Murdoch Murdoch: The Propaganda Sitcom

Introduction

We all love a good sitcom web series and the Murdoch Murdoch series is one of such. At least depending on what ideological class you subscribe to. The series falls in the category of those that are extremely controversial and presumably widely popular.

The Three Murdochs From Left to Right: Murdoch-chan, Murdoch, and Dr. Murdoch

Murdoch Murdoch is an animated American white nationalist web series, showcasing the lives of three American friends, the eponymous Murdoch Murdoch, his friend Dr. Murdoch, and female compatriot Murdoch-Chan all of whom are open ethno-nationalists. The web series emerged on YouTube in mid-2015, only to later gain a larger following during the 2016 U.S election cycle.

Its episodes are usually not more than 10 minutes long and are uploaded to different video hosting sites every few weeks. They’re presented in a crude style of animation, heavily reliant on stock images and jerky movement, mildly reminiscent of South Park.

The show has a long-running cast of recurring characters and an underlying tone of self-deprecation and irony. In other words, it’s much like any other average internet comedy series. But to many, Murdoch Murdoch is more than an average internet comedy series and has been tagged as a Nazi propaganda show.

Content

The show features short 7 to 15-minute stand-alone episodes, following the daily lives and adventures of Murdoch Murdoch, a disgruntled 20-year old white nationalist and anime fan, his older friend, Dr. Murdoch, and their female compatriot, Murdoch-Chan.

The sitcom series uses highly offensive language, with all of the main characters routinely using racial slurs and internet memes. The show routinely makes reference to Nazi Germany, European history, white nationalism and internet culture.

An example can be found in ‘The Great Meme War (GMW)’ which spans seven episodes of varying lengths, with a total of over two hours of content. The GMW tells the story of three members of the Alt-Right, a largely online movement that advocates for far-right ideas, primarily white supremacy and anti-Semitism.

The three main protagonists, along with various other members of the Alt-Right fight throughout the series against the forces of ZOG, a Jewish-controlled amalgamation including communists, progressives, classical liberals and everything they perceive as threats to their own safety. ZOG itself is a common term in far-right discourse, standing for “Zionist Occupied Government.

It is a long-held conspiracy theory that governments across the world are controlled by Jewish influence. The story portrays online discourse as a fantasy-inspired world, borrowing visual cues from a wide array of niche media including Star Wars, Lord of The Rings, Game of Thrones, etc.

Murdoch Murdoch features simple, South Park-style paper cut-out animation, often with background images and animations taken from the public domain. The show sometimes mixes animated content with real-life photographs.

Characters meant to represent real-world figures are presented with loose accuracy to fit the series’ themes. As such, Murdoch Murdoch does not only create its own indexical(s), but directly pulls from a wide range of far-right ideas, language, and symbolism.

 

List of Murdoch Murdoch Episodes

Episodes	Season 1	Season 2	Season 3
1	The Reddit Cuck Discovers Pol	Fatherland	Speak Freely
2	Nigel’s Dream	Pure 100% Bavarian Phenotype	The Ghosts Of America
3	Return Of The Swede	Revelations	Vampire Hunter M
4	Brave	They Sleep, We Live	Galaxy MM88
5	The Orbiter	Revenge Of The Murdoch
6	Race War; Us Against Them	No Way, San Jose	Sargon The Afraid
7	Ellen Pao’s Gift To Pol	Brexit	Border Runner3: The Embrowning
8	The Ghost Of Stonewall Jackson	Hwite Knights	How To Act In A Crisis
9	Flight 800-000	Anti-Fascist Action	Burgas In Bongland
10	J.J.S’s Interracial Art That’s Perfectly Acceptable	Vampires	The Wanderer’s Choice
11	When My Brother’s Finally Wake Up	Meme Magic	Episode 3.11
12	Mandell’s Milk	Shameless Promotion For The NPI 2016 Fall Conference	Race Jam
13	The Art Of The Red Pill	Obama’s Legacy	SkyDaddies, Being And Time
14	Prep The Bull	The Great Meme War Of 2016	Exploited Meme
15	Halloween Special	The Alt-Light Strikes Back	Change The Matters
16	Progressives’ Night Out	A Kangz Carol	Border Runners 4: The Caravan Crisis
17	Hold Back The Night	Your Heroes Journey	Against Time
18	The Last Son Of The West	The Last Stand Of Implicit Whiteness
19	Christmas Special	The Greatest Generation
20	This Machine Kills Hippies	All For Love
21	2016	Nice Guy National Socialism
22	Ijeb! On Suicide Watch	Metamorphisis
23	Back To The F*ggot	Immortality Through Delicious T-Shirt Money
24	Trudeau’s Diversityathon	Get Your Hands Off Muh Vidya
25	The Murdoch Diaries	The Cruel Fate Of Kekistan

                                                 

Popularity

The series portrayed the 2016 election as a long and protracted battle sequence in which the forces of the far-right battle an avalanche of enemies, all of which the show presented in one form or another.

