I just watched the first twenty minutes of this speech to camera by Scott Adams, about a piece of CNN fake news. Kudos to Adams who, having dug himself into a bit of a hole by believing some fake news, stopped digging and climbed out, and then filled in the hole by deleting his earlier and wrong interpretation of the story.
This is part of a much bigger story, I think, about how the media are now fragmenting into … well, fragments. Time was when (a) CNN might have valued their reputation for impartiality enough not to be this brazen and this fake in their “news” presentation, and when (b) if they had been this brazen and this fake, nobody else would have been able to do anything much about it. As it is, each part of the shattered ex-body politic now has their own version of these events. Mine is what you’ll see if you watch that second Scott Adams wideo, the one I just watched. If I encounter someone this evening who thinks CNN got this story right, and the event I will be attended means that I very well might, the polite version of how I might respond is: That’s not how I see this. The ruder version might also happen and here’s how that will go: You’re wrong.
Don’t call ⊠them the “mainstream media” because they are not this any more. They’re (we’re) all just media – CNN, Scott Adams, Uncle Tom Cobley on YouTube, me and my pals posting and maybe you commenting on Samizdata – churning out stuff for the kind of people who see things the way they (we) do, and want the kind of news â true, false, dazzling, daft â that they (we) want to offer.
It used to be that you only discovered what liars and nincompoops journalists were capable of being when you were in the middle of one of their stories and actually knew what lies they were telling, if they were. Now, we can all see this whenever we want to, by whistling up a contrary opinion more to our own tastes.
This is a very important change, which has already given the world Trump and Brexit and much else besides, such as, most recently, here in Britain, that already famous Question Time Roar, and all the sort of people who regret Trump and Brexit and The Roar are intensely aware of this. They are fighting back vigorously.
But here is a big opinion about that fight-back, very hastily expressed because I must soon be out. No amount of censorship or bias – by Google, by credit card companies, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and the rest of them – can even seriously reverse these liberalising (in the true sense) developments, let alone put any sort of complete stop to them.
There should many more links in the above paragraphs, and another page of explanation of that big opinion, but I am out of time. Also, maybe I could be persuaded that free expression, in countries like mine, really is seriously threatened, if anyone can convince me that the fight-back is going to be savage enough. But, gotta go.
Discuss.
The MSM put this fraud everywhere (I saw it first on the beeb).
Ace of Spades has a text summary here for those who do not wish to spend 45 minutes watching Scott’s video. Of course, one must watch the videos of the incident to know the phoniness of the original narrative (though perhaps it is not a duty to watch the 2-hour one that the lefty who took it tried to wipe from the web-that-is-forever when he realised what it did to said narrative đ ).
It appears Adams is not the only person on the right who is now realising that the media fooled them on this one, even though they imagined they knew what the PC media were. (One hopes some left-leaning people, perhaps more slowly, will also realise, but the wake-ups and apologies I am seeing are from our side of the aisle so far.) Bottom line: never think they can’t fool us.
How odd.
The Mia culpas are popping up here and there, but unlike “certain” outlets of the knee-jerk. “Orange Man Bad” ilk, they don’t all seem to have the same script concerning the event!
Why IS that?
The collectivists lie – and water is wet.
CNN may, at one time, have had a problem with lying – perhaps that is the case (I do not know), but they certainly lie often now. And I mean LIE – not “make mistakes” or whatever.
The lodestar of the American “mainstream media” has been, since at least the 1930s, the New York Time (NYT) – the NYT correspondent covered up the murder of millions in the Soviet Union in the 1930s (and got an important “journalism” prize for doing so), the NYT supported the betrayal of China in the 1940s – that brought Mao and his Marxists to power (tens of millions died because of this), the NYT covered up the Marxist beliefs of the Castro brothers in the late 1950s (to this day the left sometimes pretend that they were not Marxists at this time – they were Marxists). And on and on and on.
