UPDATE: Had to send out a new message, since the previous one contained an erroneous link and also left out the main event: old friend Glenn Greenwald is going to be joining me for the first hour. Should be a great discussion. Come by at 3:00 PM EST.
After running a pair of items this week on the same theme — an interview with Paul Thacker, the British Medical Journal author whose article was deemed true but “missing context” by Facebook, and Matt Orfalea’s mashup of the “lab leak” conspiracy theory madness from our recent past — I thought today might be a good day for a Callin discussion on the ongoing efforts at narrative-policing in the media sphere. This goes on as the White House and the Surgeon General have begun pressuring Spotify to “do more” about misinformation (they seldom name the actual misinformation), and the campaign to clamp down on alternative media in general has grown more intense. I know I’ve hit this theme before, but today I want to dig into some of the background leading up to this moment.
If you can make it, click here to join Glenn and me at 3:00 p.m.
Great discussion so far. Glenn is KILLING IT explaining how the social media companies are being controlled by the government, which is a violation of the First Amendment.
Joe Biden's Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, during an interview with MSNBC, suggested that censoring Joe Rogan would help curb the flow of misinformation surrounding covid. This is akin to the mob stopping by your Italian restaurant to admire the décor, then proclaiming it would be a shame if something happened to it.
When corporations take their direction from government, there’s a word for that. It’s fascism. Not fake “Oh no Trump is a dictator” fascism, but honest-to-goodness fascism that says if you don’t hand over a wad of cash, something just might happen to your lovely little restaurant.
Remember that over the past few years, Democrats have been threatening all sorts of actions against Facebook and other social media companies. Set against this backdrop, the threat is clear: You do what we want or we destroy you.
I used to admire GG, especially with respect to the Snowden revelations. When he started making regular appearances on Tucker Carlson's show, I recognized how they were using each other: Tucker loved the anti-Dem stuff coming from the Left (whatever that means), Glenn loving how his Twitter followers grew with each appearance (the feeder for his lucrative Substack). So interesting how Glenn (and Matt T) are careful not to speak ill of Tucker, despite many of his ludicrous positions. (If you see a child wearing a face mask, “Call the police immediately...contact child protective services.” Or his Jan 6 "documentary").
Thank you for being polite. Of course I disagree and I’m pointing to the narrow mindedness I’ve observed by GG and more recently (and to a lesser extent) by MattT. But has been a successful strategy in terms of appealing to a whole new audience.
I have never used that f-word with respect to Glenn or Matt. It's a bit more like "follow the money," but even that's too reductionist. Let's just say I think they've lost the plot.
I cancelled my sub to Glenn on the anniversary of his move to substack. He has found a niche in which his fame, adulation and significance grew by feeding well-spiced red meat to people who get a kick out of hating and feeling superior to Team Blue and PMC. It's a variation on Hate Inc. His business is schismogenic. His criticisms of Team Blue/PMC are valid. I just no longer want to spend my money and brain cycles on so much one-sided negativity on a political cleavage that I believe serves the status quo very well and is counter-productive to my aspirations. I still believe in the political power of a populist/reformist agenda based on solidarity against ruling elites and this demands solidarity across the obsolete L/R and D/R divide.
I think Glen goes where the worst action is, and right now the worst actors are on Team Dem/Team Blue or whatever one wishes to call them. It’s a big tent and no, not everyone in the tent is a bad actor. Of course not. But they’re broadly the side trafficking in deplatforming, censorship, curated narratives, outright lies, false witness and related depravities. Team Red, such as it is, is on its heels wondering what the hell is going on or just trying not to get called names.
Teams Blue and Red of course are generalizations of a far more complex reality where underlying power centers are far closer than are the superficial separating.differences, but they’re somewhat useful descriptors in this context,
This is not a cultural environment in which any progress can occur. The first need is to restore the right to civil debate on issues of national life without having one’s own life destroyed for saying something someone with power doesn’t like.
God bless Glen for taking that fight on. Whatever progressive vision one has — and there are very good ideas there that should be thoughtfully examined — it won’t be accomplished until that first fight is won.
See, from my perspective, you appear to take the idea that there is a meaningful political competition between our two parties as given. I believe that it's a sham. Putin-Nazis vs Covid-Nazis is convenient distraction from Washington's consensus on the big ticket items including capital accumulation by dispossession, empire, and climate destruction.
GG's critiques are valid and I believe they have value for some people. Just not for me right now.
I'm pleased because I'd been getting more impatient with Krystal & Saagar, for the same reason I got tired of GG and why I sometimes criticize MT in comments here. Krystal bought a whole load of patience with such a well written piece, as did MT recently with his excellent "Let’s Not Have a War", which explains how another primary narrative is a deliberately deceptive distraction.
O RLY? "I just no longer want to spend my money and brain cycles on so much one-sided negativity..."
Then stop voting for, and donating to, the people doing the horrible things which generate such a well-deserved negative reaction. I don't hear any cheerleading for the Republicans or the right from Glenn OR Matt, and to suggest otherwise makes you look like a Team Blue cultist.
Plenty of time to hate on the Republicans after the election, and they demonstrate how spineless and amoral and committed to the corrupt status quo they are.
Seems to me you just looking for someone advocating a "populist/reformist agenda" that goes easy on your team and you're not finding it here. That makes you...well, a mild euphemism would be disingenuous. Good luck finding "whataboutism" when one side is actively engaging the military and the intelligence agencies against American citizensm, and one side is not. Yet.
Goodbye. Matt's commentariat is improved, slightly, by your absence.
Matt Taibbi writes, "...the campaign to clamp down on alternative media...."
For all practical purposes, there is no alternative media. Unlike the Sixties (essentially mid-'60s through late '70s), what he is calling "alternative media" exists almost entirely online and thus dependent on the "goodwill" of mega-corporations. The minute so-called alternative media becomes a genuine threat to the profits and control of corporate America, it can be and will be closed off. The alternative press of fifty years ago did not depend on corporations, and though it had to fight Fed (and sometimes more local) efforts to intimidate printers, advertisers, and distributors, as well as the people who produced the papers, it nonetheless stuck to its guns (sometimes literally of necessity) and maintained a way to express, publicize, and organize a broad oppositional movement.
I'm going to have to disagree. Vastly more alternative information and perspectives are available now than 50 years ago. It's not a close call. Those old alternative rags were often fun and brave ventures, but they had tiny distribution and could never have the reach of the internet, even an internet now heavily policed by the big tech powers.
I could be proven wrong, but I don't think internet control will ever be that effective in countries like the US. If literally turn into China, then yeah. But there are many obstacles to that.
Skeptic, thanks for engaging. I wish you were right, but I think not. 500-channel TV was sold to us (and I do mean SOLD!) with the line that now there would be more access for and to different groups and views, that people would now be exposed to many more parts of our multi-cultural reality. The exact opposite occurred. Suddenly you could be entertained and have whatever you already believed reinforced 24/7. The internet is 500-channel TV on steroids and speed.
As to the ability of effective online opposition: superficially, yes, but fundamentally, no. Corporations are not about to enable the cutting of their own throats. And that does not even get into government actions or the greater risk from hackers and trolls, whether national, group, or individual trying to cause division and chaos.
Yes, the alternative press was largely local (with significant national and regional exceptions). However, those papers could not be stopped by corporate power, as they were produced with local resources. Even the Feds threatening advertisers, printers, and press people had very limited effect, because people were willing to walk the walk, not merely talk the talk, the reality of today's "opposition", an "opposition" largely limited to whining online, not willing to acknowledge there aint no free lunch, that to make actual change rather than just stake out a position, you have to be willing to get down and dirty, to take personal risks and personally sacrifice.
"Suddenly you could be entertained and have whatever you already believed reinforced 24/7." Not everyone uses the internet for this, I think I see the point here but it's way too reductive. For instance, I often wonder at how my dad was able to figure out how to diagnose and fix problems around the house 40 years ago while I can get my answers in minutes from free, detailed step-by-step with pics/video. The internet is nothing short of amazing.
Hierochloe, thatks for engaging substantively and with a personal anecdote. It's a refreshing change from the vast majority of ad hominem comments that sound like my 4th grade playground.
Two things I would suggest mulling over:
1/ If the electricity went off, your Dad could still fix things. Also, nobody could hack into his brain.
2/ Pre-internet, our nuclear command and control apparatus was not subject to hacking.
1) I can also still fix things using the same non-internet resources as my dad, but it's grossly less efficient than the internet (which is far more than simply a 500-channel theme-park for passive consumption while stuffing oneself with cheetos).
2) Hacking doesn't at all require the internet. The most efficient hacking done on the internet relies almost entirely on exploiting stupid people, and plenty of them were exploited (ie hacked) before the internet was born. Yes, to your point, the internet has made it easier to reach and exploit stupid people, but so did the printing press.
Oh, but it 100% WILL be that effective. Hell, they're already flexing against the most popular sources of "unapproved" thought, and what's more populist than the most popular voices?
Snap of a finger, and they're gone. The Internet used to be a wild place, arguably free, and now they've moved it into being a tool of authoritarian control. But hey! Better an oppressive oligarchy than "misinformation" amirite?
It's coming. Me, I'm hoping for a major Coronal Mass Ejection event that will take out the communications satellites.
Internet control will only be very effective with people who don't care, same as it is now. For people that care, I think dark web will just expand its user base and infrastructure.
Tikkun was a product of Lerner's touchy-feely approach to reality. More representative of effective politics were Jewish Currents, Chutzpah, and Shmate, among others. The current iteration of the Right learned from the effectiveness of the Sixties Left. The current iteration of the Left hasn't even learned why solidly Democratic West Virginia tirned into solidly Republican West Virginia in the the political blink of an eye. It is adept at little other than an inerrant ability at producing circular firing squads.
Generally speaking we use "ignorant" in two ways. One is a base insult, e.g. "You're ignorant!" The other is to be ignorant *of something*. Without some elaboration of my ignorance, and now brainlessness, I have to assume the former. So why dress it up as "I guess you've chosen the right course if your aspiration is ignorance." Is that a zinger? or a burn or something? a pithy putdown?
PRE-ignorance, it would seem. Where you work to ensure all data and arguments that enter your consciousness are consistent with some narrative. Thus, your appetite for a "proper" condemnation of the current state of affairs is not satisfied by Glenn and Matt torching the governmental and media actors moving to use the power of the state to censor the citizenry, if they do not also condemn Marjory Taylor-Greeene's newsletter and blog.
I've already stated in the comments here that GG is right to denounce pleas for more balance in his criticisms. That is indeed a dumb idea and not my problem with his work at all.
Otoh, I'm not sure I share all of your sentiments :) I don't think Trump is too crazy to be president, I think he's too lazy, selfish, and incompetent. And I agree with GG that denouncing him for not critiquing Rs more often is dumb since we have a glut of that already. My big problem with GG is: what he does supports the current political cleavage (the two party division), making it seem more real than it deserves. The status quo relies on keeping people divided against each-other to prevent them from uniting against their common evil overlords. Hence GG's work supports the status quo.
I've leveled the same critique against MT on occasion. On balance I think MT is still doing good work that I'm happy to support.
I forgot about your first paragraph in my comment a few minutes ago. Idk wtf is integral philosophy. Should I? Why? Who's Ken Wilbur? Sam Harris is an asshole and a bit of a joke. Peterson is a waste of time. Anyone in the business of youtubes talking for hours about how he's more clever than those guys is deeply suspicious right from the get go. (Besides I can't stomach this style of video presentation. How do they manage to come up with stuff even worse than TED Talks ffs?) If you have time to spare, check out my pod. The link is beside my name right there↖.
