The Sovietization of the American Press

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-sovietization-of-the-american

by andrenth • 5 years ago

130 78 5 years ago

taibbi.substack.com

u678u2• 5 years ago

To me its crazy too about how the rioters in the Capitol are rightly prosecuted, but the riots in Portland Federal Courthouse as still going on and nytimes wont even mention it.

EDIT: I hate bringing politics on HN, but cnn/nytimes have become the mirror of fox. Biden/Democrats are wonderful and do no wrong, Trump/GOP are always doing bad things. Just as the Taibbi article says.

r00fus• 5 years ago

Maybe because one is actually a treasonous riot and the other just a protest?

BrawnLongHaul• 5 years ago

The mental gymnastics to reach this conclusion (assuming you are not being scarcastic) are astounding!

ekianjo2• 5 years ago

just a protest?

That's called bending reality after half of year of burning and looting in major cities I guess?

ryandvm• 5 years ago

Treason is kind of a stretch.

A real coup involves the military and people actually taking over the role of government. We were not even close to that. January 6th was incredibly embarrassing, but it wasn't even a proper attempt at overthrowing the government.

The Capitol riots were basically just the kind of thing that happens when you have too many morons in the same place at the same time. Sort of a critical mass of idiocy.

goatinaboat• 5 years ago

treasonous

Genuine question: what do you think about “autonomous zones”? Isn’t seceding from the state usually pretty serious? The US fought a civil war over it last time someone did that.

bsiemon• 5 years ago

I believe Garland was asked about this specific issue in his hearing. He said that the distinction was that in Portland the 'riots' are not disrupting the normal function of government.

DamnYuppie• 5 years ago

What about the functioning of the populace and business? The purpose of government is to have a stable society, letting those things go seems to completely fly in the face of all of that.

bluefirebrand• 5 years ago

Translation: It doesn't affect the ruling class or the elite class so who cares?

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS• 5 years ago

Which is silly -- if they damage the building at night, and the people can't work there the next day, doesn't that 'disrupt the normal function of government'?

JPKab3• 5 years ago

I like Merrick Garland, and thought it was tragic he's not on the Supreme Court.

That being said, the riots in PDX (my brother lives there, and I was there in the summer when it was happening) were an example of a complete, willful capitulation of local government to radicals. The Capital Riot was an involuntary capitulation of the police to radicals. There is something very insidious about the former. It's reminiscent of the local government collaboration/capitulation to the KKK in 1960s Dixie.

Also, what about the occupation of several blocks in Seattle all summer long? People in congress who said absolutely nothing about a months long, armed occupation that took place with no buy-in from residents have moaned and feigned fear for their lives over a single, day long occupation of their workplace. I completely lost respect for Congressperson Ocasio-Cortez over the appalling disconnect between her perception of danger, vs the actual danger she was in during the riot. It really had the hallmarks of narcissism when viewed with the perspective of utter silence and indifference to the armed occupation of an entire neighborhood of Seattle for weeks.

President Obama's final interview before leaving office included a statement of his deep concern for the "balkanization of the media" landscape. He was right.

adventured2• 5 years ago

Not a single firearm was recovered from the Capitol riot. Only a few people are believed to have been carrying weapons, a few were charged.

In CHAZ / Seattle their self-proclaimed warlord was handing out AK47s from the back of a car. They set up blockades with semi-automatic weapons and intentionally murdered two teenagers, shooting at their vehicle.

But yeah, the great superpower almost got couped by the guy in the buffalo hat, walking around calmly like a moron. The Capitol Police intentionally, very plainly, let the rioters walk into the building (opening the doors and standing aside), and it's all on video, which you can find across Twitter. None of this is allowed to be discussed, all of it is being aggressively censored by the big technocrat autocracy.

I heard the term Blue Anon the other day for the first time. So I go to Google to find out what it is. Google had censored the term and results. That was the first time I got the chill of feeling like I was living in firewall China. You'd think that term led to something illegal, but no, it was trivial, and they still couldn't stand it and had to try to control it.

