Will Bunch expresses what I’ve been thinking since Trump was elected. American democracy is under attack from within. The fascists who yearn for an authoritarian government in the media are promoting it, and the media who supposedly don’t support it fail to recognize it. They are busy trying to follow the political playbook of the 20th century.
We need to hear from more experts on authoritarian movements and fewer pollsters and political strategists. We need journalists who’ll talk a lot less about who’s up or down and a lot more about the stakes — including Trump’s plans to dismantle the democratic norms that he calls “the administrative state,” to weaponize the criminal justice system, and to surrender the war against climate change — if the 45th president becomes the 47th. We need the media to see 2024 not as a traditional election, but as an effort to mobilize a mass movement that would undo democracy and splatter America with more blood like what was shed Saturday in Jacksonville. We need to understand that if the next 15 months remain the worst-covered election in U.S. history, it might also be the last.
Incredibly captivating article, but when you reach this final paragraph, you know with absolute and agonizing certainty that none of this will come to fruition. The mainstream media isn’t going to fix itself, and this election will be covered, same as all the rest, as a horserace.
The mainstream media are corporations first and press/media second. They will only do the things that make them more money and 99.9% of the time that’s in direct opposition of what is good for any given situation.
I 110% do not expect the behavior to change. It’s money we’re discussing and shitty gossip trash talking/ political sports casting is what makes media money so it’s what they’ll keep doing. :(
The issue is there is a belief that the problems we are facing are because we can’t accept each other’s opinions and we all need to buckle down and compromise with one another.
Which is deliciously naive in a world where Nazism has gone from “So universally reviled that they are a punchline at best” to “Just an opinion from a guy asking questions.”
Do not serve Bar Nazis
I think there is a large amount of this that’s the result of social media. When I was a kid, there were still flat-earthers and other people who believe extremely stupid things. The thing was, however, that if you said that out loud, all of the people around you would with varying degrees of politeness tell you you’re a fucking idiot and you’d usually change your mind quickly. In today’s environment, not only can you go online and not get called a fucking idiot for your dumb opinions, you can find all of the other fucking idiots and form a
circle-jerkFacebook group for bad opinions and feel validated in believing them. Oh, and even if you don’t go looking for your own little community of morons, Facebook and the rest will happily help surface those morons for you.The reality of social media is that not only do they serve bar nazis, they might as well be tinder for bar nazis.
Hell you tell someone “Bro you’re a dumbass” these days
You’re the one getting the door for being “toxic”
If you try and engage many of those types they won’t accept reason and logic either, it’s a no win situation. Of course you’re still the toxic one for not wanting to do that dance again.
This is kind of the same reason, I think. They get enough validation on the internet and unfortunately this leads to more validation IRL as well. Humans and critical thinking already rarely go together, and social media only seems to have exasperated that.
The problem of the “Punch a Nazi” line of thought is not particularly that Nazis are subject to violence : most people (centrists included) couldn’t care less about what happens to them specifically.
No, the real issue here is that people don’t trust the perception of others. You don’t attack a fascist, you attack someone who you think is a fascist. And polarization of the political discourse mean that you can be easily accused of crypto-fascism for pretty much anything (see Hexbear for example). And some people will take it at face value, and hence feel justified to attack you.
That’s… actually a good point. I consider myself being pretty against Cancel Culture despite being pretty far to the left.
Too often people get canceled based on gossip or false rumors, like somehow “He’s 30, she’s 24” gets morphed into “Dude’s a full blown pedo” or… “This forum post from 9001 years ago uses a form of slang that is offensive now, but was acceptable at the time, clearly he’s a white supremacist” becomes “This guy eats babies in the glorious name of Satan, and by Satan I mean Trump!”
It’s just something I hope the internet grows beyond. Society and general.
Mmmm, I have had a long line of arguments about this just now. Yes, neo Nazi’s are beyond contempt and to be reviled, but please do not “punch a Nazi”, ice seen that making a comeback. There is a long list of reasons why assaulting somebody for shit reasons is a bad idea, just don’t.
Yeah, like the time when we talked Hitler down politely and appeased him and everything was totally fine after
Don’t you remember? He was herding crippled jewish homosexuals into the camps like a cowboy herds cattle, when suddenly Kylie Jenner showed up and was like “Chill out Hitler, have a Pepsi!”
It was a Diet Pepsi, that’s why they called it D-Day
(I am being insanely sarcastic)
Yeah, and like that time that one of those armchair internet heroes actually faced a neo nazi without pissing their pants.
Oh wait, that never happened.