And the NYT is, I repeat, the lodestar of “mainstream” journalism – held to be so by the “Schools of Journalism” that produce the journalists who end up dominating ABC, CBS and NBC (as well as CNN). Just as the British media, such as the BBC, pumps out its own agitation-propaganda (agitprop) every day, for the cause of collectivism.
Of course the “Schools of Journalism” were CREATED to support collectivism – of the Fabian “gradual social reform” sort. Their goal has always been the extermination of liberty in-the-nicest-possible-way-of-course (they are “civilised people” and all that). But there is something I do not understand.
CNN is owned (I believe) by AT&T (one of the biggest companies on the planet – telephones and so on), ABC is owned by Disney (“The Mouse” is a vast business enterprise), CBS is owned by Viacom (again a vast business enterprise), and NBC is owned by Comcast (yet again a vast business enterprise).
Why do AT&T, Disney, Viacom and Comcast want to EXTERMINATE CAPITALISM? The television stations they own pump out endless anti capitalism propaganda as news and current affairs, and their “entertainment” shows (even their science fiction shows) are wall-to-wall Frankfurt School of Marxism – race, gender, sexuality (the full nine yards of modern collectivism).
The National Socialists (Nazis) have an answer “it is because these business enterprises are controlled by JEWS!” and they give examples of people from Jewish families in leading positions in these various business enterprises. I REJECT this answer (“well you would reject it would you not Mr MARKS”) – but the only alternative theory I have is that Big Business executives were massively influenced by the collectivist EDUCATION SYSTEM – the schools and universities (including the private schools).
However, why are some people (highly intelligent people) influenced by the education system so they spend the rest of their lives with collectivist ideas in the back of their mind (twisting their outlook) and other people not? After all we went to much the same collectivist dominated schools and universities that they did. Why did we not “turn”?
There has to be a better answer the question “but I survived the vampire’s bite – why not he?” than “he was not a man such as you Captain Kronos”. That is not an answer at all.
There has to be an answer as to why some people, highly intelligent and successful people, accept the lies of the education system and other people reject these lies.
Even when I was young child it was obvious to me that much of what the teachers were saying, and what was in the textbooks, was NOT TRUE. At university I had to spend most of my time hiding my utter contempt for the academics (alas I did not, in the end, hide it well enough). I am an amusement park joke (if even that) – I am NOT more intelligent than, for example, the CEO of Comcast who believes all the establishment leftist collectivism – higher tax rates and all.
Why is it that these highly intelligent and successful people can not see through nonsense – that I (a failure in life) could see was obvious nonsense, when I was about six years of age?
What is the difference? And it is NOT intelligence.
It is completely bizarre that this a big news story. One of the boys is being doxxed because he froze up and had a smile on his face when the Native American approached him.
Look at some of the invective on twitter for the boy from the blue checkmarks:
https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/1086716769010630656
My guess: Capitalism involves competition, and the resultant change in status that comes with winning and losing.
They’ve already won. They’re on top. A future of competition must seem to them to be the promise of only a long hard slog, after which they will either be in the same position (if they work very very hard), or lower.
End capitalism, they’re thinking, and we quash all of those upstarts seeking to knock us down. Freeze everything in place, and we get to stay on top. It’s Rand’s Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog law.
It’s irrational at its core, but I’ve learned not to underestimate the value people derive from fooling themselves.
You mean those lying liars lied again?
Well I never. Who’da thunk that could have happened.
Personally I never believed it from the moment the first picture came out, simply because it didn’t pass the ‘sniff test’, which is the only thing you need with the increasingly not-Mainstream News Media, since they plaster this shit left, right and centre, yet expect us not to notice?
NOTE TO CNN:- Don’t piss on my back and tell me that it’s raining.
I was particularly amused by the fact that the Black Hebrew Israelite video commences with their speaker proselytizing to the Native American gathering that they should return to the Hebrew God that they “abandoned to start worshiping totem poles”. Their stance to that group is both as friendly in tone, and as arguably “problematic”, as that of the students later joining in with the Native American chanting.
