Goebbels was no doubt anti-Semitic (although it’s been said he had some distant Jewish ancestors), but he also didn’t believe the vicious propaganda he concocted. He knew that Jews and Slavs weren’t the cause of Germany’s economic crisis but, politically, he used anti-Semitism to bring Hitler to power. (Something like the Bush Administration agreeing on Saddam’s WMD to justify the invasion of Iraq. Our intel agencies knew he had no WMD and was no danger to the US — it’s was all propaganda to sell the war.)

McCarthy may have been anti-Communist, but his main interest was in establishing himself as a national figure so that he could run for president, just as Nixon had used the Alger Hiss spy case to gain national prominence. McCarthy’s chief advisor Roy Cohn, who drafted the lists of supposed Commies, knew very well most of those he singled out were not Communists — he was also expanding his power and I’ve read he got a ‘delightful chill’ up his spine everytime he humbled or terrorized some poor actor by threatening his or her livelihood with an accusation of Communist sympathies. Similarly, J. Edgar Hoover exploited the ‘Communist threat’ to enhance and expand his power, even though he knew that, in many cases, he was actually spending taxpayer money to keep US Communist groups going so that he could use them in his campaign against Bolshevism. Hoover wrote a book about the ‘Commie menace’ called “Masters of Deceit” which, if he had been honest, would have been autobiographical.

The point is, it’s not what they believed, it’s that they intentionally invented lies to defame whatever adversary they decided would bring them the most power and money and what Goebbels descibed as that ‘secret thrill’ of putting something over on the suckers. If they had to do it for free, I doubt any of them would have played the game.

This is not to say that there weren’t ‘True Believers’ in the ranks, but that those at the top did not believe the propaganda they spread.

So your argument is that Palmer was not inherently anti-Bolshevik, Goebbels was not inherently anti-Semitic, & McCarthy was not inherently anti-Communist but that each of these persons cynically used those causes to promote their own personal rise?

Not sure how we’d test it.

Now, I’ve heard some quotes from Bill O’Reilly & Glen Beck suggesting that they realize that they are “entertainers” not “reporters” but I’m not sure that the whole “Liberal Media” argument, which has been trumpeted at least since Nixon, isn’t believed. There are several quotes, from a few different Fox personalities, that suggest that they see Fox as “fair & balanced” by being the “news of the right” to balance the SCLM’s “news of the left”.

The clown suits, to my mind, would just be honesty in advertising, but I see what you mean: in an otherwise serious piece, I ended with a somewhat inappropriate attempt at humor.

I disagree that the people at Fox News really think they’re balancing out the liberal slant of the news. Some few down on the scale no doubt believe they are balancing out what they think, regardless of the facts, is a liberal MSM, but others at the top, such as Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and Cal Thomas, are cynics who are well aware they are spreading right-wing propaganda and that the MSM isn’t really that liberal and, aside from that, can be easily cowed into reporting what the right wants them to report. They know the US media is owned by conservative corporations run by Republicans, whatever the political opinions of individual reporters lower on the ladder might be. Every propagandist, in order to be good at the job, must be a total cynic about the misinformation and lies they are spreading, and that is true from Woodrow Wilson’s man George Creel’s Committee on Public Information in WWI that depicted German ‘Huns’ as bloody barbarians who bayoneted infants; to Joseph Goebbels’ Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda that blamed all Germany’s problems on Jews and Slavs; to Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn’s Communist witch hunts of the ’50s and the infamous Blacklist. The people running these propaganda operations were cynical, sociopathic opportunists who believed in their ’cause’ only insofar as it increased their money and power; they scoffed at the true believers while privately savoring their ability to move the masses with well-constructed lies. Such is the state of Fox News, at least the top executive officers and big name air talent.

Certainly not your normal fare. Depressing, but thank you for letting us know of this.

I do disagree with the idea that Fox is an arm of the Republican Party. Instead the Republican Party is supported & promoted as a source of programming for Fox. It’s Fox using the Republicans, not the other way around.

I’m also not sure I agree with the Clown Suits…

The worst part of it is that Fox et. al. actually believe that they balance an otherwise “liberal media”.