Thanks. Interesting stuff, and while I appreciate the references to stuff with which I had been mostly unfamiliar, I also appreciate the useful-to-remember casual aside:
see what asking a question in the comments can do? thanks for the answer. this is enough to assure me i don't need to spend my time on it. 'preciate it.
Harris is notorious for only engaging in debates he's going to win on his terms and cancelling publication if he's not satisfied with the outcome and, if all else fails, acting all hurt and mistreated.
They are pawns. Reserve your greatest ire for the kings and queens that direct them. Our political infrastructure has been corrupted so that it serves the interests of capital. Of course it has always been biased to serve the interests of the merchant elites but it has at times been adjusted to better serve the needs and aspirations of its constituents. Right now the imperial court seems vulnerable, running out of road on their project of capital accumulation by dispossession (e.g. for 15 years our so called free-market capitalism has been on artificial life support). We cannot expect better from politicians in this situation. We need a popular movement against the elite. "Popular" meaning unite across the old party divide on matters of common interest including personal, social, economic and environmental survival, coexistence, and dignity.
Hence my difficulty with GG. His business appears to be creation of more popular division.
Especially if, by 'the elite", we mean the Davos crew, which is pretty ill-defined, even compared to terms like "commie", "racist", or "American". I dunno what they should properly be called..."One Worlders"? "Bilderbergers"? "World Economic Forum"? "The Illuminati"? Who knows what they call themselves, and I doubt it's a very formal structure anyway.
But there IS a push, from HUGELY powerful actors, to cement into place a panopticon of perfect order, with them cemented permanently into place at the top. These are largely people who have been powerful, some for a very long time, and who have used capitalism as a tool to gather even greater wealth and power to themselves and now want to remove the freedom of individuals and the competitive aspects of capitalism from the system, now that it's served its purpose. It's easy to see how thinking around systems integration would be useful for them.
I just know that, whatever they're doing "Ah'm agin it.". And so's Glenn, and so's Matt. If you think unsubscribing from two of the most prominent and sane voices who are willing to speak against the powers that be actually HELPS anything...well, ref. e.pierce insults, redux.
You still sound like a butt-hurt lefty complaining about inadequate whataboutism, even though your later posts show you should be capable of more in-depth analysis than "Well, what about the stupid Republicans??"
Ironic that the originating comment ends w a basically a plea for civil discourse. I do believe TDS is a real thing. But to accuse you of it so blatantly is an obvious recipe for shutting down discourse.
Those were superb and refreshing insights, including professional jealousy and a measurable class element in the mainstream’s condescension and paranoia about Rogan. “Not our kind of people”.
There's a reason they refuse to identify any specific alleged misinformation. The want to chill all free speech. Everyone must second guess EVERYTHING they say because Biden and his henchmen may identify you as an enemy of the people.
Anyone taking the time to listen to John Campbell should also take the time to listen to his detractors' pieces that point out huge flaws in some of his work.
Isn't this interesting? Here are two journalists, who used to have some credibility as part of the democratic and progressive 'left" but now are lost in a morass of false equivalency and bogged down in blind spots.
Either one or both of them expressed today a feeling of being "more pessimistic" in the last 5 years. How about asking your readers and listeners the following question? Do you feel pessimistic or optimistic after seeing and participating in the huge mobilization of voters in 2020 of all colors, nationalities, and backgrounds who went to the polls in the middle of a pandemic to remove a racist and white supremacist president and his corrupt party from power? Maybe that wasn't too important to the two of you, but I am damn sure that it was important to those Black women in Georgia who turned out in massive numbers to elect their first African American senator, and to the Navajos and Utes in Arizona who turned the state blue. Now it is those same groups who are living in the extreme and present danger
of physical attacks and of having their voting rights diluted and limited by Republicons in order to gain control of Congress and the White House again.
We have a political system of lesser evils, and the very imperfect Democrats are obviously the lesser evil on a variety of issues: womens' rights, immigration reform, environmental protection, clean
energy, reforming the tax structure, union, and labor rights and I could go on and on....
The T-RUMP crime family got into power for many reasons, but one of them was that some Democratic and independent voters who should have known better bought the bogus line that there is no difference between the two parties. Because of this ignorance and naivete, we have a Supreme Court today which will deprive millions of women of a fundamental human right. The damage that was done in the last 4 years will be felt for generations. It could have been avoided. Thank you.
Vote Blue No Matter Who is not a viable strategy. In fact, it's leading ever worse outcomes. It's not an accident that Biden and the Dems have failed to do anything but enact a flawed infrastructure bill while solving none of the problems you cite. Like Obama, Biden is deporting more people than Trump. No move to end fracking, no minimum wage increase, no free college tuition, no reduction in student debt (even though Biden could do that without Congress), no voting rights reform, nothing to help unions, zero on drug prices, health care reform no longer even mentioned, even less on campaign finance reform, tax reform, income inequality. Meanwhile, lots of Covid and other censorship pressure, vaccination of kindergarten kids, lost jobs for the unvaccinated and ginned up (and dangerous) hysteria about Russia and Ukraine. Finally, no workable strategy to avoid losing the Congress in the Mid-terms except moving right to appease suburbanites and more "Blue No Matter Who" scare tactics. It's all a sad farce. You are betraying the people you say you want to protect. And all you can do is try to blame and shame those of us who aren't having it any more. Who realize Democratic Party as now constituted, funded and led will never make the needed changes and is in the process of allowing the Republicans to take on the undeserved role of "party of the working class" (And not just of the white working class, but more and more of the Black and Hispanic working class too.) Just stop. Go away. You've done enough damage.
he said that so people would vote for him, he didn't actually do anything towards that. the china tarriffs were ineffective and the only other thing he did was give money to rich people. None of it addressed the root cause of why the jobs are offshored in the first place. Ironically what would need to happen, policy that ensured jobs couldn't be offshored, would be labeled "communism" if it were done by anyone else.
I think it’s best to judge politicians by what the do rather than what they vaguely mention. Trump clearly cares only about himself and does not care one bit for the working class. Even his tax cuts missed the working class, he only gave them to their bosses
No, I, my wife, and everyone I talked to saw a cut, and this is a pretty wide range of incomes. So you're comfortable with parroting no-thought-involved DNC talking points that are demonstrably untrue?
"Mute Button", please, Substack.
(that said, Trump is a stand-up comic. Check his timing, his crowd-handling chops, he's a stand-up comic. HOWEVER. Is that not preferable to a devious manipulator doing the bidding of the elite tip of the 1%? Or whatever forces willingly abuse an old man in cognitive decline to advance their agenda, by giving him ice cream, and a puppy, oh, and the Presidency?)
If that's all you know about Don the CON'S racism and corruption, then you are part of the problem. T-RUMP is part of the oligarchy and anybody who believes that he's not is naïve and totally misinformed. BTW, the vast majority of people of color are wage earners and they DID NOT vote for the CON. Thank you.
You can disagree all you want, but the facts are the facts. He comes from a wealthy father who was a real estate magnate who subsidized him at every turn and rescued him from a number of failures, but couldn't rescue him from all his financial disasters. David Kay Johnson, Pulitzer prize winning journalist, has written extensively about Don the CON and research his 5 bankruptcy filings and all the suits against him and the millions of $$$ he has paid in fines. This is part of an extensive public record, so you can deny it all you want but that just shows your total lack of credibility. As for the tax cuts, the vast majority of money saved by taxpayers went to the upper 1% of income earners like T-RUMP, who was the only
President who refused to reveal his tax returns. Finally, I said that the vast majority of people of color are wage earners(very easy to verify) and they did not vote for the predator in chief. No experts or analysts dispute that. So, all in all, your silly and empty answer of "disagree" is just posturing by someone with no knowledge or expertise, just puffery. Go back to school !
The real sad farce here is that you are mostly wrong on the majority of your assertions, especially immigration and minimum wage, but there are some you are partially correct on, only because Biden is not a king and needs congressional approval for these and must deal with 2 intransigent Dems and the entire collection of GOP ideologues who are blocking any progress. Republicons the "party of the working class"? Ridiculous! More and more of the Black and Hispanic working class? Even more ridiculous!
1/ The entire business model of the internet is clickbait. It really is that simple.
2/ The Democrats have yet to figure out why solidly Democrat West Virginia became solidly Republican West Virginia in the political wink of an eye.
3/ Trump is more much more effect than cause, a salesman/entertainer who is an excellent fit for a society that values American Idol, The Apprentice, likes, recommends, clicks, influencers, etc. over substance.
In the summer of 2020 I started reading lots of local papers (online.) I had realized that the national press across the entire political spectrum all had a specific agenda designed to appeal to a very specific demographic. At the same time, local papers had to appeal to whomever was around in order to stay in business, an invariably more diverse group. I had six Montana papers I followed. (Fewer now.) While both before and after the election the national media was saturated with stories about every real or imagined Trump fart and every real or imagined reaction to the real or imagined fart, in Montana, in the heart of Trump country, there was rarely even a mention of Trump in the local papers.
Summing up: every bit of online media with a national focus absolutely adores Donald Trump. He is their meal ticket, a clickbaiter's wet dream.
500-channel TV was sold to us (and I do mean SOLD!) with the line that now there would be more access for and to different groups and views, that people would now be exposed to many more parts of our multi-cultural reality. The exact opposite occurred. Suddenly you could be entertained and have whatever you already believed reinforced 24/7. The internet is 500-channel TV on steroids and speed.
As to the ability of effective online opposition: superficially, yes, but fundamentally, no. Corporations are not about to enable the cutting of their own throats. And that does not even get into government actions or the greater risk from hackers and trolls, whether national, group, or individual trying to cause division and chaos.
Yes, the alternative press was largely local (with significant national and regional exceptions). However, those papers could not be stopped by corporate power, as they were produced with local resources. Even the Feds threatening advertisers, printers, and press people had very limited effect, because people were willing to walk the walk, not merely talk the talk, the reality of today's "opposition", an "opposition" largely limited to whining online, not willing to acknowledge there aint no free lunch, that to make actual change rather than just stake out a position, you have to be willing to get down and dirty, to take personal risks and personally sacrifice.
God what a tedious bunch of twits the media-tech-industrial complex has become. Fabricating monsters and demons out of almost nothing, then cowering in fear or attacking with a murderous and guiltless impunity. The great angels of God laying waste to the enemies of all that’s true, just and right. That’s the mind image. The reality is worse than the ugliest stereotypes of totalitarian thought regimes. Not the reality of those regimes, but the cartoons awash with darkly cynical humor and presumed superiority drawn back when the USA was the USA and largely believed in its own sacred principles.
The “complex” is a cynical joke, devouring the nation, and run by children who never grew up. Everything is dangerous, everything is a threat, everything is a risk of “harm.” Even God is dead. And in the place of God is “narrative”. You pray to the narrative and the narrative brings life — a life of cowering, financial grift, narcissistic preening, virtue signaling and cashing in. If you sin against the narrative you are deplatformed, denigrated, denounced and hopefully, in the minds of the narrative’s self-appointed saints, destroyed.
Narratives are words and the word is God, the Bible says. But “the narrative” is not the Logos of John of Patmos, the great Greek luminescent knowing that comes from individuation and awareness, it’s a pose, a stance toward reality that frames so narrowly, so self-servingly that it’s almost a lie but without the conscious fabulation of a lie. It’s a myth, blind and reductive, an atavistic form of devolution backwards and downwards into the Saurian group mind. It’s an unconscious and instinctive blind lust for power and control, and it parades under a skin of pretension that’s translucent in direct proportion to the viewer’s consciousness.
History will never judge the individual because almost none rise to visibility that history can see. But consciousness, the true Logos, will judge in its time, and when it does it will be privately in the mind at first and then publicly as a form of withering shame. Today’s narrative worshippers will be “brought to justice” by the natural light of mind that shines everywhere but nowhere the eye alone can see. They don’t see now but then they will. They should understand now that grace is ascension from the grip of demons. Because that is what they will need from “the other” that they now demonize and seek to destroy however they can to be forgiven for what they are now doing and for what they have done. And it won’t come easily.
