#Left Media Democrat Bias

[yourtongzhihazel]

As we settle into the news of Iran's (entirely justifed) retaliation against israel, remember that the western framing of international events is ALWAYS a rules for thee but not for me transaction. The west and its running dogs fully expect to have the material backing of the united states' imperialiat apertures backing their operations. This, coupled with the inherently propagandistic and bourgeois nature of media, seeks to both hide israel's actions and genocide while simultaneously vilifying Iran and other counter-israel forces for their justified intervention on behalf of the oppressed peoples in Palestine.

Remember: ALL western media has a bourgeois bias and even those who "lean left" contend with the political-economic realities of existing within a liberal democratic dictatorship of the borugeoisie. They CANNOT be trusted to represent actual proletarian issues or interests. Western and israeli arms of both state and media are calling the retaliation an "unprovoked attack". This is a gravely imperialist stance which ignores the strike on Iran's embassy, an attack not sanctioned by any government including nazi germany, blatant targeting of civilians by israel versus military targets by Iran, and serves to downplay the material effect of such retaliation: the exposure of iaraeli defense weaknesses and military installations and thr shattering of israeli "invincibility".

The west lies about everything under the sun; from domestic support of Palestine to international news on any and all countries subject to inperialist aggression. They CANNOT be trusted.

#death to the usa #death to israel #unlimited genocide on the first world

[reasonsforhope]

Do you have any advice for dealing with election anxiety?

I think/hope so!

First, a couple caveats:

I'm from the US, so US perspective, and about US 2024 elections

I know more about politics/follow them more than like, at least 85% of US Americans? But I am not an expert.

Environment/climate news and climate hope are science-based and can be measured/predicted empirically wayyyyy more than politics can, because People

I'm not getting into the trenches around Democrats vs. the Left vs. Liberals vs. Progressives. In this post, we're all in one big venn diagram of mostly interchangeable terms

So, first off, maybe my biggest piece of advice is this: The antidote to anxiety is action.

Find something you can do to help - anything. Anxiety is like fear - it's part of your brain's alarm system. It's part of your brain's mechanism for telling you that you need to do something

So if you listen to that alarm and do something, your brain won't feel the same need to desperately escalate the alarm system

You can look up and sign up for actions, protests, petitions, letter-writing campaigns, phone banking, canvassing, and more for candidates near you at Mobilize.us (no Repubs on here I promise). They also work with Swing Left a lot - a group that helps voters look up and focus on helping the nearest race that is actually competitive (because most of them aren't!)

Again, that's Mobilize.us and Swing Left as two of the best places to find out how and where to help, and sign up to do so

Other than that, I don't have advice specifically so much as I have "some useful and more hopeful ways to think about the coming US election" and to a lesser extent democracy in general

1. The media is going to underreport how well the Left and/or Democrats are doing, basically no matter what.

So, although we can't get cocky about it, this is something absolutely worth remembering when you see just about any polling or predictions about the 2024 elections.

Here's why:

Poling is weird and often inaccurate and skews in a lot of ways and is inherently biased, and it's less accurate the further you are from an election. Also, the electoral college is a huge complication here

This skewing is built into both the interpretation of the poll and the design of the poll itself - how many people do they sample? Demographic spread? Polls try to go for "likely voters," but how well can you predict that, especially as voting rates for young people and marginalized groups are rising, often dramatically?

Right now, those biases are all skewing most to all polls and predictions to the right. Including from basically all pollsters, as well as left-wing media and news outlets.

Now, THAT'S NOT INHERENTLY A BAD THING. It's not because they don't want the Left to win. It's because in 2016, basically all mainstream media, including left-leaning media, said that there was a very low chance Trump was going to win. They said that Hillary Clinton had it in the bag. So they're all correcting for the huge inaccuracy in the 2016 (and 2020 and 2022 tbh) elections

Not only were they catastrophically and humiliatingly wrong about that, they then had to deal with the fact that that very reporting was part of why Clinton lost in 2016 - voters heard she was probably going to win, so they felt safe staying home instead of voting

And then the 2020 election polls were also super wrong, mostly in the other direction

Polling as a field is undergoing a massive shakeup around this, trying to figure out how to not fuck up that badly again, but they haven't figured it out yet, so right now they're skewing things to compensate

That's for the sake of both their own credibility and, you know, the part where just about no one in either left-wing or mainstream media or mainstream polling orgs wants Trump to win

So they're going to underreport Democratic chances on purpose to a) compensate for the bias skewing things toward Democrats in their models, and b) to make sure that they don't accidentally help Trump win again

Sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x

Reasons the Republicans are in more trouble than a lot of people think

Democrats are largely closing ranks hard around Biden, because no matter what they think of Biden, they know a Repub victory would be a thousand times worse

Republicans, however, are absolutely NOT unifying around a candidate. And they're also the ones who go around saying a ton of awful and offensive and wildly untrue things about their opponents. Meaning that the Republican primary is about to get fucking messy, and probably all of their candidates will be tarred in the process

So, basically, the Republican candidates are all going to be busy smearing the fuck out of each other - while Biden mostly doesn't have to deal with that level of negative campaigning against him for months and months

As studies show, in politics, "a negative frame is much more persistent, or “stickier,” than a positive one. If you come at an issue negatively, but are later reminded of the policy's positive aspects, you will still think it's a bust."

Also, Biden is gonna get basically all presidential-race left-wing big-name donor money, while the Right will have that money split a bunch of ways and blow through it hard on infighting, creating a probable funding gap

Trump's campaign contributions are all going to pay his legal fees. Like, to the extent that last month, his main PAC had just $4 million in cash on hand - because they siphoned over $101 million to pay his legal fees (muahahaha)

Sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x

Other hopeful things to consider

Yes, Trump's indictments and trials are, unfortunately, boosting his numbers among his supporters. However, that's only with the hard right wing - and you can't win a general election with just the far right. He needs to appeal to independent voters and moderate Repubs - and every indictment and trial hurts his chances with them. x, x

In 2022, literally everyone was predicting a "red tsunami." And they were wrong: it never happened. Instead, Democrats picked up a seat in the senate, lost a third or less of the seats in the House that they were expected to, and won a number of statewide races. x, x, x, x, x

DeSantis's decision to go to war with Disney stands to do him a lot of fucking hard. Disney isn't just powerful in general - it's an unbelievably powerful force and employer in DeSantis's home state of Florida. Disney has already pulled a $1 billion project from Florida due to the feud, is responsible for "half" of FL's tourism industry, and and is branding DeSantis as "anti-corporation" and "anti-business" - dangerous charges in the right wing. x, x, x, x, x, x

Abortion is an issue that gets voters to the polls. This is an issue on which politicians are wildly out of step with voters: Numbers change depending on how you break it down, but generally 60% to 70% of Americans think abortion should be legal - which is, in election terms, is a landslide. For years, that momentum has been with Republicans. Well, now it's with us, and so far pro-choice candidates and ballot propositions have done way better than expected. To quote Vox, in 2022, "abortion rights won in all six states with abortion ballot measures, including in red states like Kentucky and Montana that otherwise elected Republican lawmakers." x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x

#Anonymous #ask #me #us politics #us elections #election 2024 #trump #biden #democrats #florida #united states #abortion access #pro choice #abortion rights #reproductive rights #political campaign #polling #statistics #good news #hope

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Christine Rosen

It’s not as if their readers and viewers are unaware of the problem. According to Pew Research, the percentage of Americans who say Jews face discrimination has doubled from 20 percent in 2021 to 40 percent in 2024. And yet, for some reason, mainstream-media outlets seem to be the only ones who haven’t drilled down on the issue.

