INSTALLMENT THE FIFTH: Mujaheddin 2.0 and neo-Nazis, the MSM hate machine, and the Donald Trump of the 2008 Democratic Primary…
(Concluding my response to “Doc”)
Washington’s proxies: Mujaheddin 2.0 and neo-Nazis (oh my!)
It is revealing that the mainstream corporate media has completely ignored — en masse — the reporting of multiple Pulitzer-winning journalist, Seymour Hersh, particularly his documentation of Washington’s plot (Bush-conceived, Obama-implemented) to create a second Mujaheddin army for the purposes of invading a peaceful (if repressive) Syria and unseating its government (like the Georgia coup and the Ukrainian coup, led by neo-Nazis financed by the U.S. to the tune of $5 billion, this policy is aimed at crippling Russia). The Syria operation has thrown that country into chaos, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dead and 10 million refugees.
That’s a war that wasn’t close to happening before our leaders instigated it.
The MSM knows this; the MSM, by and large, makes sure this story will never see the light of day.
It’s also revealing that Seymour Hersh has been excommunicated from the American media, purged from the New Yorker and later from the (WikiLeaks-smearing) Guardian, before settling, for now, at The London Review of Books, where his excellent work continues to be ignored by the U.S. media… as a monolith.
The jingoistic MSM hate machine (which also spurns progressives)
And the media similarly walks in lockstep when it comes to vilifying foreign leaders — especially (but not exclusively) progressive, socially liberal ones — any and all who refuse to be Washington’s puppets, who refuse to support Western wars or refuse to allow our corporations to plunder their nations and impoverish their people: Daniel Ortega, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Yasser Arafat, Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Hassan Nasrallah, Yanis Varoufakis, Moammar Qaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, Viktor Yanukovych, Vladimir Putin, Jeremy Corbyn…
And if you really think that the corporate media, right across the industry, doesn’t have a “mission… to destroy progressive values,” then you simply aren’t very familiar with the media’s conduct.
In 2016, the MSM — while promoting Trump at the top of their lungs (at the Clinton campaign’s behest) — first blacked-out and then traduced Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of a mere handful of progressive politicians at the national level… because he was clearly headed for a victory over the second most unpopular presidential candidate in history: a serial racist, Wall Street tool, neocon stalwart, self-enriching influence peddler, and a complete liar and fraud. She had thrown Planned Parenthood to the wolves repeatedly, long been an enemy of women and poor people, especially African-Americans; and comported herself like a demagogue of the highest order, exceeded only by Trump and precious few others.
The “Donald Trump” of the 2008 Democratic Primary
Many on the center-left have seemingly forgotten that Hillary Clinton was the “Donald Trump” of the 2008 Democratic primary, spouting one shockingly offensive comment after another.
In 2016, the corporate media embraced the Clinton campaign-invented “Bernie Bro” malarkey and ignored the Clintons’ history of Southern Strategy politics. Having already called black children “Super-predators… without conscience or empathy,” Clinton would call Obama supporters “Boys,” and proudly profess that she was the candidate of “hardworking, you know, white people.” She would bash Mexican immigrants in language eerily similar to Trump’s in 2016. She even went so far as to disseminate the now-infamous photo of Obama in the garb of a Somali elder — in order to cast doubt about his citizenship and religion (the Clinton camp didn’t start those rumors — that’s a right-wing lie — but they ran with them, as Color of Change’s James Rucker and The Guardian have documented).
Now, that was a story worth reporting!
Even Michelle Alexander, author of the essential The New Jim Crow, argued in 2016 that “Hillary Clinton doesn’t deserve the black vote.” Yet the MSM repeated the trope that black people are Clinton’s “firewall,” even as black leaders denounced her and as Sec. Clinton had Black Lives Matter activists forcibly removed from her campaign events — and participated in a sketch that featured a joke about “Colored People Time.” Ha fucking ha.
The corporate media, enamored of its far-right champion, buried all that truth — just as they’d buried all the disturbing truths about George W. Bush in 2000, especially all of the outlandish stunts his side had pulled to rig Florida in 2000.
Such shameful acts by radical right-wingers are politely never discussed by our uniformly right-wing media. They are systematically and perpetually swept under the rug. Because the media always shills for the furthest-right politicians while hammering anyone to their left, with lies, truth, whatever’s handy. It’s what they’ve done for generations. Only it’s far worse now, as the billionaires continue consolidating their gains and gobbling up whatever wealth is left in the world. Meanwhile, leading media institutions continue to lower their standards and destroy their own credibility, as has been documented repeatedly during the Trump era by Pulitzer-winning journalists. It’s beyond regrettable, as organizations I once trusted have irresponsibly given legitimacy to Trump’s claims of “Fake News” and damaged their reputations, possibly beyond repair.
Their lies have become desperate, as the population continues awakening to the .001%’s war on our society and democratic institutions.
Explosive scoops routinely buried…
One more comment on the profit motive: “If it bleeds, it leads” has always been a deception. Incredible, explosive scoops are routinely buried, in the interest of protecting the false narratives of the ruling class. That priority trumps all others.
Just a few examples: 1) George W. Bush hatched the second Mujaheddin plot and the Obama administration ran with it… in the post-9/11 era (!); 2) on election night, once they knew they’d lost, Robby Mook and John Podesta concocted the RussiaGate excuse for losing to a reality-TV moron, with the added bonus that neo-McCarthyism provided a distraction from the rigged primary and allowed them to scapegoat WikiLeaks, an organization the neo-fascists have long wanted dead; 3) the Democrats and their media allies did everything under the sun to rig the 2016 primary, disenfranchising millions of poor and marginalized people; 4) the U.S. sold weapons to Iran and flooded African-American communities with cocaine, in order to fund its illegal, grossly immoral war on Nicaragua; and 5) Allen Dulles’ Nazi-loving CIA employed Corsican hit men to assassinate JFK (even Howard Hunt, late in life, confessed it, and he was one of the top figures involved; the proof is irrefutable, only the corporate media decided long ago to bless that American coup with its silence).
I’ve about a hundred other examples of the MSM’s utter hostility to progressives, but I’ve already rambled on unforgivably. Would that this lengthy diatribe were more concise, but it’s been interrupted by beekeeping, errand running, and a slew of other mundane stuff… but I feel I should respond before the day is out. In any case, I’m done… for now.
I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.
END PART V
NEXT: “Lenny” asserts that Liberalism entails open-mindedness and offers evidence that Jordan B. Peterson can be liberal, too; I agree and resume my post-mortem of Liberalism in America…