Legion is obviously the worst actors in the cultural left/media/tech complex that Taibbi and Greenwald have profiled in their journalism for the past year or more. It also may include the useful idiots among the electorate who can’t or don’t think for themselves and take on faith anything they’re told by their trusted media venues — and who are willing to act on those beliefs by willfully destroying people for wrong-think or tacitly accepting that destruction as culturally necessary
2000 years ago an obscure Jewish preacher said “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” But utopians don’t admit they have any sins.
I appreciate the discussion, but can't you mention someone besides Carlson and Rogan?
Caitlin Johnston, Scott Ritter, theSaker, Pepe Escobar, John Kiriaku, Ray McGovern, Op-Ed News, Consortium News, (the last two for very different perspectives that I totally endorse). Jimmy Dore maybe?
Facebook lost 1 million subscribers and its stock price dropped by 25% today.
WRT Covid, where is a report from -any- of the 6 "major" studies being conducted on Ivermectin and other treatments for Covid? I caught it at the beginning of December and immediately contacted the UofMN study several times using each of the three ways to join their study. I heard nothing.
These studies have been on-going much longer than it took to grant EUA to the mRNA studies.
Well, they've suppressed any work on treatment options from the very start, just as "natural anti-body immunity" went unmentioned for a year and a half. Just like "herd immunity" was suppressed as even a topic of discussion once the cash started to flow.
I like my super villains to be clever, or to have complex motives. But in this case, if something seems inexplicable, but led to greater profits for Big Pharma...well, that ain't "inexplicable" now, is it?
Why? The NYT lies all the time. If you cannot provide me with a specific link that shows anything from these 6 "major" studies, then you are reaming me with useless information.
The UofMN did write a letter to the FDA seeking EUA for Fluvoxamine -- an anti-anxiety drug!
There was a report that the Oxford PRINCIPLE study was suspended because it couldn't obtain the drugs.
Every story about the NYT on Covid is easily countered by alternative sources like Robert Malone. I'm not supporting Malone or the rest of the FLCCC, I'm saying that what they advertise -more- than effectively counters the MSM.
I'm not a medical researcher. I've tried to read at least some of the dozens of studies on PubMed. Studies that are frauds and studies that claim X only to be countered by studies that debunk X.
There it is. Who am I suppose to believe?
If I pick a side, it is simple to find articles to support my pre-disposed position. The problem is, when I look for articles to rebut those articles, there are a plethora of them.
So, again, where are the reports from those 6 "major" studies? I don't care what the results are. I only care that they report.
Only replying to say I've had a similar experience. It's now standard procedure when I find a source I think I trust to then actively seek out 'debunk' articles/videos and hear what they have to say about my trusted source (after getting burned blindly trusting John Campbell on everything). I have yet to find a source that doesn't eventually shit the bed, but I think some are far superior to others (TWiV for instance), even if I don't always agree with their interpretations. But MSM...fuckin forget about it.
yes, debating different interpretations is part of science, but it's not science when the scientists can't set aside their bias and ambition enough to be honest actors
Paragraph 5 could state "Studies that claim X only to ACTUALLY claim Y". I've seen a couple of these, HUGELY (and inexplicably) promoted. Heather Heying deconstructed one, and the study was so shamefully bad even I could understand the chicanery.
Is the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt anti-Semitic or Outrageously Hypocritical?
In July 2020, The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) adopted definitions of “racism” which excluded most Jews as possible targets of racism, Each of its definitions limited racism to actions against “People of Color.” Until a day ago, the ADL’s first definition was:
“Racism: The marginalization and/or oppression of PEOPLE OF COLOR based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.” (Caps added)
Then, on Monday, January 31, 2022, Whoopi Goldberg adopted the ADL’s definitions of racism in discussing the Holocaust, saying that it was an example of “man’s inhumanity to man” and “not about race.” Ms. Goldberg was immediately attacked and one of her loudest critics was Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League. All Whoopi did was agree with the ADL! Talk about grandiose hypocrisy!
BREAKING NEWS! Within the last day or so, the ADL has changed its definition of racism to:
Racism (interim definition): Racism occurs when individuals or institutions show more favorable evaluation or treatment of an individual or group based on race or ethnicity.
Obviously, the ADL changed its definition of racism because so many Jews started to scream and holler about the absurd definitions of racism being limited to only “people of color,” which exclude most, but not all, pre-War II Jews and most of today’s American Jews.
Did Greenblatt own up to his role? No! This is a serious moral failing. His organization is the one which set forth new definitions of racism according to the new Wokerism. Now Greenblatt wants to play the good guy role and pretend to help Whoopi. Here’s what Greenblatt said to CNN’s Chris Lemon on Tuesday night (Feb 1,2022)
“We sometimes have people in public places who can say clumsy things about race or faith or gender. I don’t believe in cancel culture. I like the phrase that my friend Nick Cannon uses. We need ‘counsel culture,’”
WTF? The person who needs counseling in Integrity 101 is Greenblatt. When Whoopi Goldberg was under fire for adopting the ADL definitions, Greenblatt threw gasoline on the fire, maintaining that "The Holocaust was about the Nazi's systematic annihilation of the Jewish people—who they deemed to be an inferior race."
Let’s Look at the ADL’s New “Interim” Definition
The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith started September 1913 and it now has only an interim definition of racism? And is it ever a bizarre one.
Racism now is not treating people badly but is treating one group more favorably than another group. That means all Affirmative Action programs are racist, but genocide is not. I guess we can see why it is an interim definition.
Why didn’t Greenblatt admit the ADL’s role and apologize to Whoopi in public and why did he not say in public that the ADL changed the definition which got Whoopi into trouble?
Geenblatt is Playing Us for Fools
The first definition of racism has been changed, but the ADL’s absurd 3rd definition remains the same.
“Systemic Racism: A combination of systems, institutions and factors that advantage white people and for PEOPLE OF COLOR, cause widespread harm and disadvantages in access and opportunity. One person or even one group of people did not create systemic racism, rather it: (1) is grounded in the history of our laws and institutions which were created on a foundation of white supremacy;* (2) exists in the institutions and policies that advantage white people and disadvantage people of color; and (3) takes places in interpersonal communication and behavior (e.g., slurs, bullying, offensive language) that maintains and supports systemic inequities and systemic racism.
“* In the above definition, the term “white supremacy” refers to the systematic marginalization or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges people who identify as white. It does not refer to extremist ideologies which believe that white people are genetically or culturally superior to non-whites and/or that white people should live in a whites-only society.”
Although the definition is close to incoherent a couple aspects seems clear.
(1) It only applies to people of color and thus excludes most American Jews. Thus a murdering Jews in a synagogue is not based on racism. Does it become racism if a dark skinned Sephardic Jew is killed?
(2) The other notable feature is that the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution on which our nation is founded are racist. The ADL’s second aspect of American racism is: “grounded in the history of our laws and institutions which were created on a foundation of white supremacy.” I guess Greenblatt has an edition of the Declaration of Independence which says “White people and only white people have inalienable rights.”
The whole Whoopi thing wouldn't be a problem, except Disney literally fired Gina C. for a completely non-offensive tweet warning that dehumanization was the first step of the holocaust. Now the company has painted itself into a huge corner.
I don't believe that bunch cares about being morally consistent. I do believe the woke crowd doesn't understand that the beast needs to devour, and when it runs out of its enemies, . . .
Yes, very well said. Second, after their personal power, is "The Mission" of the institution, which is not the nominal purpose for which the institution exists, but for the corollary mission of expanding the power and budget of the institution., This purpose is seldom if ever served by achieving the goal of the institution.
This all sounds knee-jerk cynical, but it does explain the behavior of institutions, ESPECIALLY governmental institutions. (my original source for this view was my old Dad, who was GS15 IN a governmental institution. He saw it.)
There is excellent article on your point discussing this special dynamic police departments, but for the moment, I have brain freeze and i cannot remember the author's name
Matt writes, "...the campaign to clamp down on alternative media...."
For all practical purposes, there is no alternative media. Unlike the Sixties (essentially mid-'60s through late '70s), what he is calling "alternative media" exists almost entirely online and thus dependent on the "goodwill" of mega-corporations. The minute so-called alternative media becomes a genuine threat to the profits and control of corporate America, it can be and will be closed off. The alternative press of fifty years ago did not depend on corporations, and though it had to fight Fed (and sometimes more local) efforts to intimidate printers, advertisers, and distributors, as well as the people who produced the papers, it nonetheless stuck to its guns (sometimes literally of necessity) and maintained a way to express, publicize, and organize a broad oppositional movement.
500-channel TV was sold to us (and I do mean SOLD!) with the line that now there would be more access for and to different groups and views, that people would now be exposed to many more parts of our multi-cultural reality. The exact opposite occurred. Suddenly you could be entertained and have whatever you already believed reinforced 24/7. The internet is 500-channel TV on steroids and speed.
As to the ability of effective online opposition: superficially, yes, but fundamentally, no. Corporations are not about to enable the cutting of their own throats. And that does not even get into government actions or the greater risk from hackers and trolls, whether national, group, or individual trying to cause division and chaos.
Yes, the alternative press was largely local (with significant national and regional exceptions). However, those papers could not be stopped by corporate power, as they were produced with local resources. Even the Feds threatening advertisers, printers, and press people had very limited effect, because people were willing to walk the walk, not merely talk the talk, the reality of today's "opposition", an "opposition" largely limited to whining online, not willing to acknowledge there aint no free lunch, that to make actual change rather than just stake out a position, you have to be willing to get down and dirty, to take personal risks and personally sacrifice.
1/ The entire business model of the internet is clickbait. It really is that simple.
2/ The Democrats have yet to figure out why solidly Democrat West Virginia became solidly Republican West Virginia in the political wink of an eye.
3/ Trump is more much more effect than cause, a salesman/entertainer who is an excellent fit for a society that values American Idol, The Apprentice,, likes, recommends, clicks, etc. over substance.
In the summer of 2020 I started reading lots of local papers (online.) I had realized that the national press across the entire political spectrum all had a specific agenda designed to appeal to a very specific demographic. At the same time, local papers had to appeal to whomever was around in order to stay in business, an invariably more diverse group. At the time I had six Montana papers I followed. (Fewer now.) While both before and after the election the national media was saturated with stories about every real or imagined Trump fart and every real or imagined reaction to the real or imagined fart, in Montana, the heart of Trump country, there was rarely even a mention of Trump in the local papers.
Live listening (and playback when the episode is published) is now available on the web app/website. Anyone can listen-in live from a computer or Android via the website. Link here: https://www.callin.com/room/discussion-with-glenn-greenwald-on-censorship-YVbUqvkxZW. Native Android app coming in a few weeks, but this works in the meantime.
Charlie, thanks for the link and info. I was able to listen for a few minutes about a half hour in, and the recording is available now. Looking forward to the update you mentioned. So appreciate Matt and Glenn. Clear voices of reason. Because the song was not originally: KEEP ON ROCKIN' IN THE CENSORED WORLD. And the phrase was not: DON'T QUESTION AUTHORITY. For 🦊 sake!
Any chance you could discuss the global monetary reset that's scheduled for the weekend of the February 22nd? It's pretty clear from the numbers they're going bankrupt everyone and bailout themselves again.
Also. Prepare for the valentine's day massacre... 👀 Yes I'm serious and it's pretty obvious if you know where to look.
