Millions of Americans have taken to the streets to resist Trump’s hijacking of democracy. That’s a start, but it’s not enough. Our challenge is to fight the misinformation campaigns that are dividing us. Fox News is an obvious starting point. Fox News is Trump’s propaganda machine that gins up his followers by feeding the MAGA “alternative reality.” The time has come to crank up the heat on the Ruppert Murdoch’s media empire that legitimizes Trump’s authoritarian actions and nurtures the rise of fascism in the United States. 

Fox News dominates the cable news business. A January 2, 2026, dateline Fox News Media release says that for 2025 Fox News held 64% of cable news audience in prime time and 63% total daily viewing. Fox News on YouTube also had 4.3 billion video views, up 57% since Trump took office. According to a 2025 Pew Research Center study, almost half of all Americans aged fifty-five and older watch and trust Fox news. Some 76% of Republicans sixty-five and older are the most likely to trust Fox news. And they vote. Shortly before the 2024 election half of all Americans said Fox news provided them with either a major or minor source of election news, with 69% of Republicans reporting that Fox news was at least a minor source of election information. 

The themes of Fox News are consistent. Crime is rampant, cities are dangerous, the liberal East and West coast elite have formed a cabal to run the deep state, and peaceful protesters are paid Antifa terrorists. The lies are endless. These fictions go back decades. In the prelude to the American invasion of Iraq, Fox promoted the weapons of mass destruction lie that justified the invasion. Fox also promoted the conspiracy theory marketed by Trump that Obama was ineligible for the presidency because he was born in Kenya. During Trump’s 2016 campaign Fox made popular his claim that the “deep state,” an anti-democratic cabal led by the likes of Hillary Clinton, was real. When the Democratic National Committee’s computer was hacked by Russia and emails regarding Clinton’s campaign strategies became public, Fox exonerated Russia by claiming that Democratic staffer Seth Rich was responsible. Rich’s later murder in an unsolved mugging then became another Fox conspiracy story. After the pandemic broke out, Fox echoed Trump’s claim that it was a Chinese hoax. Fox’s lies about election fraud in 2020 were initially accepted by 80% of all Republicans. These same lies galvanized the failed coup that led to hundreds of injuries and several deaths. And now, Fox applauds the ICE agents in Minneapolis who killed an unarmed woman and immediately promotes DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s claim that the victim was a “domestic terrorist.” The list of Fox’s peddling outright lies is endless, ranging from climate change denial to the promotion of Pizza Gate to the War on Christmas and more. In contrast, Fox’s silence on Jeffrey Epstein is deafening.

Fox is not alone in its assault on truth. There are other right-wing news outlets that are even more extreme. They’re just not as big or as popular. There’s also what Shoshana Zuboff dubs “Surveillance Capitalism,” giant digital companies like Facebook and X, for example, that have appropriated our personal information and use it to manipulate us with “facts” that may or may not be false. 

Fox and the right-wing media are bringing fascism to the United States. When people can’t agree on the facts, there is no basis for discourse. Demonization of the opposition replaces discussion of issues and society inevitably becomes fragmented, and its citizens are likely to become distrustful, suspicious, scared. Under these conditions the door to fascism opens to leaders who can now lie without consequences. Donald Trump constantly characterizes any media criticism as “fake news,” and relies on Fox and other right-wing echo chambers to market his lies.

Fox News is not invulnerable. The company’s lies about Dominion voting machines in the 2020 election cost the company close to eight hundred million dollars. California Governor Gavin Newsom filed a defamation lawsuit in 2025 that’s still pending. More public figures targeted by Fox’s malice should do the same. Litigation is not enough. The public needs to take to the streets. Organizations like Indivisible need to start calling for rallies in front of Fox News headquarters in Manhattan. There is a long-standing but ineffectual call for boycotting Fox News sponsors. Progressive organizations need to put new muscle into these boycotts by focusing on specific targets. For example, in 2018 after Fox’s Laura Ingraham ridiculed him and promoted conspiracy theories about the shooting, David Hogg, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high School massacre, called for a boycott. Within days twenty sponsors dropped their support for Ingram’s show. Each of these actions chip away at the alternative universe Fox viewers live in.  Fox News feeds the beast, we need to starve it.

Bill Scheuerman is Professor Emeritus at SUNY Oswego and former President of the National Labor College.