How pre­pared are Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s adver­saries to deal with the real­i­ty of a lav­ish­ly pro­duced state media oper­a­tion? This, the most-watched cable news net­work, func­tions in its feal­ty to Trump like a real-world Min­istry of Truth from George Orwell’s 1984, where bureau­crats ​“rec­ti­fy” the his­tor­i­cal record to con­form to Big Brother’s decrees.

At Fox, where Hannity et al. make a nightly ritual of burying the truth in 'memory holes' and spinning a new version of reality, the spirit of 1984 is alive and well.

I am refer­ring, of course, to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. Hav­ing unsuc­cess­ful­ly tried to sell itself as ​“Fair and Bal­anced,” Fox News debuted a new brand in March 2018: ​“Real News. Real Hon­est Opin­ion.” Net­work exec­u­tives appar­ent­ly chose this slo­gan to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves from ​“fake news” out­lets — and, no doubt, to dog-whis­tle a pledge of alle­giance to their com­man­der-in-chief, who since being sworn into office has decried fake news in at least 630 tweets (as of Dec. 4, 2019).

Sean Han­ni­ty, the host of Fox’s week­night flag­ship Han­ni­ty, reg­u­lar­ly rails against the ​“media mob” and its ​“fake news,” terms he has used on more than 100 of his shows since Feb. 20, 2019. On Feb. 21, 2019, for exam­ple, he said, ​“The main­stream media, they devour, you know, any sto­ry that just fits their rad­i­cal, extreme exten­sion of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist par­ty agen­da. If it advances the nar­ra­tive that Don­ald Trump is evil and his sup­port­ers are bad and Amer­i­ca is scary and racist and sex­ist, homo­pho­bic, xeno­pho­bic, Islam­o­pho­bic, the media mob will shift into full gear with­out … any kind of investigation.”

It seems Han­ni­ty and Trump have stud­ied the texts of the 20th century’s mas­ter of indoc­tri­na­tion, who wrote in his 1925 auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal man­i­festo, Mein Kampf, ​“The most bril­liant pro­pa­gan­dist tech­nique will yield no suc­cess unless one fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple is borne in mind con­stant­ly — it must con­fine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”

Over and over, indeed. With its fan­tas­ti­cal report­ing on Ukraine, Fox News is doing just that. Evi­dence over­whelm­ing­ly indi­cates that Trump refused to release mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine unless Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky pub­licly opened a cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tion into the Bidens and into alle­ga­tions (for which there is no cred­i­ble evi­dence) that Ukrain­ian actors inter­fered in the 2016 elec­tion to ben­e­fit Hillary Clinton.

In the top­sy-turvy world of Fox News, this bribe attempt is ​“fake news” spread by the ​“media mob” — while the ​“real news,” Fox would have you believe, is the invent­ed sto­ry of Ukrain­ian elec­tion interference.

At Fox, where Han­ni­ty et al. make a night­ly rit­u­al of bury­ing the truth in ​“mem­o­ry holes” and spin­ning a new ver­sion of real­i­ty, the spir­it of 1984 is alive and well.

The ascen­dan­cy of this Trump­ist pro­pa­gan­da mill, more bla­tant in its con­tempt for the truth than even the pro-war cor­po­rate press in the lead-up to the 2003 inva­sion of Iraq, should give pro­gres­sives pause. For near­ly a quar­ter of Amer­i­can adults, Fox News is the sole cable news source. It behooves us to sober­ly assess how our prospects for lib­er­ty, equal­i­ty and sol­i­dar­i­ty are depen­dent on the exis­tence of an inde­pen­dent, crit­i­cal press.

Here at In These Times, we are exca­vat­ing those ​“mem­o­ry holes” — but we can only keep dig­ging if we first fill the holes in our own bud­get. We must raise an addi­tion­al $52,000 before Dec. 31, 2019 to keep from falling short.

Fox News relies on cor­po­rate spon­sors. At In These Times, we are proud to rely on read­ers like you. Please, con­sid­er our fundrais­ing appeals. A strong and inde­pen­dent press has nev­er been need­ed more than it is today. We are all in this together.