This special report hoped to make a list of all the editors' notes and retractions that would be needed because of the #TwitterFiles. The problem turned out to be too big to count
I had an Orwellian experience with the NYT just a few days ago. They carried a story almost entirely relying on a Ukranian official who said that Russia had been lying fir years about Ukranian military units shelling civilians. Now I don’t know the truth about the specific village they were talking about in the currrent conflict, but I linked to a Human Rights Watch report and in a second comment to an Amnesty International report from 2014-2015 where they specifically said that both sides, including the Ukranian military, were shelling civilians.
My note was very polite. They didn’t print it. I sent it again with two links instead of just the HRW link. They didn’t print it. I sent another link merely telling people they could find these reports. They didn’t print it.
They did print people who explicitly took a pro Russian side, which I don’t do, but they did not print a piece like mine with links that explicitly disproved their article. They posted other comments during the hours I kept submitting mine.
This is memory hole stuff. We aren’t supposed to know that both sides committed atrocities back in 2014-2015. And most of the other commenters were completely ignorant of this. I have little sympathy for them— they could look things up. But the NYT didn’t want them to suspect anything.
I used to post on a political section of a physics web site. They had a rule that all political statements had to cite sources. In reality you could say anything that was a repetition of whatever was on television. If your info contradicted that then it didn't matter how good your sources were.
I got banned. I suspect that having solid sources made me more of a threat. I realized later that most physicists are employed in weapons research.
Ukraine has been committing ongoing genocide by artillery in the Donbass since the coup as documented by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission, a remarkable admission by a group later discovered not only not to be a neutral observer but actively sharing eastern Ukrainian positions with the Nazis.
You are repeating Putin’s talking points. He has taken the bit of accurate information that there is a small group on neonazis in Ukraine (much like there are neoNazis in the U S) and used that to claim the whole effort of Ukraine to protect their country is driven by Nazis. Let’s not forget that Putin invaded Donbas
Shouldn't we also not forget the Soros backed Maidan revolution and the part the U.S. played in a blatant coup and unwarranted meddling in Ukraine and it's democratic elections? Let's not forget that Obama basically started this war and he's still pulling the strings, behind the scene.
What is it with you guys and Soros and you claim liberals have Trump Derangement Syndrome?
And Obama did not start this war. In 2014 Putin invaded Donbas and Crimea and Obama did exactly what people on this thread seem to want Biden to do: nothing, just let Putin have his way,
Maybe you should look into Soros and his Open Society Foundation. As well as the CIA-backed National Endowment for Democracy. They go hand in hand. And look up the many color revolutions they've pulled off, worldwide....yellow, rose, green, orange, but don't quote me. Look 'em up yourself and don't settle for ignorance. See, where we have information backing our claims, you have nothing but TDS. But take heart, there is a cure.
I agree with your concern with suppression of viewpoints. However, consider how many French civilians died from allied shelling during WWII. Sadly, it is the reality of large scale warfare. My understanding is that it isn't a war crime unless it is unnecessary or disproportionate to a legitimate military objective.
What the human rights groups said is that both sides were guilty of indiscriminate fire into civilian areas.
I tend to think war and war crimes go together and to paraphrase Chomsky ( yeah, he isn’t perfect), there are always lawyers present to argue that whatever our side does is just, etc…. I just want honest reporting about the fact that both sides shell cities. It probably is normal in war. But it is reported as a terrible war crime when one side does it and denied or excused when the other side does it.
One would think that supposedly educated people could see this, but what Orwell wrote in “Notes on Nationalism” seems like a timeless truth. People have an amazing ability to avoid knowing about the atrocities committed by the side they support.
I agree completely. Probably a quibble. I also agree completely with Sherman, who wrote "war is hell." War is entirely an atrocity. Sadly it is in some circumstances a necessary one. Sherman's leadership helped end slavery. Ukraine's war helps to deter Russia's program to reassert a Soviet style control over the components of the former USSR and, potentially, Eastern Europe.
For context, let’s remember that in 2014 Putin invaded Dombass and Crimea. There may well have been shelling of civilians by both sides but Russia was invading and Ukraine was defending
For context you are a paid troll and a serial liar. The NATO analyst for Ukraine openly acknowledges Russia did not invade the Donbass in 2014. Canada has a new program perfect for people like you.
Marr: “How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that journalists are..”
Chomsky: “I’m not saying your self censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”
Nowhere did I say that I endorse everything Chomsky ever said or wrote. Hell, I have quoted Goering for truth (in particular on getting the populace behind a war), and I am as far as one can get from a national socialist.
The German MIC which eventually put Hitler in power, many of whom later wanted him arrested or killed (but could never pull the trigger, and many of these plotters were executed later) talked about replacing him with Goering (who was open to peace).
War Presidents always go insane (must be a requirement to wield that Power). It's not limited to Germans.
I never said you endorsed him either! I didn't mention you in my response, just Chomsky. I feel you. Chomsky is interesting to quote because he has forever nominally been anti-censorship and "manufactured consent."
mmm, no, not exactly, but I basically think Chomsky should've stuck to linguistics. He's too much of a statist to have any coherency in his political writings. I can't take his politics seriously given he's gone from denouncing"manufactured consent" to being one of the manufacturers.
OK so Noam Chomsky drank some of the omnipresent Kool aid, he's paid his dues. Now Harris and DeGrass and other "intellectuals", that's another matter.
It's how the consent is manufactured - anyone who disagrees doesn't get promoted. The ones who tell the bosses what they want to hear has a bright future.
The difference being that Carlson represents an existential threat to the Uniparty and the Elites behind all this bullshit. Lemon is a punchline at best. An inconsequential blip whose absence no one will notice.
Carlson did a rant against Pharma and their government advertised, taxpayer funded, vaccine experiment. Go against Pharma and that'll get a guy removed real quick. They are nasty buggers.
I think it's more accurate to say that their salaries depend on them not understanding what they are doing, and so they don't.
