Homework Assignment 3: Hamstrung

 

Author's note: ok so I've just spent the better part of twenty hours editing an eighty minute podcast through what felt like infinite Vegas Pro crashes and a double clicking mouse; I am to put it politely, exhausted and all out of f*cks to give – so today's homework assignment is going to be fairly short and to the point; fans of the No Fugazi Podcast should expect a new episode later this (Saturday) morning. 

I must confess that I'm rapidly losing interest in a rigged 2020 US Presidential Election that I have gone on record as saying I think Donald Trump is likely to win, if only because he's going to cheat and threaten violence to get what he wants in the end. Unfortunately and even despite my attempts to avoid insipid and sensationalized culture war content disguised as American politics, the fact that Downmarket Mussolini is explicitly staking his re-election (and the function of his state) on the argument that antifascists and protesters are terrorists, I have been thus far unable to tune out U.S. election coverage completely.

Now before we go any further, I would like to make one thing abundantly clear to readers who may not be familiar with my work and our previous discussions. I think at this point you'd have to be willfully blind to not recognize that Trump, the Republican Party and the larger American right are attempting to demonize public protest, antifascism and even left-leaning political thought as terrorism against the state; even while simultaneously dog-whistling their support for violent fascist terrorism from the loyal Volk. I have written extensively about this subject and you can click on the links in this paragraph if you're interested in exploring the dangerous and authoritarian intent behind this reactionary propaganda campaign further.

Which of course brings us to perhaps the most willfully blind group of people in America; Joe Biden, his in-the-tank media minions and the dead-eyed sociopaths running his 2020 Presidential campaign. I don't think it's any sort of big secret that Biden was not my preferred Democratic Party nominee in the broader fight against Trump's fascist creep and frankly there's a lot I could say here about why Biden's skillful blending of Hillary Clinton's doomed 2016 campaign, and John Kerry's doomed 2004 campaign is utter dogsh*t. The problem is that as I mentioned I honestly don't care. In fact, I am so out of f*cks to give about the Democratic Party and the elite liberal establishment as a whole that I can't even really summon up the energy to put Biden on blast for his quixotic Republican-lite campaign - in an election he has to win, because the other guy is an overt fascist.

Unfortunately however when Joe Biden goes on live television, after a 17 year old fascist militia goon murders two people, and once again starts babbling about looters, arsonists and rioting, I am suddenly forced to pay more attention. Frankly, this isn't just a question of bad politics, or even the coded racist dog-whistling involved in constantly agreeing with right wing messaging about antifascists, the Black Lives Matter movement and folks protesting against racialized police violence in general. In his desperate efforts to both embrace a fascist American law enforcement institution (that is currently clubbing soccer moms and veterans in the street,) while running from the right's unhinged fever dream that Biden is controlling or controlled by Antifa and Black Lives Matter to do terrorism, Palooka Joe's needle threading has undoubtedly put countless innocent lives in danger.

As you may well be aware (especially if you're clicking on the links as you go,) I have written extensively on the subject of why it is dangerous, disingenuous and even outright cowardly to conflate antifascist defensive actions with the premeditated, violent terrorism conducted by the reactionary American right; indeed this is clearly one of the subjects I visit most often precisely because I recognize its grave relevance to our present political situation. What I haven't really talked much about however, is why conflating "Antifa" or anti-fascist action with violent reactionary terrorism is simply and factually wrong - which is where today's homework assignment comes in. 

Writing in 2017 after the deadly fascist riot that was the "Unite the Right Rally" in Charlottesville, North Carolina, Dr. Stanislav Vysotsky details the fallacy of "bothsidesism" and precisely why defensive anti-fascist action cannot be credibly compared to fascist violence - check out this short but extremely relevant article at In These Times: 

Drawing Equivalencies Between Fascists and Anti-Fascists Is Not Just Wrong—It’s Dangerous

For those of you who may have already checked out this article based on my Twitter reading recommendations, here's some supplemental (and more mainstream) reading that might be very useful for those of you still attempting to de-radicalize reactionary relatives:

Let's Put An End To "Horseshoe Theory" Once And For All

How to Talk About Antifa With People Who Are Freaked Out About It

- 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, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

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

Article Analysis: the Bernie Blackout is Very Real

Editor's note: this article originally appeared November 19th, 2019 on my Facebook page - if you're looking for source materials, check out the comments section of the original article. For my latest book review "Why You Should Read Thomas Frank", please click here.