I'm hoping to call in today. Not sure this crowd (i.e. commenters on Matt's Substack) will appreciate this reference/link, but I've been getting a lot out the "Decoding the Gurus" podcast. Aside from the usual IDW suspects they cover, they've done very good episodes on Rogan (pre-Malone/McCullough) as well as the Malone/McCullough episodes specifically. They also just put out a short(er) one on Rogan's Insta "apology," but I believe it's only available for Patreon supporters. For my money, this pair of podcasters (Chris, an Irish anthropologist who lives in Japan and Matt, an Australian pysch professor) not only do a very good job "decoding" the rhetoric of their subjects, but Chris is pretty damn funny.
He is very funny, but from what I’ve seen his thinking is awfully reductive. I would not call him nuanced, really. In fact, sometimes I detect a kind of bitter jealousy of “influencers” in general. It happens.
Just so people don't miss this exchange of ideas. Clearly, it should be noted that one of the obvious problems with the Taibbi and Greenwald followers, as you can see below, is that they love to disagree and deny what has already been shown conclusively in case filings and court records going back for years. Then they respond with Republicon talking points with little, if any, evidence. It's hard to take them seriously.
Jdalbey 9 hr ago
Trump? So someone that wants jobs to stay in the USA is a racist? Trump was a wage earners revolt from the oligarchy
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Nick Kehrlein1 hr ago
he said that so people would vote for him, he didn't actually do anything towards that. the china tarriffs were ineffective and the only other thing he did was give money to rich people. None of it addressed the root cause of why the jobs are offshored in the first place. Ironically what would need to happen, policy that ensured jobs couldn't be offshored, would be labeled "communism" if it were done by anyone else.
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Jdalbey1 hr ago
I think he tried but from day one both sides hated him.
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Kehrlein1 hr ago
I think it’s best to judge politicians by what the do rather than what they vaguely mention. Trump clearly cares only about himself and does not care one bit for the working class. Even his tax cuts missed the working class, he only gave them to their bosses
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Jdalbey1 hr ago
Disagree
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Jack MudryWrites Jack’s Newsletter ·7 hr ago
If that's all you know about Don the CON'S racism and corruption, then you are part of the problem. T-RUMP is part of the oligarchy and anybody who believes that he's not is naïve and totally misinformed. BTW, the vast majority of people of color are wage earners and they DID NOT vote for the CON. Thank you.
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Jdalbey1 hr ago
Disagree
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Jack MudryWrites Jack’s Newsletter ·just now
You can disagree all you want, but the facts are the facts. He comes from a wealthy father who was a real estate magnate who subsidized him at every turn and rescued him from a number of failures, but couldn't rescue him from all his financial disasters. David Kay Johnson, Pulitzer prize winning journalist, has written extensively about Don the CON and research his 5 bankruptcy filings and all the suits against him and the millions of $$$ he has paid in fines. This is part of an extensive public record, so you can deny it all you want but that just shows your total lack of credibility. As for the tax cuts, the vast majority of money saved by taxpayers went to the upper 1% of income earners like T-RUMP, who was the only
President who refused to reveal his tax returns. Finally, I said that the vast majority of people of color are wage earners(very easy to verify) and they did not vote for the predator in chief. No experts or analysts dispute that. So, all in all, your silly and empty answer of "disagree" is just posturing by someone with no knowledge or expertise, just puffery. Go back to school !
"This is Jack’s Newsletter, a newsletter about Taibi and Greenwald."
This is, quite frankly, fucking hilarious. So you're expecting people to pay you to read your criticisms of Matt & Glenn's commenters? Or will it consist entirely of your interpretations of what they write? Or will it be full of fawning love for Matt & Glenn with long strings of comment board quotes with your "incites" sprinkled throughout like nuggets of sputum?
Do you actually think anyone cares?
The message board here appears exactly like every other internet message board I've ever read. Oodles & oodles of bullshit & venting that has about as much chance of changing anything as a BB has of deflecting a continent sized asteroid.
I have to say that I envy the free time you must have to actually traverse these long comment streams just to point out that the commenters are spewing "Republican talking points."
Not much of a life buddy.
If they bug you that much the easy solution would be to just read Matt's articles & then just move on & go about your day.
"Oodles & oodles of bullshit & venting that has about as much chance of changing anything as a BB has of deflecting a continent sized asteroid." Accurate.
In the absence of a software solution (Mute button), I have substituted an internal one.
I call it the "Oh, this asshole" Filter. When someone has PROVEN to be an NPC, a zombie or a tool of the powers-that-be, I just don't read or respond to their posts.
The protest in Canada is about the right to protest not the protests themselves. Her in Quebec we are over 85% for the right to protest and we are 85% in support of our government. This is not the USA. We are a democracy it is our government it does not belong to corporations. In Canada corporations have the same rights as rocks and toilet tissue. 85% of our truckers support both the government and the right to protest.
This is what press freedom looks like. It is rather empirical.
Yeah, I wondered how he would resolve his Turdeau worship with the demonstrable authoritarian behavior of that asshole. Turns out he's just gonna state two incompatible things and go blathering off. Your brain's failing, Moe.
Gee, maybe he'll get to be President!
(Turdeau's just lucky noted revolutionary Neil Young has more important things to address, in other countries. If Neil noticed oppression in his own beloved country, he'd give them a good warbling, I'm sure.)
Listening in (no Apple product) Could someone ask for comments on the emerging theme of couching the censorship argument within the "publisher/platform" argument. It seems to me that there is an intellectual slight of hand here: inverting court precedent giving private companies the right to moderate content into an obligation to do so. The FT editorial board made this argument today, arguing that Spotify needed to moderate disinformation, ironically in a piece that repeated the "horse dewormer" line.
The "publisher/platform argument" is just threats from government to remove the social media's protection from libel/slander suits. They are getting around the First Amendment free speech guarantee by having those who control the commons do the censoring for them.
They are using "public health and safety" as the foot in the door.
I tried to listen to you and Bret Whazizname on Bari's podcast.
You did good, but that motherfucker rolled over you, and monopolized the first hour by a mile.
No, I don't think it's Bari's job to rein you two in; you're both grownups, right?
Here's the thing...
You have an amazing command of language when you write. Debating's not really in your wheelhouse. I hope you're not beating up yourself too much over it (I'll put $ on you having done so).
The fact is Brett Whoziz (I know what his last fuckin' name is, I just wanna dis him) is more experienced in this arena than you are. Or maybe more naturally gifted. He failed utterly to address directly a single point you raised; instead he deflected like he was on the bridge of The USS Enterprise battling Klingons.
You're pushing 50 (yeah, I know you're over 50, but either way you're a kid to this old fart, k? lol). You don't need to develop this skill set.
It's not that Whatchamacallit's all that good, or that he made better points; he just dominated the conversation. Shit, it was so reminiscent of Maher. (Yeah, I'm a fan of yours...)
Greenwald woulda made this chump cry (if Bretty had the balls to engage him; but I'll bet he'd punk out). Just remember: Glenn's trained in that shit, okay?
None of your points in that 1st hr (I hadda turn it off) were answered nor diminished. You did a good job in that department.
I think the world's a better place for you doing what you do. Which is good, b/c ol' Brett and his half-assed (tho' ubiquitous) perspectives make it a harder place to live in every time he opens his mouth or writes some half-assed shit.
You're a good guy doing good work. And what you're doing here on Substack is fucking important in so many ways.
hey matt. this seemed like a good place to drop this topic. I have included a twitter link below. in the last couple of hours several twitter accounts of folks in the Fantom NFT space have been shut down without warning, reason or regard. a piece on this would be informative, and at this point, I think necessary.
Hopefully either you or Glen are digging into the Ukraine/Russia thing. I am avoiding most mainstream media because I don't trust a thing the say as the mouth piece of the propaganda machine. As much as censorship matters to me, I ask that you tell me whether to care about the hysteria my friends and coworkers are speaking about, or if this is fear mongering. Keep doing the work you do.
I’m sure many of us here are keeping an eye on the Canadian trucker’s protest. I read on Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity site, which I respect, a lengthy guest post from Canadian subscriber about the situation. He cited the use of crisis communication firms by politicians there to aggressively shape public perception and suspected it would be used against the truckers. The commenter questioned the authenticity of polling data used to give impression of a public bias in favor of the politician/govt position cited as in media coverage.
I had never considered that — naive as I am. I don’t know if that’s possible (or so common as to be cliche). But wanted to note it in case others and/or MT view it as a possible trick in the bag of govt-media propaganda.
Evidently the trucker protest seems to have a lot of grassroots support, but it’s hard to quantify that support. Polling data would be one way, but whether published poll data is true or simply fabrication is not clear to me. Obviously any polling firm can publicize polling data results, so there’s no “barriers to entry” preventing accurate polling, assuming a polling firm is motivated. They may not be if they view going against mainstream messaging as deleterious to their business interests. Maybe this issue would merit scrutiny by interested journalists? I don’t know, but leave it here just for consideration, since polling data is often used in political and cultural reporting.
I left Chicago 15 years ago and returned to mon payee. Fifteen years ago Quebec's revolution had already occurred and Quebec had decided on a social democracy and a free press. Quebec is a secular humanist liberal democracy. It is amazing to me how little America has done to adapt to the revolutionary changes taking place.
Gilles Vigneault has asked to be taken off Spotify
Do not want Social Media to be my news source. Do check it until I break the habit. FB is and always has been postcards and magazine articles to flip through.
IS IT CHRISTMAS?!?!??!
Great discussion so far. Glenn is KILLING IT explaining how the social media companies are being controlled by the government, which is a violation of the First Amendment.
---------
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/censors-gonna-censor
Joe Biden's Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, during an interview with MSNBC, suggested that censoring Joe Rogan would help curb the flow of misinformation surrounding covid. This is akin to the mob stopping by your Italian restaurant to admire the décor, then proclaiming it would be a shame if something happened to it.
When corporations take their direction from government, there’s a word for that. It’s fascism. Not fake “Oh no Trump is a dictator” fascism, but honest-to-goodness fascism that says if you don’t hand over a wad of cash, something just might happen to your lovely little restaurant.
Remember that over the past few years, Democrats have been threatening all sorts of actions against Facebook and other social media companies. Set against this backdrop, the threat is clear: You do what we want or we destroy you.
Have you seen GG's piece on how the Jan 6 hearings are doing the same kind of mobster shit to ISP's? You should check it out; it's the same strategy.
Oh yeah. I'm a GG junkie. I'm pretty sure he's the reason I first typed "Substack.com" into my browser.
I used to admire GG, especially with respect to the Snowden revelations. When he started making regular appearances on Tucker Carlson's show, I recognized how they were using each other: Tucker loved the anti-Dem stuff coming from the Left (whatever that means), Glenn loving how his Twitter followers grew with each appearance (the feeder for his lucrative Substack). So interesting how Glenn (and Matt T) are careful not to speak ill of Tucker, despite many of his ludicrous positions. (If you see a child wearing a face mask, “Call the police immediately...contact child protective services.” Or his Jan 6 "documentary").
I'll be polite...
Your attitude is narrow minded and does nothing to improve discourse in your country.
Thank you for being polite. Of course I disagree and I’m pointing to the narrow mindedness I’ve observed by GG and more recently (and to a lesser extent) by MattT. But has been a successful strategy in terms of appealing to a whole new audience.
Wow, it's like wanting to expand your audience is now fascist, or something.
I have never used that f-word with respect to Glenn or Matt. It's a bit more like "follow the money," but even that's too reductionist. Let's just say I think they've lost the plot.
I cancelled my sub to Glenn on the anniversary of his move to substack. He has found a niche in which his fame, adulation and significance grew by feeding well-spiced red meat to people who get a kick out of hating and feeling superior to Team Blue and PMC. It's a variation on Hate Inc. His business is schismogenic. His criticisms of Team Blue/PMC are valid. I just no longer want to spend my money and brain cycles on so much one-sided negativity on a political cleavage that I believe serves the status quo very well and is counter-productive to my aspirations. I still believe in the political power of a populist/reformist agenda based on solidarity against ruling elites and this demands solidarity across the obsolete L/R and D/R divide.
