One of Con­gress’ most steely con­ser­v­a­tives, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Liz Cheney, R‑Wyoming, defined the acid, final test that needs to be met by the House com­mit­tee prob­ing the Jan­u­ary 6th attack on the Unit­ed States Capitol.

It has an explo­sive ques­tion to answer.

“Did Don­ald Trump, through action or inac­tion, cor­rupt­ly seek to impede Con­gress’ offi­cial pro­ceed­ing to count elec­toral votes?” asked Cheney.

She used emails giv­en the pan­el by Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Mead­ows to focus on the one hun­dred and eighty-sev­en min­utes in which Trump, hav­ing sent off the demon­stra­tors, did noth­ing to stop the trash­ing. “Mark, the Pres­i­dent needs to tell peo­ple in the Capi­tol to go home: This is hurt­ing all of us, he’s destroy­ing his lega­cy,” emailed sar­cas­tic Fox News host Lau­ra Ingraham.

As well, Cheney quot­ed incrim­i­nat­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions from her House col­leagues – ini­tial­ly with­out nam­ing them – to show efforts to over­turn the ver­dict of America’s voters.

“I think we’re try­ing to under­stand those one hun­dred and eighty sev­en min­utes that he (Trump) didn’t say any­thing – what it means,” Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Pete Aguilar, D‑California, a pan­el mem­ber, said after the com­mit­tee hearing.

What it means is that the 45th Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States may well have com­mit­ted a crime two weeks before leav­ing office.

It would be a crime aid­ed and abet­ted by aides, bad lawyers, and mem­bers of Con­gress. A like­ly sus­pect, Rep. Jim Jor­dan, R‑Ohio, is slat­ed to chair the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee if Repub­li­cans regain con­trol of the House in 2022.

A lit­ter of kit­tens was let out of the bag.

The House vot­ed 222–208, with only Cheney and Adam Kinzinger vot­ing Yea, to refer Mead­ows to the Depart­ment of Jus­tice for crim­i­nal con­tempt of Con­gress. Hav­ing sent over vast­ly reveal­ing emails, he has refused – alleged­ly on Trump’s orders – to sub­mit to a deposition.

The Cheney ques­tion has set off a wingding in right wing media.

The Fox hosts she quot­ed have set out to brand her a liar and traitor.

In turn, the network’s remain­ing hon­est jour­nal­ists – and a cou­ple hon­est con­ser­v­a­tives — are bail­ing. The net­work is increas­ing­ly exud­ing the stench of fas­cism over the airwaves.

The ini­tial impe­tus to depart Fox was sup­plied by a Tuck­er Car­son “doc­u­men­tary” for Fox Nation called Patri­ot Purge, which seeks to exon­er­ate the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion­ists. Long­time Fox per­son­al­i­ty Ger­al­do Rivera has con­demned its “inflam­ma­to­ry and out­ra­geous nature.”

Con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dit Jon­ah Gold­berg and fried Steve Hayes went fur­ther: They quit. “It (Patri­ot Purge) is a per­fect exam­ple of pro­pa­gan­da that weaves half truths into a whole lie,” Gold­berg wrote in the Los Ange­les Times. “It insin­u­ates that the Jan­u­ary 6th riot at the Capi­tol might have been a ‘false flag oper­a­tion’ orches­trat­ed by the FBI or the Deep State. Worst, it sug­gests the Biden admin­is­tra­tion is com­ing for the real patri­ots – i.e. Trump voters.”

The nur­tur­ing of fear, to a gullible audi­ence, is a prime tac­tic of total­i­tar­i­an pro­pa­gan­da. Untruths get repeat­ed over and over again to an insu­lar audi­ence that hears noth­ing else.

In his famous mem­oir Berlin Diary, CBS news­man William L. Shir­er wrote of vaca­tion­ing in Switzer­land dur­ing the sum­mer of 1939 and read­ing sto­ries in the world press of Ger­many mass­ing troops for an inva­sion of Poland. Return­ing to Berlin, Nazi media was filled with arti­cles about Poland threat­en­ing Ger­many, e.g. the head­line: “Ger­man farm hous­es in the (Pol­ish) Cor­ri­dor in flames.”

Liz Cheney is a fierce par­ti­san: Unlike her Repub­li­can House col­leagues, how­ev­er, she has no truck or trade with pub­lic fab­ri­ca­tion of falsehoods.

Going on Fox News Sun­day, she told host Chris Wal­lace: “It’s the same kind of thing you hear from peo­ple who say Sep­tem­ber 11th was an inside job. It’s un-Amer­i­can to be spread­ing those kinds of lies, and they are lies.”

