Media Madness: 2020

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Film Sessions: Oligarchs will let the world burn by Thought Slime (New)

Editor's note: well, it's been an interesting past couple of days for me to say the least; if you're wondering why I'm not on Twitter, please check out my latest article on ninaillingworth.com - have yourself a merry Christmas indeed. In light of the week I've been having and the fact that we're all still living through a nightmare, neofeudalist, Captain Trips holiday season, I thought I'd pick a video for this week's film session that is both viscerally satisfying and not particularly taxing on the memory banks; hopefully you enjoy this one as much as I did.

Well, despite the fact that I’m having one of the crappier weeks of my professional life, I have managed to continue picking my way through left wing YouTube channels and video creators in the middle of all the chaos. In today’s film session, I’m going to highlight a sixteen minute feature on a channel called Thought Slime. The creator behind Thought Slime first came to my attention when I was researching an article about fascism and looking for reliable citations about the crypto-fascist street gang, the Proud Boys. Although I only ended up using that video for a couple of citations, I remembered this person’s excellent (if perhaps a bit stripped down) work, and decided to check out their channel when I was poking around for more content to familiarize myself and my audience with.

Although I really don’t know that much about this creator that you can’t find on their Wikitubia page, and I must admit the delivery is at times a little dramatic, this video appealed to me because it opens by focusing on an area I’ve studied and one of the more inexplicably monstrous decisions by established American power in living memory – the wholly unnecessary bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the closing phases of World War II; conducted primarily for the purposes of intimidating the Soviet Union and opening up the era of “mutually assured destruction” in what we know today as The Cold War.

Much to my delight however, it turns out this was only the beginning of the discussion and the focus of the video is actually an issue I write about constantly, even though it seems to alienate many of the folks around me – the fact that rich people are absolutely fine with killing every last one of us for pennies on the dollar, while trying to enact out unhinged Lex Luthor-esque fantasies about running to Mars, rather than surrender one single iota of power, influence or ability to exploit their fellow man for profit. On this issue, Thought Slime and I could not be more in agreement (which perhaps makes sense, since we’re both apparently anarchists) and it is refreshing to find someone, anyone else, willing to say this out loud; I am absolutely chuffed about the mere existence of this video.

In addition to World Wars and nuclear annihilation, Thought Slime also touches on the fossil fuel industry, a coronavirus response that looks like eugenics and how the election of Donald Trump caused them to question fundamental assumptions about how the world works, eventually leading our host to anarchism (and me to a couple more Youtube creators to add to my “check em out” list.) The end result is a highly entertaining attack on rule by elites, the power of the state and Piers Morgan eating something called a “Santa’s Yum Nut” - and for a sixteen minute video that also features a brief side discussion about Indigenous Christian Anarchism in Taiwan, that’s probably the most you can hope for.

If I do have one quibble however, it’s that Thought Slime clearly uses “the state” and “elite rule” to mean precisely the same things and that’s a fine rhetorical position to adopt, but probably could have been explained better to an audience that is unlikely to have read most of the books on the wonderful reading list the creator shows at 8:11. Naturally, as an anarcho-syndicalist myself, I’m not looking to eliminate the state so much as eliminate the difference between state power and people power – in essence, through an aggressively participatory democracy, to make the common people, into the state itself. Obviously however Thought Slime and I both clearly agree that elite rule has gotta go and thus, I had no real problem with how they were using the terms interchangeably – and including my favorite Rudolf Rocker book on the reading list certainly warmed my heart to see.

Oligarchs will let the world burn.

Additional Resources

Thought Slime Youtube Channel

Thought Slime Wikitubia Entry

No Illusions

Praxis of Evil

The Hammering In My Head

Six Things I Think: Tomb-World Politics Edition

Capitalism, Climate Crisis & the Rise of Fascism in the Pig Empire

Rocker Anarcho-Syndicalism Theory and Practice Discussion

A Brief Thought: Live & Let Die

- nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Film Sessions: An Economic Hit Man Confesses and Calls to Action from TEDxTraverseCity featuring John Perkins

Editor's note: right, so as I mentioned last night, ongoing Facebook f*ckery is forcing me to move my weekly film sessions posts over here, to Media Madness. Thankfully, this is the last backlogged video I have to crosspost and then going forward I'll just post new film sessions here and on Facebook simultaneously.

This post originally appeared on my Facebook Page on December 22nd, 2020.