In fact, the decision to downplay the anti-Semitic threat from the left is deliberate. Left-leaning media do not like to cover the behavior of their own, as the inconsistent coverage of the Jew-baiting members of the Democratic Party’s “Squad” during the past several years attests. Mainstream reporters at outlets like the New York Times take great pains to provide context and explanations for Representative Ilhan Omar’s blatant anti-Semitism, for example. A 2019 piece gave Omar and her defenders ample space to claim she was being unfairly targeted for criticism because she was a progressive Muslim woman while glossing over the fact that she had repeatedly accused Jews of having dual loyalties.

Amid the current conflict, it’s evident there is tacit agreement among most in the mainstream media that because Israel is defending itself by trying to root out Hamas in Gaza, the behavior of protesters is somehow justifiable and acceptable—but only because it involves Israel and the Jews.

This goes well beyond the deliberately misleading stories and factual errors about the war that have appeared in outlets such as the Washington Post. As Zach Kessel and Ari Blaff outlined in National Review, in a deep dive of the Post’s coverage of the Israel–Hamas war, the newspaper “has been a case study in moral confusion and anti-Israel bias” and has “violated traditional journalistic principles that have shaped coverage of foreign conflicts by American newsrooms for decades.”

Similarly, a recent story in the Free Press by Uri Berliner, a long-time editor and reporter at National Public Radio, described how NPR “approached the Israel-Hamas war and its spillover onto streets and campuses through the ‘intersectional’ lens that has jumped from the faculty lounge to newsrooms,” which meant “highlighting the suffering of Palestinians at almost every turn while downplaying the atrocities of October 7, overlooking how Hamas intentionally puts Palestinian civilians in peril, and giving little weight to the explosion of antisemitic hate around the world.”

#media bias #israel #jews #double standard #hamas #gaza

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

I'm certain that Elon is full of shit at some times, but what good things has he done that deserve recognition, too? And, what are commonly-believed lies about him, that are easily dispelled?

Putting aside that the man is singlehandedly putting human beings on other planets, and thereby doing more to try bring about the long-term survival of the human race than every climate activist collectively throwing soup at paintings, and that he - again, near-singlehandedly - has made electric vehicles both cool and a workable alternative to the combustion engine, with close to 17,000 Tesla Superchargers in the US alone... just the single act of him buying Twitter and removing the censorship and bias has likely altered the future of the entire human world, and for the better.

Because of one man, the entire mainstream media corporate narrative now has an unavoidably public alternative, and every one of their lies now gets community noted into oblivion within minutes of them speaking them. What once was an unquestioned Democrat party line, held by all major TV companies and news sites, is now being laughed at by the entire world in real time. It cannot be overestimated how much this changes the political discourse and narrative of the time we are living through, and everyone benefits from it. Freedom of speech is something everyone should appreciate and applaud, regardless of how they vote.

Maybe the weirdest lie that went viral is that his father owned an emerald mine and so Elon grew up sitting on a golden throne wiping his arse with jewels and dollar bills. Even the woke/left-wing Snopes debunked this, but there are probably millions of people out there still believing it, and vilifying Musk because of it.

I've noticed more girls seem to have believed this nonsense than boys: both a current female friend and my ex-girlfriend would only mention his name with a sneer, but when I asked them to lay out why for me, so I could understand what they were seeing, they both trailed off to a slightly puzzled silence, because when trying to articulate it, they realized it was based on nothing, just an attitude they'd taken on from the tone of media reporting and the groupthink of their peers.

Elon is a flawed human being like the rest of us, and I'm sure there are many things I'd disagree with him on, but he's a genuinely great man in a world of mosquitoes, and we desperately need more great men with vision and courage to get us out of the mess we all agree we're in.

#elon musk

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 An overnight air raid by the Zionist occupation army targeted the residential home of the Awad family, in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, resulting in the deaths of 6 civilians, including a baby, while dozens of others were wounded in the strike. ]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

GENOCIDE OF PALESTINIANS CONTINUES FOR THE 204TH DAY AS ISRAELI OCCUPATION FORCES BOMB MORE CIVILIAN HOMES

On the 204th day of "Israel's" ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 4 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of 32 civilians, mostly women and children, while another 69 others were wounded over the previous 24-hours.

It should be noted that Gaza's Ministry of Health, along with the entirety of the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip, have been pummeled by the Israeli occupation's aggression, causing extensive damage to the systems of monitoring the deaths of Palestinians in the Israeli genocide, and are no longer capable of keeping an accurate tally of the number of civilians killed.

Many of those killed in Israeli airstrikes remain buried under the rubble and are unable to be recovered due to continued Zionist aggression, which, along with extensive damage to local infrastructure, has left the official tally of Palestinians killed grossly undercounted.

Meanwhile, in the United States, protests continue on University campuses across the country, with tens of thousands of students demonstrating to call for divestment and sanctions against the Israeli entity.

In response to these protests, two American Congressman, one Democrat and one Republican, have introduced a bipartisan bill to force colleges to allow supervision by an official "antisemitism" monitor on campus.

The official name for the bill is "COLOMBIA" (College Oversight and Legal Updates Mandating Bias Investigations and Accountability) Act.

Colleges which are accused of "allowing antisemitism to fester" would have a monitor appointed by the Secretary of Education who would supervise actions taken by universities to tamp down "antisemitic" sentiments.

"Failure to comply the monitorship would result in a loss of Federal funds," a press release by the offices of Congressmember Ritchie Torres, a cosponsor of the bill, said.

The second cosponsor of the COLOMBIA protest-suppression bill is Rockland County Republican, Mike Lawler of New York.

In further news from Gaza, the Ministry of Health made an announcement on Saturday stating that all of the citizens of the Gaza Strip are drinking unsafe water, putting the Palestinian population at risk of disease and death.

The Ministry pointed out that the public health laboratory has long been shut down due to the Zionist aggression, and the ministry remains incapable of examining drinking water in the Gaza Strip.

The Ministry also slammed the Israeli occupation's blocking of chlorine from entering the enclave, leaving the Health Ministry unable to treat drinking water in Gaza, forcing the entire civilian population to drink unsafe water and putting their lives at risk.

