Fox News coaxed its viewers into believing the ‘Big Lie’ that the US election was stolen, one that helped stoked the Capitol Hill insurrection.
In the two months following the November 2019 presidential election, the Fox News cable network promoted and amplified the “stolen election” conspiracy theory, creating the overheated political environment that made the Trump coup at first possible, and then actual.
It can’t be understood as journalism, although it lathers its output with that oh-so-journalistic feel. And it’s more than propaganda. It seems more like practical activism as, knowingly or not, Fox led its MAGA audience through the three steps all activists know from Saul Alinsky’s organising guidebook Rules for Radicals: build anger and feed it with hope that urges on action.
Anger
Anger kicked off the day after the November 3 vote as Sean Hannity launched into his evening show with “Tonight, every American should be angry, outraged and worried and concerned about what happened in the election and the lead-up to the election.”
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