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Okay, it seems like maybe I’m going to put things in the can for Christmas after all, despite having no plans really for this plague holiday. I’m feeling pretty run down, social media isn’t very much fun since this Dore-AOC debate broke, and my hype-man needs time off to recharge and visit loved ones. I did however promise a Sunday film study, and I’m here to deliver – albeit a day late.

Ideally, over the break I plan to finish another two film study posts and probably another Media Madness blog, if I can fit in some time after Christmas, but before the new year. Otherwise, please accept my hopes that you find a way to make a happy holiday out of these unique circumstances and I’ll be back with more formal writings sometime around January 2nd, 2021.

Earlier this week, I found myself hunting for a specific quote from New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, when I stumbled across this remarkable eighteen minute Tedx Talk he gave that I'm going to share with you today in our weekly Film Session.

First things first, I should remind you that as a Tedx Talk, and not just a regular TED Talk, this event merely copies the TED Talk format and was put together independently by people in Traverse City. Which makes a certain amount of sense, because Perkins describes precisely the kind of networks of economic power generated by corporations, the U.S. and American-aligned governments, the Pig Empire's covert agencies and yes, the U.S. military, that the truly elite Tech Bros and Davos Divas really would rather not talk about. So who is John Perkins and what is his book really about? Let’s turn to Wikipedia for a more concise answer than I would have written:

“The book heavily criticizes U.S. foreign policy and the widely accepted notion that "all economic growth benefits humankind, and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits." Perkins suggests that, in many cases, only a small portion of the population benefits at the expense of the rest, pointing to, as an example, an increase in income inequality, whereby large U.S. corporations exploit cheap labor, and oil companies destroy local environment.

Perkins describes what he calls a system of corporatocracy and greed as the driving forces behind establishing the United States as a global empire, in which he took a role as an "economic hit man" to expand its influence.

Perkins' function, according to the book, was to convince the political and financial leadership of developing countries to accept enormous development loans from institutions like the World Bank and USAID. Saddled with debts they could not hope to pay, such countries would then be forced to acquiesce to political pressure from the United States on a variety of issues. Perkins argues that these nations were effectively neutralized politically, with their wealth gaps driven wider and their long-term economies crippled. In this capacity, Perkins recounts his meetings with some prominent individuals, including Graham Greene and Omar Torrijos. Perkins describes the role of an economic hit man as follows:

Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools included fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.”

Of course, to say that given this type of backstory Perkins himself is a bit of an odd duck, would be a massive understatement, and when he first published Confessions of an Economic Hit Man back in 2004, his quirky personality and bizarre work history, were quickly weaponized by various appendages of the establishment to try and discredit the damning story his book had just told the world.

A funny thing happened when folks started to investigate into Perkins however, they discovered that on the whole, most of the claims that would be verifiable, checked out. Yes, he was in fact an economist with the then-powerful, U.S. government connected but widely anonymous firm Chas T. Main, yes he was in the developing countries he said he was, during the times he said he’d visited them, and yes, at one point Perkins’ boss at the firm said: “Basically his story is true.… What John's book says is, there was a conspiracy to put all these countries on the hook, and that happened. Whether or not it was some sinister plot or not is up to interpretation, but many of these countries are still over the barrel and have never been able to repay the loans” - although it should be noted that the executive, Einar Greve, would later walk back admitting the firm’s association with the NSA and some minor, but salacious parts of Perkins’ personal backstory.

The real eye-opener however was when the U.S. occupation and sham rebuilding of Iraq was exposed as a complicated American corporate welfare and influence trading scheme, virtually identical to the trap of debt, bombs and murder Perkins described in Confessions of an Economic Hitman. You’ll even hear him bring up a famous name from both his story, and the Iraq privatization scandals – Halliburton; remember them? Overall, there is a certain spy games, or cloak and dagger element to Perkins’ telling of his life story, but the simple truth is that this web of personal economic incentives for neocolonialist elites, trade agreements contingent on the installation and maintenance of a neofeudalist economy, or the brute force of Pig Empire missiles, taken together to form the system of control the author describes, are today well known as the tools by which America maintains global supremacy in a post-Cold War world.