It's not much different then how I manage to type away on my Mac, which was built by slaves, and the profits of which are pumped into lobbyists to prevent positive social change.
Without a doubt! Everybody seems to dance around the obvious - there is a boatload of money to be made misleading the public with sensationalism. Fox News has been doing it for decades! I wonder how much money MSNBC made spewing all that crap in Matt Orfalea's vid? So, how do you get people to stop tuning in? It only makes sense that as long as MSNBC and others can profit from their current game plan, they will continue to play that way.
Everyone but people with terminal TDS, loyal DP followers, and leftists has abandoned the MSM (anyone else getting sick of acronyms?). I think they've gone all in as propagandists for the regime in order to maintain enough viewers to remain on air, on top of the fact that there's a pipeline from the Ivies to major media outlets and they all share the same lack of ethics and intelligence.
You're hitting on a point I've been curious about for awhile. What if corporations can make huge money just off of the list of people you named, for instance? The bigger picture is, what if companies can get rich producing products that only "niche types" will consume, or those with substantial resources can afford? What if say, GM's cheapest car cost $80k? That would preclude an entire segment of Americans from owning a new car. Get my drift?
Yes--the affluent are led down the garden path because all consumer goods are marketed as "environmentally friendly" and therefore more expensive, out of the reach of the working class who are left to scab together beaters like the Cubans do, only to get busted for emissions violations.
I think we see this with groceries--I'd like to compare the prices of Whole Foods, say, and a Publix or Safeway or Jewel. The "organic" designation is another example of consumer goods with inflated prices marketed to the affluent woke. The message seems to be, "If you can't afford [insert high-priced product here], tough shit. You like Wonder Bread and Miracle Whip and muscle cars anyway, you knuckle-walking losers."
Possibly it was current before. I noticed it finally with "60 Minutes". Their premise was to tell news as a story. If an interview conflicted with the storyline, out with or attack that interview. Does anyone expect me remember Alar? I've not watched it for years, but I understand that it is still making money.
“The average man is destitute of independence of opinion. He is not interested in contriving an opinion of his own, by study and reflection, but is only anxious to find out what his neighbor’s opinion is and slavishly adopt it”--Mark Twain
It's scary to think about what we accept as the agreed upon history of the world. I'm at the "question everything" stage and I realize I should've started a long time ago. It's a young person's endeavor, for sure. Thank you for all of your references and links. It helps a lot.
Orwell was a great writer, no doubt about it. Read his telling of going to a British public school as the token poor student. (Public school in Britain was opposite what it sounds like; it’s where rich people sent their kids in preparation for going to Eton and the like.)
Chris Hedges had that same experience in the USA, rubbing shoulders with Rockefellers as the scholarship student. He got in trouble for his effective activism.
they are getting it right as far their sponsors are concerned. But Orwell is arguing here that the lying by the Fascist news men achieved a new low, more outrageous and shameless in '39 than before. I think whatever unvarnished unbiased truth there has been its due entirely to the intelligence and quality of the guy reporting.
Was it a specific event around that time (like 9/11) that made you start questioning news coverage? For me it was around the 2008 financial crisis, when I also stumbled upon an awesome media watchdog called FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting). That really opened my eyes to the fact that we must question ALL mainstream media.
I gotta go back to nam, unfortunately. And from what I've learned from others that served in Korea, it was the same fucking thing. Russia got nothing onus when it comes to a lying press.
The US has no memory of history. When we slaughter, maim and displace peoples, we quickly move on. Other nations don't. And our State Media is a major part of that. Joseph Goebbels would be proud.
And if you ask how many 100s of thousands of Laotians and Cambodians died during the Vietnam War, people look at you blankly. Most don't know why we have Hmong communities in Minnesota and Vietnamese communities in Louisiana; everything is independent, disconnected from our actions in the collective American mind. Most don't know about the "domino almost falling" in Indonesia, and our support (typical) for dictator Suharto and his genocides, notably East Timor. As Yemen shows it never ends.
When I point out that Afghanistan was a secular Muslim country when JFK visited, on the cusp of the Soviet bloc, but with women holding decent jobs, going to University, and even wearing Western (Soviet) dress, people act as if the Taliban and terrorism has always been a part of the country. Osama bin Laden was Our Hero when he was brought in to fight the Russians on behalf of his CIA handlers, with Saudi money and Pakistani support. It is comical/ tragic when our politicians claim they were in Afghanistan to help women/ girls; we destroyed those women's lives and society INTENTIONALLY and put them under a rigid, ultraconservative theocracy.
We must question all media not just all main stream media. What good is it to question MSM only to become completely, uncritically accepting of an alternate source.
Absolutely. I consider there to be 3 main categories of media: mainstream (aka legacy, corporate-owned), alternative (mainly funded by think tanks, foundations, NGOs), and independent (funded solely by individual members/subscribers). So, the first 2 are obviously funded by institutions with a goal of shaping/manufacturing a specific narrative that benefits them, rather than the public. By contrast, I have found truly independent journalists/outlets (i.e. not beholden to any special interests, funders, powers) to be the most trustworthy, as their main mission is to tell not only the rest/other side of the story the mainstream intentionally omits, but also the contradictory (i.e. correct/actual) version of events. One need only witness the way they're attacked, dismissed and censored by the Establishment to know they're reporting the truth.
I still think you need to consult all three types of sources. Consult, not necessarily accept. If you know the corporation or NGO behind the source you can judge accordingly. But I don’t think using only independent sources is the way to go. Just on substack there are people with opinions all over the spectrum. A person can go with Matt Taibbi or Michael Moore or Dan Pfeiffer. There is a real danger that people will pick their independent media source based on what they want to hear. How does that lead to learning the truth?
Yes, that and their coverage on the transgender and other woke issues has been extremely disappointing, so I don't follow their coverage of those topics (which appear to be from newer writers). But I do still think they're on the "right side of history" wrt foreign policy, on which their veteran writers still report.