For instance, the opposing force includes a monstrous version of George Soros, a Jewish billionaire philanthropist and Democratic Party donor. The protagonists conversely fight alongside well-known figures in the far-right such as Alex Jones, the founder of the far-right news website Info-Wars, and host of the radio show the Alex Jones Show, and Richard Spencer, founder of the ethno-nationalist National Policy Institute, often credited with coining the term “Alt-Right”.

Alex Jones fighting in The Great Meme War of 2016

After the far-right army claims victory, one soldier identified as “R/TheDonald,” (a reference to a Subreddit in which Trump supporters congregate) asks if their side has actually won. In response, Murdoch gives a speech outlining the conflict between the Alt-Right and ZOG.

Richard Spencer, along with two other Alt-Right Soldiers,

Listening to Murdoch’s speech in The Great Meme War of 2016

The similar characters and the sequence portrayed in the first few episodes of the GMW struck a chord with white supremacists in America and the show became popular. It’s important to state that the actual number of views of the show is not known. But according to medium.com, a reupload of Episode 17: Hold Back The Night, which is little more than a six-minute music video filled with xenophobic and anti-Semitic scaremongering, has clocked up over 250,000 views.

And as one commenter mused “If this video hadn’t been taken down I think it would have reached a million views by now.” So we never can tell exactly how many people watch the show.

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Bans and Takedowns

On 4 February 2017, the Twitter account of the show’s creator was banned, alongside various other alt-right and white supremacist Twitter accounts. On July 21, 2017, Murdoch Murdoch’s YouTube channel was taken down, and all of its videos deleted. Shortly thereafter, the creator’s Patron account was taken down for being in violation of the terms of service.

The creator subsequently urged fans to upload the episodes themselves, and vowed to find another platform on which to upload future content. The show subsequently re-emerged on a new YouTube channel, with the new episodes focusing heavily on internet censorship, and the main characters being forced to avoid offensive language in their day-to-day lives.

Political Inclination of Murdoch Murdoch 

Far-right groups have seen an upsurge in support across western climes, from Donald Trump’s presidency era in the United States to the VOX party’s parliamentary breakthrough in Spain’s most recent elections. The far-right is having a political resurgence after years of amassing steady growth and support. They utilize cultural anxieties to recruit members of dominant cultures within a society who feel left behind in some way.

Far-right media employs several tactics to mainstream its ideas and to radicalize potential supporters. These include websites that spread misinformation, coordinated Twitter attacks, the incubation and dissemination of targeted memes, and the promulgation of far-right web series with Murdoch Murdoch as an example.

Coupled with the show’s vivid acceptance of Nazism and white supremacy, it has a passive message of unity embedded in it. The main characters exemplify this: Murdoch is a libertarian, Dr. Murdoch is a nationalist, and Murdoch-chan is an unapologetic, Hitler-quoting, SS-uniform-wearing Nazi. They represent three major factions within the alt-right, and the show repeatedly makes it clear that they need to remain together in the face of their non-white enemies.

Reviews

It’s hard to tell exactly how influential Murdoch Murdoch is. Its viewer numbers are unclear, since YouTube, where the show was originally hosted, is quick to remove the videos. Nevertheless, fans of the show consistently re-upload copies of their favorite episodes, giving an insight into the size of the show’s audience.

One fact that stands out is that the show is perceived differently depending on which ideological side individuals favor. While the series resonates well with far-right modern white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements, it is considered racial, vulgar and outright demeaning to the Jews, communists, progressives and black people.

The series’ irony softens the experience for first-time viewers, who might otherwise be scared away by the show’s politics. It remains palatable “just a joke” right up to the point where viewers start to genuinely sympathize with Murdoch Murdoch’s ideology. This works because bigoted jokes aren’t “just jokes” there’s strong evidence that they’re actually highly effective tools for fostering bigoted views.

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Murdoch Murdoch Rating

The series has a viewer’s weighted average vote of 8.4 / 10 on IMDb.

Conclusion

Murdoch Murdoch is self-deprecating and deeply ironic. The main male characters are portrayed as pathetic, clumsy idiots. The female character’s quasi-sexual adoration of Adolf Hitler is played for laughs. Topping it all off, the atrocious animation and absurd over-use use of watermarked stock images remind the viewer to take nothing seriously.