Although this eighteen minute video below represents a decent enough overview of what Perkins exposed to the world, and the man is certainly no socialist, I would still encourage you to read (The New) Confessions of an Economic Hitman as a study in how the forces of debt, violence and capitalism come together to propagate Pig Empire rule over most of the planet. Furthermore, as I suggested in my original Instagram post, you could consider combining this with a review of Stanley Butler’s “War is a Racket” and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis’ “Adults in the Room” for a very thorough examination of how global capitalism actually works, from a behind the scenes perspective offered by actors in multiple different parts of the filthy drama and swindle.

In the meantime, please check out this short introduction spoken (rather quickly) by John Perkins himself, and try not to get caught up in his bizarre insistence that that there’s a difference between “good capitalism” and “predatory capitalism.”

An Economic Hit Man Confesses and Calls to Action

- nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Film Sessions: The Myth of a Free Press: Media Bias Explained from What the Theory? by Tom Nicholas

Editor's note: with Facebook continuing to threaten anarchist content, so I've been forced to move my weekly pinko film session posts here, to Media Madness.

This post originally appeared on my Facebook Page on December 19th, 2020.

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Unfortunately I got tied up this past weekend finishing off a couple of essays and in the commotion, I forgot to leave time for our weekly film session. Now that I’ve published a few things and had a chance to catch my breath, I thought I’d post a make-up session today.

This time I want to take a look at a rather lengthy video (55 minutes) by a creator who is really quite new to me; What the Theory’s Tom Nicholas. Now according to his rather thin Wikipedia stub, Nicholas is “a British economist currently the William J. Abernathy Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School” - which is kind of funny because he looks like the kid who shags balls at a football match, and most of his videos seem to be about philosophy, or political and social theory. Whether or not this is as a result of a Wikipedia identification mistake featuring two guys with the same name (the picture looks like the same dude,) I couldn’t tell you, but based on my extremely limited sample of one video – Tom is a pretty smart guy, with at least a reasonably nuanced grasp of media theory in a capitalist environment.

More interesting to us however, is the fact that while he’s hardly Leon Trotsky, Nicholas does appear to be at least a bit of a soft socialist; perhaps a low-key Corbynite running just a bit left of the average American democratic socialist. Although a quick scan of his Youtube channel shows that as a younger creator it took Tom a while to find his stride, and the pop culture and politics videos he makes seem of very dubious quality, his left perspective on major political and social theories videos are absolute master-classes in nerdy, informative Youtube videos; including shockingly high production values.

In today’s extended-length What the Theory video, Nicholas takes an extremely granular look at the reality of media bias under private control inside a supposedly adversarial and heroic free press; which as you may well know by now is a subject near and dear to my heart. What makes Tom’s work here at least a little unique however is that he combines the ideas of media theorists Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, as well as a little bit of Marxist sociologist and foundational cultural theorist Stuart Hall, with key observations using an actual BBC story from earlier this year, about the so-called “migrant crisis,” a British version of the American “migrant caravan” scare, to demonstrate how the propaganda model works to establish bias in practice. Indeed, the overall thrashing Nicholas gives the supposedly unbiased, public broadcaster (the BBC) is frankly worth the price of admission on this video by itself, but American viewers will discover that Tom consistently finds ways to relate content about British media back to the American media environment, which prevents the piece from becoming too localized to be of use to half the people reading this.

Nicholas opens by dissecting a BBC Newsnight presentation about a raft full of Iraqi asylum-seekers crossing the English Channel, and shows how through the use of framing, suggestive language, and a careful selection bias of consulted experts, the program strongly encourages you to assume certain ideas about, and attitudes towards the migrants. As will undoubtedly be all too familiar to U.S. viewers constantly inundated with propaganda demonizing migrants, these things are all bad; ideas like migrant crossings are a national crisis, migrants might be dangerous to British citizens, and something must be done to stop, um, destitute refugees fleeing Pig Empire wars. With this analysis as background context, Tom then goes on to explain the political, cultural, and of course financial reasons why the Newsnight program adopts these positions and encourages its viewers to do the same. Finally, using both the propaganda model, and Stuart Hall's theories about representation and meaning, our presenter demonstrates that not only is the media biased on behalf of wealth and power, but also in favor of the social and cultural hierarchies necessary to maintain the current order; which in today's Pig Empire society, means an order of unrestrained corporate power.