That's awesome it started so early for you. I also read 1984 in high school (junior year, 1986), and while I found it very interesting, I was still too young to fully appreciate its cautionary message. I doubt many of today's high schools are churning out critical thinkers with a healthy dose of skepticism wrt media and government propaganda, sadly.
Big fan here, so take this in the spirit. I'm in the ad business and I see the video as a great potential "stand alone" YouTube commercial to sell the public on the whole idea of disinformation using Hamilton 68 on MSNBC as a way in. The problem is the video as produced is singing to the choir. To be effective it NEEDS a short introduction explaining what Hamilton 68 is (was) and why it matters. Now, unless you're a Racket insider like me, you'd have no idea what the point of the exercise is. I think you guys are understandably a little too close to the material. Either keep the video as is as a funny joke to insiders, or make the story clear up front with a :30 "explainer" so it can have an impact on someone who is open to the message but is short on background. Respectfully and thankfully...
I agree... and add the Nunes memo. Folks might miss the fact that media is mildly (?) implying that an elected Congressperson is an ally of Russia, or whatever those accusations were.
Thank you Orfalea, This is a stellar example of useless, lazy, and completely unreliable reporting by stupid journalists. Did anybody do any checking into Hamilton 68? No. They just said “Oh, cool. This makes my job easy. I can simply report what Hamilton 68 says.
actually the journalists are the opposite of lazy incompetent & unreliable. they are energized, driven & know they are lying for power & prestige within their social circle. They are evil, not incompetent.
Sue: as a journalism graduate, I concur with your description of today’s “journalists.” Lazy, incompetent and dishonest. They are willing purveyors of disinformation and outright lies. Anything to advance the progressive agenda they slavishly advocate.
Do you ever wonder what these cretins think is going tohsppentothemif they win their desire for communism? Do they think they are going to all have a lofty perch to gaze down upon us unwashed masses? They seem to be trying to force us to war. Do they understand how badly that will go for them? I don't think they do.
What I noticed was how nearly every commercial emphasized how important being together was....even while they were keeping us apart. The subtle messaging was "do what we say and you can be together again!"
There is a profile for those who are still masked, but it can not be stated without incurring wrath. Can't say what is not permitted without going down an endless rabbit hole.
I still wear a mask when I have symptoms even if I test negative for covid. I just think it is good manners not to inflict my cold symptoms on other people.
It’s a double edged sword... if your immune system is never challenged then it ceases to be on alert. It’s why this fad of having hand sanitizer within arms’ reach at all times, hanging off kids book bags, etc ever present to dispense a squirt is counter productive imo. I grew up in Europe and vividly remember cleaning the dirt out of my finger nails with my teeth. Somewhere in between is the right balance. Again, in my opinion.
I read something by a New York City au pair. She said the rich kids who grew up in germ free apartments all had allergies. The immune system finds something to fight.
Polio, appendicitis, tonsillitis, stomach ulcers have all been attributed to the better hygiene industrialized nations now have. You have to wonder about the increased autoimmune diseases. Most Covid deaths were not directly due to the virus, but rather an over-arching immune response (why glucocorticoids were the most effective single treatment).
(I attribute autism to plasticizers, but pure speculation at the moment. But when a disease suddenly becomes prominent, you have to look for what has changed.)
These Matt Orfalea videos are so effective for exposing the relentless nature of today's media driven propaganda campaigns. This information control, censorship industrial complex however, is completely abusive, utterly corrupt and relentlessly gas-lighting the American people. How can we stand for it? It is literally destroying the country.
Why couldn’t Trump sue MSNBC and other outlets about the Steele Dossier and other Russia linked items, ala dominion with fox? What killed fox was the discovery that turned up the internal thoughts. What would discovery of MSNBC folk turn up? I feel judge on fox suit lowered the standard to hold a news agency accountable. Would enjoy Matt analyzing this, or talking to a lawyer who can break down how the MSM can be held accountable legally for all their hoaxes.
I wondered the same thing. Surely outlets like CNN, MSNBC, all the broadcast networks, PBS... hell, ALL the mainstream/legacy outlets have MUCH more going on behind-the-scenes with as many false/fraudulent stories as they put out on the Iraq war, Afghanistan, Russiagate, covid, Ukraine, etc.
“The average man is destitute of independence of opinion. He is not interested in contriving an opinion of his own, by study and reflection, but is only anxious to find out what his neighbor’s opinion is and slavishly adopt it”--Mark Twain
Hate to say it Matt, but much beyond those of us here, nobody cares. It's just easier to not care, and we live in a world of easy. Most people won't even care when it's their turn for the gulag. They won't even notice as long as there's reliable wi-fi.
I see it in a few of my college friends and some family members. They’re not even big lefties, just lifelong Dems.
Two dynamics:
1) standard joes who bought in and promulgated all this to their own friends and family for years don’t want to admit they were taken in wholesale by lies, and/or
2) same people will dismiss/discount/cynically view all of this as - wait for it - more Russian “disinformation” (*Of course* Taibbi and those other “so-called journalists” would promote this! They’re all working for Elon! And he’s *probably* working for the Russians!”)
When desirable lies (that support my worldview) are fungible as social currency, the hand that offers actual truth gets batted away.
Not saying don’t keep up the incredibly important work here - it’s worth all the sweat - just saying this is what it’s facing, even outside the beltway.
Correcting constant repetition of lies (propaganda) requires constant repetition of truth. And about three years of it.
From Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard commencement address:
“The press, too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word “press” to include all the media.) But what use does it make of it?
Here again, the overriding concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no true moral responsibility for distortion or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist or a newspaper have to the readership or to history? If they have misled public opinion by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, even if they have contributed to mistakes on a state level, do we know of any case of open regret voiced by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No; this would damage sales. A nation may be the worse for such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. It is most likely that he will start writing the exact opposite to his previous statements with renewed aplomb.
