Watergate, Vietnam, and the Civil Rights Movement convinced the fascists that control of media and the narratives it creates were essential to rolling back progress in this country.
They created the biggest Alternate Reality Game (ARG) of them all for Republican voters and politicians to inhabit, a Fox News Cinematic Universe where it was the "political correctness" and civil rights that were the truly abhorrent, unnatural thing, an attack on the cis white majority's "inherent superiority."