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Voice of America headquarters
Opinion: Trump’s autocratic propaganda machine Is about to swallow America’s global voice and scare the daylights out of the world, writes John Casey.
In 1938, a voice crackled through American radios describing an unthinkable scene — that Martians were landing in New Jersey and annihilating cities. Humanity was on the brink of collapse.
It was Orson Welles’s infamous adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, a fictional broadcast so realistic that panicked listeners reportedly fled their homes, convinced Earth was under attack.
Fast forward nearly a century, and the radio hoax has become a nightmarish reality, not with Martians but with a hostile takeover of the American information landscape. The “aliens” this time wear red ties, host MAGA rallies, and peddle election conspiracies for clicks.
Their mother ship? One America News, and the conquest isn’t of the Earth but of the airwaves that once carried America’s truest ideals and truths.
OAN, the fringe-right propaganda network birthed in the sludge-filled swamps of Trumpism, will fill the shoes of the revered Voice of America, a state-run international broadcaster with an 80-year legacy of telling the truth in dark corners of the world. This is no ordinary programming shift. It is the hollowing out of American credibility, a bulldozing of journalistic integrity, and a smoking flare signaling the collapse of democracy’s loudest megaphone for generations.
VOA began broadcasting in 1942 with a promise: “The news may be good. The news may be bad. We shall tell you the truth.” That ethos guided its coverage through Nazi Germany, the Cold War, Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the Arab Spring.
In oppressive regimes where truth was buried or banned, VOA was a lifeline. Its journalists risked their lives to report the facts. Its stories inspired revolutions, exposed abuses, and, perhaps most importantly, it built trust. Period.
And now that trust is being detonated by Donald Trump and his lapdogs.
The news that Trump is giving OAN and its talking heads, including the conspiracy-laced Kari Lake, who now atrociously runs VOA, a front-row seat at VOA is more than political meddling, it really is Orwellian sabotage. It’s akin to handing the keys to the Library of Congress to Alex Jones or replacing FEMA with QAnon. It’s just that serious. And so wrong.
In fact, if Trump told the Martians to take over VOA, I think I could accept that. At least they’d be more honest, and dare I say, more connected to the news.
OAN, on the other hand, is not a news network. It is a cheap speaker system blasting lies, hate, and white grievance politics. It’s the channel that claimed Trump won the 2020 election long after even Rudy Giuliani gave up the charade. It promoted the Arizona audit, a clown show of ballot-hunting volunteers led by cyber ninjas and delusional activists. OAN even settled a lawsuit with Smartmatic for defamation after spreading baseless claims of election fraud.
But its sins go beyond disinformation. OAN has trafficked in homophobia and outright hatred, calling Pride flags “disgusting” and LGBTQ+ Americans “perverts” while defending policies that erase queer and trans lives from public life.
It has used its platform to demonize teachers and libraries, book bans, and embrace a version of America that is white, straight, and angry. The network’s own contributors have been caught on camera spewing anti-LGBTQ slurs, mocking marginalized communities, and endorsing the kind of state-run surveillance that belongs in Putin’s Russia, not a democratic republic.
Which, perhaps, is the point.
Because if OAN slithers its way into VOA, the “Voice of America” will no longer speak with integrity, but with intimidation. It will no longer be a beacon for the oppressed but a bullhorn for the oppressor. This isn’t just about programming. It’s about power. Control the narrative, and you control the nation and the world’s perception of it.
Autocratic states have long understood this. Russia has RT. China has CGTN. Hungary, Turkey, and Iran all have government mouthpieces disguised as journalism. If Trump succeeds in transforming VOA into a MAGA-infused version of OAN, the United States joins that list. And that is absolutely deplorable..
This fits neatly into Trump’s road map of autocracy laid bare. He’s promised to purge the federal government, weaponize the Department of Justice, turn military loyalty into a political litmus test, and now he wants to hijack our voice to the world. The strategy is straight out of the authoritarian playbook: silence dissent, flood the zone with lies, and erase the line between fact and fiction.
With VOA neutered, what remains? How will truth beam into Burmese villages? Even CNN doesn’t reach rural parts of Afghanistan. VOA does. Or did. And if we let OAN control the channel, those who once looked to America for light will see only darkness and assume we like it that way.
It will be a test of American democracy’s immune system, all the danger of RFK Jr. aside, if we allow OAN, Kari Lake, and Trump’s ideological bootlickers to replace journalists with propagandists.
We panicked in 1938 when the Martians “invaded.” But this time the aliens are real. They wear makeup, sit behind supposed “news desks” and lie with perfect confidence, and they’ve been invited to invade airwaves around the world.
And when the real Martians land, we won’t have the credibility to warn anyone.
Voices is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. Visit Advocate.com/submit to learn more about submission guidelines. Views expressed in Voices stories are those of the guest writers, columnists, and editors, and do not directly represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, equalpride.
