By Kevin Rudd (Previous prime minister of Australia) 5 January 2019 — 12:00am This year will be an important year for three of the world’s oldest, continuing democracies - the United States, the UK and Australia. The US will decide, post-Mueller, whether Trump’s presidency is terminal. The UK will decide whether to tear up a half a century of European integration. And Australia faces a general election. In the US, Murdoch’s Fox News has been the great enabler of Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the modern Republican Party. This has been a long project in the making. But because Fox has been the self-reinforcing echo-chamber of the American far right for 30 years, it has become the principal medium through which each generation of conservatives have outflanked each other by going further and further to the right. We saw it in the 1990s with the highjacking of the Republicans by Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America”. Then we saw it in the 2000s with Gingrich being outflanked by Paul Ryan’s “Tea Party”. Then the Tea Party was in turn outflanked by the Trump Party. Watching Fox is like watching a revivalist meeting of evangelical fundamentalist preachers seeking to out-compete each other for the affections of “the base”. The result is that the Grand Old Party of Lincoln has been ripped from its moorings, with profound consequences for the American democracy at home, and the American-led global order abroad. Well done Rupert. Then there’s Murdoch’s political handiwork in Britain...... More..... https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/citizen-murdoch-s-critical-grip-on-democracy-20190104-p50pkw.html