You know what has happened, loads of times, though? Judges and juries sending people to jail for assault and battery after they punched somebody for no reason.
That none of you here understand that simple principle tells me that you still have a lot to learn about the real world.
I live in Portland. I’ve been confronted face to face by plenty of you assholes over the past few years.
Somehow I’m still walking free. I must be the exception that proves the rule
you assholes
Thank you for making the point that “punch a Nazi” is really really bad because assholes like YOU immediately conflate everyone who disagrees with you with Nazis too.
But so you’re saying that you’ve assaulted many people already for no reason. You weren’t sttacked, you weren’t defending yourself, you simply saw someone with an opinion or attitude that you didn’t like, and you assaulted them.
Yeah, you’re a horrible violent criminal and you should be in jail. Probably get mental help too. In any case, you’re much much worse than your average neonazi
I was confronted by checks notes um. Nazis. Proud Boys, Patriot Front… literal same shit. They came into my city and menaced people. I didn’t seek them out.
I’m still here and thriving. Somehow your heroes are all getting jailed.
Shitty Nazi apologists thinking I’m an awful person isn’t the drunk you think it is
Did I ever say neo Nazi’s are heroes? Poiint me where.
I’m saying you cannot assault people. Literally all I did, and judges, juries and police are all in agreement on that.
So you are more in.favor of an anarchistic society where vigilantism is a thing of the day. I’m sure there’s no way that could backfire or cause innocent people to be swept up in it. You’re pretty much what you say you are against, really.
“Look Nazis are bad, but if you do anything about it, even if it’s to protect yourself or some one else! Then you’re the bad guy!”
I really hope you’re just naive and not a concern troll.
even if it’s to protect yourself or some one else!
That bit, right there, is what totally changes the scenario from the person you were replying to. Presuming by “protect” you mean protecting from physical violence, and not only from words.
Wait until you see the manifestos from all of the shooters. Punch nazis. The nazi to violence pipeline is not theoretical.
Words if used irresponsibly enough are a form of violence.
I will kill your family! I know where you live, 123 example Street, right?
Words can be violence for sure. If i were to replace this comment with just the block-quote and “/s”, moderators would justifiably light my ass up. People should not be expected to figure out if I was joking after threating their lives.
Indeed
So, when you are talking about using violence “to protect yourself or some one else”, you mean protecting them from someone saying something you oppose, and we’re back to arguing that if you don’t like what someone is saying you should be allowed to assault them, because speech has consequences.
Recruiting people to suppress the rights of others and sending thinly veiled threats to minorities is a form of violence bra
Words are violence
Save that for a judge, I’d love to see you try
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_States - I haven’t done anything wrong, so I’m not going to court, but someone else already did.
I’m sorry, you’re at this point just sayjt that in the USA you can just walk up to someone, assault them, punch them and its all fine because hey, you feel he’s a Nazi.
You’re dumb and yes, I’d love to see you explain that to a judge. Grow up kid.
So I’m free to declare you a Nazi and assault you, right? After all, nazis are bad, and I’m just protecting myself from what I perceived as your ideology
You do know when Richard Spencer got the punch he was literally in the middle of giving a speech on how being Alt-Right is “Totally cool bro” and explaining how the character he stole from someone else’s comic book is “More than a cartoon frog, but a symbol of how many people we need to gas to death to bring Hitler back”
So your answer to political violence is more political violence?
Totally. Just say “so much for the tolerant left” or “antifa are the real Nazis”
No one has ever done that before
Real talk: what are you “protecting yourself” from? How hast thou been persecuted? Trans people are people? You can’t tell racist jokes anymore without people thinking you’re an asshole? Come down off the cross, holmes
Nazis. I’m protecting myself from nazis. And you just described why I, some random asshole you don’t know, shouldn’t be allowed to declare someone a Nazi and assault them. This is why we have a legal system instead of mob rule.
People are probably better at explaining this than I, but I personally would only be violently-defensive is when its clear (mabe even easy for an random person off the street to agree that) an intimidation or harassment campagn, power grab or other violent attacks on basic liberties is happening.
The problem is everyone has a different metric for that, and not everyone’s metric is a good one. The Jan 6 people thought they justified too. They were wrong and so is the person I was replying to. This is why we have a legal system. We all agreed on a metric, we all agreed that the state should have a monopoly on violence when that metric is met.
deleted by creator
I never said any of the such and you either know it and are lying or you’re too dumb to understand.
If a neo nazi, or just anyone attacks you and you punch him, it’s self defense.
