Important people in the media both encourage and normalise abuse by repeatedly engaging in it and demonstrating that is how argument should work. 'Owning people', trying to gain 'tears' seems to be what it is about. This is again much more common than it used to be 60 or so years ago. While I have no evidence, I would date the surge of abuse from the success of Rush Limbaugh, and the attempt to build a support base that did not realise what neoliberal policies meant for ordinary people.
Normalised abuse, attempts to dehumanise others, making it possible to ignore them, or treat them badly, helps build an "information group" or in-group, which is impervious to the other side.
While this is an entirely subjective argument., when I watch, or read transcripts from Fox, it appears that most of their time is spent in abuse, and this behaviour normalises abuse and probably provokes abuse, promoting further lack of discussion. The main aim of rightwing news seems to be to make people angry. This is useful because
- People are angry. They have been left behind. They do have problems dumped on them. The world feels like it is declining. It feels better to be angry than to be despairing, depressed or apathetic. It is energising.
- A manipulator wants people not to be angry with them, or angry with the real cause of problems (especially if the dominant elites are the cause of their problems), so needs to deflect anger elsewhere and get people angry with the manipulator's enemies.
- Being angry means a person is easier to manipulate.
- Angry people are not thinking calmly or in complex ways.
- Angry people connect things which are largely unconnected because of the similar anger feeling tone between topics
- Angry people are less likely to wonder whether articles actually do make the connections the articles are claiming. Or they may misread articles so that they appear to say the opposite of what they are really saying
- It is easier to cultivate anger against an outgroup than it is to come up with solutions. For example it is easier to say people are stupid or biased, than it is to listen to them describe their problems.
- Angry people will generally not listen to people who are identified as enemies, hence they will not pick up different ideas, and they will try to intimidate those identified as enemies, which is more likely to create enemies. Anger tends to mean people interpret others in ways that make them more angry. Anger is a self- reinforcing loop.
- Anger can be addictive, so people become more likely to listen to those who manipulate them into being angry.
One recent example of this, apart from encouraging the idea that Republicans could not have lost the election, is that after the BLM protests, we can see an apparently coordinated attempt by Republican media to make it impossible to discuss race relations in the USA in a way which might offend anyone who thinks the real problem is black racism. The discussion also completely dismisses anyone who might think there is a problem as a supporter of terrorism, violence and crime.
Racial problems in the US and elsewhere in the English speaking world, will not be solved, because it is more convenient, for some, to have Republicans suspicious of, or hostile towards, black people who protest, than it is to admit there are problems. Likewise it is easier to accuse disgruntled workers of being rednecks, than it is to listen to them and help solve their problems.
The aim and effect of normalised abuse is simple: Divide and conquer.
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