By Christian Coleman

Cover design: Carol Chu

Four months into this administration defined by an onslaught of draconian executive orders, we finally have some good news. Just a week after publication, David Pakman’s The Echo Machine: How Right-Wing Extremism Created a Post-Truth America made it to the New York Times Best Seller List! It ranked number six on their print hardcover list and number seven on their combined print and e-book list! On top of that, The Echo Machine hit the Associated Press’s Audiobooks Top 10 and USA Today’s Best-Selling Booklist!

If the 2024 election cycle made anything apparent, it’s that the right wing has benefited from and capitalized on disinformation and the polarization of US politics. The Echo Machine arrived in the nick of time to take stock of this. “For anyone who wants to stand up to disinformation and deepen their understanding of politics without getting lost in jargon,” said Brian Tyler Cohen, YouTuber and author of Shameless, in his praise for Pakman, “this book is essential reading.”

At first blush, the title of the introduction of his book, “Why I Hate Politics,” comes off as a little tongue-in-cheek for the progressive political commentator and podcast host of The David Pakman Show. But Pakman told Bill Press on The Bill Press Pod why he unironically hates politics: “It feels like a waste of what could be really productive time, solving real problems and improving the country and the world for people in tangible ways. What I hate about it is that it’s become arguments with people with whom we can’t even establish and agree on basic facts from which we would then talk about policy. . . . What I hate about it is what it has become as a de facto reality in the United States.” The nature of what Pakman calls the echo machine, the right-wing amplification of disinformation and the mainstream media’s role in it, begs the question: How did we get here?

In his Thom Hartmann Program interview, Pakman addressed how billionaires have been funding right-wing movements for years. What’s in it for them? Do they cynically not like democracy? Pakman explained that it’s about billionaires building an infrastructure that caters to their interests. On Talk Cocktail, Jeff Schechtman asked Pakman if there was a single inflection point that had steered our political dialogue to the point where it is today. There were many inflection points, Pakman told him, but talk-radio stations scooped up by the religious right played a significant role. This was part of a fifty-year move toward the extreme right by the Republican Party, and our tyrant in chief is the beneficiary of it. Pakman went further into detail in his interviews on The Young Turks, The Chris Cuomo Project, The Mark Thompson Show, and Relationscapes with Blair Hodges.

What, then, can we do about this to save our democracy? On the day his book went on sale, Pakman recorded a segment for The David Pakman Show in which he said, “This is not just about how American politics got so broken. It’s also about what’s happening right now and what we can still do to stop things from getting worse. . . . The same forces that brought us here can be countered if we understand how they work and what to do about them. That’s what The Echo Machine is all about.” His critique and analysis of what led us to this political moment comes with practical ways we can shift the discourse through improved critical thinking, media literacy, and public education. We’ll need it all to get through the next four years.

Congratulations and a massive thank-you go to David Pakman! Now he can add New York Times best-selling author to his bio.

About the Author 

Christian Coleman is the digital marketing manager at Beacon Press and editor of Beacon Broadside. Before joining Beacon, he worked in writing, copy editing, and marketing positions at Sustainable Silicon Valley and Trikone. He graduated from Boston College and the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. Follow him on Twitter at @coleman_II and on Bluesky at @colemanthe2nd.bsky.social.