The end result is a satisfying (albeit earnest) video that does a very good job of bringing media bias bible Manufacturing Consent out of the late Cold War period, and into a thoroughly modernized and corporatized context. A great example of this might be how despite Manufacturing Consent’s hyper-focus on the issues of American imperialism and media bias, Nicholas demonstrates how the five propaganda filters work to shape coverage of issues the viewer will directly counter in their everyday life; like coverage of policing, Astroturf campaigns, and yes, the nature of establishment reporting on the so-called “migrant crisis.” Coincidentally, the fact that Nicholas’s work builds on the Five Filters of the Modern Media video I shared with you months ago, and touches on or reinforces some of the things I’ve been writing myself about the propaganda value of distorted framing in media stories, and the corporate media origins of “fake news” and lack of trust in the media institution as a whole, is just icing on the cake. I’ll include a number of related links for you to explore more if you so desire, in the comments below.

If I had to quibble with Tom’s work here, my first complaint would probably be the failure to even mention Michael Parenti and his 1986 work Inventing Reality; a book which Herman and Chomsky clearly borrowed from liberally (pun intended) without attribution – which is sometimes called “plagiarism” when you’re not America’s most celebrated “anarchist” intellectual. Furthermore, I would have liked to have seen a little more direct attack on the capitalist distortion of the final media product consumers are presented with, ala McChesney, and maybe even some explanation of how all encompassing the media propaganda sphere is, drawing on say a theorist like Marshall McLuhan. Given that the video is already fifty-five minutes long however, perhaps that is too big of an ask at this point.

All in all, this is a wonderful video if you’ve never read Manufacturing Consent, and still a reasonably worthwhile experience if like me, you most certainly have. That’s why I picked it for this week’s extremely late film study.

The Myth of a Free Press: Media Bias Explained

Additional Resources

Tom Nicholas Youtube Channel

Noam Chomsky - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine

Lying Without Lying: the Manipulation of Framing, Context & Depth in Corporate Media

Theory Discussion: Debunking the Myth of a Forgotten American Free Press

Theory Discussion: On Media, White Nationalism & Hugo Weaving

Why We Need Stuart Hall’s Imaginative Left

- nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Film Sessions: Jim Crow, Neoliberalism, And The Current Fascist Backlash Against Civil Rights Movements from Some More News with Cody Johnson

Editor's note: with Facebook continuing to threaten anarchist content, so I've been forced to move my weekly pinko film session posts here, to Media Madness.

This post originally appeared on my Facebook Page on December 6th, 2020.

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Quite frankly, I'm in the middle of a blog post that won't let me finish and I've had a maddeningly unproductive week that also didn't leave a whole lot of time for watching Youtube. So today I'm going to go back to Cody Johnson and Some More News to share one of the few videos I did watch this week, entitled "Jim Crow, Neoliberalism, And The Current Fascist Backlash Against Civil Rights Movements."

Now keeping in mind that this video was published on October 24th of this year, and thus some of the commentary on the (then) upcoming US election is slightly out of date, it's also fairly clear that Johnson recorded the material assuming that Joe Biden would in fact win the election - which due to the screwed up way the American electoral college works, and Trump's temper tantrum "chicken coup," was a little touch and go for way longer than it should have been, but ultimately did turn out to be the correct assumption.

With that noted however, the reason I'm sharing this video here today is because I'm tired, and after taking a tremendous amount of abuse for calling a fascist Trump administration, well, fascist, both over the past four years and astoundingly, even quite recently on social media from black helicopter leftists who read a lot of Ben Beanwald - someone sent me this video to remind me that I wasn't the only one who saw Trump and Trumpism for what they really were; I was just perhaps among the first.

In this thirty-nine minute feature, Cody Johnston manages to humorously examine vast swathes of American history to expose the triangle between capitalist exploitation, codified white supremacy, and the fascist backlash against any social progress by the marginalized, particularly African Americans. Johnston draws clear parallels between Jim Crow era America, and the modern fascist movement that solidified in American politics as Trumpism, while simultaneously demonstrating the role neoliberalism has had in creating the conditions necessary to produce fascism in the first place. It's funny, it's informative, and most importantly Cody is correct; which is a consistent feature of Some More News videos about American fascism.

Although it's not the entire focus of this episode, and Johnson's examination of the role of Jim Crow laws in particular (instead of general white supremacy and the doctrine of white nationalism, as I had) are crucial to the production, I can also say that Cody managed to fit about 90% of the things I wrote about the Pork Reich and all-American fascism into roughly half of a 40 minute video. Just about the only thing I wished he'd spent more time on here is the role of tech bro fascist billionaires in backstopping and funding this whole sh*tshow.