Because instant and credible information is required, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors, and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be refuted; they settle into the readers’ memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, and are then left hanging? The press can act the role of public opinion or miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters pertaining to the nation’s defense publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion into the privacy of well-known people according to the slogan “Everyone is entitled to know everything.” (But this is a false slogan of a false era; far greater in value is the forfeited right of people not to know, not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life has no need for this excessive and burdening flow of information.)
Hastiness and superficiality—these are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century and more than anywhere else this is manifested in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press; it is contrary to its nature. The press merely picks out sensational formulas.
Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, exceeding that of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Yet one would like to ask: According to what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the Communist East, a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has voted Western journalists into their positions of power, for how long a time, and with what prerogatives?
There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the totalitarian East with its rigorously unified press: One discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole (the spirit of the time), generally accepted patterns of judgment, and maybe common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Unrestrained freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership, because newspapers mostly transmit in a forceful and emphatic way those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and that general trend.”
I've said this in the comments of YouTube, but I'll say it here - the way this video is edited is not going to change any one's mind.
If the goal is to preach to the choir and feel morally superior while alienating everyone who doesn't already agree, it succeeds.
If the goal is to correct errors and fight government disinformation, it utterly fails. The MSNBC stan will see the complete lack of respect here and turn it off.
I'd prefer you changed people's minds. But I would never show this video to someone in order to change their mind.
I imagine many ppl who bought into this stuff when it was aired have selectively forgotten just how ridiculous it got. Such a person will indeed prolly feel off-put when they see this, as would anyone reminded of past foolishness. But they’ll prolly keep it in mind the next time, so they aren’t made to look a fool again.
Ie the goal here is less to change minds - plenty of content elsewhere on the site for that - than to get ppl to use theirs.
And putting aside rhetoric the video is an artistic masterpiece which has its own merit.
And this edit, like all of Matt's edits, appears to be more concerned with dunking on people rather than changing their minds.
Can you imagine someone who has been swallowing MSNBC's BS for the last decade watching this and thinking, "Oh my god, I really have been taken for a ride!"
Or do you think they'll watch twenty seconds of it, turn it off, and complain about the BernieBros being obnoxious?
I mean, I AGREE with it, and I think it's smug and infuriating. So what's the point? Other than some smug self-congratulation and a rousing circle-jerk?
Yes, sheer repetition works. It’s called the illusory truth effect. Although I was aware of it as a rhetorical technique, I didn’t know it had a name until Caitlin Johnstone brought it to my attention. It’s a glitch in our brain wiring plus our social nature that, like a mortar and pestle, our mental response can be ground into dust with this crudest method, so that, after hearing something a certain number of times, one either comes to believe it is true, or one becomes aware that it is socially acceptable to believe it is true and unacceptable to believe it is not true (or even to suspect that it might not be true), or both, whereupon the fear of being effectively stoned by the believers is often sufficient to quiet any residual skepticism, if it has not already been completely squashed.
The antidote to this magic trick is knowledge of its existence and that it is being constantly deployed - that and intellectual courage, which no would-be democratic person can afford not to have.
At some point, one has to conclude that the MSM is intentionally and consciously being dishonest.
I had an Orwellian experience with the NYT just a few days ago. They carried a story almost entirely relying on a Ukranian official who said that Russia had been lying fir years about Ukranian military units shelling civilians. Now I don’t know the truth about the specific village they were talking about in the currrent conflict, but I linked to a Human Rights Watch report and in a second comment to an Amnesty International report from 2014-2015 where they specifically said that both sides, including the Ukranian military, were shelling civilians.
My note was very polite. They didn’t print it. I sent it again with two links instead of just the HRW link. They didn’t print it. I sent another link merely telling people they could find these reports. They didn’t print it.
They did print people who explicitly took a pro Russian side, which I don’t do, but they did not print a piece like mine with links that explicitly disproved their article. They posted other comments during the hours I kept submitting mine.
This is memory hole stuff. We aren’t supposed to know that both sides committed atrocities back in 2014-2015. And most of the other commenters were completely ignorant of this. I have little sympathy for them— they could look things up. But the NYT didn’t want them to suspect anything.
I used to post on a political section of a physics web site. They had a rule that all political statements had to cite sources. In reality you could say anything that was a repetition of whatever was on television. If your info contradicted that then it didn't matter how good your sources were.
I got banned. I suspect that having solid sources made me more of a threat. I realized later that most physicists are employed in weapons research.
Ukraine has been committing ongoing genocide by artillery in the Donbass since the coup as documented by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission, a remarkable admission by a group later discovered not only not to be a neutral observer but actively sharing eastern Ukrainian positions with the Nazis.
You are repeating Putin’s talking points. He has taken the bit of accurate information that there is a small group on neonazis in Ukraine (much like there are neoNazis in the U S) and used that to claim the whole effort of Ukraine to protect their country is driven by Nazis. Let’s not forget that Putin invaded Donbas
Shouldn't we also not forget the Soros backed Maidan revolution and the part the U.S. played in a blatant coup and unwarranted meddling in Ukraine and it's democratic elections? Let's not forget that Obama basically started this war and he's still pulling the strings, behind the scene.
What is it with you guys and Soros and you claim liberals have Trump Derangement Syndrome?
And Obama did not start this war. In 2014 Putin invaded Donbas and Crimea and Obama did exactly what people on this thread seem to want Biden to do: nothing, just let Putin have his way,
Maybe you should look into Soros and his Open Society Foundation. As well as the CIA-backed National Endowment for Democracy. They go hand in hand. And look up the many color revolutions they've pulled off, worldwide....yellow, rose, green, orange, but don't quote me. Look 'em up yourself and don't settle for ignorance. See, where we have information backing our claims, you have nothing but TDS. But take heart, there is a cure.
Rout out your cunt, you CIA shitstain.
you really think that's a cogent response, Sevender? It makes you sound like a psychotic.