The theater game going on in DC right now with the national guard? I've got one word for you: staged.

It's a sick joke. The cultural civil war is well underway.

edit: and of course now this link is being censored from HN, naturally

MattGaiser3• 5 years ago

Not a single firearm was recovered from the Capitol riot. Only a few people are believed to have been carrying weapons, a few were charged.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/feb/15/ron-johnso...

alecb• 5 years ago

It's pretty bizarre how much overlap there is between HN commenters and people who have been rewired by the Facebook news feed.

u678u2• 5 years ago

Turns out the policeman who died was from a stroke, he wasn't hit with a fire extinguisher. Doesn't fit the narrative either.

7952• 5 years ago

The capitol riot was a single event tied to a specific circumstance. Whilst the Portland situation has been ongoing in different forms since last summer. The continuation of that does not prove a lack of police action. Merely that police action has not effected the motivation of some people.

briantakita• 5 years ago

The FEDS & other entities have infiltrated all major dissident "movements" on the political left & right, paying/lightening sentences of convicted criminals and/or manipulating gullible ideologues to do sensationalist acts.

Que Bono? Many parties. News Outlets & Social Media get more clicks from the outrage, Agencies get bigger budgets, Shows are made, Startups can build products to "combat disinformation" & "fight censorship", Researchers receive grants to study the population, Politicians have a distracting cover story to pass legislation/EO's that would have caused alarm in calmer circumstances, etc.

It's all theater or Professional Wrestling. Enjoy the show.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe

mssundaram• 5 years ago

I first learned about Kayfabe from here https://coronacircus.com/2020/06/02/welcome-to-kayfabe/

haltingproblem• 5 years ago

Simple. The people at the Capitol were not their rioters so they were armed hostage takers, a thrust for a coup, armed insurrectionists etc.

The people at the Portland Federal Courthouse are their rioters who are brave dissenters expressing civil disobedience in the tradition of Gandhi and MLK. They are advancing the cause of marginalized communities who lack a voice. Portland is a tertiary city so no govt business of note happens at the federal courthouse hence no disruption of normal function. /s

See how easy it is? Of course when the tables are turned the other side will do the same inversion and law and order will degenerate and so will our society.

antidaily2• 5 years ago

Hacker news?

naringas2• 5 years ago

I would argue that many of these changes the world is going throught are technological in principle.

the perpsective that the pandemic merely accelerated already ongoing trends towards remote work, and the growth of internet-centric society?

i.e. all because of the internet?? I know it's a stretch...

phcordner• 5 years ago

pg is a known fan of the cancel culture complaint think tank industrial complex

antidaily2• 5 years ago

Cool cool. Is that why it got flagged?

JPKab3• 5 years ago

If you think about the Press as being the SEC, and the political elite as Wall Street, what we have today is a full regulatory capture of the corporate media by each political party.

The GOP got Fox, WSJ, and a bunch of smaller players.

The Democrats got basically everything else.

It should be noted that only the elite, corporate friendly wings of each party controls these media orgs. Not the more grassroots elements.

samspenc• 5 years ago

Just a quick note that I consider WSJ (Wall Street Journal) neutral, they mostly report on business news and I find their news to be fairly non-biased.

naringas2• 5 years ago

what if... the soviets had had an internet and computers? what would have come from central planning? would it have been a failure?

Maybe the chinese will answer this questions...

nix233• 5 years ago

Maybe the chinese will answer this questions...

I think they did that already:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System

Daho0n• 5 years ago

That doesn't answer his question.

WannaFly• 5 years ago

you can see how central planers screwd us economy, and how seeds of capitalism turn china in to top economy.

nix233• 5 years ago

27% of chinese peoples (in 2011) have around 5$ per day...top economy!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China

rtuulik• 5 years ago

https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-soviets-invented-the-internet...

BaseS42• 5 years ago

Snide Response: In Soviet Russia, media watches you!