Gaza's Ministry of Health also said the suffering of Gaza's population is compounded by the difficulty of obtaining water following the Israeli occupation's destruction of Gaza's desalinization plants.

In Beit Lahiya for instance, in the northern Gaza Strip, the city's mayor, Alaa Al-Attar, reported that the Israeli occupation army has destroyed 70% of water wells in the city, along with 50% of the city's sewage pumps, and has destroyed more than 80km of water and sewage networks, resulting in a humanitarian catastrophe for the local population.

In further tragic news, an infant who's life was saved after being removed from her mother's womb her death in an Israeli airstrike, has died herself from complications.

According to several reports in the local Palestinian media, as well as an Al-Jazeera report, the infant baby, named Sabreen al-Rouh Jouda, was rescued from her mother's womb after an Israeli airstrike hit their home, killing the unborn child's entire family, including her mother who carried her at the time, along with her father, and her young sister.

The infant Rouh died in hospital on Thursday and was buried with the rest of her family in Gaza.

Meanwhile, the massacre of civilians in Gaza continues unabated, with airstrikes and artillery shelling targeting residential homes and buildings across the northern, central and southern Gaza Strip, resulting in dozens of casualties over the last day.

In Gaza's north, Zionist gunboats fired live bullets from heavy machine-guns towards the fisherman's port of Gaza City, while at the same time shelling the outskirts of the Al-Shati Refugee Camp with artillery.

In another gruesome massacre, Zionist warplanes bombed near the Faisal School in the Japanese neighborhood of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, killing three Palestinian civilians and wounding a number of others.

Similarly, occupation fighter jets bombed the Sawarha area, west of the Nuseirat Camp, in the central Gaza Strip, martyring two civilians and wounding several others.

The slaughter of Palestinians continued with another Zionist airstrike targeting a civilian house in Rafah City, in the south of Gaza, killing at least 6 civilians.

That strike was immediately followed by two more airstrikes on residential homes in Rafah, resulting in the deaths of 8 more civilians, mostly women and children, and wounding dozens of others.

In yet another tragedy, Zionist occupation forces destroyed a residential home in the al-Sultan neighborhood of the Nuseirat Refugee Camp, in the central Gaza Strip, leading to the death of 4 civilians, including a baby girl.

Elsewhere, Zionist warplanes bombed yet another inhabited residential building, also in the Nuseirat Camp, killing 4 citizens and wounding at least 30 others.

The occupation army continued its terror with the launch of repeated firebelts targeting the Al-Mughraqa area of central Gaza, while Gaza City in the north was hammered with a multitude of airstrikes, several of which focused on the Shuja'iyya neighborhood where three residential homes were targeted.

The Zionist army also obliterated a house in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, killing 3 civilians, including a woman and her child.

Previously, an occupation airstrike that targeted a residential building belonging to the Shawa family, housing displaced civilians, was scoured by Civil Defense crews who managed to recover the bodies of three civilians, including a child, while several others who were wounded were taken to Al-Ahli Arab National Hospital.

Zionist warplanes also heavily bombed the Al-Zawayda area of central Gaza, targeting civilian homes in multiple intense raids, killing a Palestinian civilian and wounding a number of others.

A multitude of civilians were also wounded following occupation artillery shelling which targeted agricultural lands in the Sawarha area, west of the Nuseirat Camp, while occupation fighter jets continue firing firebelts to the northwest of Khan Yunis, in Gaza's south.

Occupation aircraft similarly targeted residential buildings in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City.

As a result of "Israel's" ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the current death toll among the local population has surged yet again, now exceeding 34,388 Palestinians killed, including over 14'690 children and 9'680 women, while another 77'437 others have been wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

April 27th, 2024.

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#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

#gaza #gaza strip #gaza news #gaza war #gaza genocide #genocide in gaza #genocide #israeli genocide #israeli war crimes #war crimes #crimes against humanity #palestine #palestine news #palestinians #free palestine #end the occupation #israel #israeli occupation forces #israeli occupation #israel palestine conflict #war #middle east #politics #news #geopolitics #world news #global news #international news #breaking news #current events

[sethshead]

The surge of anti-Semitism is a symptom of the decay of democratic habits, a leading indicator of rising authoritarianism. When anti-Semitism takes hold, conspiracy theory hardens into conventional wisdom, embedding violence in thought and then in deadly action. A society that holds its Jews at arm’s length is likely to be more intent on hunting down scapegoats than addressing underlying defects. Although it is hardly an iron law of history, such societies are prone to decline. England entered a long dark age after expelling its Jews in 1290. Czarist Russia limped toward revolution after the pogroms of the 1880s. If America persists on its current course, it would be the end of the Golden Age not just for the Jews, but for the country that nurtured them.

I also began my undergraduate studies in the late-'90s, just a few short blocks from Columbia University. My memories of the time and place are not so rosy as are Mr. Foer's. I remember a humanities lecture being disrupted by a student revolt because it focused on the Holocaust. This was back when everything was called a "Holocaust" except the actual Holocaust, and unsurprisingly the Holocaust was equated with New York State's prison system. Bad as carceral culture is, it is not the Holocaust. Columbia had its LaRouchists camped forever outside. Friends at CCNY were taught that people like me were fake Jews and responsible for slavery by faculty approved by the likes of Leonard Jeffries. Academia, even then, was a setting where antisemitism retained respectability, provided it was couched in radical enough theory and jargon.

Yes, Jews are the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to liberal backsliding, the first to be othered, antisemitism the first bigotry to be destigmatized. But it has likewise been a very long time since American academia has been committed to the liberal project; longer than I've been alive, I'd reckon. My experience is of an academic humanities and some social sciences mobilized to problematize, deconstruct, and dismantle liberalism; of instructors who had appointed themselves radicalizers and indoctrinators, not critical guides in teaching how to think, how to interrogate all texts.

This conflict between the university's traditional liberal role of hosting reasoned debate among a diversity of ideas, and faculty and students who wish to create intellectual monocultures of goodthink on campus, will ultimately cause the collapse of the Ivory Tower. It has for too long tolerated doctrines intolerant of dissent or argument. The Fourth Estate tried to hold the lines of liberal democracy, until the internet democratized media and the mob went where it could find the maximum bias confirmation, be pointed towards the old classic villains to explain all personal and social failings. Now both demagogical extremes may blame different Jews, but in the end, they both blame Jews for America's problems. And where are our old defenders? Where have they ever been? Have we ever had defenders?

In 1968, when a local New York City public school board tried to fire an almost-entirely Jewish group of teachers, who defended them? The largely Jewish-led union. But unions don't care as much about Jews anymore, not when they're more preoccupied with international events than with the welfare of their members here at home - just ask the Jewish teachers harassed and threatened at Hillcrest and Origin High Schools how vocal their union has been in their defense, and against DOE attempts to whitewash bias incidents.

