest political site on Facebook and the biggest on Twitter.[49]

Despite Breitbart’s alignment with white supremacists, the publication was actually started by a Jewish lawyer and businessman, Larry Solov.[50] Despite the publication’s overt association with racists and anti-Semites, Breitbart was conceived by Andrew Breitbart, who is also Jewish, during a visit to Israel in summer 2007, who was “sick of the anti- Israel bias of the mainstream media and J-Street,” and decided to found Breitbart with the aim of founding as a site “that would be unapologetically pro-freedom and pro-Israel.”[51]

“They say that we are ‘anti-Semitic,’” explained Solov and Breitbart’s editor Alex Marlow, “though our company was founded by Jews, is largely staffed by Jews, and has an entire section (Breitbart Jerusalem) dedicated to reporting on and defending the Jewish state of Israel.”[52] According to Dan Cassino, an associate professor of Political Science at Fairleigh Dickinson University who studies the right-wing media, since the early days, Breitbart has been focused on “calling out the left, but especially American Jews who were insufficiently loyal to Israel.” As Cassino explains it, its founder Andrew Breitbart, who died in 2012, relentlessly pursued the argument that “the left is the enemy, but Jews on the left are worse because they are traitors” who are “selling out Israel.”[53]

Andrew Breitbart met Matt Drudge in Los Angeles during the 1990s who became his mentor, with Breitbart later helping to run the Drudge Report. Drudge, who’s parents were Reform Jewish Democrats, says that his politics are “libertarian except for drugs and abortion.”[54] Critics say the Drudge Report has used the racial to generate page views, as in the case when it posted the headline of “Black Lives Kill,” after five Dallas police officers were killed in a horrific ambush attack in July 2016.[55] “Matt Drudge, for whom my late friend Andrew Breitbart used to work closely and for whom I used to fill in on his old national radio show, is not a conservative,” conservative talk-radio host John Ziegler told Business Insider. “He is a brilliant businessman who doesn’t care at all about the conservative cause.”[56] Drudge had a long homosexual relationship with Washington D.C. landscaper, David Cohen.[57] Since the death of Andrew Breitbart in 2012, Solov remains the co-owner along with Andrew Breitbart’s widow Susie Breitbart and the Mercer family.

Notable events in Breitbart’s history have included the ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy, the firing of Shirley Sherrod, the “Friends of Hamas” story, the Nancy Pelosi/Miley Cyrus ad campaign, the misidentification of Loretta Lynch, and Michelle Fields’ allegations against Corey Lewandowski, and the Anthony Weiner sexting scandals. Breitbart launched BigGovernment.com in 2009, and as Editor-in-Chief hired Mike Flynn, a former government affairs specialist at the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank funded by the Koch brothers. The site attracted nationwide attention when Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe used hidden cameras when they sought advice from employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) on how to run an illegal business that included the use of underage girls in the sex trade. O’Keefe had worked for about a year at the Leadership Institute, led by Morton Blackwell, a friend of Paul Weyrich. Although according to law enforcement and media analysts the videos were heavily edited to create a negative impression of ACORN, The U.S. Census Bureau and the IRS ending their contracts, the U.S. Congress suspended its funding, ultimately resulting in the organization filing for bankruptcy.[58]

In 2011, Breitbart’s BigJournalism website reported on a sexually explicit photo linked on the Twitter feed of her Huma’s husband, New York Representative Anthony Weiner. Weiner initially denied that he had sent a 21-year-old female college student the link to the photograph, but after questions developed, he admitted to inappropriate online relationships. Later that year, Breitbart reported other photos Weiner had sent, including one that was sexually explicit which was leaked after Breitbart participated in a radio interview with hosts Opie and Anthony. Breitbart stated that the photo was published without his permission. Weiner subsequently resigned from his congressional seat on June 21, 2011.