If you walk up to a neo Nazi and punch him for no reason whatsoever beyond “I don’t like his opinions” then you’ll get arrested and you’ll be convicted of assault and battery. It. Is. That. Simple.
You can armchair hero all you want about how big bad you would punch those evil Nazis but that is all bullshit and you know it. I’ve had too many discussions now with too many people like you who are so brave on the internet but in front of an actual neo nazi your piss your pants.
Yes, ooh, Nazis are bad, I had no idea. However, we live in a civil society where EVERYONE has rights, even those with thoughts and opinions that we don’t like, even neo Nazis. If you don’t like that then guess what? That means you have racist opinions and you’re the same as what you hate so badly.
So grow up, stip bragging on the internet how brave you are and get with the real world where you can’t just punch a person.
Let me get this straight…you think that if someone is intolerant of racists, that makes them racist?
No, and you didn’t read anything I wrote because I literally didn’t say any of that, not sure why you’re making stuff up.
I say that if you ASSAULT somebody because of their admittedly shitty opinions, that you’re the bad guy and are going to jail.
That and that I’m getting slightly tired of all those armchair internet heroes in mamas basement getting hard peepees over fantasizing how they would beat up Nazis. Never mind most of them would piss their pants when standing next to an actual Dangerous person.
Can you elaborate more then, on this quote of yours?
‘we live in a civil society where EVERYONE has rights, even those with thoughts and opinions that we don’t like, even neo Nazis. If you don’t like that then guess what? That means you have racist opinions and you’re the same as what you hate so badly.’
Elaborate where? It’s pretty clear: everyone has rights, limitations and obligations. You do not have the right to assault people for having opinions that you (nor me) don’t like. Yes, neo-nazis are dickless assholes, yaddah, you still don’t have the right to assault them.
It’s not that complicated
You do know that “Send the jews back to camp! Race war now!” is not an opinion I, or ANYONE ELSE, should have to respect right?
Did I say you have to agree with racists? Did I say anywhere that you should have respect for neo Nazis?
I said: STOP FANTASIZING ABOUT ASSAULTING PEOPLE FOR THEIR SHITTY OPINIONS! First off you’d piss your pants in the real world, second you’d get your ass handed if you did and if you didn’t, you’d go to jail for assault and yes: YOU WOULD BE THE BAD GUY, NOT THE NEO NAZI
Stop fantasizing about carrying water for the Fourth Reich
Save that for a judge, I’d love to see you make that argument
No one is saying you have to respect the racist idiot. Just that it’s not self defense to attack someone for saying it, it’s assault. BIG difference.
Bring back fairness doctrine and break up large media
Fairness Doctrine only applied to broadcast media, so it would need to be be expanded to include Cable/Satellite TV as well as somehow the Internet/streaming.
Well considering that the biggest news channels on youtube are legacy media channel even just the broadcast version would help, but yes it would need to be expanded
They’re only big on YouTube because YouTube pushes “authoritative” sources, even if you avoid them for your news. Remember when status coup’s footage of Jan 6th was taken down but CNN, which was replaying status coup’s footage of Jan 6th, was left up without issue?
who?
but why they are big doesn’t change that they are big.
I wouldn’t say the fairness doctrine is a good idea, but oh damn do we need to break up the media. Sinclair is a threat to our democracy.
I agree with half your comment, because Sinclair is a threat to democracy. But the change in our political culture began with right wing talk radio after the end of the fairness doctrine.
Of course there were other factors, like neoliberal attacks on our living standards. But perhaps there could have been another narrative to explain those neoliberal attacks in a more diverse media environment.
deleted by creator
Such a simple statement that explains so much.
The flip side of this is “Gell-Mann amnesia” — the opinion that the popular news reports about your professional field are full of shit, but that the reports about everyone else’s fields are probably pretty much correct.
To me this is an interesting bit:
but brutal fascism or flawed democracy.
The US under Trump wasn’t North Korean style fascism, although it may have been headed in that direction. It was maybe fascism with strong overtones of democracy. People still got to vote, and their vote mattered, it’s just that Dear Leader had his thumb on the scale. Congress members and senators still showed up to work, and the decisions they took still mattered, even if some of the Republicans were constantly violating precedents and norms. The judicial system still kept churning and mostly following the laws and precedents, even if Trump appointed a lot of unqualified partisan judges.
My guess is that many Trump voters wanted this kind of system. They didn’t want a full-on North Korea sort of situation, and they were deluded enough that they thought they could keep a Trump presidency from becoming a full-on dictatorship. What they wanted was basically a “flawed democracy” where people who looked like them still got to vote and their vote mattered, but they definitely wanted their vote to matter much more than the votes of other people.
