AMERICAN PARTY DUOPOLY

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—The mass media are working furiously to spin this in a way that rivals my satire piece from the other day. The New York Times has been cartoonishly re-writing its own reporting in a desperate attempt to make Israel look like an innocent victim of unprovoked attacks instead of the obvious aggressor against people protesting a brutal apartheid regime backed by an entire empire. The New York Post falsely reported that the deaths on Monday were caused by “Airstrikes from Hamas militants” (when did Hamas get an air force?) when sharing an article which falsely implied that those fatalities were inflicted by both sides. DW News framed its headline in a way that suggested the nine children killed had been involved in “fighting” against Israeli forces, and the word “clashes” is being thrown about willy nilly to describe a very one-sided assault. But it isn’t working.

SCOTT RITTER—The most recent defense expenditure authorization required that the ODNI establish a “social media data analysis center” to coordinate and track foreign social media influence operations by analyzing data voluntarily shared by US social media companies. Based upon this analysis, the ODNI would report to Congress on a quarterly basis on trends in foreign influence and disinformation operations to the public. As envisioned by Congress, the intelligence community would determine jointly with US social media companies which data and metadata will be made available for analysis.

In short, the intelligence community, using data obtained from the social media accounts of American citizens, will report to Congress how this data influences the political decision making of these same American citizens. If this does not make the most ardent defender of the US Constitution ill, nothing will.

Aaron Maté and Glenn Greenwald discuss the effects of BlueAnon, especially the never-ending Russiagate hoax, whose malignant roots have penetrated the soil of practically the whole Western media apparatus. 

ERIC ZUESSE—Whereas conservative media rely unashamedly upon the existing popular mythology, liberal media need to rely upon that but to pretend not to, and to be instead ‘humanitarian’ and ‘enlightened’ in a more tolerant and open-minded sense: they specialize in hypocrisy — it’s liberal aristocrats’ particular style of art-form; they’re the ‘not conservative’ type of aristocrats. They pretend to be what they aren’t (champions of democracy — which they actually despise and crave to overcome, if it exists at all).

Progressive media (to the extent they exist at all, which is only very slight, anywhere) avoid both hypocrisy and mythology: they are openly anti-aristocratic, and rejecting also any mythology — they are populist, while not affirming the popular (or any) mythology. (By contrast: conservative ‘populists’ are committed to the existing popular mythology, and can therefore be manipulated by openly conservative aristocrats — they can be “Tories,” or even “Nazis,” and they can therefore vote against their own “class interests.” It’s stupid, but conservative ‘populists’ nonetheless do it routinely.)

As a result of this (since the progressives’ appeal — rejecting both the aristocracy and the mythology — is so small), politics almost invariably pits conservatives against liberals, and therefore promotes dictatorship (rule of the nation by its aristocracy), either way.

SERGE HALIMI—One of the most promising features of the Biden package is its universality. More than 100 million Americans have already received a Treasury cheque for $1,400. For a quarter of a century, most western states have made their social policies conditional on ever more stringent means testing, permanent surveillance, and punitive, humiliating employment ‘activation policies’ (2). As a result, people who no longer receive anything despite being in need are encouraged to hate public policies that they have paid for but which benefit someone else. Then, riled by the media, they come to believe they are subsidising cheats and freeloaders. The Covid-19 crisis has interrupted that kind of talk.