I agree with your concern with suppression of viewpoints. However, consider how many French civilians died from allied shelling during WWII. Sadly, it is the reality of large scale warfare. My understanding is that it isn't a war crime unless it is unnecessary or disproportionate to a legitimate military objective.
What the human rights groups said is that both sides were guilty of indiscriminate fire into civilian areas.
I tend to think war and war crimes go together and to paraphrase Chomsky ( yeah, he isn’t perfect), there are always lawyers present to argue that whatever our side does is just, etc…. I just want honest reporting about the fact that both sides shell cities. It probably is normal in war. But it is reported as a terrible war crime when one side does it and denied or excused when the other side does it.
One would think that supposedly educated people could see this, but what Orwell wrote in “Notes on Nationalism” seems like a timeless truth. People have an amazing ability to avoid knowing about the atrocities committed by the side they support.
I agree completely. Probably a quibble. I also agree completely with Sherman, who wrote "war is hell." War is entirely an atrocity. Sadly it is in some circumstances a necessary one. Sherman's leadership helped end slavery. Ukraine's war helps to deter Russia's program to reassert a Soviet style control over the components of the former USSR and, potentially, Eastern Europe.
For context, let’s remember that in 2014 Putin invaded Dombass and Crimea. There may well have been shelling of civilians by both sides but Russia was invading and Ukraine was defending
More than 2/3 of Crimeans are ethnic Russians, and have been for decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Crimea
Jack F. Matlock, former US Ambassador to Russia, (1987-1991): https://jackmatlock.com/2022/11/there-must-be-a-negotiated-settlement-with-russia/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_F._Matlock_Jr.
https://usrussiaaccord.org/acura-viewpoint-jack-f-matlock-jr-todays-crisis-over-ukraine/
For context you are a paid troll and a serial liar. The NATO analyst for Ukraine openly acknowledges Russia did not invade the Donbass in 2014. Canada has a new program perfect for people like you.
If anybody tried to be honest, they would be shown the door and we all know it.
Marr: “How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that journalists are..”
Chomsky: “I’m not saying your self censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”
http://scratchindog.blogspot.com/2015/07/transcript-of-interview-between-noam.html
Chomsky... idk... talk about a guy who lost any remaining creditibility by going all in for the vaxx apartheid. Sam Harris + senescence=Chomsky
Nowhere did I say that I endorse everything Chomsky ever said or wrote. Hell, I have quoted Goering for truth (in particular on getting the populace behind a war), and I am as far as one can get from a national socialist.
The German MIC which eventually put Hitler in power, many of whom later wanted him arrested or killed (but could never pull the trigger, and many of these plotters were executed later) talked about replacing him with Goering (who was open to peace).
War Presidents always go insane (must be a requirement to wield that Power). It's not limited to Germans.
I never said you endorsed him either! I didn't mention you in my response, just Chomsky. I feel you. Chomsky is interesting to quote because he has forever nominally been anti-censorship and "manufactured consent."
Chomsky is a fraud.
mmm, no, not exactly, but I basically think Chomsky should've stuck to linguistics. He's too much of a statist to have any coherency in his political writings. I can't take his politics seriously given he's gone from denouncing"manufactured consent" to being one of the manufacturers.
Chomsky is great. He's wrong on 9/11 and he's wrong on the vax, probably other things too.
Nobody's perfect.
OK so Noam Chomsky drank some of the omnipresent Kool aid, he's paid his dues. Now Harris and DeGrass and other "intellectuals", that's another matter.
Fake intellectuals.
It's how the consent is manufactured - anyone who disagrees doesn't get promoted. The ones who tell the bosses what they want to hear has a bright future.
We saw that yesterday- Tucker Carlson (though they did get Don Lemon right).
Don Lemon is out because he put himself above his masters.
Tucker is out because he put America ahead of them.
That's a beautiful thought. And very true. Thank you.
The difference being that Carlson represents an existential threat to the Uniparty and the Elites behind all this bullshit. Lemon is a punchline at best. An inconsequential blip whose absence no one will notice.
Carlson did a rant against Pharma and their government advertised, taxpayer funded, vaccine experiment. Go against Pharma and that'll get a guy removed real quick. They are nasty buggers.
Exceedingly vengeful
Happened just yesterday at Fox
I think it's more accurate to say that their salaries depend on them not understanding what they are doing, and so they don't.
It's not much different then how I manage to type away on my Mac, which was built by slaves, and the profits of which are pumped into lobbyists to prevent positive social change.
You think?
Without a doubt! Everybody seems to dance around the obvious - there is a boatload of money to be made misleading the public with sensationalism. Fox News has been doing it for decades! I wonder how much money MSNBC made spewing all that crap in Matt Orfalea's vid? So, how do you get people to stop tuning in? It only makes sense that as long as MSNBC and others can profit from their current game plan, they will continue to play that way.
How do you get people to stop tuning in?
Everyone but people with terminal TDS, loyal DP followers, and leftists has abandoned the MSM (anyone else getting sick of acronyms?). I think they've gone all in as propagandists for the regime in order to maintain enough viewers to remain on air, on top of the fact that there's a pipeline from the Ivies to major media outlets and they all share the same lack of ethics and intelligence.
You're hitting on a point I've been curious about for awhile. What if corporations can make huge money just off of the list of people you named, for instance? The bigger picture is, what if companies can get rich producing products that only "niche types" will consume, or those with substantial resources can afford? What if say, GM's cheapest car cost $80k? That would preclude an entire segment of Americans from owning a new car. Get my drift?
Yes--the affluent are led down the garden path because all consumer goods are marketed as "environmentally friendly" and therefore more expensive, out of the reach of the working class who are left to scab together beaters like the Cubans do, only to get busted for emissions violations.
I think we see this with groceries--I'd like to compare the prices of Whole Foods, say, and a Publix or Safeway or Jewel. The "organic" designation is another example of consumer goods with inflated prices marketed to the affluent woke. The message seems to be, "If you can't afford [insert high-priced product here], tough shit. You like Wonder Bread and Miracle Whip and muscle cars anyway, you knuckle-walking losers."
