by Tobin Smith
A lot is at stake here. As Vox’s Sean Illing notes, the sight of Trump “leading a white mob in a chant” about sending a black Congresswoman “home” will be “featured in history books for decades to come.”
The world and history are indeed watching. The time to stop the Foxocracy from metastasizing into an even larger and more powerful fascist monster is now—you have taken the first step. Take another and make the effort to reclaim a relationship poisoned by Fox News addiction.
History will indeed rightfully judge us if we knowingly let this self-inflicted plague of fear and hate consume the liberal democracy which we inherited from our forefathers but left weaker and more divided on our watch.
—Tobin Smith, October 8, 2019
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tobin Smith appeared in more than two thousand opinion panel segments on Fox News during his fourteen-year tenure as a paid FNC Contributor and Guest Anchor. Contractually obligated to be at Fox News’s New York City studios at least forty-eight weeks a year to tape the weekend talk show Bulls & Bears on Fridays, he was the only full-time right-wing panelist always in the NYC studios, constantly asked by segment producers to play the role of the “hit man” or the panel member counted on to make the final right-wing argument for the right-wing audience at home. He also guest hosted sixty-plus episodes of Fox News and Fox Business Network programming from 2000–2013. While working with producers inside Fox News NYC and socializing with Fox News staff at favorite watering holes after work, he learned never-before revealed strategies Fox News production staff used to rig the outcomes of FNC opinion debate segments. Smith is also a New York Times bestselling author whose books include ChangeWave Investing 2.0 and Billion Dollar Green.
Table of Contents
FOXOCRACY
Also by Tobin Smith
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
CONTENTS
Note to Readers
My Important Message for Self-identified Conservative or “Deplorable” Readers
Introduction: FNC’s Rigged Opinion-Segment-Scam: Confessions of a Fox News Hit Man
1 How Did the Fox News Tribal Identity Porn Playbook Become So Powerful?
2 How I Broke the Code on the Rest of FNC’s Tribal Identity Porn Conspiracy
3 In America, Politics Are Tribal . . . Period
4 My Road to Fox News Enlightenment 2000–2018
5 Why the Emotional Impact of Fox News Is Ten Times More Powerful than Conservative Radio
6 How the Fox News “Fair and Balanced” Tribal Warfare Playbook Works
7 A Few Key Stories to Illustrate the Playbook
8 Your Eyes Do Not Lie: Fox News Is Good Old Soft-core Sex Porn Too
9 More Fox News Production Lessons Learned
10 Why Fox News’s White Tribal Superiority Shtick Is So Incredibly Powerful
11 The Incredible Power of Weaponized Visceral Threat and Fear
12 The Untold Truth about Tribal Social Identity Porn
13 The Two Superpowers of Fox News
14 How Fox News Became a Significant Branch of the 94-Million-Strong Evangelical Church
15 The Facts About Fox News TV Addiction
16 What Then Is the Only Logical Conclusion About the Power, Intent, and Pathologies of Fox News’s Tribal Warfare Playbook in 2019?
Afterword: America Is Better than This: It’s Time for the Fox News Reckoning to Fight Back Against Commercial Tribalized Partisanship
About the Author