On August 28, 2016, the New York Post reported that Weiner had sexted another woman, including sending one picture while lying in bed with his young son. As a resulted, Weiner’s wife Huma Abedin announced her intention to separate from her husband. Abedin is an American political staffer who serves as vice chairwoman of the 2016 campaign for President of Hillary Clinton, with whom she is rumored to be having a long-term Lesbian affair. While a student at George Washington University, Abedin began working as an intern in the White House in 1996, assigned to then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. From 1996 to 2008, she was an assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. Writing in Vogue during the 2007 campaign, Rebecca Johnson called her “Hillary’s secret weapon.”[59]

According to a number of Clinton associates, Abedin is also a trusted advisor to Clinton, particularly on the Middle East, and has become known for that expertise. “She is a person of enormous intellect with in-depth knowledge on a number of issues—especially issues pertaining to the Middle East,” said Senator John McCain.[60] However, in a letter dated June 13, 2012, to the State Department Inspector General, five Republican members of Congress—Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Trent Franks of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Thomas J. Rooney of Florida, and Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia—claimed that Abedin’s three family members, including her late father, her mother and her brother, were connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations, failing to recognize the Muslim Brotherhood is a Masonic organization with long-standing ties to the CIA.[61]

Tea Party

Breitbart often appeared as a speaker at Tea Party movement events across the U.S. The Tea Party movement, promoted by Fox News, and attuned to the Koch brothers’ propaganda of denouncing “Big Government.”  Essential funding for the Tea Party movement was provided through groups such as Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF), both founded by the Koch brothers. Growing since 2004 and now spanning three dozen US states, AFP now employs hundreds of professional operatives, claims close to 300,000 affiliated volunteer activists, and spends some $150 million annually on electoral efforts and policy campaigns.[62] The two organizations have called on at least fifteen Fox News hosts and contributors to publicly promote their upcoming events, Media Matters said. These hosts include Tucker Carlson, Mike Huckabee, Laura Ingraham, Guy Benson, Dana Perino and Andrew Napolitano.[63]

In 1984, when the Koch brothers founded Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a conservative political group whose self-described mission was “to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation,” Congressman Ron Paul was appointed as its first chairman.[64] Journalist Joshua Green has stated in The Atlantic that while Paul was not the Tea Party’s founder, or its culturally resonant figure, he has become the “intellectual godfather” of the movement since many now agree with his long-held beliefs.[65] Paul, a former associate of Lew Rockwell, maintained a close working relationship with the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, and has given extensive interviews to the magazine of the John Birch Society, and has frequently been a guest of the radio show of Alex Jones. Jones denounces Jacob Rothschild, George Soros and Warren Buffet as “globalists,” but defends the Koch brothers, claiming they are a “political bogeyman for the controlled left.”[66]

Paul and his associates published a number of the newsletters, particularly in the period between 1988 and 1994 when Paul was no longer in Congress, dwelling on conspiracy theories, praising anti-government militia movements and warning of coming race wars. The newsletters offered praise for David Duke and other controversial figures. Paul’s newsletter’s outlook showed sympathy for the cause of the radical Patriot Movement, where armed revolution against the federal government was seen as justified. In January 1995, three months before right-wing militants bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, a newsletter listed “Ten Militia Commandments,” describing “the 1,500 local militias now training to defend liberty” as “one of the most encouraging developments in America.”[67]

“Ron Paul may not be a member of the John Birch Society, but you need a micrometer to tell them apart,” says Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political Research Associates who’s been following the JBS and other right-wing groups for years. Someone from Houston asked if he was a JBS member. “I’m not a member [of the John Birch Society],” he told the reporter, but “…the members of the John Birch Society have been very good friends of mine and have been very helpful in my campaign.”[68] In recent years, the John Birch Society has played a major and acknowledged role in the Tea Party. The Daily Caller reported in 2010 that the JBS, despite having been marginalized by William F. Buckley in the 1960s and 1970s, had been making the rounds at several Tea Party events and started hosting a table at CPAC in 2009, after having not attended for two decades, save one year in the 1990s.[69] But the JBS openly acknowledged their support for the Tea Party. “We’ve been helping train the Tea Party for some time, teaching it how to organize and avoid some of the mistakes we made,” said Bill Hahn, a JBS spokesman.[70] As noted by Chip Berlet, “As it coalesced as a political force in the late 1970s the new Christian Right adopted many themes from the anticommunist conspiracy-hunting of the John Birch Society, and portions of the Christian Right subsequently became a major source of conspiracist narrative in the 1980s and 1990s.”[71]