In the end, realizing that folks like Johnston were also seeing what I'd seen, was just the antidote I needed to get over being gaslit by crypto-reactionaries, who aren't even anti-capitalists, claiming to be "the real left" online - including many popular influencers like Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, and others.

I'll place some related links in the comments, including another short video by the Gravel Institute on why the Electoral College is bullsh*t, for added value. But yeah, I told you so; and if you're smart, you'll listen when I tell you that beating swine emperor Trump doesn't mean we've beaten fascism - these guys aren't going anywhere.

Jim Crow, Neoliberalism, And The Current Fascist Backlash Against Civil Rights Movements

Additional Resources

Some More News Youtube Channel

Trumpism Is Just A Synonym For Fascism

Stop Supporting Donald Trump, A Fascist

Fascism & Anti-Fascism: A Decolonial Perspective

How the Nazis Used Jim Crow Laws as the Model for Their Race Laws

The Long Shadow of Racial Fascism

Trump’s Answer to Structural Racism? Police State Fascism

Amerikan Musik: Fascism Ascendant in the USA Page

No Fugazi On Fascism: A Five Part Podcast Series

- nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Film Sessions: Baldwin Vs Buckley Pin Drop Speech

Editor's note: with Facebook continuing to threaten anarchist content, so I've been forced to move my weekly pinko film session posts here, to Media Madness.

This post originally appeared on my Facebook Page on November 29th, 2020.

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Well, I think at this point it's safe to say it's been a productive, if tiring ten days or so - in addition to two fully cited essays, this first week of blogging yielded another seven or so pieces of varying lengths. Obviously, I probably can't keep publishing something every day forever without burning out, but I'm feeling pretty good about the start we've got off to so far. As such, I'm going keep this post short, sweet and relaxing.

Of course, nobody ever said that relaxing couldn't be educational and that's where today's video comes in. In light of the fact that we just looked at a seventy minute video about Ben Shapiro (by Cody Johnson at Some More News) earlier this week – I thought it might be nice to briefly bask in the intellect and eloquence of one of American history's greatest minds and greatest orators; James Baldwin. Today's clip comes to us from the end portion of Baldwin's opening argument in his now famous 1965 Cambridge debate against the truly odious conservative faux intellectual William F. Buckley Jr. - for those of you interested, I'll include a link to the full debate below and an article that talks about why this debate was so important (and tragically remains so, to this very day.)

So roughly speaking – who were these men, and why should you be interested in this debate?

Well, James Baldwin was an African American writer, speaker, activist and intellectual whose work across a myriad of mediums (novels, plays, poetry, essays and public oration or, as we shall see below, debate) focused heavily on issues of marginalization in the Pig Empire; including distinctions of race, gender, sexuality and class as they function in Western social hierarchies. To say that Baldwin was a brilliant man is something of a massive understatement. Frankly I'm of the mind that the less said about Buckley the better but by way of brief explanation please allow me say that now deceased founder of the National Review spent most of his adult life serving as living proof that it's always been pretty easy to get away with nonsensical racist double-speak in America, if you happen to deliver it with a mid-Atlantic accent.

Taken together, these two intellectuals publicly represented some of the most eloquent representatives of two separate positions on racial equality in America; at least on the surface, and until this very debate exposed Buckley and 1960’s American conservatism for the sham repackaging of cracker supremacy that it really is (and remains today.) For you see my friends, there is really no question about who “won” the debate; Baldwin destroyed Buckley with the whole world watching.

The real question here, and the one I’d like you to keep in your mind as you watch this clip of James Baldwin speaking is why there was even a debate at all? As you listen to Baldwin calmly and emphatically explaining to a (primarily white) audience of British students that African Americans are indeed human just like them, and that racism is not only real, but a function of direct choices made by our entire society, never forget that the topic of this debate was seriously the question of “whether or not the American Dream has come at the expense of the American Negro” - a question that becomes repugnant in its own right once one remembers that the wealth and power of America was forged on the bloody, beaten backs of African Americans subjected to chattel slavery; even without considering the open white supremacy that fuels our society to this very day.

And that I suppose is both the real triumph, and the real tragedy of this clip; even after making one of the most brilliant men in American history stoop to defending his own humanity against an assclown like Buckley, for the entertainment of the viewing audience and perhaps the education of some college kids – we still, to this day, have learned almost nothing about what Baldwin said, as a society.