I think Glen goes where the worst action is, and right now the worst actors are on Team Dem/Team Blue or whatever one wishes to call them. It’s a big tent and no, not everyone in the tent is a bad actor. Of course not. But they’re broadly the side trafficking in deplatforming, censorship, curated narratives, outright lies, false witness and related depravities. Team Red, such as it is, is on its heels wondering what the hell is going on or just trying not to get called names.
Teams Blue and Red of course are generalizations of a far more complex reality where underlying power centers are far closer than are the superficial separating.differences, but they’re somewhat useful descriptors in this context,
This is not a cultural environment in which any progress can occur. The first need is to restore the right to civil debate on issues of national life without having one’s own life destroyed for saying something someone with power doesn’t like.
God bless Glen for taking that fight on. Whatever progressive vision one has — and there are very good ideas there that should be thoughtfully examined — it won’t be accomplished until that first fight is won.
See, from my perspective, you appear to take the idea that there is a meaningful political competition between our two parties as given. I believe that it's a sham. Putin-Nazis vs Covid-Nazis is convenient distraction from Washington's consensus on the big ticket items including capital accumulation by dispossession, empire, and climate destruction.
GG's critiques are valid and I believe they have value for some people. Just not for me right now.
Surprise! Yesterday on Breaking Points, Krystal Ball's monologue was perfectly on point: https://youtu.be/c2LHbYTJV9g
The more time we consume in the primary and secondary narratives (https://thefsb.substack.com/p/dont-just-stand-there-do-something), the more work we do for the status quo. If we consume all our time there, nothing can get better.
I'm pleased because I'd been getting more impatient with Krystal & Saagar, for the same reason I got tired of GG and why I sometimes criticize MT in comments here. Krystal bought a whole load of patience with such a well written piece, as did MT recently with his excellent "Let’s Not Have a War", which explains how another primary narrative is a deliberately deceptive distraction.
O RLY? "I just no longer want to spend my money and brain cycles on so much one-sided negativity..."
Then stop voting for, and donating to, the people doing the horrible things which generate such a well-deserved negative reaction. I don't hear any cheerleading for the Republicans or the right from Glenn OR Matt, and to suggest otherwise makes you look like a Team Blue cultist.
Plenty of time to hate on the Republicans after the election, and they demonstrate how spineless and amoral and committed to the corrupt status quo they are.
Seems to me you just looking for someone advocating a "populist/reformist agenda" that goes easy on your team and you're not finding it here. That makes you...well, a mild euphemism would be disingenuous. Good luck finding "whataboutism" when one side is actively engaging the military and the intelligence agencies against American citizensm, and one side is not. Yet.
Goodbye. Matt's commentariat is improved, slightly, by your absence.
/me confused. Are you evicting me?
also, "my team"?
Matt Taibbi writes, "...the campaign to clamp down on alternative media...."
For all practical purposes, there is no alternative media. Unlike the Sixties (essentially mid-'60s through late '70s), what he is calling "alternative media" exists almost entirely online and thus dependent on the "goodwill" of mega-corporations. The minute so-called alternative media becomes a genuine threat to the profits and control of corporate America, it can be and will be closed off. The alternative press of fifty years ago did not depend on corporations, and though it had to fight Fed (and sometimes more local) efforts to intimidate printers, advertisers, and distributors, as well as the people who produced the papers, it nonetheless stuck to its guns (sometimes literally of necessity) and maintained a way to express, publicize, and organize a broad oppositional movement.
I'm going to have to disagree. Vastly more alternative information and perspectives are available now than 50 years ago. It's not a close call. Those old alternative rags were often fun and brave ventures, but they had tiny distribution and could never have the reach of the internet, even an internet now heavily policed by the big tech powers.
I could be proven wrong, but I don't think internet control will ever be that effective in countries like the US. If literally turn into China, then yeah. But there are many obstacles to that.
Skeptic, thanks for engaging. I wish you were right, but I think not. 500-channel TV was sold to us (and I do mean SOLD!) with the line that now there would be more access for and to different groups and views, that people would now be exposed to many more parts of our multi-cultural reality. The exact opposite occurred. Suddenly you could be entertained and have whatever you already believed reinforced 24/7. The internet is 500-channel TV on steroids and speed.
As to the ability of effective online opposition: superficially, yes, but fundamentally, no. Corporations are not about to enable the cutting of their own throats. And that does not even get into government actions or the greater risk from hackers and trolls, whether national, group, or individual trying to cause division and chaos.
Yes, the alternative press was largely local (with significant national and regional exceptions). However, those papers could not be stopped by corporate power, as they were produced with local resources. Even the Feds threatening advertisers, printers, and press people had very limited effect, because people were willing to walk the walk, not merely talk the talk, the reality of today's "opposition", an "opposition" largely limited to whining online, not willing to acknowledge there aint no free lunch, that to make actual change rather than just stake out a position, you have to be willing to get down and dirty, to take personal risks and personally sacrifice.
"Suddenly you could be entertained and have whatever you already believed reinforced 24/7." Not everyone uses the internet for this, I think I see the point here but it's way too reductive. For instance, I often wonder at how my dad was able to figure out how to diagnose and fix problems around the house 40 years ago while I can get my answers in minutes from free, detailed step-by-step with pics/video. The internet is nothing short of amazing.
Hierochloe, thatks for engaging substantively and with a personal anecdote. It's a refreshing change from the vast majority of ad hominem comments that sound like my 4th grade playground.
Two things I would suggest mulling over:
1/ If the electricity went off, your Dad could still fix things. Also, nobody could hack into his brain.
2/ Pre-internet, our nuclear command and control apparatus was not subject to hacking.
1) I can also still fix things using the same non-internet resources as my dad, but it's grossly less efficient than the internet (which is far more than simply a 500-channel theme-park for passive consumption while stuffing oneself with cheetos).
2) Hacking doesn't at all require the internet. The most efficient hacking done on the internet relies almost entirely on exploiting stupid people, and plenty of them were exploited (ie hacked) before the internet was born. Yes, to your point, the internet has made it easier to reach and exploit stupid people, but so did the printing press.
Oh, but it 100% WILL be that effective. Hell, they're already flexing against the most popular sources of "unapproved" thought, and what's more populist than the most popular voices?
Snap of a finger, and they're gone. The Internet used to be a wild place, arguably free, and now they've moved it into being a tool of authoritarian control. But hey! Better an oppressive oligarchy than "misinformation" amirite?
It's coming. Me, I'm hoping for a major Coronal Mass Ejection event that will take out the communications satellites.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
Internet control will only be very effective with people who don't care, same as it is now. For people that care, I think dark web will just expand its user base and infrastructure.
Tikkun was a product of Lerner's touchy-feely approach to reality. More representative of effective politics were Jewish Currents, Chutzpah, and Shmate, among others. The current iteration of the Right learned from the effectiveness of the Sixties Left. The current iteration of the Left hasn't even learned why solidly Democratic West Virginia tirned into solidly Republican West Virginia in the the political blink of an eye. It is adept at little other than an inerrant ability at producing circular firing squads.
I guess you've chosen the right course if your aspiration is ignorance
I chose to aspire to ignorance. Hm. What condition am I in now?
uhhh, brainless
Generally speaking we use "ignorant" in two ways. One is a base insult, e.g. "You're ignorant!" The other is to be ignorant *of something*. Without some elaboration of my ignorance, and now brainlessness, I have to assume the former. So why dress it up as "I guess you've chosen the right course if your aspiration is ignorance." Is that a zinger? or a burn or something? a pithy putdown?
PRE-ignorance, it would seem. Where you work to ensure all data and arguments that enter your consciousness are consistent with some narrative. Thus, your appetite for a "proper" condemnation of the current state of affairs is not satisfied by Glenn and Matt torching the governmental and media actors moving to use the power of the state to censor the citizenry, if they do not also condemn Marjory Taylor-Greeene's newsletter and blog.
I've already stated in the comments here that GG is right to denounce pleas for more balance in his criticisms. That is indeed a dumb idea and not my problem with his work at all.
Pauvre homme.
The $50 I didn't spend on reuping the GG sub went straight to NakedCapitalism.com 's fall fund raiser. So it was a wash.
Otoh, I'm not sure I share all of your sentiments :) I don't think Trump is too crazy to be president, I think he's too lazy, selfish, and incompetent. And I agree with GG that denouncing him for not critiquing Rs more often is dumb since we have a glut of that already. My big problem with GG is: what he does supports the current political cleavage (the two party division), making it seem more real than it deserves. The status quo relies on keeping people divided against each-other to prevent them from uniting against their common evil overlords. Hence GG's work supports the status quo.
I've leveled the same critique against MT on occasion. On balance I think MT is still doing good work that I'm happy to support.
I forgot about your first paragraph in my comment a few minutes ago. Idk wtf is integral philosophy. Should I? Why? Who's Ken Wilbur? Sam Harris is an asshole and a bit of a joke. Peterson is a waste of time. Anyone in the business of youtubes talking for hours about how he's more clever than those guys is deeply suspicious right from the get go. (Besides I can't stomach this style of video presentation. How do they manage to come up with stuff even worse than TED Talks ffs?) If you have time to spare, check out my pod. The link is beside my name right there↖.
Thanks. Interesting stuff, and while I appreciate the references to stuff with which I had been mostly unfamiliar, I also appreciate the useful-to-remember casual aside:
"there are all sorts of idiots everywhere".
see what asking a question in the comments can do? thanks for the answer. this is enough to assure me i don't need to spend my time on it. 'preciate it.
Harris is notorious for only engaging in debates he's going to win on his terms and cancelling publication if he's not satisfied with the outcome and, if all else fails, acting all hurt and mistreated.
I'm with Dennett on both free will and consciousness. I also liked these two articles in Aeon I read recently. https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one https://aeon.co/essays/consciousness-is-not-a-thing-but-a-process-of-inference Nothing much to disagree with there.
But really, philosophy can be a bummer and repulsive to the extent that it's intellectual oneupmanship.
They are pawns. Reserve your greatest ire for the kings and queens that direct them. Our political infrastructure has been corrupted so that it serves the interests of capital. Of course it has always been biased to serve the interests of the merchant elites but it has at times been adjusted to better serve the needs and aspirations of its constituents. Right now the imperial court seems vulnerable, running out of road on their project of capital accumulation by dispossession (e.g. for 15 years our so called free-market capitalism has been on artificial life support). We cannot expect better from politicians in this situation. We need a popular movement against the elite. "Popular" meaning unite across the old party divide on matters of common interest including personal, social, economic and environmental survival, coexistence, and dignity.
Hence my difficulty with GG. His business appears to be creation of more popular division.
Especially if, by 'the elite", we mean the Davos crew, which is pretty ill-defined, even compared to terms like "commie", "racist", or "American". I dunno what they should properly be called..."One Worlders"? "Bilderbergers"? "World Economic Forum"? "The Illuminati"? Who knows what they call themselves, and I doubt it's a very formal structure anyway.
But there IS a push, from HUGELY powerful actors, to cement into place a panopticon of perfect order, with them cemented permanently into place at the top. These are largely people who have been powerful, some for a very long time, and who have used capitalism as a tool to gather even greater wealth and power to themselves and now want to remove the freedom of individuals and the competitive aspects of capitalism from the system, now that it's served its purpose. It's easy to see how thinking around systems integration would be useful for them.
I just know that, whatever they're doing "Ah'm agin it.". And so's Glenn, and so's Matt. If you think unsubscribing from two of the most prominent and sane voices who are willing to speak against the powers that be actually HELPS anything...well, ref. e.pierce insults, redux.
