politics

The War On Christmas Is Over (If Right-Wing Media Wants It)

That the War on Christmas has quieted reveals the right's total domination of media in the United States

Apparently the War on Christmas is over, or on hiatus, or maybe the soldiers in said war are exhausted and can’t pretend to be mad about make-believe censorship of their cherished religious-turned-secular celebration of heedless consumption.

Whatever’s happened in this soon-to-be second decade of the Trump era, Americans are no longer fired up about the so-called War on Christmas, which never existed but offered a reason to be outraged during a time of usually-slow news cycles. In fact, Americans largely no longer see the War on Christmas, according to recent polling.

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A mere 23 percent of poll respondents said the war against tiny baby Jesus scrolling an iPad in his little manger rages on, down from 39 percent in 2022. Almost half of respondents said there was no war against Christmas in the United States, and about three in ten folks were undecided, which is a very funny stance to have on this topic. Were Starbucks holiday cups made by a far-left international cabal determined to snuff out Christianity worldwide? It’s hard to say. I’m undecided.

Probably this can be explained, as mentioned by BFT discord member Dusty Schmidt, by a lack of media obsession around the supposed War on Christmas in all its variations. I’m sure someone somewhere on right-wing cable news is railing against the dangers of woke (read: not white) Santa Claus at a local mall, but the nonstop coverage of shit that could be crazily interpreted as a war against the sweet baby Jesus, swaddled in extra absorbent diapers, has vanished in recent winters.

(This is where I remind you of my lengthy – perhaps too lengthy – BFT essay on the pulsating bad faith at the heart of the so-called War on Christmas and the American power dynamics that are flipped directly on their head to make this war seem real and worth fighting)

Maybe the same folks who would self-immolate in the parking lot of a Home Depot after being told “happy holidays” by a store clerk are feeling secure enough to take a year off from the War on Christmas now that the Big Boy is back in power. Trump hasn’t even done his bit about bringing back Christmas since narrowly winning a second term (the idea of a national leader “bringing back Christmas” to a nation utterly obsessed with Christmas is funny in a way that might wear down your molars if you think about it too much). Perhaps the presence of our fascist leader back in the White House with his slimy little co-president is enough for the Christmas warriors, usually wide-eyed and crazed by this time of year, to lay down their rhetorical weapons and trust that Antifa super soldiers won’t burn down the local nativity scene for fear of government retribution come January 20.

That Americans of all sorts of politics are telling pollsters that the War on Christmas is either over or not real should, I think, draw attention to the right wing’s domination of the national media and discourse. The right, powered by endless billions of dollars from bad actors across the world, has all but taken over American media over the past decade. They control all local TV news stations, they dominate cable news, they have turned Twitter into a fascist propaganda machine, the billionaires who own major newspapers are willingly turning those papers into Trumpist collaborators, and their well-oiled misinformation machine has made YouTube into a veritable fascist recruiting ground.

The American right controls basically all the means of communication and Democrats still think they can break through with charts and graphs and the occasional viral video (which is sent out into right-wing online platforms and often suppressed).

So if the right-wing media machine wants the War on Christmas to start up again, it will start up again. If the machine, controlling the framing of every news story – both major and minor – sees fit to fire up the War on Christmas narrative to distract from some development that might not be pleasing to Trump or congressional Republicans or Elon Musk, then the war will rage on. They will find something somewhere in the heartland that shows the left’s hatred for the sacred December holiday and that will be what we talk about for a day or two or three.

We will retreat to our online foxholes and strap on our helmets and through Obama-era muscle memory we will fight the Christmas War as fervently as we ever have. And when pollsters ask people if the War on Christmas is real, they will say yes, of course it is. Haven’t you been watching the news? It’s all they’re talking about. Wake up, you goddamn sheep. Baby Jesus, drinking unpasteurized milk like a freedom-loving baby, is under attack from forces seen and unseen!

Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel – a far-right group that harasses companies that don't openly celebrate Christmas – said the War on Christmas had quieted because organizations like his had effectively forced corporations into submission. Staver said the Liberty Counsel had kept lists (you know you're the good guy when you're keeping lists) of companies that had not properly bowed to the red-and-green forces. This, Staver said, was enough to end the assault on Baby Jesus, playing with his crib mobile featuring the faces of Republican presidents.

I don't think that's right though. This is a matter of propaganda, not bullying Target and Walmart. The discourse around every issue goes back to the right’s control of the narrative. It makes the concept of democracy all but impossible to sell to a hugely misinformed public. They have spent years and an eye-watering amount of cash to take over social media and, mostly, mainstream outlets, and now they are reaping the benefits. If the left – or at least folks who oppose fascism – don’t address this, there’s nothing much to talk about. There is an information war and only one side knows it’s happening.

Getting Yelled At About Molasses

Recently on Bluesky I was chastised for supposedly buying into right-wing framing of the government funding bill that President Musk killed via posts on X, the everything platform.

Someone has posted a screen grab of a Fox News segment about what the right would call wasteful spending packed into the continuing resolution that would keep the federal government running for the next few months. Part of the right’s attack on the bill – derided as a leftist wishlist even though far-right House Speaker Mike Johnson put the thing together – was that it contained $3 million for the study of molasses.

An inspection of molasses should cost $1, per the analytics.

I wondered aloud on Bluesky how an elected Democrat could possibly defend $3 million for the inspection of molasses, not because the effort is worthless or unnecessary, but because as soon as one opens one's mouth and defends millions in government spending for molasses inspection, one loses the argument. No normie is going to hear that and say, ah yes, this person has a point about spending millions in fucking tax dollars on fucking molasses (and pointing out that $3 million is nothing in the federal budget is pointless because $3 million is a lot of fucking money to the average, extremely low-information voter who thinks of the government as a failed business).

Naturally, I was told that I had bought into far-right framing of the issue at hand and that I might as well have voted for Trump if I'm going to question how we defend spending millions on inspecting molasses. Someone told me to enjoy the camps, which made me laugh because I'm the last person who would ever qualify for a "camp."

There were some good responses to how the left might push back against right wingers calling this kind of spending frivolous and wasteful. I appreciated these replies more than the ones accusing me of being a secret Republican operative. I would be much richer if that were the case.

There's certainly a way to shift the framing here and tell people that Trump and his Republican Party want to poison your food and make you and your loved ones sick by refusing to spend a minuscule amount of taxpayer dollars on ensuring you do not, in fact, get the shits from everything you eat beginning in 2025.

And that brings us back to the right's total domination of all media narratives. There is no widely-watched or read outlet that can push back with pro-molasses inspection propaganda – messaging that would emphasize just how dangerous it would be for you and your family if the federal government stopped inspecting the food we eat. That means of communication does not exist, so we continue to live in a world shaped by Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk.

There's certainly money out there for an alternative propaganda network that could loosen the right wing's death grip on mainstream and social media. It wasn't that long ago that Kamala Harris over a four-month span raised more than $1 billion from donors both large and small. If we are ever to be done with the War on Christmas, and if molasses inspection is ever going to be defended in the media, then there must be a second participant in our information war.

Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.