According to Dr. James Scaminaci, a sociologist and authority on the Tea Party and the American militia movement, the “blueprint for the development of the patriot militia movement,” was provided by William Lind.[72] As further noted by Jerome Jamin in “Cultural Marxism and the Radical Right,” the Tea Party “is an ideal place to accommodate the ideas of William Lind and Pat Buchanan, as it is fundamentally anti-communist and anti-Marxist.”[73] Even though the right-wing groups and conspiracy theorists have a wide range of different goals, the Tea Party places its view of the Constitution at the center of its reform agenda. It urges the return of government as intended by some of the Founding Fathers. Tea Party activists have expressed support for Republican politicians Sarah Palin, Dick Armey, Michele Bachmann, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. In July 2010, Bachmann formed the Tea Party Congressional Caucus, which has been defunct since July 2012. A “Nationwide Chicago Tea Party” protest was coordinated across more than 40 different cities for February 27, 2009, thus establishing the first national modern Tea Party protest.

Karl Frisch of Media Matters wrote that Fox News “frequently aired segments imploring its audience to get involved with tea-party protests across the country.”[74] Fox has also provided organizing information for the events on air and online. Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Neil Cavuto, and Greta Van Susteren all broadcasted live from tea parties in different cities across the country. Fox News called many of the protests in 2009 “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties” which it promoted on air and sent speakers to. This was to include then-host Glenn Beck, though Fox came to discourage him from attending later events. Beck, who has quoted National Renaissance Party member Eustace Mullins, speaks frequently about God’s special “destiny for America.” Referring directly to the 1630 sermon by John Winthrop, the Rosicrucian and first governor of Massachusetts, he said, “We used to strive in this country to be a shining city on the hill,” at the Restoring Honor rally in 2010. “That’s what the Pilgrims came here for. That’s what they thought this land was. It’s what our Founders thought… It is the shining example of a place where people work together in peace and friendship and worship God and make things better together.”[75]

Alex Jones

According to Alex Jones, the Tea Party was started by him and Ron Paul supporters.[76] The Tea Party was mobilized by the notion of a conspiracy inspired by the writings of right-wing conspiracy authors like Eustace Mullins, who was a guest on Alex Jones’ radio show InfoWars. New York magazine described Jones, who has been a frequent guest on Art Bell’s show, as “America’s leading conspiracy theorist,” and the Southern Poverty Law Center as “the most prolific conspiracy theorist in contemporary America.”[77] A classic Patriot, Jones believes, in his own words, that “the answer to 1984 is 1776,” and that America can be saved from the clutches of the “Illuminati” through a return to the principles of the “Founding Fathers.” Despite his denunciations of “globalists,” Jones has affirmed his avowed support for Zionist. He believes that government and big business have colluded to create a New World Order through “manufactured economic crises, sophisticated surveillance tech and—above all—inside-job terror attacks that fuel exploitable hysteria.”[78]

Jones, who is known for his rabid denunciations of the “Illuminati,” nevertheless maintains that the enemies of the conspiracy and the founders of the United States, are the “real” Illuminati. In October 2015, Jones revealed this bombshell:

The Illuminati founded in Germany was a counter Illuminati to the real Illuminati that just called itself the Enlightenment, and in Latin “Illuminati.” But it didn’t call itself Sir Francis Bacon, and all of that, hundreds of years before the Jesuit priest Adam Weishaupt. The modern Illuminati was a Catholic spin-off in an attempt to take over the Illuminati and the Rosicrucians. And yes, undoubtedly, my family on both sides of the Mayflower, hardcore protestants, you could say Rosicrucians. This country was founded by real Rosicrucians, not the Rosicrucians you see out there today. And so, undoubtedly, if you want to say it, I mean I would say I come out of a classical enlightenment family of what you would call real Illuminati, real enlightenment. And I’ll just say it and I’ll tell you there’s no secret society, there’s no secret messages there’s no secret handshakes. There’s freedom, there’s Jesus Christ, there’s free market, there’s family, there’s strength, there’s honor. There’s the will to fight tyrants. That’s what there is. The will to fight evil. The will to build a new civilization. Built on honor, built on trust, built on building up a system for all of humanity. And that secret was not a secret at all, and it made this country special, despite all our evils. The will and the dream to build that [Francis Bacons’] New Atlantis was special and was pure and now the globalists have hijacked the New Atlantis and they’ve used it to take over the world and sell the opposite of what this country was founded on and it tears my heart out. So it’s easy for lesser men to write an article claiming I’m in some secret society and a Mason. I’m in the society of humanity. There are no secrets.[79]

