Irish Examiner view: Rush Limbaugh’s legacy is a call to arms

One of the architects of the post-truth age built an epoch-changing radio career on racist, sexist, and homophobic views

Rush Limbaugh introduces US president Donald Trump at the start of a campaign rally in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in November 2018. Limbaugh, the talk radio host who became the voice of American conservatism, has died. Picture: Jeff Roberson/AP

Rush Limbaugh, one of the architects of the post-truth age, has died aged 70. A toxic provocateur and propagandist, he was a fevered facilitator of the Trump presidency. 

Unencumbered by the constraints of decency or veracity he built an epoch-changing radio career on racist, sexist, and homophobic views. 

A climate change denier, he gave myriad bizarre and deliberately undermining conspiracy theories the oxygen of incessant — and dishonest — publicity. 

He staunchly opposed immigration and was a hard-line, unrelentingly blinkered advocate of US exceptionalism. 

Unsurprisingly, he received America's Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2020 from a serial liar, an endorsement that did not change the fact that Limbaugh was one of the founding fathers of today's hate industry. 

Just as the 1999 Republican-led repeal of Glass–Steagall, 1933 legislation that controlled the wilder ambitions of bankers, partially led to the financial crash of 2008, the 1987 repeal of the Federal Communications Commission fairness doctrine that obliged broadcasters to present balanced argument, allowed poisonously partisan voices like Limbaugh hijack anger and discontent — sadly, all too often justified — in a way that exacerbated polarisation. 

In 1988, months after fairness doctrine was ditched, Limbaugh's show was syndicated and relayed on hundreds of stations. By 2020, it had attracted around 27m listeners an achievement that earned Limbaugh $85m a year. 

That 27m, more a constituency than an audience, has tremendous power. Any doubt about that can be held against that tragic concession of decency to the cowardliest partisanship epitomised by the 43 Republican senators who voted to acquit Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection. 

Some may have believed Trump innocent — right, yeah — but all feared the vengeance Trump and Limbaugh's fans would exact. That is just one strand of Limbaugh's horrid legacy.

Another is that he, even at a step removed, gave licence to a kind of vitriol that has all too often spiralled into hatred. 

Politicians of all hues, especially women, have felt the heat of online abuse which has all too often gone far beyond anything tolerable. 

The family of Captain Tom Moore, the 100-year-old British veteran, who raised almost £33m for NHS charities before he died earlier this month, have said that they had to shield him from "pretty horrific" internet trolling that would have "broken his heart". 

What kind of person feels the need, or the right, to abuse a 100-year-old man reliant on a zimmer frame?

Footballer James McClean's wife Erin might be able to offer a worthwhile opinion on that ugliness. Earlier this week she bravely described the impact online abuse was having on her, her husband and their family.

Erin McClean, wife of footballer James McClean, described the impact online abuse was having on her, her husband and their family. Picture:  Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

McClean, who was born in Derry, chooses not to wear a remembrance poppy. That entirely valid decision has incurred wrath and freely-expressed hatred. He has been subject to online death threats, one anonymous hero threatened to burn down his house while his family was at home. 

Erin McClean has admitted that she sat through a game wondering is another online threat, this time from a person who promised to bring a gun to the match might be real.

"There isn't a day that goes by that either one of us don't receive a message of some sort, whether it be a threat or else telling us to get the f**k out of England," she wrote.

This, like the latitude abused by Limbaugh, raises all the old questions around free speech — how can it be celebrated as a right rather than corrupted to sow dishonesty and hatred?

That question has, even since cigar-smoking Limbaugh, who mocked the link between cancer and smoking died of lung cancer, assumed a new urgency. 

Facebook, has blocked Australian media organisations and users from sharing news content on the platform. 

The lock-out comes in an escalating row between tech firms and the Australian government that could become a test case for media regulations and the way the world consumes news.

When the rules changed Limbaugh changed culture and assumed huge, unaccountable power that led to disastrous outcomes. 

The rules must be changed again, and quickly too, if social media giants are not to make his behaviour and legacy seem a thing of nothing by facilitating toxicity and hatred far beyond anything even he, at his most odious, imagined.