You still sound like a butt-hurt lefty complaining about inadequate whataboutism, even though your later posts show you should be capable of more in-depth analysis than "Well, what about the stupid Republicans??"
Ironic that the originating comment ends w a basically a plea for civil discourse. I do believe TDS is a real thing. But to accuse you of it so blatantly is an obvious recipe for shutting down discourse.
Those were superb and refreshing insights, including professional jealousy and a measurable class element in the mainstream’s condescension and paranoia about Rogan. “Not our kind of people”.
Please kindly consider using a different platform since Callin seems to be incapable of providing any support for Android or PC.
Not anymore! Live listening (and playback when the episode is published) is now available on the web app/website. Anyone can listen-in live from a computer or Android via the website. Link here: https://www.callin.com/room/discussion-with-glenn-greenwald-on-censorship-YVbUqvkxZW
Thank you!
Android app? I found a web app, very limited but usable if you are very careful, but nothing for Android? Where did you find it?
I still can't find it. https://i.imgur.com/VREKRYn.png
Perhaps Alphabet offers each of us a different selection? idk
Whatever the deal, I still firmly believe: 𝖙𝖊𝖈𝖍 𝖜𝖎𝖑𝖑 𝖘𝖆𝖛𝖊 𝖚𝖘!
At least give them some sort of deadline to pressure them into Android support. Congrats on getting Glenn on!
Android coming in a few weeks. Live listening (and playback when the episode is published) is now available on the web app/website. Anyone can listen-in live from a computer or Android via the website. Link here: https://www.callin.com/room/discussion-with-glenn-greenwald-on-censorship-YVbUqvkxZW
I want to cry because all of this justifies what I have been saying for the last four years or so.
There's a reason they refuse to identify any specific alleged misinformation. The want to chill all free speech. Everyone must second guess EVERYTHING they say because Biden and his henchmen may identify you as an enemy of the people.
Any looking for an unbiased assessment of the whole COVID debacle ~ check out JOHN Campbell from the UK. Google him. 2+ million followers now.
Anyone taking the time to listen to John Campbell should also take the time to listen to his detractors' pieces that point out huge flaws in some of his work.
Huh. Someone who speaks against the narrative has "detractors". Imagine that.
Literally everybody commenting on covid has both detractors and fuck ups. Some correct their mistakes, others just ride the viewer count tsunami.
Isn't this interesting? Here are two journalists, who used to have some credibility as part of the democratic and progressive 'left" but now are lost in a morass of false equivalency and bogged down in blind spots.
Either one or both of them expressed today a feeling of being "more pessimistic" in the last 5 years. How about asking your readers and listeners the following question? Do you feel pessimistic or optimistic after seeing and participating in the huge mobilization of voters in 2020 of all colors, nationalities, and backgrounds who went to the polls in the middle of a pandemic to remove a racist and white supremacist president and his corrupt party from power? Maybe that wasn't too important to the two of you, but I am damn sure that it was important to those Black women in Georgia who turned out in massive numbers to elect their first African American senator, and to the Navajos and Utes in Arizona who turned the state blue. Now it is those same groups who are living in the extreme and present danger
of physical attacks and of having their voting rights diluted and limited by Republicons in order to gain control of Congress and the White House again.
We have a political system of lesser evils, and the very imperfect Democrats are obviously the lesser evil on a variety of issues: womens' rights, immigration reform, environmental protection, clean
energy, reforming the tax structure, union, and labor rights and I could go on and on....
The T-RUMP crime family got into power for many reasons, but one of them was that some Democratic and independent voters who should have known better bought the bogus line that there is no difference between the two parties. Because of this ignorance and naivete, we have a Supreme Court today which will deprive millions of women of a fundamental human right. The damage that was done in the last 4 years will be felt for generations. It could have been avoided. Thank you.
Vote Blue No Matter Who is not a viable strategy. In fact, it's leading ever worse outcomes. It's not an accident that Biden and the Dems have failed to do anything but enact a flawed infrastructure bill while solving none of the problems you cite. Like Obama, Biden is deporting more people than Trump. No move to end fracking, no minimum wage increase, no free college tuition, no reduction in student debt (even though Biden could do that without Congress), no voting rights reform, nothing to help unions, zero on drug prices, health care reform no longer even mentioned, even less on campaign finance reform, tax reform, income inequality. Meanwhile, lots of Covid and other censorship pressure, vaccination of kindergarten kids, lost jobs for the unvaccinated and ginned up (and dangerous) hysteria about Russia and Ukraine. Finally, no workable strategy to avoid losing the Congress in the Mid-terms except moving right to appease suburbanites and more "Blue No Matter Who" scare tactics. It's all a sad farce. You are betraying the people you say you want to protect. And all you can do is try to blame and shame those of us who aren't having it any more. Who realize Democratic Party as now constituted, funded and led will never make the needed changes and is in the process of allowing the Republicans to take on the undeserved role of "party of the working class" (And not just of the white working class, but more and more of the Black and Hispanic working class too.) Just stop. Go away. You've done enough damage.
Trump? So someone that wants jobs to stay in the USA is a racist? Trump was a wage earners revolt from the oligarchy
he said that so people would vote for him, he didn't actually do anything towards that. the china tarriffs were ineffective and the only other thing he did was give money to rich people. None of it addressed the root cause of why the jobs are offshored in the first place. Ironically what would need to happen, policy that ensured jobs couldn't be offshored, would be labeled "communism" if it were done by anyone else.
I think he tried but from day one both sides hated him.
I think it’s best to judge politicians by what the do rather than what they vaguely mention. Trump clearly cares only about himself and does not care one bit for the working class. Even his tax cuts missed the working class, he only gave them to their bosses
No, I, my wife, and everyone I talked to saw a cut, and this is a pretty wide range of incomes. So you're comfortable with parroting no-thought-involved DNC talking points that are demonstrably untrue?
"Mute Button", please, Substack.
(that said, Trump is a stand-up comic. Check his timing, his crowd-handling chops, he's a stand-up comic. HOWEVER. Is that not preferable to a devious manipulator doing the bidding of the elite tip of the 1%? Or whatever forces willingly abuse an old man in cognitive decline to advance their agenda, by giving him ice cream, and a puppy, oh, and the Presidency?)
Under Trump, the less you made, the greater the percentage of your tax cut.
Disagree
If that's all you know about Don the CON'S racism and corruption, then you are part of the problem. T-RUMP is part of the oligarchy and anybody who believes that he's not is naïve and totally misinformed. BTW, the vast majority of people of color are wage earners and they DID NOT vote for the CON. Thank you.
Disagree
You can disagree all you want, but the facts are the facts. He comes from a wealthy father who was a real estate magnate who subsidized him at every turn and rescued him from a number of failures, but couldn't rescue him from all his financial disasters. David Kay Johnson, Pulitzer prize winning journalist, has written extensively about Don the CON and research his 5 bankruptcy filings and all the suits against him and the millions of $$$ he has paid in fines. This is part of an extensive public record, so you can deny it all you want but that just shows your total lack of credibility. As for the tax cuts, the vast majority of money saved by taxpayers went to the upper 1% of income earners like T-RUMP, who was the only
President who refused to reveal his tax returns. Finally, I said that the vast majority of people of color are wage earners(very easy to verify) and they did not vote for the predator in chief. No experts or analysts dispute that. So, all in all, your silly and empty answer of "disagree" is just posturing by someone with no knowledge or expertise, just puffery. Go back to school !
Get real. H got out of Brooklyn you loathe him cuz he did well in Manhattan. Keep sucking up to the sad dems. That whole party is pathetic
👍
The real sad farce here is that you are mostly wrong on the majority of your assertions, especially immigration and minimum wage, but there are some you are partially correct on, only because Biden is not a king and needs congressional approval for these and must deal with 2 intransigent Dems and the entire collection of GOP ideologues who are blocking any progress. Republicons the "party of the working class"? Ridiculous! More and more of the Black and Hispanic working class? Even more ridiculous!
Mudry, you are a conceited,superficial,self absorbed ASS...E.
Wow. I'm not surprised to see a 180-degrees-wrong idiot spouting the DNC narrative. Hell, I'm not even surprised you've got $5 to troll Substack.
I am surprised at the amazing *degree* of mindlessness, it's near-total!
What a stupid person.
Nice to have a contribution from CNN-hilarious
Color me a rainbow.
That was cool. Callers were great. ☎️ 💯
Compare and contrast Duck Duck Go & Google?
Two for the price of one! :)
Three things to keep in mind:
1/ The entire business model of the internet is clickbait. It really is that simple.
2/ The Democrats have yet to figure out why solidly Democrat West Virginia became solidly Republican West Virginia in the political wink of an eye.
3/ Trump is more much more effect than cause, a salesman/entertainer who is an excellent fit for a society that values American Idol, The Apprentice, likes, recommends, clicks, influencers, etc. over substance.
In the summer of 2020 I started reading lots of local papers (online.) I had realized that the national press across the entire political spectrum all had a specific agenda designed to appeal to a very specific demographic. At the same time, local papers had to appeal to whomever was around in order to stay in business, an invariably more diverse group. I had six Montana papers I followed. (Fewer now.) While both before and after the election the national media was saturated with stories about every real or imagined Trump fart and every real or imagined reaction to the real or imagined fart, in Montana, in the heart of Trump country, there was rarely even a mention of Trump in the local papers.
Summing up: every bit of online media with a national focus absolutely adores Donald Trump. He is their meal ticket, a clickbaiter's wet dream.
500-channel TV was sold to us (and I do mean SOLD!) with the line that now there would be more access for and to different groups and views, that people would now be exposed to many more parts of our multi-cultural reality. The exact opposite occurred. Suddenly you could be entertained and have whatever you already believed reinforced 24/7. The internet is 500-channel TV on steroids and speed.
As to the ability of effective online opposition: superficially, yes, but fundamentally, no. Corporations are not about to enable the cutting of their own throats. And that does not even get into government actions or the greater risk from hackers and trolls, whether national, group, or individual trying to cause division and chaos.
Yes, the alternative press was largely local (with significant national and regional exceptions). However, those papers could not be stopped by corporate power, as they were produced with local resources. Even the Feds threatening advertisers, printers, and press people had very limited effect, because people were willing to walk the walk, not merely talk the talk, the reality of today's "opposition", an "opposition" largely limited to whining online, not willing to acknowledge there aint no free lunch, that to make actual change rather than just stake out a position, you have to be willing to get down and dirty, to take personal risks and personally sacrifice.
God what a tedious bunch of twits the media-tech-industrial complex has become. Fabricating monsters and demons out of almost nothing, then cowering in fear or attacking with a murderous and guiltless impunity. The great angels of God laying waste to the enemies of all that’s true, just and right. That’s the mind image. The reality is worse than the ugliest stereotypes of totalitarian thought regimes. Not the reality of those regimes, but the cartoons awash with darkly cynical humor and presumed superiority drawn back when the USA was the USA and largely believed in its own sacred principles.
The “complex” is a cynical joke, devouring the nation, and run by children who never grew up. Everything is dangerous, everything is a threat, everything is a risk of “harm.” Even God is dead. And in the place of God is “narrative”. You pray to the narrative and the narrative brings life — a life of cowering, financial grift, narcissistic preening, virtue signaling and cashing in. If you sin against the narrative you are deplatformed, denigrated, denounced and hopefully, in the minds of the narrative’s self-appointed saints, destroyed.
Narratives are words and the word is God, the Bible says. But “the narrative” is not the Logos of John of Patmos, the great Greek luminescent knowing that comes from individuation and awareness, it’s a pose, a stance toward reality that frames so narrowly, so self-servingly that it’s almost a lie but without the conscious fabulation of a lie. It’s a myth, blind and reductive, an atavistic form of devolution backwards and downwards into the Saurian group mind. It’s an unconscious and instinctive blind lust for power and control, and it parades under a skin of pretension that’s translucent in direct proportion to the viewer’s consciousness.