At the same time, the alternative was definitely also a flawed democracy. To get elected requires raising a ton of money, which ties strings to almost everyone who runs. The DNC largely picks who’s allowed to run as a democrat, and one of the main qualifications to run is a person’s ability to raise money. As a result, even when the democrats are in charge, common sense things that are supported by a majority of the population don’t pass when they’re opposed by any special interest with money.
It’s easy to understand why there was initially so much overlap between supporters of Bernie Sanders and supporters of Trump. People were tired of the oligarchy-controlled pseudo-democracy, and they wanted radical changes.
The advertising duopoly of Facebook and Google has weakened journalism at a time when we desperately needed good journalism. What’s left is basic horse-race and scandal-focused coverage for politics, and click bait for the rest. There are still some journalists out there doing good work, like the folks at Pro Publica. But, that kind of journalism is difficult and expensive.
I’m scared that the window for journalism being able to rescue the US might have passed. If Trump wins again, you know that the freedom of the press is going to take a serious hit. On the other hand, if the democrats win big they’re going to be completely tied to the people who fund their campaigns. And the corporate-owned media isn’t going to be doing stories on how the corporate-owned politicians are handing even more power to corporations.
People still got to vote, and their vote mattered
Both questionable statements, considering massive systematic voter suppression that has been going on for decades, and also on account of the US political system, not least first-past-the-post and the electoral college, your vote may easily end up not mattering at all (as compared to countries with proportional representation).
Sure. But it’s not like they announce the election results before the election. Not everyone’s votes count, and there’s a lot of bullshit, but the results are still fundamentally influenced by the voting. That’s “flawed democracy” vs. “pretend democracy”.
The difference is that occasionally you can get upsets like the Roy Moore vs. Doug Jones election. Even with all the knobs and levers twisted to give Moore every advantage possible, the allegations that Moore had been having sex with numerous underage girls was enough to derail his run. In a properly functioning system it shouldn’t have even been close. But, in the end, it was very close.
I don’t think we have to get even as far as the technically-legal but obviously shady as fuck outcomes like this, but just look at the last presidential election. Our votes only mattered because they didn’t manage to get away with ignoring them, and that’s largely just because a couple of people found the barest of morals and they were rampantly incompetent.
People still got to vote, and their vote mattered, it’s just that Dear Leader had his thumb on the scale.
This is only because an insurrection and attempted coup failed.
The advertising duopoly of Facebook and Google has weakened journalism at a time when we desperately needed good journalism.
Though they didn’t help, honestly the faux both-sides “journalism” is taking its own L’s, mostly. I canceled my sub to the Times quite a while back because of this type of thing, and I find it rare to see actual journalism quite a lot of the time. Headlines like “deadlock in congress due to continued failure to reach consensus on tax bill.” Actual reality: Republicans want to cut taxes for the wealthy and provide loopholes for yacht owners with no plan to pay for it, Democrats want to spend approx 0.00000001% of the military budget to provide free meals for elementary students.
See also, any trans issues. “Controversy roils over trans athletes in sports.” Reality: one fucking asshole in Iowa or Idaho or Mississippi or wherever want to blanket ban on trans athletes in sport because one MTF wants to play a sport. Oh, and they don’t even have a kid that goes to the school/participates in the sport and the MTF player hasn’t broken the top 10.
Or climate or Trump or anything with the slightest bit of controversy. Butchering the quote, but it’s something along the lines of “as a journalist, if someone tells you it’s raining, and another person tell’s you it’s not, it’s not your job to report disagreement, it’s your job to stick your head out the window and see if it’s raining.”
Applied to that first quote, if journalism was doing its job, every outlet would be reporting in no uncertain terms that the former president tried to deny your right to vote and overthrow democracy.
even if some of the Republicans were constantly violating precedents and norms
I think the last decade or so of GOP actions are a clear example of why any norm or precedent that’s actually vital to how things run needs to be codified into an actual rule or law with a clear punishment for violations.
This is spot on.
The problem Democrats have is that we have to drag two huge stones around our neck.
-
We have to fight the fascist right
-
We have to do so while everything is controlled by corporate interest
Either of those is a massive undertaking on its own, doing both is near impossible.
We can’t push for more radical Democrats since the cost of losing is a fucking orange maniac… So we have to elect the corporate centrist.
Corporations have done a fantastic job keeping 50% of the population dumber than a bag of bricks and voting against their own interest.
