Hasnain says:

At first glance this is just one of those satisfying political articles justifying one side over the other. But this is definitely a bit more than that - going into the history of polarization in America, this digs into some data around various sources of polarization to land on the conclusion that it’s likely Fox News and *not* other causes.

Yes, correlation is not causation, but this makes a solid argument.

“The recent battle over critical race theory is an instructive example of how all roads lead to Fox News. Turning a decades-­old critical framework deployed mostly in grad school into the latest culture war was originally the brainchild of a conservative activist named Christopher Rufo, who appeared periodically on Fox last year to promote his cause. But it remained bubbling under the surface until early this year, when—facing flagging ratings and increased competition from the even more far-right outlets Newsmax and OAN—Fox suddenly decided to put it into heavy rotation. Starting in March, Fox mentioned CRT 1,300 times in the space of just three months. Six weeks after its campaign started, CRT began trending on Google. By the end of June, 26 states had introduced legislation that restricted or banned teaching CRT and related topics. Fox may not have invented this most recent conservative culture war, but it didn’t really go anywhere until Fox decided to make it the latest outrage of its white viewers.”

Posted on 2021-07-31T16:02:08+0000