How You Can Expose Liars and Exploit Vulnerabilities in Fascist Media
Discrediting (The Anti-Autocracy Psyop)
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of history.”
— George Orwell
Discrediting as a valuable tool in the Anti-Autocracy Psyop.
There is a reason Fox News settled for $787.5 million rather than let the trial happen.¹ Tucker Carlson had texted a producer that Sidney Powell was “lying” and her claims “insane.” Sean Hannity had privately called Powell a “fucking lunatic.” Fox’s own internal research division, called the Brain Room, had concluded the election fraud claims were false.² Fox CEO Suzanne Scott had responded to a reporter’s accurate fact-check by writing “This has to stop now. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.” Rupert Murdoch himself had described Trump’s voter fraud narrative as “bulls--- and damaging.” None of this stopped any of them from going on air and telling their viewers the opposite of what they knew to be true. Facing a jury, they paid. Neither network was required to apologize. Most of their viewers have no idea this happened.
That is a vulnerability to target.
The JTRIG document,³ the classified GCHQ training presentation leaked by Edward Snowden and published in The Intercept in 2014, names discrediting as a formal operational goal. The slides describe the mission as “destroy, deny, degrade and disrupt” by “discrediting” targets, and list specific tactics under a section the document itself titles “discredit a target.” Intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic built entire operational units around this. The ethical version does not require fabrication, honey traps, or false flag operations. It requires documentation. The target’s own record does the work.
Discrediting is the third tool in this series, and it works differently than the first two. JAQing Off, covered in the previous piece, slips past defenses by asking questions that don’t look like attacks. The Herd effect, covered before that, works by getting to a space first and setting what feels normal before anyone else arrives. Discrediting is more direct. You are not necessarily asking a question. You are holding up a document written in someone’s own hand and letting them convict themselves.
A 2024 study published in Cognitive Research⁴ found that attacking a source’s trustworthiness, specifically by pointing to a documented conflict of interest or a proven act of deliberate deception, reduced belief in that source’s claims as effectively as directly debunking the claims themselves. Calling the source incompetent had no effect. But proving they knew, proving the lie was intentional rather than a mistake, hit as hard as any factual correction. The same research found that framing something as deliberate disinformation rather than honest error makes the discrediting significantly more powerful.
Fox’s texts prove a decision, not a mistake. Carlson texted a colleague to get a reporter fired⁵ for accurately fact-checking Trump. Scott described accurate journalism as bad for business. Murdoch knew the claims were false and let his hosts broadcast them anyway. Every one of them knew, and every one of them went on air anyway, because the lie was more profitable than the truth. That distinction is the weapon.
It lands harder when the ground has been prepared. Someone who has already seen a JAQ question planted in a Fox comment section, “Didn’t Fox have to pay nearly a billion dollars for lying to you?” is not encountering the settlement texts cold. They are encountering them after doubt already has a foothold. The question created the opening. The document walks through it. This is why these tools are synergistic rather than interchangeable. The Herd effect sets the frame. JAQing Off plants the seed. Discrediting brings the harvest.
Fox is not the only right wing media outlet with a documented record of lying to its audience. Newsmax paid $107 million in separate settlements to Dominion and Smartmatic over the same lies.⁶ Drop the name of an outlet and what you know in the comments. If you have a source, bring it. We will build the list together.
These are the questions that come from this material.
Didn’t Fox News have to pay nearly a billion dollars because their own texts proved they were lying to you about the 2020 election?
Tucker Carlson’s private messages say Sidney Powell was lying. Why did Fox keep putting her on the air?
Didn’t Newsmax pay $107 million to settle lawsuits over election lies?
You do not explain. You do not brief. You post the question and you leave. Turn off notifications. Do not go back. The moment you start defending the question, you become the story. The question does not need you to survive. It needs you to disappear.
This works everywhere their content appears: Fox’s own Facebook page, Hannity’s Twitter replies, local news comment sections where their clips get shared, the neighborhood group where someone just posted a Tucker clip. You are not arguing with anyone. You are leaving something behind for the people who are watching but not typing, the people who make up the overwhelming majority of every comment section that has ever existed.
The next piece in this series covers information environments, which is about knowing what tool to use where. Not every space calls for the same approach. The spectrum runs from a question so innocuous it could have come from anyone to a direct discrediting that names the document and the dollar amount. Where you land on that spectrum depends on the space you are in, the audience you are trying to reach, and your own risk tolerance. After that, we will cover operational security, what it looks like to do this work with appropriate protection, how to think about anonymity, and what level of precaution fits what level of activity.
The loudest voices in these spaces have been running coordinated influence operations for thirty years. They built the infrastructure. We are learning to use it.
No credentials required.
What are some good examples of discrediting? Let us know in the comments so more Existential Republic folks can see!
Find any official in any state at openstates.org. Find your state attorney general at usa.gov/state-attorney-general. Find mutual aid near you at mutualaidhub.org.
Works Cited
ABC News. (2023, April 24). What Fox News hosts allegedly said privately versus on-air about false election fraud claims. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fox-news-hosts-allegedly-privately-versus-air-false/story?id=97662551
Government Communications Headquarters. (2012). The art of deception: Training for online covert operations [Classified presentation, released via Snowden disclosure]. Electronic Frontier Foundation. https://www.eff.org/files/2014/04/09/20140224-intercept-training_for_covert_online_operations.pdf
Greenwald, G. (2014, February 24). How covert agents infiltrate the internet to manipulate, deceive, and destroy reputations. The Intercept. https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
Ecker, U. K. H., Prike, T., Paver, A. B., Scott, R. J., & Swire-Thompson, B. (2024). Don’t believe them! Reducing misinformation influence through source discreditation. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 9(52). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s41235-024-00581-7
NBC News. (2025, August 18). Newsmax to pay $67 million to settle defamation lawsuit from voting machine company. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/newsmax-pay-67m-settle-defamation-lawsuit-voting-machine-company-rcna225604
Peltz, J., & Riccardi, N. (2023, April 18). Fox, Dominion Voting Systems reach $787 million settlement over false election claims. PBS NewsHour. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fox-dominion-voting-systems-reach-settlement-over-false-election-claims
Timm, J. C., Terkel, A., & Gregorian, D. (2023, April 11). Private Fox News text messages, emails released in Dominion suit. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/private-fox-news-text-messages-emails-released-dominion-suit-rcna72693
I would pretty much always change ‘you were lied to/they are lying to you’ to ‘WE were lied to/they are lying to US’
Using singular singles them out as being alone in being a duped victim, plural implies us vs the liars and we are victims together and we don’t have to stand for it.
Very small but i think it could unconsciously matter to some
I personally like to use the puzzled old grandmother tactic. "But what about this letter she just sent to the courts yesterday? I'm so confused!"