I’ve also seen corporate interest drive wedges into Democrats as well. We’re starting to be split on bullshit like is it LGBT, or LGBTQ, or LGBTQ+, arguing about semantics and looking to take people down for accidentally using the wrong word.
Nevermind if everyone in the group agrees on equal rights for all, you’re using the wrong term this month, therefore we are building a divide between us.
It’s maddening how well it’s working.
Corporations have done a fantastic job keeping 50% of the population dumber than a bag of bricks and voting against their own interest.
A lot of people vote against their own interests, but I don’t think you can really blame the corporations for that.
Voting against their interests tends to be culture war nonsense, and corporations don’t really want to get involved in that because they never want to take sides, because that could cost them customers. See the recent Bud Lite nonsense for example.
Instead, what they tend to do is use their money to seed out candidates who hold views they don’t like (basically ensuring that the DNC and RNC only run candidates that the companies approve of) or doing things after elections to get loopholes and carve-outs in laws that benefit them. When you effectively have both the democrats and republicans on your payroll, you don’t really care which side people vote for, you just ensure that whoever’s elected is beholden to you.
As for keeping people dumb, again, not something most corporations work for. Some of them, like tech companies, even want an intelligent workforce. The more people in their hiring pool, the less they have to pay. Having said that, they’re happy if the government cuts funding to schools if it means tax breaks that benefit them.
But yeah, I think fundamentally you’re right. The only team that can beat the fascists includes a lot of corporate democrats. And with corporate democrats in the “big tent”, there are lots of reforms that are never going to be on the table. And, when people see corporate-owned politicians in power and refusing to even consider common-sense reforms, they get frustrated. Some stop voting entirely. Others give up and vote for the fascists because they hope that will at least disrupt the system.
Bringing it back to journalism, it seems to me like what we need is good journalism that exposes both the stranglehold the corporations have on a lot of politicians, and how much bribery and influence peddling there is, but also how the other side is outright fascist and what the consequences might be. Instead we get horse race journalism, and talking points, and both-sides he-said-she-said bullshit.
As for keeping people dumb, again, not something most corporations work for. Some of them, like tech companies…
Yes and no…
to a large company, more legbor skilled in doing the thing you want them to do is excelant to drive wages down, everything else a person can learn is not their priority.
For their customers, adiction makes people unable to think no matter how smart they are. To force someone to keep buying, make them an adict. Super common in amarica, things like processed shugar, high fructose corn syrup, loot boxes and gambling come to mind.
nah turfs are now openly allying with Nazis, so we can safely rule hem out of the whole “being left” thing
-
Freedom of the press isn’t worth much though when the most watched “news” network is the propaganda machine for one party right? If a hundred million people watch the Disinformation Channel and ignore reality then all the free press in the world won’t help IMO
It’s still critically important. What’s happening in Russia shows that. Sure, the most watched shows in Russia are state-backed programs that blast out Putin’s propaganda. But, that doesn’t mean he was going to allow other news sources to exist.
Congress members and senators still showed up to work, and the decisions they took still mattered, even if some of the Republicans were constantly violating precedents and norms. The judicial system still kept churning and mostly following the laws and precedents, even if Trump appointed a lot of unqualified partisan judges.
From an outside perspective this is a good demonstration that while your system is somewhat flawed, it’s still resilient. By flawed I mean mainly the two party system and stuff like judges being appointed by politicians. However if your system didn’t have some builtin failsafes, it would have been much more vulnerable to influence from unwanted sources.
Even if most trump voters wanted to turn the US into a proper aristocracy, (some right wingers actually do*), the process would have been much more complicated in comparison to countries that have become dictatorships in the past decades.
*I’m referring to a somewhat new trend, where influential people are claiming that the US is suffering from a dumb population, and that experts should be given more power.
All things considered, I think our institutions are holding up pretty well. The coup attempt failed and the election was certified. Trump tried to coerce Georgia into falsifying the election results and failed. Trump stole classified documents and the agencies responsible for that escalated appropriately to the point where he got raided by the FBI. The DOJ is prosecuting all these accordingly. It took longer than I would like but overall it’s going pretty well.
We have enormous issues to address but it’s hard to attend to domestic policy if our democracy is effectively destroyed with the inauguration of a tyrant who stole an election. That’s pretty much game over…
This was well put and a good summary of the situation!
In a less resilient democracy attempts of interference in the election process might not cause the same uproar it has in the US.
This also works the other way. The prosecution of Trump seems to be handled with care to ensure that the charges are justifiable. In non democratic countries a political opponent would first go to jail and then the prosecutors would try to invent some kind of corruption charge.
