The New Empire: How the Right Built a 24/7 Culture Machine—and Why Progressives Must Catch Up Overview:

Part 2: Core Infrastructure — Broadcast, Digital, Influencers, and Funding

This four-part series explores how the American right built a permanent, decentralized, emotionally resonant media machine that now dominates the cultural and informational landscape. From Goldwater's defeat to the meme wars of today, we examine the infrastructure, strategy, emotional power, and total saturation of this empire — and what progressives must do to fight back, and build out our own decentralized messaging systems.

Part 2: Core Infrastructure — Broadcast, Digital, Influencers, and Funding

How the American right built a permanent, multi-layered machine that operates faster, louder, and deeper than mainstream media ever could.

By the early 2000s, the American right had achieved a critical strategic breakthrough: it no longer needed mainstream media to influence public opinion. Instead, it had built a permanent, full-spectrum communication machine — one that operates 24/7, floods every corner of daily life, and penetrates far deeper into American culture than any traditional newsroom or political campaign can.

This right wing machine is especially dominant in areas the mainstream has abandoned — news deserts, small towns, rural communities, and neighborhoods where local journalism has collapsed. In these spaces, right-wing media doesn’t compete with the mainstream — it replaces it.

This infrastructure wasn’t built to inform.
It was built to unite the right wing base, immerse, mobilize, and reengineer reality — until conservative identity becomes a lived, daily experience.

❝This isn’t media strategy. It’s identity engineering.❞

1. Broadcast and Radio Networks: The First Layer of Saturation

Talk Radio
The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 opened the floodgates for partisan broadcasting. Talk radio legends like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage forged emotional loyalty through humor, grievance, and outrage — broadcast to millions daily. With syndication through Salem Media and iHeartRadio, AM and FM radio became the daily soundtrack of right-wing America. Many of talk radio voices had content that they found migrated seamlessly to the other media we list below, especially to YouTube and podcasting.

Local TV
While national news outlets drew accusations of liberal bias, Sinclair Broadcast Group quietly acquired local TV stations and inserted conservative “must-run” commentary. This allowed ideological talking points to appear between the weather and high school sports — delivered by trusted local anchors.

Fox News & Fox Nation
Launched by Roger Ailes in 1996, Fox News merged cable dominance with emotional narrative. It didn’t just present news — it framed stories around “us vs. them.” Fox Nation, its streaming spinoff, offers deep-dive content, documentaries, and exclusive shows that tighten the feedback loop. For users whom Fox News was too “moderate” other emerging cable networks, such as Newsnation emerged.

❝Talk radio saturates. Cable legitimizes. Local news personalizes.❞

2. Digital Properties and News Aggregators: The Viral Engine

Breitbart, Daily Wire, The Blaze, Gateway Pundit and others.
These sites were built for virality, not credibility. Examples include:

• Breitbart — Steve Bannon’s culture war factory.

• Daily Wire — grievance content with a Gen Z sheen, now producing films and kids’ content.

• Gateway Pundit — conspiratorial, misleading, but wildly popular.

• The Blaze — Glenn Beck’s multi-platform empire of ideological content.

• PragerU - A slick, YouTube-optimized propaganda outlet masquerading as an educational resource, pushing right-wing ideology through animated videos targeting students, parents, and teachers.

Facebook Pages & Meme Factories
Networks like Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, Blue Lives Matter, and Women for Trump fueled algorithmic rage. Facebook’s engagement-based model rewarded their emotional intensity, making them dominant even when traditional media coverage waned. Right wing actors successfully “worked the ref” pressuring Facebook to alter its algorithms to improve visibility of their content, pressuring Facebook to include right wing fact checkers in their third party fact check systems, and making Breitbart a trusted source not down ranked in the Facebook news feed.

Twitter/X Networks
Right-wing influencers, burner accounts, and “hashtag brigades” flooded timelines. After Elon Musk’s takeover, moderation relaxed, amplifying even more extreme content under the guise of “free speech.”At the same time, multiple studies have been published showing the new right-wing bias in the X/Twitter algorithm.

