MEDIA SCUM

PATRICE GREANVILLE—The capitalist media are owned by multibillionaires or huge corporations controlled by interlocking handfuls of millionaires and billionaires, the actual rulers of any capitalist nation. In the US such elites pursue constant war to expand and preserve their global empire. Media personnel, at the top levels largely comprised of unprincipled careerists, is happy to carry their devious message to the masses. Practically all media figures today, no matter how famous or obscenely paid, are propagandists of one type for another, pushing various narratives that only benefit the global 0.001%. That is why it is correct to view them as media whores, or as some also call them “presstitutes”.

JOE LAURIA—Graphika seemed alarmed that on PeaceData’s Arabic-language site “some articles also attacked France in general and President Emmanuel Macron in particular, and accused them of an ‘imperialist’ approach toward Africa.” This is in line with the Times quoting Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at Graphika and an Atlantic Council fellow, as saying, “In terms of posting, they were clearly significantly left of the Biden-Harris campaign,” as if this were a threat to “national security” as the FBI contends. PeaceData had a mix of original and republished articles, Graphika tells us, from publications such as The Grayzone, which Graphika smears as a “pro-Kremlin site.”

GARY LEUPP—One possibility is to focus on the prospect of a looming fascist police state. This would require a shift in Democratic policy; so far the Democrats have attacked Trump for his alleged ties with Russia, or withholding of arms to Ukraine, or his inaction on the coronovirus. It’s only because of the sudden revival of Black Lives Matter, mass demonstrations and Trump’s dispatch of federal forces to repress them, and his fascistic rhetoric about law and order, that this issue has entered the race.

If lackluster Biden (with his history of supporting police unions) can be depicted as the “antifa” candidate versus the fascist one, and the election depicted as an urgent choice between martial law and a return to normalcy, perhaps enough people would mobilize to defeat the “fascist.”

MAX PARRY—Despite the obvious credibility and authenticity questions regarding the use of such controversial technology, it has not prevented critics from lauding it unquestioningly. Unfortunately, even some in alternative media have been regurgitating the film’s propaganda such as The Intercept, a slick online news publication owned by billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar whose financial ties to the national security state and U.S. soft power institutions conflict with the outlet’s purported mission. Notably, The Intercept’s glowing review of Welcome to Chechnya was written by Mehdi Hasan, a journalist who also works for Al-Jazeera, a news agency owned by the ruling emirs of Qatar, a theocratic dictatorship where homosexuality is actually illegal. 

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Like many other forms of bigotry, this one has been engineered and promulgated by powerful people who benefit from it. If the mainstream news media were what it purports to be, namely an institution dedicated to creating an informed populace about what’s truthfully going on in the world, we would see the bombings in foreign nations given the same type of coverage that a bombing in Paris or London receives.

This would immediately bring consciousness to the unconscious bigotry that those in the US-centralized empire hold against people in low and middle income countries, which is exactly why the plutocrat-owned media do not report on it in this way. The US-centralized empire is held together by endless violence, and the plutocrats who run it have built their kingdoms upon the status quo of that empire.