What exactly do you mean by “aristocracy”? You could argue that that’s what the US already is. Lobbying by the very rich means they get their way much more often than the majority of the population gets their way. Even many of the senators and congress people are deci or centi-millionaires.
I’d say the Trump voters want a fascist state with some hints of democracy remaining. They want rich people (other than Trump) to have less of a voice than they currently do, and they’re willing to give up many democratic aspects of the current system to get it. I think most of them would still like to be able to vote for things, and would still want their votes to matter. But, I think they’d be willing to give up many of their rights as long as the strong man in charge hurts the right people.
Look, guardrails that can handle being hit hard once can’t be counted on to protect you again. Also, I think what’s meant by “brutal fascism” above is Trump’s end goal, not how he behaved in his first term. I’m only slightly to the right of Gramsci and Bookchin, and even I don’t think his first term achieved full-on fascism. But make no mistake, there’s good reason to believe 2024 will be our last free election (they’re already not fair) for a while.
Brutal fascism may be Trump’s end goal, but that doesn’t mean he has any likelihood of getting it. What matters more is what everyone else wants. Dictators don’t become dictators on their own. They need generals, lawyers, judges, cops, etc. to all work with them to achieve their aims. There are certainly some people in Trump’s orbit who would welcome a Trump dictatorship, but there are others who want him as a figurehead that allows them to become oligarchs. There are others who actually do believe in some form of democracy, they just want a democracy that looked a lot like the 1776 democracy, where only the opinion of white land-owning white males mattered.
As for the 2024 election, even if Trump wins, things will only get slightly less free and slightly less fair. They’re already badly bent, and they’ll get bent some more, but it’s not like elections are going to go from “free” to “non-free” over 4 years. There’s just too much institutional momentum and not enough popular support for Trump for that to happen.
If you think we don’t have a lot of institutional and popular support for right-authoritarianism, I don’s know what country you’ve been living in the last 20 years. Who’s going to stop him? The Democrats? The party that’d bring a policy paper to a gunfight? I hope I’m wrong and things are as rosy as you think. But I won’t bet my life on it.
The incentives of capitalism and the intended role of the 4th estate are not compatible. Stoking the flames of populism is simply too lucrative of a business model when compared to trying to keep the public informed. This is what allows perverse media groups to proliferate and dominate the public eye.
I don’t think this is an easy problem to solve. If you’re able to successfully regulate things like Fox, does that fix it, or do people just start gravitating more towards alternate media like Joe Rogan? Do you start regulating podcasts too? Twitter influencers? I feel like it’d just become a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. And given that the 4th estate’s role is to check the government, how do you use the government to safeguard it without giving them too much control over it? It’s a difficult balance to strike.
That said, clearly we aren’t striking that balance now, so perhaps it’s time to try something different.
I think that Fox news as well as Talking Heads like Joe Rogan and our old friend Rush Limbaugh are very effective propaganda artists who reach such a wide audience that they need to be shut down and held accountable for their actions into stabilizing this country. This country will devolved further into authoritarianism if we don’t put a stop to it.
But the same methods used to stop Joe and Rush could be used by government in an authoritarian way. Giving government more control over media is a very dangerous and difficult thing to do without media devolving into a propaganda arm
I suspect the people calling for it are either too short sighted to see that, or think their people would hold power if that was applied and then leverage it into only allowing propaganda for the “correct” party.
Always remember, never give the government power that you wouldn’t mind your opposition wielding.
In short the rich folk have the country over a barrel due to FPTP-voting and a lack of campaign financing subsidies. This scheme was designed by ancient wealthy romans for the benefit of ancient wealthy romans and it’s not a coincidence this form of democracy is the one America seeks to deliver upon the rest of the world.
Literally it’s called “the great experiment” because it’s failed before and will fail again if not allowed to evolve and advance into a form with better representation and where wealth doesn’t dictate everything happening.
The greatest driver of violence, crime and corruption is wealth-inequality, it’s no coincidence unions and such worse are branded as communism and criminal behavior by the plutocrats running the country, unite and demand change!
it’s no coincidence unions and such worse are branded as communism
Divide-and-conquer is one of the oldest games in the book; it’s a shame people can’t (or don’t want to) recognize this for what it is.
It is, and will always be- capitalism. When everything is for profit, lies become commodities. This system can work, until there is a crisis that markets can’t absorb. Climate change cannot be commodified because it affects consumers. Fascism is capital’s answer to the crisis. It can’t be voted away. We must demand for a planned economy to transform into a sustainable society. It’s our only hope. This is where we need to be.