Jones calls himself a paleoconservative, whose early sources were the Patriot Movement, John Birch Society and the CNP. In an interview with Joel Skousen, nephew of conservative author and commentator W. Cleon Skousen of the John Birch Society, Jones claimed, “There’s a left-wing CFR-funded conspiracy theory that says some group called the CNP runs everything. It’s a total diversion… Absolutely, [Howard Phillips and Richard Viguerie are excellent CNP mentor]. And Howard Phillips has been fighting the New World Order forever.”[80] Although not openly advocating racism against Blacks, Jones has nevertheless employed the characteristic argument of the Klan, that political correctness denies Whites the right to “defend” their own rights and their “culture.”[81]

Jones has actually admitted on multiple occasions that he comes from a CIA and army special forces family: “Let me just tell you something. I grew up in Dallas, Texas, with my family doing things like, uh, helping take in East German defectors, okay? Whenever I go to a family reunion, half of the people in the room are former or retired CIA. And do you know what they tell me? They tell me I’m dead on, a hundred percent absolutely right.”[82] Jones claims that he’s often asked by recently retired generals, or former special forces colonels, or current Delta Force people—some of them have been on his show—they ask what intelligence agency he’s with. While his answer is consistently no, Jones explains: “On the other hand, I do have branches of different agencies actually trying to couple with what we’re doing to resist the globalists. And I’m not working with some agency in an official capacity taking orders. It doesn’t work like that. It’s just people that also wanna resist this. It’s like V for Vendatta where everybody doesn’t need to get orders. They’ll just show up at the same time.”[83]

[1] Matthew Hutson. “Why Liberals Aren’t as Tolerant as They Think.” Politico (May 09, 2017).

[2] Jane Mayer. “The Making of the Fox News White House.” The New Yorker (March 11, 2019 Issue).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Max Boot. “Republicans are paying the price for their addiction to their own media.” Washington Post (October 6, 2016).

[5] Associated Press. “Murdoch fund-raiser for Clinton creates buzz.” NBC News (May 12, 2006).

[6] “Clinton: Vast right-wing conspiracy is back.” MSNBC. Associated Press (March 13, 2007).

[7] Denver Nicks. “Unsealed Clinton Docs Shed Light on ‘Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.’” Time (April 18, 2014).

[8] Brooks Jackson. “Who Is Richard Mellon Scaife?” CNN (April 27, 1998).

[9] Chris Good. “Clinton White House’s Conspiracy Theory of Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories.” ABC News (April 18, 2014); John F. Harris & Peter Baker. “White House Memo Asserts a Scandal Theory.” Washington Post (January 10, 1997).

[10] Paul Waldman. “Fox News is now completely devoted to Donald Trump.” The Week (May 20, 2016).

[11] “Fox News Channel Tops Cable in Total Day Viewers for Record Eight Consecutive Months.” Fox News (February 2017).

[12] Paul Waldman. “Fox News is now completely devoted to Donald Trump.”

[13] Brad Friedman. “Fox News’s faux news.” The Guardian (November 16, 2009).

[14] Anthony Collings. Capturing the News: Three Decades of Reporting Crisis and Conflict (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2010), p. 154.

[15] David A. Bell. “Fake News Is Not the Real Media Threat We’re Facing.” The Nation (December 22, 2016).

[16] Rachel Weiner. “The Ten Most Egregious Fox News Distortions.” The Huffington Post (October 20, 2009).

[17] Robert Parry. “How Roy Cohn Helped Rupert Murdoch.”

[18] Jason Deans. “Kiley attacks Murdoch’s friendship with Israel.” The Guardian (September 5, 2001).

[19] “The Murdochs and the Middle East.” The Spectator (December 11, 2007).

