The business of outrage

ONE of the gentler quips uttered by the writer and thinker H.L. Mencken was that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. By the same token, nobody ever went broke overestimating the anger of the American people. The country is in an unusually flammable mood. This being America, there are plenty of businesspeople around to monetise the fury—to foment it, manipulate it and spin it into profits. These are the entrepreneurs of outrage and barons of bigotry who have paved the way for Donald Trump’s rise.

The very first of them was Rush Limbaugh who, back in the 1980s, transformed himself from a disc jockey into a radio commentator. Mr Limbaugh shook up the ossified talk-show format by dispensing with the tedious call-ins and adding anarchic humour. Soon an army of “ditto-head” followers hung on his every word. He has 13m regular listeners and hundreds of imitators, ranging from national stars such as Sean Hannity to local ranters.

The second entrepreneur of outrage was Roger Ailes, a Republican operative who teamed up with Rupert Murdoch to build Fox News. Mr Ailes took talk radio and added TV production values and 24-hour news. Mr Ailes has now left Fox News following a sex scandal. But his formula—outspoken conservative pundits (such as Bill O’Reilly and the ubiquitous Mr Hannity) plus serious journalists—continues to produce results. Fox is the highest-rated cable-news channel but is also respectable enough to host presidential debates.

The internet produced a new crop of outrage merchants. Matt Drudge got in early with a quirky website that published material the mainstream press deemed too hot to handle. Then 9/11 and an outpouring of patriotism gave another boost to the conservative blogging industry. But the most successful of the internet generation was Andrew Breitbart. He started in journalism working for Mr Drudge, then helped Arianna Huffington set up her website and put the two experiences together to launch Breitbart News—a no-holds-barred website that spends at least as much time attacking liberal institutions as it does commenting on daily news. Mr Breitbart died of a heart attack in 2012, aged 43, but found an equally hard-edged successor in Stephen Bannon.

Messrs Limbaugh and Breitbart were quintessential examples of Clay Christensen’s “disruptive innovators”. They discovered a vast, underserved market—people who were interested in the news but who had little in common with the Ivy League university-educated liberals who dominated regular news outlets such as NPR. Mr Limbaugh used a technology that was supposed to be dying—AM radio—but which allowed him to communicate with his followers as they drove to work. Breitbart News built an audience of millions without backing from a bigger media company. Contrary to what Marshall McLuhan, a media scholar, said, what mattered was not the medium but the message.

The message that flew off the shelves was outrage. Messrs Limbaugh & Co divided the world into two camps—hardworking Americans struggling to make a living versus liberals bent on taking them for a ride. They railed at limousine liberals who preached one thing and did another. They reserved particular venom for internal traitors—RINOs (Republicans in name only) and (soft) squishes—who were constantly selling them out in return for establishment kudos. Mr Limbaugh summed up the outrage entrepreneur’s formula for success in a single phrase: “What the hell is happening out there?”

Fury can easily turn into bigotry. Mr Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke, a student who campaigned for free contraception, “a slut”. And, like drug addicts, outrage junkies require ever stronger fixes to achieve the same effect. Breitbart News, in particular, has excelled in pushing boundaries. It has employed undercover “journalists” to get people to say shameful things. It specialises in publishing items of “click bait” that have little factual basis but create an image of a world gone wild. It has provided platforms in its comment section for members of far-right hate groups who rail against immigration and Jews.

The outrage industry has clearly reached a milestone with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Mr Trump’s training for his reinvention as a politician was the show “The Apprentice” on NBC. He won the hearts of 13m Republican primary voters by recycling conservative media hits such as “build a wall” and “ban all Muslims”. He tried to rescue his troubled campaign by drafting Mr Bannon as his chief executive.

There are big bucks in bigotry

The question in American politics is whether the milestone is the end point or another marker on a long road. Many Republicans reckon the outrage industry is a mortal threat to their party, landing them with an unelectable candidate for what should have been a winnable election. “They’re in the hate business, they’re a bunch of nuts,” Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s chief election strategist, said on CNN about Breitbart. The formula may not last. The audience for talk radio and Fox News is ageing. Advertisers are reluctant to be associated with toxic content. Several mainstream brands fled Mr Limbaugh’s show after his “slut” remarks.

Yet anyone who thinks the outrage boom is finished is likely to be disappointed. If Mr Trump wins the election, America will discover what it is like to be run by the entrepreneurs of outrage. If he loses, he may turn his presidential campaign into a media empire, encompassing 24/7 Trump TV and more. Conservative media will still have the doings of the Clinton family to help propel profits from all those who hate them. And foreign markets beckon. Breitbart News has opened offices in London, and is producing a stream of stories about Islamic terror attacks, the refugee crisis and Brexit. It plans to expand into Belgium, Germany and France. Whatever happens on November 8th, Mr Trump’s presidential campaign signals that there is worse to come.