History will never judge the individual because almost none rise to visibility that history can see. But consciousness, the true Logos, will judge in its time, and when it does it will be privately in the mind at first and then publicly as a form of withering shame. Today’s narrative worshippers will be “brought to justice” by the natural light of mind that shines everywhere but nowhere the eye alone can see. They don’t see now but then they will. They should understand now that grace is ascension from the grip of demons. Because that is what they will need from “the other” that they now demonize and seek to destroy however they can to be forgiven for what they are now doing and for what they have done. And it won’t come easily.
"Fabricating monsters and demons out of almost nothing, then cowering in fear or attacking with a murderous and guiltless impunity."
A good one-sentence description of the *behavior* of the Beast. Now, just exactly who are they? Not just their tools and minions, who are Legion.
Legion is obviously the worst actors in the cultural left/media/tech complex that Taibbi and Greenwald have profiled in their journalism for the past year or more. It also may include the useful idiots among the electorate who can’t or don’t think for themselves and take on faith anything they’re told by their trusted media venues — and who are willing to act on those beliefs by willfully destroying people for wrong-think or tacitly accepting that destruction as culturally necessary
2000 years ago an obscure Jewish preacher said “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” But utopians don’t admit they have any sins.
I appreciate the discussion, but can't you mention someone besides Carlson and Rogan?
Caitlin Johnston, Scott Ritter, theSaker, Pepe Escobar, John Kiriaku, Ray McGovern, Op-Ed News, Consortium News, (the last two for very different perspectives that I totally endorse). Jimmy Dore maybe?
Facebook lost 1 million subscribers and its stock price dropped by 25% today.
WRT Covid, where is a report from -any- of the 6 "major" studies being conducted on Ivermectin and other treatments for Covid? I caught it at the beginning of December and immediately contacted the UofMN study several times using each of the three ways to join their study. I heard nothing.
These studies have been on-going much longer than it took to grant EUA to the mRNA studies.
WHY?
Well, they've suppressed any work on treatment options from the very start, just as "natural anti-body immunity" went unmentioned for a year and a half. Just like "herd immunity" was suppressed as even a topic of discussion once the cash started to flow.
I like my super villains to be clever, or to have complex motives. But in this case, if something seems inexplicable, but led to greater profits for Big Pharma...well, that ain't "inexplicable" now, is it?
Check out Coronavirus Tracker - NY Times and John Hopkins U.
Why? The NYT lies all the time. If you cannot provide me with a specific link that shows anything from these 6 "major" studies, then you are reaming me with useless information.
The UofMN did write a letter to the FDA seeking EUA for Fluvoxamine -- an anti-anxiety drug!
There was a report that the Oxford PRINCIPLE study was suspended because it couldn't obtain the drugs.
Every story about the NYT on Covid is easily countered by alternative sources like Robert Malone. I'm not supporting Malone or the rest of the FLCCC, I'm saying that what they advertise -more- than effectively counters the MSM.
I'm not a medical researcher. I've tried to read at least some of the dozens of studies on PubMed. Studies that are frauds and studies that claim X only to be countered by studies that debunk X.
There it is. Who am I suppose to believe?
If I pick a side, it is simple to find articles to support my pre-disposed position. The problem is, when I look for articles to rebut those articles, there are a plethora of them.
So, again, where are the reports from those 6 "major" studies? I don't care what the results are. I only care that they report.
Only replying to say I've had a similar experience. It's now standard procedure when I find a source I think I trust to then actively seek out 'debunk' articles/videos and hear what they have to say about my trusted source (after getting burned blindly trusting John Campbell on everything). I have yet to find a source that doesn't eventually shit the bed, but I think some are far superior to others (TWiV for instance), even if I don't always agree with their interpretations. But MSM...fuckin forget about it.
That conflicting ideas part, actual science.
Your conclusion about the MSM? Perfectly valid, and extends beyond Covid.
yes, debating different interpretations is part of science, but it's not science when the scientists can't set aside their bias and ambition enough to be honest actors
Paragraph 5 could state "Studies that claim X only to ACTUALLY claim Y". I've seen a couple of these, HUGELY (and inexplicably) promoted. Heather Heying deconstructed one, and the study was so shamefully bad even I could understand the chicanery.
They are losing control of the narrative and they hate that, so by eliminating any narrative they won't lose control. What could go wrong?
Is the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt anti-Semitic or Outrageously Hypocritical?
In July 2020, The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) adopted definitions of “racism” which excluded most Jews as possible targets of racism, Each of its definitions limited racism to actions against “People of Color.” Until a day ago, the ADL’s first definition was:
“Racism: The marginalization and/or oppression of PEOPLE OF COLOR based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.” (Caps added)
Then, on Monday, January 31, 2022, Whoopi Goldberg adopted the ADL’s definitions of racism in discussing the Holocaust, saying that it was an example of “man’s inhumanity to man” and “not about race.” Ms. Goldberg was immediately attacked and one of her loudest critics was Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League. All Whoopi did was agree with the ADL! Talk about grandiose hypocrisy!
BREAKING NEWS! Within the last day or so, the ADL has changed its definition of racism to:
Racism (interim definition): Racism occurs when individuals or institutions show more favorable evaluation or treatment of an individual or group based on race or ethnicity.
Obviously, the ADL changed its definition of racism because so many Jews started to scream and holler about the absurd definitions of racism being limited to only “people of color,” which exclude most, but not all, pre-War II Jews and most of today’s American Jews.
Did Greenblatt own up to his role? No! This is a serious moral failing. His organization is the one which set forth new definitions of racism according to the new Wokerism. Now Greenblatt wants to play the good guy role and pretend to help Whoopi. Here’s what Greenblatt said to CNN’s Chris Lemon on Tuesday night (Feb 1,2022)
“We sometimes have people in public places who can say clumsy things about race or faith or gender. I don’t believe in cancel culture. I like the phrase that my friend Nick Cannon uses. We need ‘counsel culture,’”
WTF? The person who needs counseling in Integrity 101 is Greenblatt. When Whoopi Goldberg was under fire for adopting the ADL definitions, Greenblatt threw gasoline on the fire, maintaining that "The Holocaust was about the Nazi's systematic annihilation of the Jewish people—who they deemed to be an inferior race."
Let’s Look at the ADL’s New “Interim” Definition
The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith started September 1913 and it now has only an interim definition of racism? And is it ever a bizarre one.
Racism now is not treating people badly but is treating one group more favorably than another group. That means all Affirmative Action programs are racist, but genocide is not. I guess we can see why it is an interim definition.
Why didn’t Greenblatt admit the ADL’s role and apologize to Whoopi in public and why did he not say in public that the ADL changed the definition which got Whoopi into trouble?
Geenblatt is Playing Us for Fools
The first definition of racism has been changed, but the ADL’s absurd 3rd definition remains the same.
“Systemic Racism: A combination of systems, institutions and factors that advantage white people and for PEOPLE OF COLOR, cause widespread harm and disadvantages in access and opportunity. One person or even one group of people did not create systemic racism, rather it: (1) is grounded in the history of our laws and institutions which were created on a foundation of white supremacy;* (2) exists in the institutions and policies that advantage white people and disadvantage people of color; and (3) takes places in interpersonal communication and behavior (e.g., slurs, bullying, offensive language) that maintains and supports systemic inequities and systemic racism.
“* In the above definition, the term “white supremacy” refers to the systematic marginalization or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges people who identify as white. It does not refer to extremist ideologies which believe that white people are genetically or culturally superior to non-whites and/or that white people should live in a whites-only society.”
Although the definition is close to incoherent a couple aspects seems clear.
(1) It only applies to people of color and thus excludes most American Jews. Thus a murdering Jews in a synagogue is not based on racism. Does it become racism if a dark skinned Sephardic Jew is killed?
(2) The other notable feature is that the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution on which our nation is founded are racist. The ADL’s second aspect of American racism is: “grounded in the history of our laws and institutions which were created on a foundation of white supremacy.” I guess Greenblatt has an edition of the Declaration of Independence which says “White people and only white people have inalienable rights.”
The whole Whoopi thing wouldn't be a problem, except Disney literally fired Gina C. for a completely non-offensive tweet warning that dehumanization was the first step of the holocaust. Now the company has painted itself into a huge corner.
I don't believe that bunch cares about being morally consistent. I do believe the woke crowd doesn't understand that the beast needs to devour, and when it runs out of its enemies, . . .
Live by the sword.........
Next. #WeRemember
Greenblatt was also in charge when 4chan trolled him about the entirely-invented "white power hand symbol" thing. Immediate panic.
Also note that power-grifter SLPC jumps onto all of these bandwagons, never content with the money that falls off the cart.
Very well said!!!
Yes, very well said. Second, after their personal power, is "The Mission" of the institution, which is not the nominal purpose for which the institution exists, but for the corollary mission of expanding the power and budget of the institution., This purpose is seldom if ever served by achieving the goal of the institution.
This all sounds knee-jerk cynical, but it does explain the behavior of institutions, ESPECIALLY governmental institutions. (my original source for this view was my old Dad, who was GS15 IN a governmental institution. He saw it.)
There is excellent article on your point discussing this special dynamic police departments, but for the moment, I have brain freeze and i cannot remember the author's name
Matt writes, "...the campaign to clamp down on alternative media...."
For all practical purposes, there is no alternative media. Unlike the Sixties (essentially mid-'60s through late '70s), what he is calling "alternative media" exists almost entirely online and thus dependent on the "goodwill" of mega-corporations. The minute so-called alternative media becomes a genuine threat to the profits and control of corporate America, it can be and will be closed off. The alternative press of fifty years ago did not depend on corporations, and though it had to fight Fed (and sometimes more local) efforts to intimidate printers, advertisers, and distributors, as well as the people who produced the papers, it nonetheless stuck to its guns (sometimes literally of necessity) and maintained a way to express, publicize, and organize a broad oppositional movement.
500-channel TV was sold to us (and I do mean SOLD!) with the line that now there would be more access for and to different groups and views, that people would now be exposed to many more parts of our multi-cultural reality. The exact opposite occurred. Suddenly you could be entertained and have whatever you already believed reinforced 24/7. The internet is 500-channel TV on steroids and speed.
As to the ability of effective online opposition: superficially, yes, but fundamentally, no. Corporations are not about to enable the cutting of their own throats. And that does not even get into government actions or the greater risk from hackers and trolls, whether national, group, or individual trying to cause division and chaos.
Yes, the alternative press was largely local (with significant national and regional exceptions). However, those papers could not be stopped by corporate power, as they were produced with local resources. Even the Feds threatening advertisers, printers, and press people had very limited effect, because people were willing to walk the walk, not merely talk the talk, the reality of today's "opposition", an "opposition" largely limited to whining online, not willing to acknowledge there aint no free lunch, that to make actual change rather than just stake out a position, you have to be willing to get down and dirty, to take personal risks and personally sacrifice.
Three things to keep in mind:
1/ The entire business model of the internet is clickbait. It really is that simple.
2/ The Democrats have yet to figure out why solidly Democrat West Virginia became solidly Republican West Virginia in the political wink of an eye.
3/ Trump is more much more effect than cause, a salesman/entertainer who is an excellent fit for a society that values American Idol, The Apprentice,, likes, recommends, clicks, etc. over substance.
Summing up, every bit of online media with a national focus absolutely adores Donald Trump. He is their meal ticket, a clickbaiter's wet dream.