[20] “Business and Financial Leaders Lord Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch Invest in Genie Oil & Gas.” IDT Corporation (November 15, 2010).

[21] Chris Wright. “Why Is A Saudi Prince Selling Out Of News Corp?” Forbes (February 4, 2015).

[22] James Rosen. “Did members of Saudi royal family fund terrorism against US?” Fox News Special Report (February 6, 2015).

[23] Cliff Kincaid. “Scandal Rocks Fox News Over Saudi Terror Link.” Accuracy in Media (February 6, 2015).

[24] “Rupert Murdoch takes stake in rival to al-Jazeera.” The Guardian (July 6, 2010).

[25] Lucia Graves. “Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch: inside the billionaire bromance.” The Guardian (June 16, 2017).

[26] Babara Bush. Barbara Bush: A Memoir (Guideposts, 1994), p. 338.

[27] Tim Dickinson. “Political Hitman Lee Atwater on 'Soul Brother' Roger Ailes.” Rolling Stone (June 1, 2011).

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Jack Shafer. “Fox News 1.0.” Slate (June 5, 2008).

[31] Dickson. “How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory.”

[32] Ibid.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Murray Waas. “Al Regnery’s Secret Life.” New Republic (June 22, 1986).

[35] Chip Berlet. “Into the Mainstream.” SPLC (August 15, 2003). Retrieved from https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2003/mainstream

[36] “David Horowitz Freedom Center.” Islamophobia Network. Retrieved from https://islamophobianetwork.com/organization/david-horowitz-freedom-center/

[37] “America By Fraud: Sarah Palin Buys Her Way On To NYT Bestseller List.” Politicus USA (December 2, 2010).

[38] Steve Benen. “A publishing mystery.” Washington Monthly (December 28, 2010).

[39] Oliver Willis. “Mark Levin Claims ‘No Groups Buy My Books’ As Conservative Group Buys His Book.” Media Matters (January 10, 2014).

[40] Sarah Ferguson. “CORRECTED: Ann Coulter: Plumping Her Sales Figures?” Village Voice ( JUNE 15, 2006).

[41] Nomad. “Cooking the Books: How the Conservative Best Seller Scam is a Free Market Hypocrisy.” Nomadic Politics (November 16, 2014).

[42] Joel B. Pollak. “In Show of Unity, Bannon, Priebus Address CPAC and the ‘Opposition.’” Breitbart (February 23, 2017).

[43] Giovanni Russonello & Kenneth P. Vogel. “Latest mosque issue: The money trail.” Politico (September 4, 2010).

[44]  Leily Rezvani. “Ben Shapiro to speak on campus after Stanford admin criticized his collaborator’s visit in May.” The Stanford Daily (October 18, 2019).

[45] Jane Mayer. “The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency.” The New Yorker (March 27, 2017 Issue).

[46] Ibid.

[47] Amber Phillips. “The 10 most influential billionaires in politics.” Washington Post (21 September 2015).

[48] Michael M. Grynbaum & John Herrman, “Breitbart Rises From Outlier to Potent Voice in Campaign.” New York Times (August 26, 2016).

[49] Carol Cadwalladr. “Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media.” The Guardian (February 26, 2017).

[50] Josh Hafner. “For the Record: For Trump, everything’s going to be alt-right.” USA Today (August 26, 2016).

[51] Larry Solov. “Breitbart News Network: Born In The USA, Conceived In Israel.” Breitbart News (November 17, 2015).

[52] Robert Mackey. “Steve Bannon Made Breitbart a Space for Pro-Israel Writers and Anti-Semitic Readers.” The Intercept (November 16, 2016).

[53] Ibid.

[54] Robert Scheer. “Dinner With Drudge.” Online Journalism Review (July 16, 1998).

[55] “After Dallas, conservatives rebel against the Drudge Report.” Business Insider (July 10, 2016).

[56] Ibid.

[57] Keith Stern. Queers in history: the comprehensive encyclopedia of historical gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders (Dallas: BenBella, 2009).

[58] Simon Maloy. “Report: James O’Keefe To Pay $100K Settlement To Former ACORN Employee.” Media Matters for America (March 7, 2013).