Substantive Response: Mass Produced Journalism, be it's consumption or production, is purely a therapeutic exercise for the vain and the neurotic. Actual Investigative Journalism is dangerous for the investigators.

The only thing keeping journalist outfits going is the monumental amount of blackmail they've accumulated since the dawn of the camera. We all get to suffer with the journalist's delusions of grandeur because they have footage of a Rothschild grandchild slumming it once.

thisiscorrect• 5 years ago

To your latter point, the Jeffrey Epstein case was the first time I'd really considered kompromat on American politicians and other elite as a prime motivation for many of the decisions we see out of DC. Was that also an eye opener for others? Maybe it just reflects naivety or lack of imagination on my part.

BaseS42• 5 years ago

Understand why Bezos bought WaPo now?

Big ol' CIA-authorized blackmail stash in their archives

mlillie• 5 years ago

Yes, we have one party here. But so does America. Except, with typical extravagance, they have two of them!

- Julius Nyerere

ck2• 5 years ago

Oh sure, the left definitely just falls in line and makes excuses to protect their own regardless of issue or logic.

Except not. The left DESTROYS their own. I think you have parties confused.

Reaching for "soviet" comparisons is like going to a Nazi reference, the conversation is essentially over.

jkingsbery• 5 years ago

Both parties destroy their own.

There are a number of anti-Trump Republican politicians. For standing up to Trump, they face primary challenges and other career-affecting blow-back.

The left also destroys its own sometimes. An interesting recent case is Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, who after (1) making a decision that we now understand is poor which lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths, (2) forced a government health organization to change a report solely for political reasons, (3) has bullied pretty much everyone in New York state politics, AND (4) now has 6 credible (i.e., not necessarily true, but believable) accusations of impropriety from women that worked for him, Democrats are suggesting that maybe he be investigated.

The comparison to the Soviets should always be careful. The original article does a good job showing actual examples of the parallels, so we can see that the comparison goes only as far as media treatment.

sethc26• 5 years ago

I just finished reading “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles, and it gives good (though likely biased) context after the Bolshevik Revolution, that made reading this article more thought provoking than I think it would be.

Though even if you hate Biden, he isn’t Stalin, just as Trump wasn’t Hitler. The media is absurd to me though. Seriously they lack any sort of principle it seems. Whatever “The Party” is doing is right. (For Fox News the party being Republican, and democrat for all else)

MattGaiser3• 5 years ago

At least two of the articles cited as problematic are opinion columns.

Biden's historic victory for America

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/06/opinions/biden-gop-relief-bil...

the paper joined most of the rest of the press corps in howling in outrage.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trum...

bioinformatics• 5 years ago

So, you are saying that editors, publishers of the paper just print whatever opinion pieces they receive?

MattGaiser3• 5 years ago

Opinion columns openly take sides. They are not news and they do not pretend to be so.

jenkstom• 5 years ago

It just amazes me how QAnon crazy opinion pieces are making it to the front page of HN now. I find this way more disturbing than I should I guess.

Rompect2• 5 years ago

How can it be crazy if you can literally see the different headlines for the same thing?

disgrunt2• 5 years ago

Matt Taibbi is QAnon now? What isn't QAnon in your mind?

Tycho• 5 years ago

However you characterize the Capitol riot, it's fair to say it was a huge story. And the NYT flubbed it badly - they misreported the most incendiary detail, spreading the false claim that a police officer had been bludgeoned to death by a fire extinguisher wielded by members of the mob. But NYT seems to have suffered zero loss of status due to this - very peculiar.

Also interesting was that the only TV reporter on the ground when the event was happening was from ITV News, a British station.

silicon2401• 5 years ago

But NYT seems to have suffered zero loss of status due to this - very peculiar.

Not peculiar at all: in the modern age of constant media feeds, what matters most is something to post and get views/clicks. Whatever happens after that is immaterial

This is why I began actively avoiding the news. What they show is arbitrary: their real goal is just making you think there's a breaking scoop in the next few minutes/posts, so keep consuming. If it's uninteresting, boring, incomplete, or misreported as in your example, it doesn't matter to them. So why should it matter to us?