I read an article not too long ago about a guy who started a worker owned restaurant. Everyone got a really good salary and any profits would be split evenly between all the workers. The article reveals that the business hasn’t actually turned a profit but it didn’t matter to the employees because the business made enough to cover it’s expenses and all the workers were paid really well (IIRC they were making something like $30 an hour).
The concept really blew my mind: a business didn’t need to be profitable to be successful.
Capitalism really does seem to be the problem.
Is anyone really surprised by this? Or am I just so deeply under my rock I can’t relate to normal people anymore? :(
When you’re surrounded by ignorance it becomes difficult to find the island of reason
This is giving me so much comfort, thank you.
there has to be a way to do journalism without a web traffic or profit incentive.
About 10 years ago, the crypto community was talking about this with regard to microtransactions. The idea was that nobody really wants to pay a monthly subscription fee to news publications, but getting someone to digitally pay 1-10 cents to read an interesting article is probably doable. Unfortunately, digital currencies became what they are today instead of anything actually useful.
Actually a better solution exists and is used to varying degrees of success in other countries. BBC, ABC, CBC to name a few. Are they perfect? No. Are they funded adequately? Probably not.
That said crypto once again is looking for a problem to solve and there’s nothing to solve that isn’t already solved. Fund the existing solution properly does nothing but help.
that’s the fucking opposite of solving this problem
That’s the whole idea behind transact.io (non-crypto), but it’s had trouble catching on with news publishers because they are very risk adverse.
No kidding. Back in the day, news organizations would actually sell physical papers. The Internet has destroyed them, for better or worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McClatchy
owns most local news papers and prints nothing but propaganda no news of local city council or county council meetings everything is being decided behind closed doors without the people and noone is there to report otherwise
everything is awesome just look at this new eatery “insert gentrified town here” is being blessed with
That’s because “journalism” is a joke and died a long time ago.
IMHO, freedom of the press is a right that should apply only to people, not companies, organizations, institutions. No organization should be able to call itself news or press while seeking profit. Freedom to profit from acting as press is not/should not be a right.
Then shut down Fox News, CNN, and friends as dangerous shows peddling lies.
The pursuit of profit is simply not compatible with the pursuit of truth.
Individuals motivated to be legit press can work independently, form co-ops to share resources, or seek funding limted by law.
This seemingly (though not really) simple truth is really propaganda. CNN isn’t unbiased, but then, no one is. Fox News is blatantly lying. Mentioning both sides is a way of whitewashing the truth about the worse actor. Tying the complaint to corporate profits is a way of disguising the real message.
No one should take news reporting at face value. Everyone should be educated in media literacy. But there’s a big difference between a motivated agenda and outright disinformation.
A side-observation that I think is truly only coincidence: user name is Kool_Newt. Newt Gingrich is one of the people I blame most for setting us on this cursed path of culture war and lunacy. It definitely existed long before him (Caning of Charles Sumner), but he lit that fuse on fire and fanned the flames.
Yup. Newt did everything possible to sow division and hatred. Even instructing others on how to go about it.
And then he had the audacity to claim Obama was “divisive”, blah blah blah.
I agree Fox News is a special kind of programming consisting of many whole cloth fabrications aimed at less critical thinkers, but don’t kid yourself about CNN, MSNBC etc, they blatantly lie and propagandize too, it’s just less overt.
Also, not Newt Gangrene – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt
I disagree. Tying all press to government funding is the surest way to captured media by the ruling party. If journalists are not independent then they are not a check against power.
This is an incredibly short sighted, simplistic view of journalism. If for profit companies don’t pay journalists, then who does? Good luck crowd sourcing an international news bureau. If everyone is the press, then no one is because how do you know who’s telling the truth and who isn’t?
You act like all companies are evil and all individuals and co-ops are somehow pure of heart. It would be the same shit disinfo, just with worse production value.
You act like all companies are evil and all individuals and co-ops are somehow pure of heart
Right, there are fundamentally different motivations and attract different types of people. Roger Ailes for instance would not be attracted to a journalist coop.
What would be the motivation for individual journalists to spread disinfo? Sure some will, but a few people spreading disinfo is or even many uncoordinated people spewing BS is very different from a massive corporation with specific goals and the means to coordinate and spread misinfo to achieve those goals.
What would be the motivation for individual journalists to spread disinfo?
Everyone has an agenda, whether it’s ideological, malice, etc.
Spare me the outrage from the press, when the press is the entity that helped create this mess.