American Jews sought influence in our liberal environment for our own protection, but that liberalism has required us to cede some influence to those who also know marginalization. At the local level, this has made us again vulnerable.

That said, liberalism is a mixed blessing for Jews. It offers us the opportunity for individual advancement as far as our talents will allow, without having to renounce our Jewish identity. Yet at the same time, Jewish identity isn't really individual, it's grounded in community, in family and public ritual. At heart, ours is a tribal and insular culture. The more we're accepted, the more diffuse our connection to the community becomes; when under disability and persecution, we huddle together and renew our dedication to our people and to the intergenerational transfer that is our future. Whatever happens in America, we will survive - Am Yisrael hai. American liberal democracy, and that of any country that turns on its Jews? About that I'm not so sanguine.

[tomwambsmilk]

Re: your post about drawing explicit lines to real life events and people on Succession, it has been driving me crazy, especially everyone saying 4.08 was "just 2016". It was harrowing, yes, but there were elements of past elections mixed together, and the WI thing reminded me of 2000...idk why people want things to be so cut and dry, 1 for 1 comparisons, that would be lazy writing!!!!! Like...appreciate the good writing.

I 100% agree - the 2000 election is one of the ones that's been explicitly referenced by writers and consultants for 4.08, even more so than 2016 or 2020. If I had to separate out what may have influenced what, I'd say the situation around WI and ATN calling early is much more reminiscent of the hanging chad situation in Florida in 2000, where some news outlets wrongly called the election for Al Gore rather than Bush. The aftermath, however, feels much more reminiscent of the civil unrest which followed the 2020 election. But even then, none of it is exactly the same, because the succverse is its own world!! It really truly would be incredibly lazy to just thoughtlessly recreate the 2016/2020 elections but with succession characters and orgs, and Succession has almost always been better than that.

And tbh, ambiguity around news network calls is not exclusive to 2000, and civil unrest is not exclusive to 2020. I see a lot of connection between the temptation to read succ like this, and the tendency people had when Veep was airing to say it "predicted the future". It didn't really. What actually happened is that the writers of Veep had an awareness of the political landscape and history of the US, and the stories which 'came true' were usually based on or extrapolated from things that had already happened. Anyone who was paying attention could have 'predicted' that. (Veep usually exaggerated, because it was a satire, but it was a satire rooted in a lot of truth). But most people's political awareness seems to be limited to the last 10-20 years, and recency bias leads people to fixate on what's happened in the last couple of election cycles; hence the fixation on 4.08 as being representative of 2020.

(I saw one critic call the choice to have Mencken win under dubious circumstances and have democrats protesting a "subversion" of what happened in 2020 - because he's a republican, not a democrat - and it struck me as so incredibly stupid, not least of all because it shows how mired in modern partisan party politics many American viewers are, to such an extent that they aren't able to acknowledge the greater systemic critiques shows like Veep and Succession are trying to make. Political showmanship and the media-politician relationship and electoral fraud and political violence are not things the Republican party invented in 2016. They've been around forever, and while one party may have more of a history of these things than the other, to a certain extent they do transcend party lines.)

In terms of the family dynamics, it's similarly frustrating to see people go Roys = Murdochs, PGN = NYT, Mencken = Trump etc. because as soon as you shoehorn the characters into that framework you lose a lot of critique. Mencken is far more of an ideologue than Trump ever was, because the critique being put forward with Mencken is not about Trump the person (which would be shallow and topical and hopefully outdated relatively soon) but about fascism the ideology. The family dynamics of PGN emulate the family dynamics of the NYT trust in order to critique 'old money' news and how it operates - but operationally, aspects of PGN function more like a major outlet such as MSNBC, which allows the show to also critique the broader left-leaning media landscape. Even looking just at Logan Roy - Jesse has cited as influences not just Rupert Murdoch, but Conrad Black, Tiny Rowland, Lord Rothermere, William Randolph Hearst, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Sumner Redstone. (In one direct quote from the book It's Not TV: "It's just fun to be completely freed from any sense of responsibility to portray real people realistically.") To read Logan only through the lens of Rupert Murdoch misses a lot of what the show is trying to say about the nature of wealth, particularly extreme wealth, in a capitalist system, and the role that the media plays in that system (and how that role has evolved over time).

And again, it's frustrating because I think it's indicative of this idea that the corruption and exploitation of the media landscape is a modern phenomenon and not something that's been present and developing since its inception, and I also think it's indicative of the belief that this sort of corruption and exploitation only occurs on the political right, when in actual fact it's something that wealthy and powerful people of all (professed) political stripes have engaged in.

#asks #anon

[joannechocolat]

Society of authors members - a word...

Members of the Society of Authors, we have our annual AGM on November 17th.Usually, only a hundred or so members choose to attend the AGM, but this year is going to be different. This year, we face a well-organized attempt by a relatively small group of members to take over the AGM and push through two resolutions.

The meeting is virtual, so you can attend by Zoom. You can also vote on resolutions by proxy as long as you do so before the 15th.

Before we start, this post is mine, and not an official SOA statement. But –

As members of our union, there are a number of important resolutions for you to look at during this year’s AGM, which will help shape the future of the organization. I urge you to look at them all, and especially at resolutions 6 and 7, submitted by a group headed by some prominent gender critical members.

You’ve probably noticed that this year, there has been a great deal of attention given to our little group by a (mostly hostile) media. Much of it centres on me personally, and much of what they say is typically misleading, incomplete or untrue. Most of it has been driven by social media, where for several years I have been the target of abuse and attacks by gender critical people. I believe that the two following resolutions come as a direct result of this.

Resolution 6 is an attempt to get rid of me as Chair because of my “documented behaviour and comments”, which I take to mean my statements on social media in favour of trans rights, as well as my support of the three writers of colour who received racist abuse in the wake of the Kate Clanchy affair last year.

Resolution 7 includes a demand for a commitment to free speech, which, though it may seem reasonable in principle, in this context shows a basic lack of understanding of what the SOA already does for free speech, and implies that there is bias against certain groups within the organization.

First, let’s have a look at this accusation of bias, which runs through the whole proposal. Some of the people behind these two motions have made it clear that they think that my personal opinions, as tweeted on my personal account, somehow make me unable to exercise impartiality in my capacity as SOA chair.

Okay. Let’s look at my personal opinions. I have a lot of them, and I tweet a lot. I’m a Remainer. I’m left-wing. I’m pro-choice. I wear a mask in public places. I support trans rights. I’m afraid of climate change. I hate racism in all its forms. I really like musical theatre, and (full disclosure) once unfollowed someone on Twitter for saying they hated Les Mis. But the thing I keep being accused of bias over is – you guessed it – trans rights.