Chris Wal­lace quit FNC after last Sunday’s broad­cast, telling the audi­ence he was bound for new work at CNN’s stream­ing service.

It’s a mea­sure of the pow­er of Cheney’s ques­tion that Fox isn’t black­ing her out and treat­ing her as an un-per­son. Instead, it is dis­cred­it­ing her.

Han­ni­ty has even sought to depict him­self as the aggriev­ed par­ty after Cheney read his email. (A slav­ish Trump lick­spit­tle, Han­ni­ty emailed Mead­ows: “Can he make a state­ment? Ask peo­ple to leave the Capitol.”)

“Where is the out­rage in the media over my pri­vate text mes­sages being released again pub­licly? Do we believe in pri­va­cy in this coun­try? Appar­ent­ly not,” Han­ni­ty thun­dered, before wel­com­ing Mark Mead­ows as a guest to give the par­ty line on why he’s not being deposed.

The most vicious pun­dit­ry has come from Tuck­er Carl­son, call­ing Cheney “a liar”, post­ing an unflat­ter­ing pic­ture of her – unflat­ter­ing pic­tures of pro­gres­sive women are a Fox sta­ple – and play­ing the fear card: “The Jan­u­ary 6th com­mit­tee has become the Amer­i­can ver­sion of a Sovi­et show tri­al… Liz Cheney can har­ness the awe­some pow­ers of the nation­al secu­ri­ty state to seize your text mes­sages and read them in the Con­gres­sion­al Record.”

The Anti-Defama­tion League, America’s most ven­er­a­ble voice against big­otry, has tried to flag FNC on its extremism.

In a let­ter to Fox Cor­po­ra­tion CEO Lach­lan Mur­doch, Jonathan Green­blatt wrote: “Let’s call this (Patri­ot Purge) for what it is, an abject, indis­putable lie and a bla­tant attempt to rewrite his­to­ry. As an orga­ni­za­tion com­mit­ted to fight­ing anti-Semi­tism and all forms of hate, we remain deeply con­cerned that the false nar­ra­tive and wild con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries pre­sent­ed by Carl­son will sow fur­ther divi­sion and has the poten­tial to ani­mate violence.”

“Where is the line for you and Fox?” Green­blatt asked the Mur­doch dauphin.

Green­blatt received no answer. Carl­son dou­bled down dur­ing his anti-Cheney screed Tues­day night, lion­iz­ing the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion­ists: “Thou­sands of ordi­nary Amer­i­can cit­i­zens, vot­ers, peo­ple who believe in our democ­ra­cy far more fer­vent­ly than Liz Cheney ever has, came to Wash­ing­ton because they fer­vent­ly believed democ­ra­cy had been thwarted.”

By a sev­en-mil­lion-vote Biden vic­to­ry. The ADL was heard from again this week. Fox ran a car­toon of Jew­ish phil­an­thropist (and Holo­caust sur­vivor) George Soros as a pup­pet mas­ter, with a Demo­c­ra­t­ic dis­trict attor­ney on one swing hold­ing a “defund the police” sign and a Demo­c­ra­t­ic attor­ney gen­er­al with a “No bail” sign. Phys­i­cal fea­tures of the Soros fig­ure could have come from a copy of Der Sturmer picked up from a Nurem­burg kiosk in the 1930s.

The ADL protest­ed that the car­toon “con­jures up long­stand­ing anti-Semit­ic tropes” and “con­tributes to the nor­mal­iza­tion of anti-Semitism.”

Fox took down the car­toon from its Face­book page and Insta­gram, while on-air Fox con­trib­u­tor Leo Ter­rell was dri­ving home its mes­sage, claim­ing that America’s crime wave is part of a con­spir­a­cy by “left-lean­ing George Soros Demo­c­ra­t­ic pros­e­cu­tors” to entrap police.

Stoke fear. Erect objects of hate. Alas, the vast major­i­ty of Liz Cheney’s Repub­li­can col­leagues are buy­ing into this strat­e­gy, or are main­tain­ing a fear­ful, reveal­ing silence. Their knees are shak­ing at the pow­er of right-wing media… the pow­er to put their pri­ma­ry chal­lengers on the air.

In a dis­tant mir­ror, I read the words of Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Mar­garet Chase Smith of Maine, who deliv­ered a “Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­science” against red-bait­ing Repub­li­can col­league Joe McCarthy.

“I do not want to see the Repub­li­can Par­ty ride to polit­i­cal vic­to­ry on the Four Hors­es of Calum­ny: fear, igno­rance, big­otry and smear,” Smith said.

Smith found a lot more sup­port in her par­ty sev­en­ty years ago than Liz Cheney does now.