They are coming for us - right-wing media on Bidens week

  • 3 years   ago

President Biden may have called for unity but he's also trying to quickly dismantle Trump's legacy. How has his busy first full week gone down with conservative media?

"They are coming for us," Newsmax's Greg Kelly warned his viewers this week.

 

Joe Biden and the other liberals in Washington were trying "to cancel us and what we stand for", Kelly explained, just like Donald Trump said they would.

For those unfamiliar with the conservative media landscape, his warning might have sounded melodramatic.

But Kelly knows his audience - and how to tap into their deep unease about where Biden will take America, economically and culturally.

People in places like Kansas, Oklahoma and other Republican-leaning states worry openly about the government trying to control their lives, and to take away their livelihoods.

And in Biden's flurry of executive orders - he's signed more than three dozen already including ones on LGBT rights, racial justice, immigration and the environment - the president has provided his critics on the right with plenty of ammunition.

Biden is trying to "radically change the nature of the country", said conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. He warned listeners about a coming "dictatorship", one that could be orchestrated through his presidential orders.

Shapiro took aim at the president's push for racial equity, and a decision to revoke an order, signed by Trump, that prohibited federal funding for workplace training that urges employees to acknowledge concepts like white supremacy and white privilege.

Shapiro described the workshops as "pathetic struggle sessions in which you are called before some sort of human resources, quote, unquote, expert", and then told you have to learn how not to use offensive language.

The actions from the new administration in the White House come at a moment when conservatives feel attacked from all sides. The former president has been silenced on Twitter and they allege that the social media companies are censoring conservative voices on their platforms.

As Fox News' Tucker Carlson explained to Axios, many in Trump's base feel as though the "combined forces of global power have turned on them and are cracking down hard - hilariously, in the name of democracy".

"It's a running theme," says Howard Polskin, publisher of a newsletter, The Righting, that monitors conservative media. "They say there's going to be massive oversteps by big government, and re-education camps. So many Americans feel their liberties are at stake, and it's patently false."

Polskin believes these outlets deliberately exaggerate the threat to play to the audience's fears - but he argues it's vital for moderate and liberal America to understand the conversations taking place.

Source: BBC

Comments