(You may have read a lot about Rupert Murdoch recently, but read on.)

Hatred is a terrible word. It is a word that carries the most terrible intents, from murder to warmongering. In the name of hatred, terrible atrocities are committed. People butchered. Words weep at the existence of such an expression. However, it serves a purpose as a word of last emotion. In its name, a woman is murdered every week in Australia. In its name, hate is used for many purposes, including the desire for power and wealth.

Hatred is particularly offensive when it is used by the wealthy for their own enrichment. Rupert Murdoch, in the course of accumulating his wealth, has never shied away from using it.

Most of us have little desire to ruin people’s lives in the totality of an expected human lifespan. We all can inflict stress, trauma, hatred, violence and lies on others to satisfy hatred when it seeks an outlet for expression.

An innate part of being human is the capacity to inflict hatefulness on others. It is used by the rich and powerful to subjugate others.

The recently retired 92-year-old head of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, is a significant player in this methodology.

News Corp is best described as a conservative social engineering project disguised as a news media company.

For over 70 years, Murdoch has inflicted his particular brand of indecency on a singularly energetic cohort of individuals responsive to his refined and perfected methods of inflicting misery. He has successfully dulled the minds of millions throughout the Western world.

From this shrivelled-up body of a man came an affinity for social engineering in the name of money. It included the infliction of stress, trauma, hatred, violence, lies and the destruction of people’s lives.

The American columnist Mike Royko said of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers that they are trash: “No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped up in one of them.”

On his retirement as executive chairman of News Corporation, it would be easy to concentrate on his achievements. He has indeed broken his share of legitimate news stories, even if he has used smut, innuendo and lies to do so. He has employed many people and shaken the hands of the most important.

Heaping praise on him would cast a shadow over his heinous actions. He found that journalistic opinions sold more than facts. That tits on page three did the same. That controversy and lies sold papers when journalists omitted the truth.

Murdoch has control of so much media: newspapers, radio stations, websites and TV networks. If he is to leave a legacy, it must undoubtedly be that he was one of the greatest influencers of his time.

He persuaded people that life is about perception. Not what it is but what we perceive it to be.

The truth is that no other person has had a more disastrous influence on Western democracy than the departing head of News Corporation. No other single individual newspaper proprietor has so “poisoned” our collective minds to the point where our ability to reason has been taken from us.

No public figure (except Trump, maybe) has done more to erase any understanding of the climate crisis facing all of us.

No media tycoon has used every methodology available to erode endorsed social safety nets to advantage capitalism.

The Herald Sun, The Australian, Fox News, The Sun, the New York Post, and many other soiled publications carry the weight of his propaganda.

He assassinated any editorial goodness and replaced it with a coating of news hatred that took his mastheads to new depths.

The Murdoch media have titled democratic elections by elevating baseless fake opinions to the front pages and then disguising them as news.

He has tilted a bias in favour of one party over another, with disastrous leaders with disastrous consequences who have endeavoured to destroy their own democracies. In the eyes of many, Murdoch is a monster.

Donald Trump, Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson, Tony Blair, Liz Truss, David Cameron, Tony Abbott, and John Howard – were all endorsed by Murdoch and given the required publicity.

They were all willing to do his favours in return because that’s what building wealth requires. “Political power is temporary“, as Murdoch’s is dynastical and lasting.

This sullen man allegedly disseminated anti-vaccine nonsense during a global pandemic while quietly receiving one of the first available injections.

But that’s his style, as noted by Dave Milner in The Shot:

Indicators of the wretchedness beneath his carapace were apparent early on, long before he mass disseminated anti-vaccine tripe during a global pandemic while quietly receiving one of the first available jabs; long before Fox News lost a $787 million lawsuit against an electronic voting company, Dominion, for knowingly spreading baseless lies and conspiracy theories about the US election being stolen, directly leading to the violent and deadly insurrection on the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021.

When Murdoch left Australia, he left behind a dysfunctional fourth estate. Still, his career took off in the UK. He helped Thatcher rout the unions, and a cruel temperance descended on Britain’s political reality.

Milner continues:

In 1989, when 96 football fans of Liverpool FC died in a crowd crush at Hillsborough stadium, a tragedy caused by the actions of overzealous local police, his newspaper The Sun punched down at grieving families, blaming the victims for the tragedy. He caused immense hurt among the survivors for no reason beyond wanting to sell more newspapers than a balanced, accurate account would – a pattern that has remained true throughout his entire career. Following the tragedy, The Sun was driven out of Liverpool. To this day it is not welcome within the city limits. Having a newspaper driven out of town with pitchforks for its wretchedness is an achievement few in media have ever pulled off.

Or how in 2011, when his largest UK masthead, the News of the World, was closed down after it emerged his employees were illegally hacking the phones of celebrities, politicians, and the grieving parents of a missing child.

That Murdoch’s journalism is held in such low regard by so many is plain to see. It would help if you look at the culture in which they thrive. It is one in which profit is placed before any other consideration.

So much for Rupert Murdoch’s claim that “there are no climate change denialists in News Corporation. “ This mob are full of lies. Yet they control 70% of Australian print media. Time for #MurdochRoyalCommissionhttps://t.co/xXTg6k0Lid

— Office of Kevin Rudd, 26th PM of Australia (@MrKRudd) January 14, 2020

A final word fom Milner:

In 2001, Murdoch’s Fox News poured fossil fuel on the US invasion of the Middle East and ramped up anti-Muslim sentiment post 9/11. He pressed those same fear, racism and xenophobia buttons in the British populace as they jumped over the Brexit cliff in 2016; and is pushing them again in Australia today, as we face a referendum on whether we should listen to Indigenous people before we tell them what to do. His language is fear and hatred, suspicion of difference, deference to money and scorn for the weak and powerless, and far too much of the world has adopted this as its native tongue.

And on top of all this, he uses his media in all its forms to ‘assassinate’ those of opposing views (generally political).

Now, he has chosen to hand over the reins to his son, Kendall Roy Lachlan Murdoch (better known as ‘Lachlan’). He is the chosen one to take over from the master of misery.

Few will mourn the departure of Rupert Murdoch, of whom I have only sparsely written. He may be gone (though he will be lurking in the background as “chairman emeritus“), but the edifice of his evil remains, and NewsCorp will now continue with an heir who might be worse than Rupert. Lachlan is, after all, “His father’s pawn“. That is a worrisome thought.

One of his first moves was to nominate former PM Tony Abbott to the Board of News Corp. Abbott would have little to offer in terms of leadership. He was a failure at that. He did, however, have expertise in the delivery of gutter politics. Therefore, he will be well suited to a seat on the right of Lachlan.

To say l hate the man Rupert Murdoch and others of his ilk would be a bridge too far. The capacity for hate is not within me, and to do so would only suggest like-mindedness.

@TurnbullMalcolm on Murdoch: "“I say this without any sense of hyperbole: I do not believe that there is any individual alive today that has done more damage to American democracy than Rupert Murdoch. You might say [he’s] Australia’s deadliest export.”

— Mike Carlton (@MikeCarlton01) September 22, 2023