MSNBC Is the Most Influential Network Among Liberals: And It’s Ignoring Bernie Sanders

In today's edition of our ongoing article analysis feature, we're going to take a look at what I personally feel may be the most important piece of political media analysis released so far in the 2020 Democratic Party nomination cycle.

Throughout this nomination contest and the last Democratic Party primary season in 2016, supporters of the Democratic Socialist Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders have argued that mainstream corporate media in America has not only purposely avoided covering the Sanders campaign but what coverage they have offered has been dishonest, disingenuous and highly slanted towards negative (and often erroneous) conclusions about Bernie, his supporters and his campaign.

Well, if this November 13th, 2019 article about MSNBC's Democratic Party primary coverage by Branko Marcetic over at In These Times is indicative of the larger industry, it's now empirically possible to say Sanders supporters are *right* about the #BernieBlackout and it is instead the establishment media minions who called their complaints a "conspiracy theory" who now have some explaining to do.

Drawing on the tradition of extremely granular media analysis popularized by books like Manufacturing Consent and to a lesser degree, data science websites like FiveThirtyEight, Marcetic conducts a detailed examination of extremely blatant biases in MSNBC's coverage of the three leading Democratic Party nomination candidates in August and September across the network's top six prime time political shows; those three candidates of course being Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

As will likely come as no surprise to astute political media observers in America, it turns out that not only do MSNBC's top political analysts talk about Bernie Sanders less than Elizabeth Warren and far less than Joe Biden, but also that coverage of Bernie Sanders on MSNBC's flagship shows is far more likely to be negative than that of the other two candidates - which is pretty remarkable when you realize that one of the two months In These Times looked at featured a very real Joe and Hunter Biden corruption scandal that ties into the ongoing Trump impeachment and has itself driven an infinite number of whackjob Republican-endorsed conspiracy theories in what passes for the "mainstream" right wing media these days.

What really separates Marcetic's analysis in this article from the work of "data guys" like Nate Silver however, is his deep drilling into the specifics of MSNBC's coverage above and beyond the raw numbers to examine precisely *what* the network is saying about each of the three candidates, and the picture is not pretty. Far from a mere bias against Sanders, these clip by clip and argument by argument examples demonstrate that as a whole MSNBC's flagship political shows, their hosts and the vast majority of their guest pundits are actively campaigning against Bernie Sanders. Of course while that conclusion may not come as much of a shock to American leftists, it bears noting here that just a few months ago virtually every corporate media outlet in America accused the Sanders campaign of propagating Trumpian conspiracy theories when the Senator from Vermont had the audacity to suggest he and his supporters weren't getting a fair shake in the mainstream "liberal" media.

With meticulous attention to detail, Marcetic has logged numerous smears, misrepresentations and at times, even outright falsehoods disseminated in the network's war against Bernie, all the while pointing out key gaps in the coverage of any news events that could be perceived as somehow positive for the Sanders campaign. Perhaps even more alarmingly, this In These Times investigation clearly demonstrates that in MSNBC's quest to shut out Sanders and draw Liz Warren to the center, the network has largely abandoned coverage of policy proposals, agenda statements or action plans presented by literally *any* of the candidates whatsoever - as far as the network is concerned, this election is about an endless wave of breaking primary polls and while they're happy to inform you that Liz Warren "has a plan for that" they apparently have no intention of telling you what that plan might be.

The simple truth is that this is the "16 negative articles about Bernie Sanders in 16 hours on the Washington Post webpage" of the 2020 nomination cycle and unfortunately it appears to have slipped under the radar because mainstream media has no interest in sharing coverage from a nominally left wing media organization like In These Times.

Naturally there will be those who complain about the narrow scope of the study, and point to what they feel is "equally slanted" coverage in left wing publications like Jacobin, or Current Affairs but as Marcetic's data demonstrates, these people are being largely disingenuous. The numbers don't lie and MSNBC not only has a dominant hold on the liberal cable news market, but the network is particularly influential with age sixty-five and older viewers who are far more likely to vote in primaries than any other age demographic.

Due to its size and ubiquity in the public discourse, MSNBC is driving national opinions about the 2020 Democratic Party nomination contest on a scale that dwarfs every outlet the American left has to access that same discourse - and the network is openly and demonstrably driving those opinions against Bernie Sanders. Try to keep that in mind the next time Chris Mathews wants to lecture you on the need to respect your elders in the party or Larry O'Donnell has opinions to share on the importance of a "free and *fair* press."

As even famous American author Ernest Hemingway eventually learned while trying to avoid relentless CIA harassment during his retirement in Cuba - it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.

- nina Illingworth



Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus.

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

Updates available on Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook.

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