If you look at the list of people proposing these motions (and if you take a glance at their Twitter profiles), you’ll find some prominent gender critical voices there. I’m not remotely surprised by this. There’s a history and a context to this attack, dating back several years. If you’d like to know more, here it is. And all this has become part of a right-wing culture wars agenda that sees me as part of “a contamination by the woke”,  as this blog post (one of many) typifies.The way I see it, this targeting of the SOA is part of a wider attempt to force the organization to abandon its impartiality and to pander to the demands of the right wing, via the gender critical movement – demands that, in this case, amount to removing a democratically elected Chair, and effectively giving preferential treatment to people with gender critical beliefs.

I don’t think that having openly pro-trans beliefs is a reason to stand down as Chair. I don’t think that anyone would insist on this if I held any other belief – if I were Jewish, for instance. But having a trans son, and supporting his rights, is enough in the eyes of these people to justify this unfounded claim – a claim that either by expression my opinions, or by not supporting theirs, I have somehow “allowed” gender critical authors to be cancelled or to lose work, because of their gender critical beliefs.

This is utter nonsense. My Twitter is a personal account, like the rest of my social media. I don’t bring my clashes on Twitter into SOA meetings, or expect the SOA to defend me against criticism or abuse. Nor should anyone else: it’s not within the remit of the SOA to supervise social media, or to comment when authors disagree.What the SOA is very good at is resolving contractual complaints. But anyone needing this kind of help needs to ask the SOA for help, not complain on social media that they weren’t offered any. If my car gets a flat tyre, I don’t complain to the management of my local Toyota garage that they didn’t help me – unless I’ve actually been there first. I wouldn’t expect them to look on social media to find out if I needed repairs. Why? Because what I say on Twitter doesn’t concern my local Toyota garage. For a start, they probably don’t follow me on Twitter.  And I wouldn’t expect them to intervene if someone on Twitter complained that I’d left my Toyota blocking their drive, or if someone had left a rude message on the windscreen. Because – guess what? It isn’t their job. They’re a garage, not The Batman.

So, what do I actually do at the SOA? Well, I chair the Management Committee. We deal with finances and strategy, prizes and grants. We help direct policy and, with the help of the SOA staff, determine how best to serve the members. We are not a political party, though we do lobby politicians of all parties on issues that concern our members. We do not debate “what makes a woman” because the SOA has 12,000 members, including trans people and gender critical people, and we want to serve them all. The gender critical lobby has – or so it seems to me – consistently refused to understand this. I have been asked repeatedly to debate with them on Twitter over trans rights. I have been threatened over my refusal to sign a petition that I felt legitimized JK Rowling’s comments on gender. I have received death threats and abuse. I have been told that as Chair of the SOA I must engage with this debate, and then, when I have expressed opinions, have been told by the same people that I shouldn’t have said anything. But here’s the thing. Free speech is for all, even in the case of those with whom you disagree. And a democracy treats people equally, regardless of their status. The gender critical lobby seems also not to understand this. It may have the support of some very powerful and well-connected people, but that doesn’t make their voices any more important than those of our other members. That’s why the SOA remains neutral in disagreements between individuals, whilst still supporting the free speech of everyone concerned. I’m very sure that if my opinion had swung towards the gender-critical side, no-one would be trying to claim that I was biased now. And I think that where there has been prejudice, it has been directed at me, for exercising my right to a belief that a very well-connected group of people in the media feel I simply shouldn’t hold.

Please don’t see this an an invitation to attack these people on social media. Whatever they may have said about me, whatever lies and smears they have used to make their case, I do not condone attacks or abuse in my name. If you feel there is a legitimate complaint to be made about anyone, then please do so via the SOA, according to their Dignity & Respect policy, not on Twitter.  Twitter can be ugly, and things can quickly get out of hand there.

When I was elected to the Management Committee, I promised to concentrate on promoting diverse voices and ensuring that the SOA was an inclusive, fair and welcoming environment for every kind of writer. This current attack on our democracy by a vocal group of ideologues not only threatens that promise, but uses up valuable resources of time, expense and energy that would be better spent dealing with the needs of our members.

If you agree, please consider voting against Resolutions 6 and 7, either in person at the AGM, or by proxy.Here’s the link to register:  If you agree, please consider voting against Resolutions 6 and 7, either in person at the AGM, or by proxy.

Here's the link to register:  

See you at the AGM, where, whatever your views, I look forward to hearing you. 

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

When I Was Your Age

Stephen Jay Morris

10/31/23

©Scientific Morality

I don’t mean to be sesquipedalian. However, I do relish the use of vulgar, four-letter words. That's my writing style. Don’t like it? Go somewhere else. Don’t let me waste your time. Okay? No! I aint no keyboard warrior, I am a pen and paper iconoclast. Okay? Okay! Now let’s go to the subject at hand.

We have tepid biases, then we have severe biases. Both are an anathema to the traditional liberals, or so-called “Woke.” You know? Racism, sexism, ablism, agism and many others. Then you have acceptable biases like “Generation gap.” Also, there are geographical biases, astrological biases, and other silly ones, like music criticism, sports bias, etc. Does this sound familiar: “People born under the sign of Pisces are assholes! Most of them live in Florida! What a shitty state that is! Not only do they have criminals, but they have lousy sports teams!” It all sounds hateful and hypercritical, but it is acceptable in society. Just like political bias: “It’s alright to call someone a communist, but you can’t call them a nigger!”

The paleo-conservatives are much too cowardly to use racial epithets, so they use innocuous, acceptable biases like “geographical bias” to cover up their racial hatred and disdain for their political adversaries. Instead of saying, “A city full of niggers that is run by a Democratic city council,” they say, “Chicago.”  Now that the conservative movement is being taken over by the White Nationalist movement, they’re even more at ease using racist terminology.

Today, I want to tackle the subject of the Generation Gap. Every race, creed, or color has had this problem. It is an innocuous bias that has been around since 399 B.C., the days of the ancient Greek philosophers. Quote: “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”― Socrates 399 B.C. End Quote. This didn’t just start with the Baby Boomers and their parents in the 60’s.

Every generation has its critics. Why do older people do this? Before I answer that question, let me point out that every individual has their own unique personality. Talking about generational issues, you tend to generalize. People who generalize are too stupid and indolent to elaborate. That is why most racists are stupid. So, why do most older people look down on the younger generation? Because they wish they were young enough to repair their misspent youth. Plus, they resent the better life their children have. Tag it “jealousy!”

Now, what I just said is a gross generalization. That may be true for some, but not all. There are parents who love their children, and those children reciprocate that love.  So, who is “anti-youth?” Mostly, this sentiment comes from the political Right in America! They want all males to be masculine warriors who will protect the ruling class, and all women to be birthing wives to increase the White population. Don’t believe me? Tough shit! Just read the history of any Fascist nation; it’s all the same.

