New Challenges in the Study of Right-Wing Propaganda: Priming the Populist Backlash to “Hope and Change”

Abstract

Before the rise of the Tea Party, propaganda primed the backlash to Obama's election by controlling the media frame and much of the narrative about social forces capable of blunting the Right's resurgence in the 2010 midterm election. This article analyzes the right-wing propaganda campaign to advance paranoid stories about the political enemies of America. Specifically, the article discusses three propaganda stories and shows how they are tied to the Republican Party's electoral strategy: (1) the construction of a voter fraud myth as a foundation for attacking the voting rights of minorities and the poor; (2) the take down of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN); and (3) the launch of a Red scare and witch hunt by the pseudo-discovery of what the Right calls the “Cloward-Piven Strategy,” an alleged left-wing blueprint for destroying capitalism and collapsing the government. The application of new media techniques to electoral politics calls for a revival of the historical-critical tradition in propaganda analysis.