Monday, March 14, 2022

Divide And Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes - Trailer + Quick Summary


Quick Summary:  Fox News was started by notorious sex offender, oligarch, and far-Right billionaire Roger Ailes, from Warren, Ohio.  His father was a violent anti-labor Christian who sent his son to Ohio University, where the young man became  acutely aware of how to stoke a people's fears.  He came to politics after producing one of the first daytime talk and variety  entertainment shows.  After having his hero Nixon on the show, he approached the future president with the proposal that he produce him as a 'media advisor''.  Inspired by the Nazi propaganda film the Triumph of the Will (1935), Ailes aimed at a position from which television could be commanded for the purpose of far-Right messaging.  Indeed, the 'Nixon in the Arena' series were in part based on making Nixon appear as heroic as Hitler.  In notes later obtained by journalists, Ailes makes it clear that he thinks Americans are lazy and stupid and that a powerful TV network should do the thinking for them by playing on their resentments, prejudice and fears.   The central goal was to push out a far-Right message in a way that would avoid the critical press, reasoned argument, and global standards of journalism.  It became known as the FOX network.  The Senate history of Mitch McConnell is essentially an Tiles creation, taking him from being a low-level judge to one of the most influential politicians in the oligarchy. Reagan, Giuliani and George Bush Snr. also owed him a great deal, thereby benefitting his media empire.  Ailes embraced neofascist conspiracies, helping them to go mainstream, with his portrayal of Obama as a radical Islamist, Pizzagate, and through his promotion of the Trump Organization.  Indeed, while being an expert on little other than corrupt and racist real estate dealings, Trump and his far-Right opinions, was everywhere on the network years before his presidential campaign was announced.  When Ailes was finally being prosecuted for his sexual misconduct, he turned to Trump and the Trump Organization's notorious team of lawyers.  To the very end, even when more than a dozen women came forward alleging sexual harassment, Trump defended Ailes as “a very good man,” but Murdock's sons saw Ailes as bad for business. Ailes was also given access to people's private messages by Facebook, and performed illegal surveillance and repeatedly made threats to those who opposed him.  To his death, he remained a true believer in the fascist credo that, “Those who believe they should win, will eventually win.  Inferiors make superiors physically sick, they drag us down.  I am more important than America.”  Ailes literally built a wall in his office and a gate around his home to keep out gay terrorists and people of middle eastern descent.

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