The U.S. political Right wants every male in this country to be a self-reliant, rugged individual. Conservative news website and media company, “The Daily Wire,” makes lots of money from attacking the so-called Left. One of its commentators, Matt Walsh, wears a Fidel Castro beard and is a Millennial who attacks Generation Z. He cited a psychological study that found Gen Z-ers are suffering from anxiety and panic attacks. Matt, being the dumbass he is, did not sympathize with them, stating “they are just spoiled kids.” I get the feeling he never reads any pamphlets published by the Roman Catholic Church. He also stated that he has never experienced a panic attack, so therefore, there is no such thing. Any individual who has this mind set might suffer from psychopathological Narcissism. He has no ability to empathize. I pity his children and his wife.

I am a 69 year-old, Jewish male. Beginning at 11, I grew up having panic attacks. It was embarrassing and frequently occurred in public. These attacks came out of nowhere, not unlike an Epileptic seizure. I got them not because I had Liberal, hippie parents who were lenient with me; As I learned through psychotherapy many years later, it was because my neurons weren’t firing correctly and I had a bio-chemical imbalance in my brain. Matt Walsh thinks with his balls, not his brain.

A major upshot of this modern world is that religion is dying, and science is advancing. So, we must endure schmucks like Walsh until natural causes take hold.

Just remember, the world is getting better and better!

#stephenjaymorris #poets on tumblr #poets of tumblr #baby boomers #anarchopunk #millenials #anarchism #anarchocommunism #gen z culture #Anarcho capitalism #anarcho primitivism #anarcho syndicalism #anarchofeminism #anarchoqueer #satire

[perfectlyvalid49]

hey, thanks so much for adding that "check your sources" thing to the post criticising israel! I'm kinda terrified of how quickly people are just pouncing on the opportunity to spread misinfo (I mean every globally-discussed event seems to be surrounded by that nowadays...). I won't lie, I'm also running out of energy to fact-check because there's just so much conflicting info out there, but when people don't even bother before spreading bold statements from openly biased sources to hundreds and thousands... anyways, point being, I appreciate your efforts and I really liked your post, thanks for doing your best!

You’re welcome! I honestly believe that misinformation/disinformation is an existential threat to democracy. I wish more people were more careful about the information they spread. I’m glad someone out there appreciates whatever small addition to the conversation I can make.

But I gotta admit that my initial reaction to this was which post? A while ago I pushed back against someone uncritically posting criticism of Israel from Al Jazeera, and they blocked me, and I took it personally. So I kinda went on a tear for a few days where I posted that sort of thing a lot.

As for running out of energy to fact check – me too! I’ll admit that I don’t fact check everything; that feels like an impossible task. But for anyone who cares, I’ll go into what sorts of things I think about and what are more likely to make me fact check what I’m seeing. Media literacy 101, let’s go!

So the very first question you need to ask yourself is, “does the reporting organization have known biases, and how does that interact with the topic reported?” The easy example in the US is that everyone knows that Fox has a right wing bias, and MSNBC skews left. When in doubt, there’s a handy chart ( https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/ ). But other biases can come into play as well. ABC is owned by Disney, so for reporting on Disney, I fact check anything that is coming from ABC. Al Jazeera has an antisemitic bias, so for reporting that involves Israel, I fact check anything coming from Al Jazeera. But either of those sources are valid for something apolitical, like the local weather forecast.

The next thing you need to look out for is, “how is this being reported?/Is the headline trying to make me feel something?” It’s one thing if an article is clearly marked as an opinion piece, but then it’s just that – opinion. If a newspaper is publishing something as not an opinion piece, then you need to see if the author is presenting facts, or presenting an opinion disguised as facts. Very frequently you can tell from the headline. For example, “Reported Death Toll in Gaza Rises to 15,000” is factual, and a good indicator that the article is trustworthy, whereas “IDF murders another 500 civilians; Death Toll Now at 15,000” reports the same number but with a clear bias (use of the word murder, deaths listed as civilian, uncritically accepting Hamas’s numbers even though we have evidence that they lie about these things, trying to evoke outrage). This doesn’t mean that the article can’t contain true facts! But it does mean it’s a good candidate for double checking against other sources.

Another thing to watch out for is, “is this trying to get me to do or not do something? If so, who benefits?” Is the article trying to convince you that it’s stupid to fight climate change? Either because it’s already hopeless or because it isn’t real – either way you should be suspicious. Who benefits? Probably big companies who don’t want to change how they’re run to lessen the impact on the environment. Or when you start seeing posts about how voting for democrats is pointless because they’re not doing enough – who benefits? People who want to see republicans in power instead. This isn’t necessarily cause for a fact check, but it’s still an important part of media literacy to be able to recognize this tactic and ask yourself this question.

Finally, ask yourself, “is the article telling me something I want to hear/am inclined to agree with?” We all have biases, and a lot of news articles play into that. And it’s very likely that you’ll fact check something you don’t want to believe anyway – because you don’t want to believe it, so of course you’ll look for something to prove it wrong. But things that you want to believe are the things you need to be the most cautious of, because they can still be false, but you’re more likely to pass them on uncritically. I actually sort of did this myself a few weeks ago – I posted an article about JVP sucking. And they do! But I could have picked a better article to post, because the one I selected was not super well written, and it had busted links. I should have double checked, but it was saying something I already agreed with, so I didn’t read the whole thing before sharing. (No one is perfect, I will try to do better).

And while this feels super relevant to the i/p conflict (and it is!), really, it’s applicable to just about everything. There’s an election in just under a year, and this will be very relevant to that too. I know there are news aggregates that will do some of the bias checking for you, but really the ability to think critically about a source of information is a really, really important skill. Practicing it for yourself is the best way to develop it.

#politics #important skills #media literacy #identifying biases #especially your own #no one is perfect #but we all have to try to be better #I am an idiot elder millennial who had to learn this the hard way #I'm not sure I'm the best teacher for this #but any teacher is better than none I guess #I'm writing this while distracted at work #so if you think of something I missed please reblog with additions

[positivityforlesbians]

Hey so I’m not sure if there’s a central point to this ask but what do you do when you feel more or less “outnumbered”? I stupidly searched some tags that I knew would upset me and it seems like so many people have an inherent bias against “white cis lesbians” and it seems like they throw the word white in front of it just to get away with being misogynistic and homophobic because their arguments are never about race. They’re about if someone is in the wrong for having sexual boundaries. Also, I’m not even white and those posts make me feel like a bigot for being a lesbian. Which is how I know that adding “white” is so superficial. I keep reading that my aversion to male genitalia (even the male genitalia that has been surgically restructured) makes me transphobic and that i need to unlearn that aversion but it just doesn’t make sense to me?? I look to the comments and see one or two others like myself who are genuinely confused and the most common response is “I’m not google” or “examine the root of your preferences”. But my examining is so brief because I was literally BORN THIS WAY. I think about it and it’s so clear to me that my body and brain love female bodies and are repulsed by male bodies. It all feels like mass brain washing and conversion therapy.

