Right-Wing Media Stoke IRS Fear-Mongering

By Kevin Howley, August 23, 2022

The right wing noise machine is working overtime this summer. Spurred by President Biden’s recent legislative success, most notably passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and the FBI’s search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, conservatives have launched a full frontal assault on their opponents ahead of the November midterms.

Extremist “news sites” are the tip of the spear. Spinning a toxic and potentially lethal web of  deception, misdirection and outright fabrication, conservative pundits and their GOP allies are ratcheting up their violent rhetoric—echoing the seditious bombast that lead directly to the J6 Capitol Insurrection.

Incendiary Rhetoric

Despite reporting that suggests Republicans are “coming under fire for their rhetoric” the fearmongering grows increasingly incendiary. While concerns over targeting FBI agents for violent attack has received the lion share of news coverage, the demonization of the IRS demands closer scrutiny.

Consider this item from WND designed to strike fear in the hearts—and wallets—of middle class Americans and small business owners who, so the conspiracy theory goes, will be subject to IRS audits conducted by heavily-armed Revenue agents.

“Think of the IRS as a mass shooter. Where does the mass shooter strike? Well, they almost exclusively prey on soft targets, such as gun-free zones. It’s very rare that one will be stupid enough to target a gun show or gun store.”

Rhetorically equating the IRS with mass shooters isn’t simply reckless; it’s armed and dangerous.

“Weaponizing” the IRS

Granted WND is not your run of the mill right wing website. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) doesn’t mince words describing WND’s Christian conservative extremism: “Its pages are devoted to manipulative fear-mongering and outright fabrications designed to further the paranoid, gay-hating, conspiratorial and apocalyptic visions…from the fringes of the far-right and fundamentalist worlds.”

Headlines like this one: “Fed Asking For New IRS Agents ‘Willing to Use Deadly Force” are typical. Or how about this hysterical header: “Congresswoman: New Army of IRS Agents Coming After Americans.”

WND may be ahead of the curve, but the right wing media sphere is full of manipulative warnings of a “weaponized” IRS. It’s all a piece with traditional Republican talking points about tax and spend liberals, the perils of big government, and elitist Democrats. Gateway Pundit tips its hand when it notes: “They will shoot and kill you over your $1,500 in taxes. But the Bidens, the Pelosi’s, and every other Uniparty crook will never be touched.

Trump World Demagoguery

But make no mistake. These aren’t simply Reagan-era talking points rebooted for the midterm election; it’s Trump World demagoguery meant to agitate a Republican base that is itching for a fight.

The Daily Wire offers a chilling example of fear-mongering that may well lead to violent confrontation between federal law enforcement and the GOP’s death camp followers. Headlined “Guns, Body Armor, Spy Gear: Here’s What Biden’s Beefed-Up IRS Investigation Unit”—portentously illustrated with an image of armor-piercing bullets—the lede issues this dire warning: “The IRS is about to go on an 87,000-employee hiring spree and many of those new tax collectors will be packing heat while they hunt for money.”

This isn’t simply a matter of Republican law makers and conservative operatives making the IRS a “GOP boogeyman ahead of the midterms,” as The Hill put it recently. The party of law and order is inviting chaos on a scale that could make the J6 Capitol Assault look like an ice cream social.

Kevin Howley is a writer and educator whose work has appeared in Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, Social Movement Studies, and Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture. His most recent book is Drones: Media Discourse and the Public Imagination.

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