There's long been a type of savvy, conservative-coded con man who's especially adept at siphoning the money of AARP-eligible suburban and rural white Christians into their own, city slicker pockets. But the link between the grift and the right wing politics has rarely been as tight as it is today.
I try to project the bulk of my anger about this dynamic at the perpetrators of this con--super-rich cynical a-holes like Carlson and Brand who are laughing all the way to the bank. Anyway, this dynamic has been in place for a while now. This article is from 2012. thebaffler.com
thebaffler.com
Back in the 80s a major vector for this religio-political, right wing populist con game was The Spotlight, a publication with a circulation ~3X the size of National Review's and which was run by a semi-closeted neo-Nazi named Willis Carto.
The basic messaging of The Spotlight ca. 1980s is virtually indistinguishable from that of Newsmax or Infowars today. The details have changed, but the conspiratorial message is the same. In the 1980s The Spotlight's owner created audio content that could be heard on ~400 AM radio stations.