We didn’t deserve James Baldwin in 1965, and we still don’t deserve him today; and yet there he remains, forgiving our ignorance and calmly exposing the fundamental lie of white supremacy, that a man can be superior to another man by right of birth and the color of his skin, decade after decade – I hope, some day soon, we will finally learn to listen.

James Baldwin - Pin Drop Speech

Additional Resources

James Baldwin Debates William F. Buckley (1965; Full Debate)

Baldwin vs. Buckley: A Debate We Shouldn’t Need, As Important As Ever

- nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Film Sessions: Perhaps Ben Shapiro Shouldn't Be Taken Seriously By Anyone About Anything from Some More News with Cody Johnson

Editor's note: as I explained in my last post, Facebook is being twitchy about my low-key anarchist page and I don't want to lose my weekly film sessions, so I'm transferring them here to Media Madness.

Today's post originally appeared on my Facebook Page on November 26th, 2020.

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So, you’re trapped in a capitalist hellhole currently experiencing the second wave of a global pandemic virtually nobody in government seems to be talking seriously, and to top it all off – it’s Thanksgiving but you’re probably stuck at home trying not to murder your aging relatives for some gravy and a Lions game. What exactly are you going to do with yourself here? The answer of course, is to spend just over an hour laughing at what a disingenuous vampire muppet Ben Shapiro is.

Today’s video comes to us from the always witty Cody Johnson (@drmistercody on Twitter) and his excellent Youtube series, Some More News. Typically I like to feature shorter, more digestible videos in this space but given that it’s apocalypse Thanksgiving, you could definitely use a good laugh and Johnson’s videos are always worth the time investment in my experience, I thought we’d make an exception for this seventy minute masterpiece. It also doesn’t hurt that this might be the single greatest takedown of Ben Shapiro’s nonsense and f*ckery ever created.

Of course, it could be argued that eviscerating Shapiro is an activity akin to plucking low hanging fruit; you point out that he’s a racist, a lackey propagandist for reactionary billionaires (most notably the Wilks brothers and the extended Koch donor network) and that he’s about as tall as a hobbit. And to be fair, Johnson does touch on these subjects, but what makes this episode of Some More News so interesting is that it actually engages Ben Shapiro on his own terms, or at least his own stated terms – “logic, facts and reason.” Starting from the simple question “is Ben Shapiro stupid, or a liar” and working his way through numerous clips of Ben’s public appearances and videos, Johnson repeatedly answers his own question without actually saying so; factually, Ben Shapiro isn’t stupid, but rather a brazen liar who thinks you’re stupid.

Furthermore, the analysis in this video is surprisingly deep for a comedy presentation. Rather than settling for cataloguing the near-infinite number of times that Shapiro has been “wrong” about a culture-war, hot button issue important to American reactionaries, Cody’s analysis instead effectively demonstrates that Shapiro’s branded catch-phrase “facts don’t care about your feelings” is a staggering form of weaponized projection employed by a man who openly admits his own research begins with his feelings, and ends with searching up “facts” that confirm those feelings. Indeed, after watching the episode I found myself thinking a more accurate slogan for Shapiro might be “my feelings are facts and your facts are feelings, neener, neener, neener...”

Naturally, Johnson also hammers Shapiro for his wanton abuse of ridiculous hypothetical scenarios hidden behind the seemingly reasonable conversational formulation of “let’s say that” and also takes the little sh*t-puppet to task for clowning on college kids because he’d get repeatedly owned by critical adult thinkers in the media – which as anyone whose seen the BBC’s Andrew Neil interview with Shapiro can attest is objectively true!

Perhaps in the final analysis it’s simply best to give the last word to Johnson himself, who notes that “Ben Shapiro is an extremely biased, emotional narcissist who pretends he’s a student of logic and debate but is actually just a talking head for conservatives and has used his popularity and personal bigotry and religious beliefs to stoke the fires of racism and political hatred for way too long and he shouldn’t be taken seriously.”

To check out Some More News: Perhaps Ben Shapiro Shouldn't Be Taken Seriously By Anyone About Anything, click on the link below and check out the comments section for additional sources and citations:

Perhaps Ben Shapiro Shouldn't Be Taken Seriously By Anyone About Anything