Possibly it was current before. I noticed it finally with "60 Minutes". Their premise was to tell news as a story. If an interview conflicted with the storyline, out with or attack that interview. Does anyone expect me remember Alar? I've not watched it for years, but I understand that it is still making money.
Correct, because if it’s not dishonesty then they are all stupid A/F.
Operation Mockingbird is alive and well.
"one has to conclude that the MSM is intentionally and consciously being dishonest"
Or lazy and stupid. Likely all three.
ya think?
Why are there so many who don't?
“The average man is destitute of independence of opinion. He is not interested in contriving an opinion of his own, by study and reflection, but is only anxious to find out what his neighbor’s opinion is and slavishly adopt it”--Mark Twain
Are there only a few narratives allowed to circulate, that you are only allowed to pick from? Who's informing me of the world I know nothing about?
"Are there only a few narratives allowed to circulate, that you are only allowed to pick from?"
How about one narrative? Promulgate it or else. That seems to be the plan. Disagreement is allowed only on social issues, where hostility is fostered.
"Who's informing me of the world I know nothing about?"
Uh...Matt Taibbi?
He's certainly doing his part, but it's a big world out there.
It's scary to think about what we accept as the agreed upon history of the world. I'm at the "question everything" stage and I realize I should've started a long time ago. It's a young person's endeavor, for sure. Thank you for all of your references and links. It helps a lot.
Ya think?
“At some point”……that conclusion was reached years ago to anyone paying attention.
Every utterance regarding Ukraine has been a lie from the legacy press. Not one bit of truth to be had.
“ Wag The Dog”.
Yes, homage to Catalonia, a lesser known but critically important Orwell text.
I love the play on words between "retailing" and "re-telling"
Orwell was a great writer, no doubt about it. Read his telling of going to a British public school as the token poor student. (Public school in Britain was opposite what it sounds like; it’s where rich people sent their kids in preparation for going to Eton and the like.)
Chris Hedges had that same experience in the USA, rubbing shoulders with Rockefellers as the scholarship student. He got in trouble for his effective activism.
Reminds me of Michael Corleone's interpretation of the stability of the Cuban government in front of Hyman Roth...
they are getting it right as far their sponsors are concerned. But Orwell is arguing here that the lying by the Fascist news men achieved a new low, more outrageous and shameless in '39 than before. I think whatever unvarnished unbiased truth there has been its due entirely to the intelligence and quality of the guy reporting.
Yes. It has been going on forever. They just took off the masks after Trump because to them, he justifies any action no matter how authoritarian.
Was it a specific event around that time (like 9/11) that made you start questioning news coverage? For me it was around the 2008 financial crisis, when I also stumbled upon an awesome media watchdog called FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting). That really opened my eyes to the fact that we must question ALL mainstream media.
I gotta go back to nam, unfortunately. And from what I've learned from others that served in Korea, it was the same fucking thing. Russia got nothing onus when it comes to a lying press.
The US has no memory of history. When we slaughter, maim and displace peoples, we quickly move on. Other nations don't. And our State Media is a major part of that. Joseph Goebbels would be proud.
And if you ask how many 100s of thousands of Laotians and Cambodians died during the Vietnam War, people look at you blankly. Most don't know why we have Hmong communities in Minnesota and Vietnamese communities in Louisiana; everything is independent, disconnected from our actions in the collective American mind. Most don't know about the "domino almost falling" in Indonesia, and our support (typical) for dictator Suharto and his genocides, notably East Timor. As Yemen shows it never ends.
When I point out that Afghanistan was a secular Muslim country when JFK visited, on the cusp of the Soviet bloc, but with women holding decent jobs, going to University, and even wearing Western (Soviet) dress, people act as if the Taliban and terrorism has always been a part of the country. Osama bin Laden was Our Hero when he was brought in to fight the Russians on behalf of his CIA handlers, with Saudi money and Pakistani support. It is comical/ tragic when our politicians claim they were in Afghanistan to help women/ girls; we destroyed those women's lives and society INTENTIONALLY and put them under a rigid, ultraconservative theocracy.
Wonder what we will do to Ukraine? And Taiwan?
We must question all media not just all main stream media. What good is it to question MSM only to become completely, uncritically accepting of an alternate source.
Absolutely. I consider there to be 3 main categories of media: mainstream (aka legacy, corporate-owned), alternative (mainly funded by think tanks, foundations, NGOs), and independent (funded solely by individual members/subscribers). So, the first 2 are obviously funded by institutions with a goal of shaping/manufacturing a specific narrative that benefits them, rather than the public. By contrast, I have found truly independent journalists/outlets (i.e. not beholden to any special interests, funders, powers) to be the most trustworthy, as their main mission is to tell not only the rest/other side of the story the mainstream intentionally omits, but also the contradictory (i.e. correct/actual) version of events. One need only witness the way they're attacked, dismissed and censored by the Establishment to know they're reporting the truth.
I still think you need to consult all three types of sources. Consult, not necessarily accept. If you know the corporation or NGO behind the source you can judge accordingly. But I don’t think using only independent sources is the way to go. Just on substack there are people with opinions all over the spectrum. A person can go with Matt Taibbi or Michael Moore or Dan Pfeiffer. There is a real danger that people will pick their independent media source based on what they want to hear. How does that lead to learning the truth?
Agreed. But FAIR has been co-opted by Blue Anon. They were and still are on board with the Covid scam.
Yes, that and their coverage on the transgender and other woke issues has been extremely disappointing, so I don't follow their coverage of those topics (which appear to be from newer writers). But I do still think they're on the "right side of history" wrt foreign policy, on which their veteran writers still report.
Thanks for the detailed response. Glad to know another FAIR supporter!
Ah yes, Gareth Porter. Big fan.