In the summer of 2020 I started reading lots of local papers (online.) I had realized that the national press across the entire political spectrum all had a specific agenda designed to appeal to a very specific demographic. At the same time, local papers had to appeal to whomever was around in order to stay in business, an invariably more diverse group. At the time I had six Montana papers I followed. (Fewer now.) While both before and after the election the national media was saturated with stories about every real or imagined Trump fart and every real or imagined reaction to the real or imagined fart, in Montana, the heart of Trump country, there was rarely even a mention of Trump in the local papers.
And then they came for me.
Two giants that I will miss because I have an Android. If Call In can remedy this in the next 37 minutes, I'd love to participate.
Live listening (and playback when the episode is published) is now available on the web app/website. Anyone can listen-in live from a computer or Android via the website. Link here: https://www.callin.com/room/discussion-with-glenn-greenwald-on-censorship-YVbUqvkxZW. Native Android app coming in a few weeks, but this works in the meantime.
Charlie, thanks for the link and info. I was able to listen for a few minutes about a half hour in, and the recording is available now. Looking forward to the update you mentioned. So appreciate Matt and Glenn. Clear voices of reason. Because the song was not originally: KEEP ON ROCKIN' IN THE CENSORED WORLD. And the phrase was not: DON'T QUESTION AUTHORITY. For 🦊 sake!
Any chance you could discuss the global monetary reset that's scheduled for the weekend of the February 22nd? It's pretty clear from the numbers they're going bankrupt everyone and bailout themselves again.
Also. Prepare for the valentine's day massacre... 👀 Yes I'm serious and it's pretty obvious if you know where to look.
Watch the Nasdaq it'll be green soon.
Love both your work. You'll love mine...
I'm hoping to call in today. Not sure this crowd (i.e. commenters on Matt's Substack) will appreciate this reference/link, but I've been getting a lot out the "Decoding the Gurus" podcast. Aside from the usual IDW suspects they cover, they've done very good episodes on Rogan (pre-Malone/McCullough) as well as the Malone/McCullough episodes specifically. They also just put out a short(er) one on Rogan's Insta "apology," but I believe it's only available for Patreon supporters. For my money, this pair of podcasters (Chris, an Irish anthropologist who lives in Japan and Matt, an Australian pysch professor) not only do a very good job "decoding" the rhetoric of their subjects, but Chris is pretty damn funny.
https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm
He is very funny, but from what I’ve seen his thinking is awfully reductive. I would not call him nuanced, really. In fact, sometimes I detect a kind of bitter jealousy of “influencers” in general. It happens.
I don't see him that way (i.e. reductive), but to each his own.
AWESOME!!!!
I listened to the recording, this was fantastic Matt. More of Glenn and others please.
Just so people don't miss this exchange of ideas. Clearly, it should be noted that one of the obvious problems with the Taibbi and Greenwald followers, as you can see below, is that they love to disagree and deny what has already been shown conclusively in case filings and court records going back for years. Then they respond with Republicon talking points with little, if any, evidence. It's hard to take them seriously.
Jdalbey 9 hr ago
Trump? So someone that wants jobs to stay in the USA is a racist? Trump was a wage earners revolt from the oligarchy
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Nick Kehrlein1 hr ago
he said that so people would vote for him, he didn't actually do anything towards that. the china tarriffs were ineffective and the only other thing he did was give money to rich people. None of it addressed the root cause of why the jobs are offshored in the first place. Ironically what would need to happen, policy that ensured jobs couldn't be offshored, would be labeled "communism" if it were done by anyone else.
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Jdalbey1 hr ago
I think he tried but from day one both sides hated him.
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Kehrlein1 hr ago
I think it’s best to judge politicians by what the do rather than what they vaguely mention. Trump clearly cares only about himself and does not care one bit for the working class. Even his tax cuts missed the working class, he only gave them to their bosses
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Jdalbey1 hr ago
Disagree
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Jack MudryWrites Jack’s Newsletter ·7 hr ago
If that's all you know about Don the CON'S racism and corruption, then you are part of the problem. T-RUMP is part of the oligarchy and anybody who believes that he's not is naïve and totally misinformed. BTW, the vast majority of people of color are wage earners and they DID NOT vote for the CON. Thank you.
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Jdalbey1 hr ago
Disagree
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Jack MudryWrites Jack’s Newsletter ·just now
You can disagree all you want, but the facts are the facts. He comes from a wealthy father who was a real estate magnate who subsidized him at every turn and rescued him from a number of failures, but couldn't rescue him from all his financial disasters. David Kay Johnson, Pulitzer prize winning journalist, has written extensively about Don the CON and research his 5 bankruptcy filings and all the suits against him and the millions of $$$ he has paid in fines. This is part of an extensive public record, so you can deny it all you want but that just shows your total lack of credibility. As for the tax cuts, the vast majority of money saved by taxpayers went to the upper 1% of income earners like T-RUMP, who was the only
President who refused to reveal his tax returns. Finally, I said that the vast majority of people of color are wage earners(very easy to verify) and they did not vote for the predator in chief. No experts or analysts dispute that. So, all in all, your silly and empty answer of "disagree" is just posturing by someone with no knowledge or expertise, just puffery. Go back to school !
"This is Jack’s Newsletter, a newsletter about Taibi and Greenwald."
This is, quite frankly, fucking hilarious. So you're expecting people to pay you to read your criticisms of Matt & Glenn's commenters? Or will it consist entirely of your interpretations of what they write? Or will it be full of fawning love for Matt & Glenn with long strings of comment board quotes with your "incites" sprinkled throughout like nuggets of sputum?
Do you actually think anyone cares?
The message board here appears exactly like every other internet message board I've ever read. Oodles & oodles of bullshit & venting that has about as much chance of changing anything as a BB has of deflecting a continent sized asteroid.
I have to say that I envy the free time you must have to actually traverse these long comment streams just to point out that the commenters are spewing "Republican talking points."
Not much of a life buddy.
If they bug you that much the easy solution would be to just read Matt's articles & then just move on & go about your day.
"Oodles & oodles of bullshit & venting that has about as much chance of changing anything as a BB has of deflecting a continent sized asteroid." Accurate.
In the absence of a software solution (Mute button), I have substituted an internal one.
I call it the "Oh, this asshole" Filter. When someone has PROVEN to be an NPC, a zombie or a tool of the powers-that-be, I just don't read or respond to their posts.
YOU, Jack, are right there.
The protest in Canada is about the right to protest not the protests themselves. Her in Quebec we are over 85% for the right to protest and we are 85% in support of our government. This is not the USA. We are a democracy it is our government it does not belong to corporations. In Canada corporations have the same rights as rocks and toilet tissue. 85% of our truckers support both the government and the right to protest.
This is what press freedom looks like. It is rather empirical.
https://www.latribune.ca/2022/02/03/envoyer-larmee-a-ottawa-nest-pas-dans-les-cartes-de-justin-trudeau-photosvideos-0846d7e8822f97bb10263a63976a9570
Yeah, I wondered how he would resolve his Turdeau worship with the demonstrable authoritarian behavior of that asshole. Turns out he's just gonna state two incompatible things and go blathering off. Your brain's failing, Moe.
Gee, maybe he'll get to be President!
(Turdeau's just lucky noted revolutionary Neil Young has more important things to address, in other countries. If Neil noticed oppression in his own beloved country, he'd give them a good warbling, I'm sure.)
How much more blatant can they be?
I wish folks will cite dates of these censorship events. Also enough with the comments callers - how about some questions?
Listening in (no Apple product) Could someone ask for comments on the emerging theme of couching the censorship argument within the "publisher/platform" argument. It seems to me that there is an intellectual slight of hand here: inverting court precedent giving private companies the right to moderate content into an obligation to do so. The FT editorial board made this argument today, arguing that Spotify needed to moderate disinformation, ironically in a piece that repeated the "horse dewormer" line.
The "publisher/platform argument" is just threats from government to remove the social media's protection from libel/slander suits. They are getting around the First Amendment free speech guarantee by having those who control the commons do the censoring for them.
They are using "public health and safety" as the foot in the door.
I hope you see this, Matt...
I tried to listen to you and Bret Whazizname on Bari's podcast.
You did good, but that motherfucker rolled over you, and monopolized the first hour by a mile.
No, I don't think it's Bari's job to rein you two in; you're both grownups, right?
Here's the thing...
You have an amazing command of language when you write. Debating's not really in your wheelhouse. I hope you're not beating up yourself too much over it (I'll put $ on you having done so).
The fact is Brett Whoziz (I know what his last fuckin' name is, I just wanna dis him) is more experienced in this arena than you are. Or maybe more naturally gifted. He failed utterly to address directly a single point you raised; instead he deflected like he was on the bridge of The USS Enterprise battling Klingons.
You're pushing 50 (yeah, I know you're over 50, but either way you're a kid to this old fart, k? lol). You don't need to develop this skill set.
It's not that Whatchamacallit's all that good, or that he made better points; he just dominated the conversation. Shit, it was so reminiscent of Maher. (Yeah, I'm a fan of yours...)
Greenwald woulda made this chump cry (if Bretty had the balls to engage him; but I'll bet he'd punk out). Just remember: Glenn's trained in that shit, okay?
None of your points in that 1st hr (I hadda turn it off) were answered nor diminished. You did a good job in that department.
I think the world's a better place for you doing what you do. Which is good, b/c ol' Brett and his half-assed (tho' ubiquitous) perspectives make it a harder place to live in every time he opens his mouth or writes some half-assed shit.
You're a good guy doing good work. And what you're doing here on Substack is fucking important in so many ways.
hey matt. this seemed like a good place to drop this topic. I have included a twitter link below. in the last couple of hours several twitter accounts of folks in the Fantom NFT space have been shut down without warning, reason or regard. a piece on this would be informative, and at this point, I think necessary.
https://twitter.com/southardww/status/1491224286526590982?s=20&t=UvmpGK8_uNPiyys5e2V8pg
Hopefully either you or Glen are digging into the Ukraine/Russia thing. I am avoiding most mainstream media because I don't trust a thing the say as the mouth piece of the propaganda machine. As much as censorship matters to me, I ask that you tell me whether to care about the hysteria my friends and coworkers are speaking about, or if this is fear mongering. Keep doing the work you do.
I’m sure many of us here are keeping an eye on the Canadian trucker’s protest. I read on Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity site, which I respect, a lengthy guest post from Canadian subscriber about the situation. He cited the use of crisis communication firms by politicians there to aggressively shape public perception and suspected it would be used against the truckers. The commenter questioned the authenticity of polling data used to give impression of a public bias in favor of the politician/govt position cited as in media coverage.
I had never considered that — naive as I am. I don’t know if that’s possible (or so common as to be cliche). But wanted to note it in case others and/or MT view it as a possible trick in the bag of govt-media propaganda.
Evidently the trucker protest seems to have a lot of grassroots support, but it’s hard to quantify that support. Polling data would be one way, but whether published poll data is true or simply fabrication is not clear to me. Obviously any polling firm can publicize polling data results, so there’s no “barriers to entry” preventing accurate polling, assuming a polling firm is motivated. They may not be if they view going against mainstream messaging as deleterious to their business interests. Maybe this issue would merit scrutiny by interested journalists? I don’t know, but leave it here just for consideration, since polling data is often used in political and cultural reporting.
Still limited to Apple only?
I left Chicago 15 years ago and returned to mon payee. Fifteen years ago Quebec's revolution had already occurred and Quebec had decided on a social democracy and a free press. Quebec is a secular humanist liberal democracy. It is amazing to me how little America has done to adapt to the revolutionary changes taking place.
Gilles Vigneault has asked to be taken off Spotify
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G551bmF4AhA
Do not want Social Media to be my news source. Do check it until I break the habit. FB is and always has been postcards and magazine articles to flip through.
You guys are doing great work. Thank you!
Sound like a good one!
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/