Rompect2• 5 years ago

Also interesting is a comparison of the articles of Trump and Obama by Wikipedia's founder

https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

sethc26• 5 years ago

Why is this post flagged? It’s like someone actually wants to prove the author correct in his views.

h2odragon• 5 years ago

There's plenty of places for flamewars; and the HN mods try to avoid hosting them. I can't disagree, the flamewars need to happen, but they don't have to happen here, and the HN policies have been applied with a consistent excellence that I respect.

sethc26• 5 years ago

I found the article interesting is all, probably because I just read a historical fiction book on post wwi Russia and so I thought it was a thought provoking article, that is good to discuss even if biased.

I think it is a fair point, and flagging it just seems to prove the point that criticism of “The Party” isn’t allowed.

I think HN mods do a good job too, but that is why this is disappointing to me. I’ve seen far more biased articles around politics, causing much more heated flame wars than this, that haven’t been flagged.

luckylion2• 5 years ago

The mods will regularly remove flags from articles that are coming from a progressive point though, so I don't think the "no flamewars/flame bait" actually holds water.

xirbeosbwo1234• 5 years ago

It's a shame that the necessary work of criticizing our media is so often undertaken dishonestly.

When Donald Trump made the same calculation, saying he couldn’t cut ties

This is not what happened.

Donald Trump denied that the Saudi royalty was known to be behind the murder of Khashoggi despite the conclusions of U.S. intelligence. He was part of the coverup, obscuring the known facts to preserve his relationship with bin Salman. Joe Biden, on the other hand, said bin Salman was responsible for his murder but decided not to penalize him.

Both of those decisions are unacceptable to me. That does not make them the same.

Say what you will about the New York Times, but they rarely tell lies as brazenly as Mr. Taibbi.

dkarl2• 5 years ago

The news is catering to people's appreciation of the change from the Trump era. We'll get bored with it after a while, and they'll have to spice things up.

I think it's very difficult to figure out where we go from here, though. American mainstream media has always aspired to be nonpartisan in the sense of being politically inclusive, a common ground where people come to get not only facts but also a sense for the range of reasonable opinion about the issues of the day. How can you give a sense for the breadth of opinion in a country that contains congressional districts that elected both Marjorie Taylor Greene and AOC? (To be clear, I don't mean to denigrate AOC by mentioning her in the same breath as Greene.) How can you maintain journalistic integrity and also present opinions that can only be explained by repeating a litany of known falsehoods?

I think it will require a new approach from staid old-school media outlets that tend to make everything sound blandly reasonable unless they are actively denouncing it. That approach won't last, because it's tiring to read the same outrage time after time. Soviet press could get away with it because they had a monopoly, but American newspapers won't keep doing something that wears on readers. They need to figure out a way to inform readers of the full range of beliefs of Americans without making them all sound reasonable, and at the same time without endlessly resorting to outrage.

gsharm• 5 years ago

It arguably wasn't even a legitimate win, and questioning it was censored away by big tech, as well as censored during the election period (e.g. the Hunter Biden story).

This censorship was executed brazenly and openly.

See: https://www.creators.com/read/dennis-prager/01/21/the-most-i...

Many of us on the centre-right are fed up and aren't even engaging anymore. I've unfollowed all my politics feeds. The left can eat themselves for the next 4 years.

IAmWorried• 5 years ago

Yeah, this is where I'm at too. Whenever I see any story from WaPo or NYT I refuse to click. The lies and blatant propaganda are just too much for me. My values have shifted quite a bit in the last year, with the rise of the crazy cancel culture, censorship, and race baiting.

Honestly I wish I had been born in China at this point. I would rather not be able to criticize the government than live in this stupid politically correct shithole.

nickpp• 5 years ago

And of course - flagged.

The Sovietization of the American Press

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