❝Outrage beats accuracy. Emotion spreads faster than evidence.❞

3. Internet Activists and Bot Networks: The Chaos Layer

4chan / 8kun / Meme Warfare
Anonymous forums like 4chan, Win forums, and 8kun birthed not just memes — but narratives. QAnon, “Clown World,” and Pepe memes moved from the digital fringe to Fox News in days. These boards function as chaos labs, where virality and irony blur the line between joke and ideology.

Foreign Interference & Bot Farms
Russia’s Internet Research Agency didn’t invent American division — it exploited it. By creating fake conservative personas and amplifying U.S. grievances, foreign actors deepened polarization. Reports from the Senate Intelligence Committee confirm how Russian bots and other fraudulent accounts influenced narratives on race, guns, and voter fraud.

4. Podcasters and Influencers: The New Anchors of Conservative Culture

Rogan, Shapiro, Peterson, Crowder, Owens, Kirk
They aren’t journalists — they’re identity validators. As we wrote above, some of these voices migrated from AM radio or web fame; others were new voices whose prominence grew inside the podcasting space. Some examples:

• Joe Rogan questions science and government narratives with massive reach.

• Ben Shapiro turns emotion into “logic.”

• Theo Von: wraps reactionary talking points in self-deprecating Southern charm, making regressive ideas feel like just folksy common sense.

• Jordan Peterson preaches anti-collectivism with academic flair.

• Steven Crowder uses Gen Z aesthetics to spread bigotry under the guise of comedy.

Daily Wire+
It’s more than a podcast network. Daily Wire+ now produces documentaries, children's content, and scripted shows — building a culture that’s ideologically insulated and emotionally satisfying. Truth Social's business plans claim it will ad a TruthSocial+ service for streaming professional level content to rival Disney+ and the other mainstream streaming platforms.

Rumble, Locals, Substack
Banned from YouTube? Demonetized on Twitter? No problem. These platforms offer refuge for content creators deplatformed elsewhere, helping build an ideological echo chamber free of oversight.

5. C3 and C4 Foundation Funding: The Permanent Money Machine

Dark Money Infrastructure
Philanthropic networks like DonorsTrust, Bradley Foundation, Koch, and Mercer family fund the ideological pipeline — from white papers to meme pages.

• C3s (nonprofits) support “educational” think tanks and content.

• C4s fund issue campaigns and influencers, with no donor disclosure.

Infrastructure Over Election Cycles
Rather than spending in spurts, these funders built institutions. They fund courts (Federalist Society), media (PragerU, Daily Wire), and even retail (Patriot Mobile) — all year, every year.

❝They didn’t just build campaigns. They built a worldview.❞

6. Foreign Involvement: A Chaotic Accelerator

Russia, China, Iran and others
These governments exploit U.S. cultural vulnerabilities. Russian sock-puppet accounts promoted “both sides” of controversial issues. Iran pushed disinfo on Israel. China amplified racial tensions during 2020 protests. Researchers continue to find that these state based actors continue to play a role in elections and culture in the US and other democracies.

Murky Funding
Shell companies, offshore trusts, and anonymous donations help fund far-right media properties, evading scrutiny and masking external influence.

7. Grassroots and Community Anchors: The Offline-Online Loop

TPUSA, Moms for Liberty, Tea Party Offshoots
These groups connect digital rhetoric to real-world spectacle — school board disruptions, anti-mask protests, “parents’ rights” rallies — all filmed and fed back into the media ecosystem.

Churches, Gun Clubs, Veterans Halls
Faith communities and patriotic institutions are ideological reinforcement zones. Messaging distributed by groups like Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom is echoed in sermons, meetings, and bulletins.

❝The message is delivered in a meme — but it’s reinforced in a sermon.❞

Conclusion: A System Built for Emotional Immersion

The American right has built something far more powerful than a messaging strategy.

This system isn’t designed to win debates.
It’s designed to make debates irrelevant.

Coming Next: Part 3 — 24/7 Presence, Amplification, and Emotional Resonance
How the right built a worldview delivery system that never turns off — and how it emotionally wires millions to see truth, fairness, and democracy as threats.