All this could have been avoided some 6 years ago if these clowns in the press did their goddamn jobs. Trump had a history of corruption going back decades. Between sexual assault cases, crooked business dealings,connections to the Russians as well as connections to the mafia, and everything in between. Rarely any of that came to light or was taken as seriously as it should have been. It was one free pass after another. They gave him endless air time because they loved those sweet, sweet ad-dollars. They considered him a joke candidate and never dove deep into his past finances or connections.
…And then it happened. He was actually elected. And that’s when it became serious.
Fuck every last one of these journalists who just sat back, let him slide, and just let it happened. Now they have the gall to talk about authoritarian-this, and fascism-that.
The press isn’t monolithic. This is one journalist stating their opinion and analysis of what the rest of the industry needs to focus on.
Came here to say this. There is some excellent, probing journalism out there. The problem is, it’s not very profitable
and in there lies the rub, everybody’s gotta fill their own ricebowl
It is far more monolithic than people realize. Folks think that only the Fox News if the world were being overly generous to Trump when he was just a candidate. The reality is that all mass market news outlets were.
I was a loooong time listener of NPR, a news outlets that most would probably consider as neutral or even left of center as you’ll get from US mass media. And I totally lost respect for them hearing them cover Trump as a candidate. Even now, I can just about hear Steve Inskeep chuckling after a Trump speech and simply never taking him as a serious candidate. This was someone who was running for the highest office in the land. He would have access to our nuclear codes. And these fucken reporters, who I had previously held in high regard, were just laughing at some of the insane antics that Donald was pulling. They were letting this shit slide while they would have roasted any other candidate if they had said the same thing.
And it’s not just NPR but any mass media news outlets acted the same way. That’s where the majority of Americans get their news and they were all doing the same things.
deleted by creator
I refuse to give NPR any more of my time anymore. I used to have a very long commute so for many years my radio was locked in on them all the time (the fact that music stations are shit these days doesn’t help either). Not any more. I’ll look at their stories if they come across my news feed these days, but they lost their credibility with how they handled Trump with kid gloves and they lost even more credibility with how they tried to sink Bidens agenda more recently.
Our news media gives one free pass after another to Republicans and holds Democrats to impossibly high standards.
In terms of what I listen to now, it’s a random assortment of what comes through my feed. I really haven’t had a good “home” for news in a while and I don’t like that, but reading multiple sources is probably the best move regardless since you can see how various outlets spin the same story. I’d love to find some slick app that compiled many outlets so I could read them on my tablet that filtered out the noise but I’ve yet to find that solution.
Conversely, I had to stop listening to NPR during donny’s tenure, they got so one sided it was disgusting. I’m a Democrat but I don’t need my news to hold my hand and tell me stories. Maybe it was extra bad becuase it’s the Seattle NPR station, but regardless I’ve not returned since.
It’s one thing to be Fox News and everybody knows what kind of bullshit you’re up to, it’s another to be a well of respected news station and try and pull the same kind of bs.
deleted by creator
It means I’m aware that my party has problems and I don’t want the media that I watch to skirt around it, these issues need to be addressed on all sides.
We are never going to heal as a nation and start improving if we keep insisting on only “bettering our half of the equation”, or only “attacking the bad half of the equation”. That’s not realistic. Not every criticism that Republicans have of democrats is invalid either.
deleted by creator
I had the opposite experience. I would listen to Mitch and others go spout blatant lies and receive absolutely no pushback from the hosts/journalists.
Thats problematic as well, agreed.
It isn’t, I totally agree, but there are far fewer independently owned news outlets and far fewer owners than ever. And that is part of the reason we are here.
But, yeah, this is one of a few journalists reporting on what is actually happening with regard to Republican authoritarianism.
If you can control who gets a job based on their background, (example: “no socialists, gays, or jews. off the record policy”) you dont even need to use invasive mind control techniques. Just have your writing teams sniff their own farts.
People like murdock control huge swaths of news outlets. The corprate office issues propaganda scripts that individuals are forced to put their name on (example, by reading it aloud).
. Trump had a history of corruption going back decades
The press shit on trump like no tomorrow. It didn’t stick because they’d spent years and years eroding their own legitimacy, not because they didn’t air bad things about Trump.
During 2016 election The New York Times published thousands of stories about Clinton email/Benghazi, not one on Trumps lifelong ties to NY/Russian mob. As if The New York Times wasn’t in a particularly knowledgeable position to report on 70 years of NYC construction & mob history
I mean - you’re just wrong https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/trump-russia
this came out may 2017, after trump was sworn in dipshit
There is no such thing as Journalism anymore. When you get paid by the click, the actual information doesn’t matter.
