Reflections on Right Wing Talk Radio (2011)

From issue 22 of the World Socialist Review

Right-wing talk radio seems in search of a savior, at least those that broadcast the gospel as interpreted by the religious right who seek to impose a biblical order while abandoning the social aspects of traditional Christianity. The religious right holds a quasi-Calvinist view (with the terror of End Times thrown in), according to which God rewards those who outdo their brethren in cut-throat competition to earn the big bucks. So hold on to your job at all costs and climb the corporate ladder, stepping on the fingers of the guy on the rung below. This worship of cut-throat competition is naturally accompanied by cynical paranoia – heated exaggeration, a suspicious attitude, outright dishonesty, and conspiratorial fantasy. Paranoia is hard to confine to one part of the mind and expands into a worldview.

The function of paranoia

Right-wing talk radio is full of distrust and fear – fear of the unknown, fear of Moslems, fear of invasion – and this feeds the paranoia.

Paranoia actually performs an important social function. It’s one way of bringing order to a disorderly world. Seeing conspiracy everywhere you look at least makes sense of things beyond your understanding. The threat of climate change, financial collapse, nuclear weapons, terrorism – these are phenomena of such magnitude that any conceivable action feels like David versus Goliath.

The millions of Americans who listen to religious conservative talk radio are gradually bringing the United States closer to fascism. Is this because a growing number of them believe there is no alternative?

Twenty-five years ago, Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale actually presented the U.S. electorate with real policy choices, even if they offered no alternative to the established system. Today, however, any differences are a mere matter of degree. The neoliberal stance is shared by both parties. Republicans rail against the Democrats’ bailouts, government takeovers, and budget deficits, hoping the populace forgets that all these things also occurred under George W. Bush. Meanwhile, almost every single concept in Obama’s health plan has been pushed by senior Republicans, from Bob Dole to Mitt Romney.

Farewell to Keynes

The Democrats once accepted Keynes’ approach to economic policy. Keynes concern was to ensure social stability by maintaining full employment at relatively high wages. His utopia was a society of leisure and prosperity, beauty, grace, and variety, where “love of money” would be regarded as an aberration. The new neoliberal paradigm sacrifices all social values – and is prepared if necessary to sacrifice democracy itself – on the altar of “sound finance.” Today’s spineless and stupid Democrats also kowtow to the neoliberal god.

Glen Beck bleats over the airwaves that the call of the “socialist” and “Moslem” Obama for voluntary national service is “something out of Maoist China.” But the “progressive” president of “change” and “hope” copied this idea from George W. Bush, and he in turn copied it from his father, George H.W. Bush, who first proposed it in 1989.

With names like “No Spin Zone,” “Nothing But Truth,” and “Steel on Steel,” right-wing talk radio programs appropriate the “news” format and masquerade as news broadcasts. Many liberals get their news from satirical programs like “The Daily Show” or “The Colbert Report.” The disinformation is so effective that all these people actually imagine that they are hearing the news!

Both political parties represent the same class interests and strive for the same class goals. The strident yap-yap-yap that endlessly streams forth from the radio talk shows does not express any significant policy differences, but is contrived as a substitute for them.

An objective critique must resist all attempts to manipulate its ideas for purposes opposed to its own. “Criticize all that is.”

Joe Hopkins