“One puff, and you’re hooked.”
That's awesome it started so early for you. I also read 1984 in high school (junior year, 1986), and while I found it very interesting, I was still too young to fully appreciate its cautionary message. I doubt many of today's high schools are churning out critical thinkers with a healthy dose of skepticism wrt media and government propaganda, sadly.
They have to spend too much time preparing the kids for standardized tests
That's a rhetorical question, right?
Money
So depressing because she isn’t dumb. I suspect she doesn’t want to alienate her friends.
I don't always agree with you guys, but what you're doing is incredibly important--keep up the great work.
Awesome work, Matt Orfalea. Now can you please do their COVID lies? Or would that require too many decades to compile?
I would love to see that, too. But yes, that would be more of a documentary-length video.
Big fan here, so take this in the spirit. I'm in the ad business and I see the video as a great potential "stand alone" YouTube commercial to sell the public on the whole idea of disinformation using Hamilton 68 on MSNBC as a way in. The problem is the video as produced is singing to the choir. To be effective it NEEDS a short introduction explaining what Hamilton 68 is (was) and why it matters. Now, unless you're a Racket insider like me, you'd have no idea what the point of the exercise is. I think you guys are understandably a little too close to the material. Either keep the video as is as a funny joke to insiders, or make the story clear up front with a :30 "explainer" so it can have an impact on someone who is open to the message but is short on background. Respectfully and thankfully...
I agree... and add the Nunes memo. Folks might miss the fact that media is mildly (?) implying that an elected Congressperson is an ally of Russia, or whatever those accusations were.
100% agreement from the same perspective.
Totally agree. Sent this to a few people and had to explain hamilton68 first.
Probably be banned on U -Tube, I suspect.
Thank you Orfalea, This is a stellar example of useless, lazy, and completely unreliable reporting by stupid journalists. Did anybody do any checking into Hamilton 68? No. They just said “Oh, cool. This makes my job easy. I can simply report what Hamilton 68 says.
actually the journalists are the opposite of lazy incompetent & unreliable. they are energized, driven & know they are lying for power & prestige within their social circle. They are evil, not incompetent.
Sad to say, you might be right.
Sue: as a journalism graduate, I concur with your description of today’s “journalists.” Lazy, incompetent and dishonest. They are willing purveyors of disinformation and outright lies. Anything to advance the progressive agenda they slavishly advocate.
Do you ever wonder what these cretins think is going tohsppentothemif they win their desire for communism? Do they think they are going to all have a lofty perch to gaze down upon us unwashed masses? They seem to be trying to force us to war. Do they understand how badly that will go for them? I don't think they do.
No, neither did the SRs and Mensheviks in Russia, and, later, the old Bolsheviks themselves. Nothing new here.
Well there is one difference. We can shoot back, effectively.
I guess I am. I build them. I guess that makes me a nut.
Even the scripted network shows got in on the covid mania! The 2020 era of network television will not age well.
I loved the TV commercials for Eharmony where the couple on a date are masked.....
That's hilarious!
What I noticed was how nearly every commercial emphasized how important being together was....even while they were keeping us apart. The subtle messaging was "do what we say and you can be together again!"
“ but only if you get vaccinated so you can survive the long winter of death and doom” or whatever that bullshit was.
There is a profile for those who are still masked, but it can not be stated without incurring wrath. Can't say what is not permitted without going down an endless rabbit hole.
I still wear a mask when I have symptoms even if I test negative for covid. I just think it is good manners not to inflict my cold symptoms on other people.
It’s a double edged sword... if your immune system is never challenged then it ceases to be on alert. It’s why this fad of having hand sanitizer within arms’ reach at all times, hanging off kids book bags, etc ever present to dispense a squirt is counter productive imo. I grew up in Europe and vividly remember cleaning the dirt out of my finger nails with my teeth. Somewhere in between is the right balance. Again, in my opinion.
I read something by a New York City au pair. She said the rich kids who grew up in germ free apartments all had allergies. The immune system finds something to fight.
Polio, appendicitis, tonsillitis, stomach ulcers have all been attributed to the better hygiene industrialized nations now have. You have to wonder about the increased autoimmune diseases. Most Covid deaths were not directly due to the virus, but rather an over-arching immune response (why glucocorticoids were the most effective single treatment).
(I attribute autism to plasticizers, but pure speculation at the moment. But when a disease suddenly becomes prominent, you have to look for what has changed.)
Yes, show everyone how much better than us you are, and how you are afraid to breath the same air as us normies.
“Like” for anyone who references Waltzing Matilda.
3 pieces of content from Matt today. Tell me you are pissed off, without telling me you are pissed off.....
just getting his work out before the 6am raid & charges of violating the espionage act for reporting reality.
God help us!
These Matt Orfalea videos are so effective for exposing the relentless nature of today's media driven propaganda campaigns. This information control, censorship industrial complex however, is completely abusive, utterly corrupt and relentlessly gas-lighting the American people. How can we stand for it? It is literally destroying the country.
Maybe it's time to tip them over. Physically. Take them apart piece by piece.
Why couldn’t Trump sue MSNBC and other outlets about the Steele Dossier and other Russia linked items, ala dominion with fox? What killed fox was the discovery that turned up the internal thoughts. What would discovery of MSNBC folk turn up? I feel judge on fox suit lowered the standard to hold a news agency accountable. Would enjoy Matt analyzing this, or talking to a lawyer who can break down how the MSM can be held accountable legally for all their hoaxes.
Yes, I think discovery on some of this might be interesting.. one way or another.
I wondered the same thing. Surely outlets like CNN, MSNBC, all the broadcast networks, PBS... hell, ALL the mainstream/legacy outlets have MUCH more going on behind-the-scenes with as many false/fraudulent stories as they put out on the Iraq war, Afghanistan, Russiagate, covid, Ukraine, etc.
