Fox News

Fox News is portrayed as a central instrument of the conservative media elite: although Donald Trump and his supporters claim to oppose “the elite,” the book insists that Fox News itself belongs to that elite and openly supports Trump. Its significance lies in this contradiction. The network appears to represent popular rebellion against liberal institutions, yet the narrative treats that rebellion as a managed division within the broader rule of the Ownership Class.

Position Within the Elite

Fox News is introduced through the book's distinction between one overarching elite and two supposedly opposed political-media factions. The 1%, or Ownership Class, is described as the only genuine elite; the division between a liberal elite and a conservative elite is presented as a strategy of “divide and rule.” In this framework, Fox News is not part of the liberal media elite. It is emphatically part of the conservative media elite, and its affection for Donald Trump is used as evidence that Trump's claimed war against “the elite” is actually a manufactured conflict with liberal political and media institutions.

Donald Trump therefore occupies two positions at once in the book's analysis: he is a member of the general 1% elite and a member of the conservative political and media elite. Fox News helps make those positions appear compatible with anti-elite populism. By presenting Trump as an outsider while supporting him as a powerful insider, the network turns elite politics into a spectacle of opposition without challenging the underlying hierarchy.

Media Control and Manufactured Consent

The book places Fox News inside a wider system of ownership and information control. George Carlin's critique describes wealthy owners as having bought or controlled corporations, legislatures, courts, and major media companies, thereby determining much of the news and information available to the public. Within that argument, Fox News is not merely a channel delivering political opinions; it is part of the institutional machinery through which citizens are prevented from developing the critical perspective necessary to recognize their own exploitation.

This media role is connected to the book's account of consent manufacture. Edward Bernays is described as having applied theories of the unconscious to peacetime commerce, invented public relations, and developed the systematic manipulation of public opinion. Advertising targets desire in order to maximize profit for the Ownership Class, while political media targets fear, resentment, and identity. Fox News consequently represents a political form of the same broader process: attention is directed toward cultural enemies and symbolic conflict, while the economic interests of the wealthy remain protected.

Trump, Resentment, and Hierarchy

Fox News is associated with the emotional politics surrounding Donald Trump. The book argues that Trump's voters were driven by ressentiment toward cultural elites in government, universities, and the coasts, but that their resentment was redirected downward rather than toward the billionaire plutocrat they elected. Fox News's place in this system is implied by its membership in the conservative media elite: it helps sustain a hierarchy in which white conservatives can feel elevated above black and Hispanic Americans while remaining subordinate to wealthy rulers.

The same pattern appears in the book's account of obedience. The Trumpanzees are said to revere the elite and to long to be led, ruled, and bossed by figures such as Donald Trump. Fox News supports the leader around whom that desire is organized, allowing submission to a plutocrat to be experienced as freedom and loyalty to the Ownership Class to be experienced as rebellion. The network thus participates in what the book calls a slave-like political psychology: hostility is directed at other subordinated groups, while attachment to the master is preserved.

Conspiracy, Ideology, and the Hidden Signal

The book also connects Fox News to a wider culture of ideological concealment. In its discussion of They Live, a shadowy elite engineers economic collapse, brings the working class close to enslavement, and broadcasts a hidden signal that creates false consciousness in the masses. The film's underground Resistance attempts to “hack the signal” and expose reality. The analogy makes media an instrument that can conceal domination while presenting an apparently free social order.

The comparison is deliberately redirected away from antisemitic conspiracy theories. The book states that right-wing conspiracy theorists equate the aliens in They Live with Jews or the Illuminati, while John Carpenter identified them instead with yuppie followers of Ronald Reagan and with unrestrained capitalism. Fox News belongs to this ideological field not because the evidence presents it as literally broadcasting an alien signal, but because the network is treated as a vehicle for messages that normalize capitalist hierarchy, racial resentment, and allegiance to the wealthy.

Political Consequences

Fox News appears again in the book's catalogue of what supporters of Donald Trump are asked to “choose”: the Ownership Class, the super-rich elite, Fox News, Breitbart News, and Cambridge Analytica are placed together with cronyism, predatory capitalism, nepotism, corruption, and manipulation. The list frames the network as part of an interconnected political economy rather than as an isolated news organization.

The resulting consequence is a reversal of the network's apparent political meaning. Its rhetoric may present itself as resistance to liberal authority, but the book argues that it directs popular anger away from the Ownership Class and toward racial, cultural, and institutional targets. In that sense, Fox News helps preserve the very order its audience imagines itself to be fighting. Its narrative function is to dramatize an anti-elite revolt that leaves elite ownership intact.