[59] Rebecca Johnson. “Hillary’s Secret Weapon: Huma Abedin.” Vogue (August 1, 2007).

[60] Spencer Morgan. “Hillary’s Mystery Woman: Who Is Huma?” Observer (April 2, 2007).

[61] Editorial, “Michele Bachmann’s baseless attack on Huma Abedin,” The Washington Post (July 19, 2012).

[62] Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Theda Skocpol & Caroline Tervo. “Behind “Make America Great,” the Koch Agenda Returns with a Vengeance.” Talking Points Memo (November 21, 2016).

[63] Eric Hananoki. “The Koch Brothers Are Using Fox News Employees As Campaigners.” Media Matters (July 1, 2014).

[64] Daniel Faber, Deborah McCarthy. Foundations for Social Change: Critical Perspectives on Philanthropy and Popular Movements (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), p. 97.

[65] “The Tea Party’s Brain – Magazine.” The Atlantic (October 5, 2010).

[66] The Majority Report. “Alex Jones Paid By The Koch Brothers?!” YouTube (October 9, 2013).

[67] James Kirchick, “Angry White Man.” New Republic (January 8, 2008).

[68] Andrew Reinbach. “President Ron Paul? Ron Paul and the John Birch Society.” Huffington Post (July 5, 2011).

[69] Matthew Boyle. “John Birch Society reborn in Tea Party movement?” The Daily Caller (November 29, 2010).

[70] Andrew Reinbach. “President Ron Paul? Ron Paul and the John Birch Society.” Huffington Post (July 5, 2011).

[71] Chip Berlet. “The Spread of Conspiracist Scapegoating and Anti-Masonry.” Freemasonry in Context: History, Ritual, Controversy. ed. Art DeHoyos, S. Brent Morris (Lexington Books, 2004), p. 287.

[72] Paul Rosenberg. “From the “old right” to the alt-right: How the conservative ideology of FDR’s day fueled the rise of Trump.” Salon (October 8, 2016).

[73] Jerome Jamin. “Cultural Marxism and the Radical Right.” The Post-War Anglo-American Far Right: A Special Relationship of Hate, ed., P. Jackson & A. Shekhovtsov (Springer, 2014), p. 96.

[74] Karl Frisch. “Warning: This tea may cause severe damage to journalistic integrity.” Media Matters (April 10, 2009).

[75] Lisa Miller. “One Nation Under God.” Newsweek (December 9, 2010).

[76] Mabel Stephens. “Alex Jones Ron Paul founded the Tea party and the Koch brothers fund it.” YouTube (Sep 19, 2014).

[77] Joe Ciscarelli. “An Interview With Alex Jones, America’s Leading (and Proudest) Conspiracy Theorist” (November 17, 2013); “Alex Jones Profile.” Southern Poverty Law Center.

[78] Alexander Zaitchik. “Meet Alex Jones.” Rolling Stone (March 2, 2011).

[79] “Alex Jones Reveals His Deep Masonic Roots” The Alex Jones Channel. YouTube (Oct 16, 2015).

[80] Joel V.D. Heijden. “Alex Jones of Infowars Admits to CIA and ‘Army Special Forces’ family; Supports Death Squads, Dictators, Drugs, Disinformation… And the CNP.” Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics (January 17, 2016).

[81] NWOTaser. “Alex Jones Rant: Shut-Up Racist, Shut-Up Nazi, Shut-Up Cracker.” YouTube (January 18, 2011).

[82] Joel V.D. Heijden. “Alex Jones of Infowars Admits to CIA and ‘Army Special Forces’ family; Supports Death Squads, Dictators, Drugs, Disinformation… And the CNP.” Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics (January 17, 2016). Retrieved from https://isgp-studies.com/alex-jones-of-infowars-is-cia-army-disinformation

[83] Ibid.

Volume Six

1. Culture Wars

2. Red Mafia

3. From Russia With Love

4. #MeToo

5. Conservative Media

6. Atl-Reich

7. Multipolar World Order

8. Katehon

9. Collusion

10. Russia House

11. Techno-Libertarianism

12. Military-Digital Complex

13. Fake News

14. Memetic Warfare

15. Big Data

16. Make America White Again!

17. In Trump We Trust

18. Israel First