He wouldn't be able to prove the malice part of defamation. /joke
“The average man is destitute of independence of opinion. He is not interested in contriving an opinion of his own, by study and reflection, but is only anxious to find out what his neighbor’s opinion is and slavishly adopt it”--Mark Twain
Hate to say it Matt, but much beyond those of us here, nobody cares. It's just easier to not care, and we live in a world of easy. Most people won't even care when it's their turn for the gulag. They won't even notice as long as there's reliable wi-fi.
I think it’s way beyond not caring.
I see it in a few of my college friends and some family members. They’re not even big lefties, just lifelong Dems.
Two dynamics:
1) standard joes who bought in and promulgated all this to their own friends and family for years don’t want to admit they were taken in wholesale by lies, and/or
2) same people will dismiss/discount/cynically view all of this as - wait for it - more Russian “disinformation” (*Of course* Taibbi and those other “so-called journalists” would promote this! They’re all working for Elon! And he’s *probably* working for the Russians!”)
When desirable lies (that support my worldview) are fungible as social currency, the hand that offers actual truth gets batted away.
Not saying don’t keep up the incredibly important work here - it’s worth all the sweat - just saying this is what it’s facing, even outside the beltway.
Correcting constant repetition of lies (propaganda) requires constant repetition of truth. And about three years of it.
From Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard commencement address:
“The press, too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word “press” to include all the media.) But what use does it make of it?
Here again, the overriding concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no true moral responsibility for distortion or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist or a newspaper have to the readership or to history? If they have misled public opinion by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, even if they have contributed to mistakes on a state level, do we know of any case of open regret voiced by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No; this would damage sales. A nation may be the worse for such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. It is most likely that he will start writing the exact opposite to his previous statements with renewed aplomb.
Because instant and credible information is required, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors, and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be refuted; they settle into the readers’ memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, and are then left hanging? The press can act the role of public opinion or miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters pertaining to the nation’s defense publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion into the privacy of well-known people according to the slogan “Everyone is entitled to know everything.” (But this is a false slogan of a false era; far greater in value is the forfeited right of people not to know, not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life has no need for this excessive and burdening flow of information.)
Hastiness and superficiality—these are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century and more than anywhere else this is manifested in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press; it is contrary to its nature. The press merely picks out sensational formulas.
Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, exceeding that of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Yet one would like to ask: According to what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the Communist East, a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has voted Western journalists into their positions of power, for how long a time, and with what prerogatives?
There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the totalitarian East with its rigorously unified press: One discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole (the spirit of the time), generally accepted patterns of judgment, and maybe common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Unrestrained freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership, because newspapers mostly transmit in a forceful and emphatic way those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and that general trend.”
I've said this in the comments of YouTube, but I'll say it here - the way this video is edited is not going to change any one's mind.
If the goal is to preach to the choir and feel morally superior while alienating everyone who doesn't already agree, it succeeds.
If the goal is to correct errors and fight government disinformation, it utterly fails. The MSNBC stan will see the complete lack of respect here and turn it off.
I'd prefer you changed people's minds. But I would never show this video to someone in order to change their mind.
It will be a classic.
The point is not to root out the entrenched, might as well try to talk sense to a full-on cult member, but to reach the undecided.
Indeed. And move the needle of the entrenched a bit to the other side.
I imagine many ppl who bought into this stuff when it was aired have selectively forgotten just how ridiculous it got. Such a person will indeed prolly feel off-put when they see this, as would anyone reminded of past foolishness. But they’ll prolly keep it in mind the next time, so they aren’t made to look a fool again.
Ie the goal here is less to change minds - plenty of content elsewhere on the site for that - than to get ppl to use theirs.
And putting aside rhetoric the video is an artistic masterpiece which has its own merit.
Really? I'm sure it makes you feel good about yourself, and I'm equally sure it will do nothing to effect positive change.
You are entirely correct. That other swine is swinish and dull.
Yes, you being a smug prick has definitely made me see your way of thinking.
9-0.
Glad my point wasn't lost on you.
The question is, "Do you want to change minds? Do you want to have an impact, or be irrelevant?"
I'd prefer to change people's minds.
It's comedic and isn't there always truth in comedy? You can't change people's minds overnight, but you can certainly get them to start thinking.
Not by insulting them.
And this edit, like all of Matt's edits, appears to be more concerned with dunking on people rather than changing their minds.
Can you imagine someone who has been swallowing MSNBC's BS for the last decade watching this and thinking, "Oh my god, I really have been taken for a ride!"
Or do you think they'll watch twenty seconds of it, turn it off, and complain about the BernieBros being obnoxious?
I mean, I AGREE with it, and I think it's smug and infuriating. So what's the point? Other than some smug self-congratulation and a rousing circle-jerk?
Yes, I can. I watched MSNBC a long time..until the 2016 election and then I stopped.
Name one time that has ever worked.
LOLZ.
Definitely on the right track.
Watching this video I start to understand why beheading is a source of justice in some cultures.
"Contrary to what we might imagine, conviction can be worn down by volume, like shingles cracking under years of weather."
This is such an awesome line and so very true.
Yes, sheer repetition works. It’s called the illusory truth effect. Although I was aware of it as a rhetorical technique, I didn’t know it had a name until Caitlin Johnstone brought it to my attention. It’s a glitch in our brain wiring plus our social nature that, like a mortar and pestle, our mental response can be ground into dust with this crudest method, so that, after hearing something a certain number of times, one either comes to believe it is true, or one becomes aware that it is socially acceptable to believe it is true and unacceptable to believe it is not true (or even to suspect that it might not be true), or both, whereupon the fear of being effectively stoned by the believers is often sufficient to quiet any residual skepticism, if it has not already been completely squashed.
The antidote to this magic trick is knowledge of its existence and that it is being constantly deployed - that and intellectual courage, which no would-be democratic person can afford not to have.
The intertwining of Joe McCarthy's words to MSNBC actors completing the sentences was brilliant!
You can see where they got their playbook.