Listening to folk who regularly consume Fox News and Sky News Australia content you enter a disturbing place. The right wing media is profoundly corrupt. The reporting on Trump is more akin to cheer leading than any scrutineering. Outlandish claims by Donald Trump are accepted without examination. The right wing media bubble is an echo chamber full of lies and exaggerations. This is the home of fake news for gaslighting and other nefarious means. The false accusations about the economic wastage and criminality of welfare programmes by Elon Musk and his DOGE are an illustration of this.
The War On Welfare By The Right Wing Americans
In the United States any financial help for those less fortunate has always been begrudged by neocons. This half of America feeds on the vulnerable to make their fortunes and besmirches the idea of the welfare state. Historically, when slavery was outlawed it was the slave owners who got recompensated. The slaves themselves got nothing and most white politicians fought against welfare policies to help these African Americans going forward.
“On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill emancipating enslaved people in Washington, the end of a long struggle. But to ease slaveowners’ pain, the District of Columbia Emancipation Act(Link is external) (Link opens in new window) paid those loyal to the Union up to $300 for every enslaved person freed. That’s right, slaveowners got reparations. Enslaved African-Americans got nothing for their generations of stolen bodies, snatched children and expropriated labor other than their mere release from legal bondage.”
The Right Wing Myth Of The Self Made American
The current Musk Trump DOGE attacks, sackings and purge of civil servants and welfare programmes reminds me of Robodebt in Australia. Of course, the LNP Coalition take inspiration from the extremist right wing think tanks and politics prevalent in the USA. This Anglo-settler psyche formulated thinking is all about white men inheriting the earth and making their own way without government assistance. This is a myth, of course, the whole pulling yourself up by your boot straps thing. Even the family at the heart of Little House On The Prairie fame received free land grants from the US government. Elon Musk and his companies have benefitted from $38 billion worth of government contracts. Making welfare recipients into criminals is a well-trodden path of demonisation by neocons in Australia and the US.
Demonised Dole Bludgers Downunder
Disgruntled working people latch onto villains identified by their political leaders. Scapegoats include welfare cheats, immigrants, LGBTQI folk and anyone different from the accepted norms. The right wing media is profoundly corrupt in that they don’t fact check and are largely made up of political hacks and are not investigative journalists. Indeed, real journalism is pretty thin on the ground at Fox News and Sky News Australia. Op/ed, gossip, and disinformation are their meat and potatoes. The unthinking public love this fodder on their social media feeds. Believing the worst in people, especially the demonised enemy is what makes this merry go around. Robodebt saw half a million Australians made out falsely to be welfare cheats and dole bludgers. This illegal scheme was the brain child of Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and their political minions. It has cost the Australian tax payer $1.8 billion in a settled class action, but much, much more in money and lives after a Royal Commission and NACC enquiries. People took their own lives in despair and it is considered the greatest betrayal of its citizens by an Australian government in history.
“The Royal Commission found that “Robodebt was a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals. In essence, people were traumatised on the off-chance they might owe money. It was a costly failure of public administration, in both human and economic terms”.
With those words, the Royal Commission summed up the human tragedy that was the Robodebt Scheme – a Budget measure introduced by the Abbott Government, expanded by the Turnbull Government and defended, until the last minute, by the Morrison Government.”
PwC the consultancy firm paid tens of billions by the LNP Coalition federal governments after they slashed the public service, did several reviews into Robodebt during its 6 years. Macro-corruption is the term used to describe these big ticket redirections of public funds into the pockets of individuals and private sector mates. A lack of transparency accompanies these movements of government services into the private sector. The chumps who support Trump are in for a surprise when their Medicaid money and services disappear into the bank accounts of friends of Trump and Musk. This is the underserving super wealthy stealing from the poor – it is not some cost cutting exercise – it is massive corruption. Simultaneously, Trump loyalists – yes men – will replace inspector generals and long serving unbiased civil servants. Corruption will go into overdrive in the USA. The poor will get poorer. The very rich will get even richer. The halls of power will get whiter and many more men will be in charge of things. This does not reflect the population demographics of the United States. DEI was and has been a concerted effort to share power with people from different walks of life and more diverse backgrounds.
The right wing media is profoundly corrupt and Trump is banning AP and Reuters from White House press briefings. Russian state media was present at the staged attack on Zelenskyy by Trump and Vance. Donald Trump will try to turn America into Putin’s Russia by hobbling the media in the courts and through threats and bans. Corporate media is already buckling via Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post in its surrender of editorial independence. Murdoch has long been a right wing mogul fanning the polarising flames to divide America for greenbacks. These giant companies have their snouts in the trough already. The idea of a free media has always been somewhat contrived in the face of rampant capitalism but now will disappear completely. All these Americans who wanted to see real change will find out that things can change in the wrong way.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
©GolfDom