To make matters worse, there’s no safe way to even vent this frustration without being called a “terf”. I feel like being born a same sex attracted woman has doomed me to inevitably being labeled a terf when idek much about terfs other than being called one is a really bad thing. People are supposed to pick ideology/schools of thought. From what I’ve seen, lesbians who are vocal about their sexuality are forced into that box by other people. If that makes sense? Its almost comically absurd. I’d laugh if it weren’t so horrific and homophobic. I feel like I can’t loudly and proudly be a lesbian and it SUCKS because I spent all of high school in the closet and I just feel robbed and I feel betrayed by supposed members of my… “community” who, quite frankly, hate actual homosexuals whether they want to admit it or not. I guess I wanted to know if you think there’s hope for lesbians? Or if the game is rigged for us to be hated by both the left and right? Do you think there are many other lesbians like me who are silently fed up with being the scapegoat of so many people’s anger and insecurity? Is there anything you do to feel better about being unable want male bodies when it feels like literally every other “queer” woman online does/is willing to? I get republicans thinking I’m a freak for loving women. It truly baffles me when democrats, liberals, and fellow gay/bi people also think I’m a bad person for how I was born. It’s so horribly lonely.

Firstly, I once again apologize for being so long to answer. All your concerns are valid and I want you to know that there are absolutely many other lesbians like you who are silently fed up with this hatred against us. Make no mistake it is indeed lesbophobia, this time it's more effective because it hides in plain sight, it goes from mouth to mouth so often unchallenged because people are so afraid to be seen as ostracising and exclusionary.

No matter what these new homophobes say though, we are still unable to change who we are, and why would we want that anyway ? The atmosphere is so toxic, so intoxicating, that lesbians just existing in western supposedly progressive countries are called "terfs" and "transphobes". The ones who are not called that are lucky for now because they're either careful and lying about their real opinion on the matter (which isn't even an opinion but a fact, we are not attracted to the opposite sex) - which worsen it all for the rest of us (no "thank you" to any of you reading this, you're simply hypocritical if you are out there calling us transphobes when you damn well know you wouldn't actually like sex involving pe**s either, duh) or not involved on social media or lgbt spaces irl so they don't know what's going on (which ... I'm kind of jealous of that). The best thing you can do to put distance between this new type of lesbophobia and you is to find the actual self-loving lesbians who are not afraid to be called names if this means being true to our sexual orientation. It's okay to be solely attracted to the same-sex, it's okay to be a lesbian, lesbophobes can die mad about it. ✨

#anonymous #my answers #lesbian safe #lesbophobia #lesbian positivity #lesbian pride

[mariacallous]

so two unrelated but deeply related things. E. Jean Carroll won yet another round in court against Trump when a judge shot down Trump's attempts to delay the second (which is really the first) law suit by Carroll against him.

and Briahna Joy Gray brought up (on whatever Podcast she's on now) Tara Reade as a serious vote from the left criticizing Biden's support for Ukraine over helping Hawaii.... which whatever

the point was having the ghost of Reade dragged back up reminded me of how the media treated her allegations that fell apart pretty quickly vs the way the media treats Carroll, they are actively not interested in Carroll. idk if its just that there's SO much Trump stuff no one can focus vs so little Democratic problem that to both sides you have to hyper focus on anything that comes up, see Hunter, but I can't help but feel like.... idk someone should be in those famous Trump dinners asking people how they feel about Trump being a rapist and if that changes how they'd vote (I know the answer, but it'd be nice to dream of one or two of them feeling awkward saying it) and you wonder do to the almost non-coverage, are there lots of people who don't know?

I think part of it might be because Caroll's stuff is "old news" whereas Reade is "more recent".

However, I think it's also one of those things where with Trump/Republicans it's just not "news" because we kind of already know and expect this - never mind how serious or important this is. It's another "Trump has legal issues" with a slight dash of sexual assault thrown in but not *really* enough to elevate it above the overall Trumpian noise.

And there's also just the inherent media bias against Democrats.

Plus both sides (the right and the "progressive"/left) have a vested interest in trying to discredit or take Biden down.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.

Harsh (even if fair) coverage of left-of-center governments will not decrease accusations of bias in the U.S., Brazil, or anywhere else.

In 2023, trust in news media will continue to decrease in any country that has a government with any semblance of normalcy. This will be most evident with the continuation of the Biden administration in the U.S. and with a new post-Bolsonaro government in Brazil. With outwardly anti-press presidents gone, and more critical coverage of relatively stable governments, trust in news media will decrease simply because newspapers will have fewer allies in the audience.

I like to talk about Brazil not only because it is where I am from and where I think about most of the time, but because almost everything that happens in the world happens in Brazil, sometimes sooner, often louder. Really, you should all be paying attention to Brazil. Growing economic inequality, particularly in times of crisis? Brazil has always had that. Causes and effects of global climate change? Part of our history. Rise of a populist right-wing? Going on for a while now. The right-wing wave receding against a moderate-to-left coalition? Happened in our latest elections this past October, a little later than in the U.S., but sooner than in other places.

This Brazilian mirroring of global events happens in the news media environment as well. The well-known trends are all there, and I saw them first-hand working in newsrooms from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s: decline of traditional print, the surge of online-native news media, doubts about business models, influence of tech in our daily news consumption and in the formation of anti-democratic pockets of the audience. And now, we are seeing a great laboratory about the decrease of trust in the news media.

Continue reading.

#brazil #politics #brazilian politics #journalism #mod nise da silveira #image description in alt

[thegalievthought]

On Imperialist Wars: The Modern Importance of The Vanguard and Revolutionary Defeatism

In our modern day, we face a world where Imperialist geo-politics has gotten to a point of complication of a far grander scale than in history before. From China and Taiwan to Syria and of course the proxy war in Ukraine. It seems that geo-politics is getting more and more important for the proletariat. However, it is much harder to understand. So in our modern day the workers and petite bourgeoisie, look to news outlets such as CNN and Fox. To tell them in an hour or less who everyone is, why they are fighting, and who is right. For the workers who haven't the time, or perhaps the proper education or ability to do research outside the sphere of mass media, this proposes a clear problem. Is the media we consume accurate? Is the media we consume biased? In our so-called “age of information,” these are fair questions to ask when anyone can make a thread on Twitter in 10 minutes and cause outrage for days. We have clear concerns about the information we consume. This has led to a movement you know all too well, the “Fake News” movement, an idea created and founded as a reactionary juxtaposition of Liberal progressivism. When a fascist uses reactionary dog whistles, and when ABC news calls them out for it. Using that fear of the information we consume, the reactionary can wave away this as simply ‘fake news’ and dispel the accusations of racism wholly within their target audience. So simply what is to be done? As communists should we capitulate to Liberal news sources despite any bias or false reporting? No. Simply put the left in our modern day has largely become complicit in using Liberal media. Even the most fervent communist reads a CNN article before the Jacobin or WSWS’s version. I'm even guilty of this. So the question then must be asked what is the solution or more accurately what is to be done? Lenin says, “A party is the vanguard of a class, and its duty is to lead the masses and not merely to reflect the average political level of the masses.” This ultimately reflects the purpose of the vanguard party, which is to educate and lead the working class. So in our modern day where are these vanguard parties? In the third and second world, there is no shortage of these parties 

