Why the NewsCorp scandal won't resonate with Americans

The News of the World hacking scandal has progressed with shocking speed in the UK. Yesterday it seemed to reach a fevered climax when Rupert Murdoch withdrew his bid for satellite operator BSkyB after he was ceremoniously denounced by the entire British Parliament in an unprecedented session. It marks an incredible end of an era. Murdoch is effectively being banished from Britain after having held sway over the island's media, government and even police for decades.

Now commentators are speculating that the trouble for Murdoch's media empire News Corp, which also own many papers and Fox News in the US, is spreading across the Atlantic. The shares in News Corp on the New York Stock Exchange came crashing down even before Murdoch's BSkyB bid was withdrawn, and the billionaire himself had to buy up the shares to keep the price from collapsing.

Now there are concerns that the bribery allegations in the UK could get the company into legal trouble in the US, because it is illegal for a company publicly traded in America to pay bribes to foreign officials – which includes police officers. That, combined with new allegations that Murdoch's British papers also hacked into the phones of American 9/11 victims has prompted some Democrats in congress to call for an investigation into the matter. But will the public at large share their outrage?

Is Murdoch's influence in British politics coming to an end?

The News of the World phone hacking scandal in the UK has literally exploded this week, with fresh allegations that the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper hacked into the phones of murder victims, victims of the 7/7 terrorism attacks, relatives of dead soldiers and detectives investigating cases. Late yesterday it was announced that the 160-year-old paper will shut down as a result of the scandal, news that sent shock waves through Britain.

The allegations of bribing police officials and hacking into phones began several years ago, but the latest revelations are so distasteful that it seems to have given British politicians the resolve to publicly denounce Murdoch, something they never dared to do before. At the centre of the scandal is Rebekah Brooks, who was editor of News of the World at the time of the phone hacking but has since risen to become chief executive of Rupert Murdoch's global media empire News Corp. The company, which also owns Fox News and papers such as the New York Post in the US, controls a vast array of British tabloid papers and has long been known in the UK as a political power broker. Murdoch controls British politics, it is claimed, by threatening to use his papers to destroy any politician that doesn't give in to his demands.

But Murdopch's influence over British politics seemed to come to a climactic end this week, as one after another members of the British Parliament took to the floor and denounced not only News Corp, but also the fact that the parliament for so long has been bullied by the company. Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith said News Corp has "systematically corrupted the police and in my view has gelded this Parliament, to our shame.” Labour MP Chris Bryant said the hacking was symptomatic of the way News Corp operates around the world.

America unhinged

Perhaps the only thing more depressing than this weekend's assassination shooting of US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was the fact that it was so utterly unsurprising. The shooting, which for the moment remains an attempted assassination as its intended target fights for her life in hospital, so far has a death toll of six out of 20 people shot. For many observers in the US, the shooting is the culmination of two years of incendiary rhetoric from the right, an episode of far-right violence that people have been warning was coming soon. When you have mainstream American politicians telling people that the government is trying to establish "death panels" in its healthcare legislation and that there has been a "Socialist takeover" of the government that can only be brought to an end using "second amendment remedies", it was only a matter of time before some unhinged person on the far right acted out in violence.

The motives of the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, are not yet clear. In fact authorities are looking into the possibility of a second shooter. It is not yet known whether Loughner had any specific ties to the Tea Party movement, whether he was an admirer of Sarah Palin, or whether he was a fan of incendiary Fox News hosts such as Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly. But from his online postings and notes, it already seems clear that Loughner subscribed to far right ideology. His online postings and YouTube videos rant against government tyranny, using language that is eerily reminiscent of the language the mainstream right has been increasingly using. In one of his postings, Loughner refers disparagingly to 'currency that's not backed by gold or silver' - an idea that is the subject of regular rants on Mr. Beck's show (right before his commercials for gold investment). This idea that a non-gold-backed currency is unconstitutional was also a main focus of the anti-government 'patriot movement' of the 1990's that was responsible for violence in the middle part of that decade. Loughner also went on long rants about immigration, particularly Hispanic immigrants in Arizona.

Be careful what you wish for, teabaggers

The Tea Party movement in the United States saw its most high-profile electoral success last Tuesday with the primary election of Rand Paul, son of the notorious Texas Libertarian Ron Paul, to be the Republican candidate for Senator in Kentucky. The pundits told us it was a “victory over the Washington establishment” delivered by voters seething with anger. Paul’s mainstream Republican challenger had received the endorsement of long-serving Republican senators, while Paul had been endorsed by the Tea Party and Sarah Palin. “This is a message to Washington from the Tea Party!” shouted an elated Paul at his victory speech.

But it wasn’t long before the reality began to sink in about exactly who the teabaggers were pushing into power. Like his father, Paul is an adherent to a uniquely American brand of ultra-orthodox Libertarianism. This strain of thought opposes almost all government interference in people’s lives. It is opposed to income tax, the environmental protection agency, the FBI, the Americans with Disabilities Act, government pensions, medicare, you name it. If the government does it, they want it killed.

Lately this kind of non-government ideology has been gaining popularity amongst an increasingly radicalized American public. The Tea Party movement, born out of citizen anger over Barack Obama’s efforts to give all Americans health insurance, has morphed into a snowballing anti-government crusade that seems like it won’t be content until Washington has been burned to the ground. Spurred on by Fox News, the most watched news network in the US, the Teabaggers believe that the US government is “out of control”, developing into an authoritarian super-state that seeks to regulate every area of their lives.

A tea party for Britain?

This week, Tory Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan was on Fox News in America, where he is frequently found, and talked about his efforts to bring the anti-government “tea party” movement to the UK.

The idea that this rag-tag movement of disaffected, gun-toting right-wingers with funny hats could ever catch on in the United Kingdom is a stretch. I probably couldn’t think of a more un-British phenomenon. But, given the rising anti-EU rhetoric in this country, is it inconceivable to see Hannan's vision become a reality here?

Who knows how many people actually turned up to Hannan’s little gathering, I certainly didn’t hear anything about it in the British media (a quick check suggests about 100 people showed up). But though he may be on the fringe of British politics and is an unwanted thorn in the side of Tory leader David Cameron, it is important to remember Hannan is still a Tory politician. His brand of populist, anti-government rhetoric is just an extreme representation of a strain of thought that is active and growing in the Conservative Party.