The disinformation machine you've never heard of, how Christian fundamentalists brainwash millions

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions

Over the past two decades, the American media landscape has been transformed. At the turn of the last century, a hundred-year-old news canon still reigned supreme: professional journalism from wire services such as the Associated Press and leading newspapers set a national news agenda. Magazines, broadcasters, and local newspapers added their own reporting, but paid close attention to the national template. The formula worked: the late 20th century was the Golden Age of the journalism business. Professional news organizations played a powerful role in society, and ad-rich newspapers and broadcasters made record profits.

That all changed in the early 2000’s, when the new digital platforms — including Google, Facebook, and Craigslist — challenged that structure and blew up its business model. Journalism’s mainstays, lucrative display and classified advertising, migrated online with the advantage of reaching targeted consumers. Audiences who had been told “content wants to be free” balked at the paywalls that compensated journalists to report and editors to vet their work.

As a result, between 2000 and 2020, network news divisions closed scores of foreign and national bureaus, and one in five US newspapers failed. Over a thousand counties, most of them rural, were left with no newspaper at all.

But nature abhors a vacuum, and as professional journalism disappeared from thousands of communities, new media models stood ready to take its place. The Radical Right’s media ecosystem was built on previous decades of media development through religious broadcasting and political direct mail. They benefited not just from the news deserts, they also combined with the opportunities presented by new media technologies. These would mushroom into an entire ecosystem of religious fundamentalist radio programs and podcasts, many of them disguised as “news programs,” as well as countless digital platforms and social media initiatives that have been feeding a toxic diet of political propaganda and COVID misinformation to their audiences in recent years.

*snip*

[Faux pas]

1. Kickin'

To read later

[Grasswire2]

2. Why don't we just give them their own "holy land" space and help them move?

Something we can easily cut off at the borders.

Florida seems like an appropriate spot.

[Chainfire]

8. They want the whole thing, and they expect us to move.

I have pondered what the world that they think that they want would look like if they got it. A society with two guns for ever person, but one brain to share among three. I don't think it would be long before the survivors would be growing bananas and fighting among themselves.

[csziggy]

9. I've known what it would be like since reading Heinlein's "If This Goes On"

"If This Goes On—" is a science fiction novella by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, first serialized in 1940 in Astounding Science-Fiction and revised and expanded for inclusion in the 1953 collection Revolt in 2100. The novella shows what might happen to Christianity in the United States given mass communications, applied psychology, and a hysterical populace.

{SNIP}

The story is set in a future theocratic American society, ruled by the latest in a series of fundamentalist Christian "Prophets". The First Prophet was Nehemiah Scudder, a backwoods preacher turned President (elected in 2012), then dictator (no elections were held in 2016 or later).

{SNIP}

The 1940 version of "If This Goes On—" was believed to be Heinlein's first novel[5] until the unpublished work For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs was discovered in 2003.[6] However, in the earlier, unpublished novel Scudder, though coming very close to gaining power, is stopped at the last moment by the mobilization of Libertarians.

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22If_This_Goes_On%E2%80%94%22

That future and the one in the Handmaid's Tale are my worst fears for the Christo-facist take over of this country.

[Goonch]

3. The Council for National Policy (CNP)

The Council for National Policy (CNP) is an umbrella organization and networking group for conservative and Republican activists in the United States.

It was launched in 1981 during the Reagan administration by Tim LaHaye and other right-wing conservative Christians, to "bring more focus and force to conservative advocacy"It has been described by The New York Times as "a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country,"

[lindysalsagal]

4. When the holy scripture (or something close) is for sale to the highest bidder.

What a money maker for the fake churches! Multi-national corporations get to piggyback on the gospel for a price.

These people are already brainwashed to buy into it all. This may be the end of civil society. This is how you get a jan 6 insurrection.

[Traildogbob]

5. These "Christians"

Are like the Pentecostal tambourine beating snake handlers up here in Western North Carolina.
Trump is the serpent. They are not afraid of his poisonous bite, they welcome it. It shows God their full faith in him. He will save them from the Orange serpent bite and reward them for their faith in their God. But like many of those fools, they died.
Not so sure heaven is packed with Jim Jones and Davidian idiots either.

[roamer65]

6. I'd like use Kirk's head as a punching bag.

[Hulk]

7. We should all drive across rural America and listen to AM radio..

Probably on FM as well. The biblical bull shit and right wing propaganda is being pumped in rural America's ears 24/7 like you wouldn't believe. It's hopeless.