However, in the first world, we see a lack of any meaningful vanguard party. Parties like Labour, The CPUSA, ect often fall into being no more than reactionary social democrats. No one in their right mind would claim Jeremey Corbyn to be sufficiently read in Marxist theory. So what is at the core the main problem with the majority of western vanguard parties? First, is an overemphasis on participation in liberal democracy. Socialism as a foundation principle requires that the liberal capitalist society must be dismantled and that socialism cannot be attained through democracy alone, but also requires such social upheaval that is of armed insurrection. Two, a liberalisation of the socialist position for the example of The Labour party has been in a process going on for at least a hundred years. To where it stands is no question as Lenin said “Thus the Labour Party is a ‘capitalist workers’ party.” What can fundamentally be said of many western ‘socialist parties’ is that of a trend away from vanguardism and revolutionary socialism, and into a liberal socialist, or even social democratic positions. So even furthermore is the importance placed on the vanguard. In our time we have very few options for socialist education. So what is to be done? Well, it falls to the current and next generation of radicals to radicalise already existing parties, create new revolutionary news sources, and most importantly form new vanguard parties! 

With new parties to educate and help formulate united socialist positions. For example, bring everything full circle. Geo-politics often divides and splits us. Take the conflict in Ukraine. The left is split into several positions in the conflict. With one side being rightly so committed to the position of revolutionary defeatism. The other committed to supporting one of the two imperialist powers in the conflict. (typically to bourgeois nationalism) So further what is revolutionary defeatism? And why is it the correct position for the majority of modern geopolitical struggles through the socialist position? Well, Revolutionary defeatism is the concept that in imperialist wars, the working class always loses. We gain nothing from fighting workers of other nations. So revolutionary defeatism states as the solution are to oppose imperialism bourgeois wars. (typically through accelerating the class war) So since we know that the workers always lose, revolutionary defeatism says you support no imperialism or bourgeois state but rather the working class so in the case of the Ukraine conflict. The clear answer is revolutionary defeatism. We should not support Russia or the US and NATO but rather the Ukrainian workers and do all we must to fight off both sides! We see this from Communist and anarchist fighters in Ukraine. So the movement of the proletariat stands in defiance of imperialism and social-imperialism all over the world. We must be opposed to taking sides in bourgeois wars from Ukraine to Syria. The workers of the world united stand behind their vanguards and in support of their freedom will liberate themselves. And support for imperialists and their conflicts amounts to little more than reformism, revisionism, and reactionism like we’ve seen before in history from the likes of Mensheviks and the so-called ‘right-opposition communists’. So when we refer to imperialist wars, I hope we understand that fundamentally the only correct position for the communist movement and the proletariat at large is one of vanguardism to unite the proletariat and serve to educate and lead the workers, and revolutionary defeatism to not server the imperialism parasites and their goals.

#leftism #trotskyism #communism #marxist #marxism #socialism #antifascism #anti capitalism #marxism leninism #leninism #bolsheviks #Bolshevik Leninism

[bllsbailey]

Elon Musk Calls NPR CEO 'One of the Worst Human Beings in America,' Announces Campaign for 1st Amendment

National Public Radio CEO Katherine Maher (Photo Below)

NPR CEO Katherine Maher bought a NYC townhouse for $2.7M

has been thoroughly exposed as a radical in recent days as one of NPR’s veteran editors—Uri Berliner—actually told the truth and revealed that the taxpayer-sponsored “news organization” is hopelessly biased toward the progressive viewpoint. For this transgression, he was promptly suspended; he said thank you but take a hike, I’m resigning.

The highly publicized back-and-forth led inquiring minds to take a closer look at Maher’s past, and what they found out is that she’s a radical extremist who thinks the leftist narrative is more important than the actual truth and that those who don’t stick to said narrative should be silenced in the name of “progress.” She has her right to these opinions—but she doesn’t have the right to use our taxpayer money to foist them on the American public.

Maher Madness:

National Public Radio CEO Katherine Maher’s 1st Amendment Hatred Shows They Removed the Wrong Person

Longtime NPR Editor Who Exposed Their Bias Resigns, Rips 'Divisive' New CEO on the Way Out the Door

NEW: 25-Year Editor Who Exposed NPR Suspended, Radical CEO Has More Shocking Posts Surface

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember the famous TV commercials where entrepreneur Victor Kiam would come on the screen and say, “I liked the shaver so much, I bought the company [Remington].” Elon Musk took a similar approach; he values free speech so highly that he shelled out $44 billion in 2022 to buy social media platform Twitter (now X), in part to fight rampant big-tech censorship. He promptly canned 80 percent of the company’s workforce, reinstated accounts that had been banned, and completely overhauled the company’s free speech policies.

And he’s certainly no fan of the former CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, Maher, who took over as NPR CEO in March:

Katherine Maher is blatantly racist and sexist – one of the worst human beings in America— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 18, 2024

Whoa! Elon, tell us how you really feel. 

It was one in a number of posts he’s made since the NPR story broke. Here’s another:

This keeps getting crazier! The head of NPR hates the Constitution of the USA. https://t.co/1Xp8Pi12fs— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 17, 2024

He also posted “Defund NPR,” “NPR has become a hard left propaganda machine that tolerates no dissent,” “It’s ok for a commercial media orgs to have political bias, but not taxpayer-funded orgs!,” and more.

He’s dead right on all those—there’s no way our taxpayer dollars should be supporting extremist wackos like Maher—but it appears that Musk is going to do more than just sit back and post to X. He’s going to take action, according to his Thursday afternoon tweet:

Given the relentless attacks on free speech, I am going to fund a national signature campaign in support of the First Amendment— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 18, 2024

At this point, it’s unclear what form such an effort would take, and he has not provided more details as of this writing. But while many thought he was bluffing when he first brought up the notion of buying Twitter, Musk has proven he is capable of taking bold (and expensive) steps. 

Related:

Elon Musk Calls It Like He Sees It: 'There Is Either a Red Wave This November or America Is Doomed'

Without knowing more, I nevertheless welcome his statement because the more influential people we have fighting the scourge that is Big Tech and Big Media censorship—egged on and abetted by progressives and Democrats—the better. We saw during the COVID era just how devastating censorship can be and how we can be simultaneously lied to and silenced by people who seem to pay no consequences for their trampling of the First Amendment. 

Musk is 100 percent correct to call out this loon running NPR, and I hope his “national signature campaign in support of the First Amendment" has some teeth to it.