ABSTRACT
This chapter will consider the way the transformation of media values and political economy has driven the resurgence of right-wing populism in America. Broadcast media have been central to American right-wing populism and movement conservatism in the last thirty years. Fox News and conservative personalities from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Alex Jones do not simply represent a new political and media voice but embody the convergence of politics and media in which affect and enjoyment are the central values of media production. The consumption of Fox News is not a dispassionate exercise drawing on critical faculties, but an affective investment in movement politics and branded conservatism. This audience spans traditional and new media forms as an individuated public primed to the populist politics of affect and alienation. This has been a fecund space for media entrepreneurs and right-wing populists who use access to politicized, conservative audiences to make an end-run around the traditional disciplines of politics and journalism. Donald Trump is the synthesis of a media politics in which affective intensity and enjoyment are the principle political-economic values. He is not simply a media-savvy showman; he offers himself as a subject of enjoyment and elicits affective identification.