This media circus was partially set in motion by Phillips, who seems to have sincerely believed he was intervening to defuse a potentially violent confrontation, assuming the Covington kids to be the aggressors because they vastly outnumbered (seemingly over a hundred vs. 5) the Black Hebrew Israelites, and because of their MAGA hats. Whether Phillips had heard the rather abusive (and incidentally homophobic) rants of the BHIs is unclear, though their complete absence from the currently prevailing media narrative is indicative of the utter farce that is modern “journalism”.
— Erwin Knoll, editor, The Progressive
I don’t think there is much evidence that people have ever really believed the propaganda style news of state broadcasters like the BBC and those run by members of the ‘liberal’ establishments in various countries.
While things have been getting better, as they generally were for most western people for most years in the last century, people simply didn’t mind that propaganda and largely ignored its political and social evangelising.
Now things are getting worse for many of those people, they continue to ignore the propaganda, hence Trump, Brexit, the yellow vests and the rise of populist parties in Europe.
In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: FACECRIME, it was called.
When Brett Kavanaugh fought back, they used that against him. When the Covington Boys stand there and smile and take it, the left uses that against them.
Now I know what news story is being mentioned – I had no idea when I first read this post, as the post does not explain what specific news story it is about.
In this specific news story – some Catholic school boys were left waiting for a bus after a Pro Life march. They were kept waiting for about an hour.
Whilst they were waiting for the bus some black men (from the organisation the “Black Israelites”) came up to the boys and started screaming that they (the boys) were faggots (homosexuals) and screamed various other abuse. Then a “Native American” man walked up to the boys (they did not walk up to him – he walked up to them) and started chanting at them and banging a drum in their faces.
The boys were not the aggressors – they were aggressed against.
The “mainstream” media has organised a smear campaign against the boys – inciting DEATH THREATS against them (no surprise there). The “mainstream” media would love to see these boys destroyed – after all some of the boys were wearing Trump hats, so the boys deserve to be destroyed.
And their school has sold out (betrayed) the boys – by apologising, when it was actually the boys who were being aggressed against (I repeat – the boys were not the aggressors, they were aggressed against).
Valuable lessons for the boys……
The “mainstream” media lie – indeed they reverse the truth to support the left.
And do not trust your school, or any other institution (including the Church) – because they will sell you out (betray you) to the left.
Only trust people who have stood by you – when there were harsh consequences (for them) for standing beside you. Do not trust anyone else.
bobby b.
Your theory may or may not be correct – but I do NOT have a better theory as to why so much of Big Business is out to exterminate capitalism and replace it with socialist collectivism. So your theory is the best we have got.
They (the people in charge of Big Business) seem to assume that their life (“life style”) would be much the same under socialism as it is now – that (to use George Orwell’s words) everyone else would be “under socialism” but they themselves would be on top of it.
The people who control ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN (and so on) may be very intelligent – may have a much higher “IQ” than me. but they are incredibly unwise. Clearly intelligence does not stop them being so far path of wisdom that they can not see that they are on the road to Hell.
Thirty minutes ago, the beeb put up a story cautiously hinting that there just might be more to the incident than they said yesterday. It’s hardly a clear reversal of yesterday’s fake news, but someone reading right through it does get something a bit nearer real news.
I thought this morning of commenting “and now the beeb have disappeared the story” with a suitable rant about how the lies they cannot sustain get silently memory-holed, but decided to wait a few hours – having read that advice repeatedly in blog articles about this. đ
And now that the truth has been revealed, I’m seeing the Progressive Social Justice Warrior call to expose, and “doxx”, the young gentlemen of the “Black Israelites” (“ironic” BLM/BDS youth corp?) band, as well as all the “retweeters” of the original “breaking news”, literally taken out of context, literally lies by omission, signature knee-jerk reaction. !
Oh wait…
@Paul,
For Big Business, capitalism is a train. You get off when you have reached your destination.
“then filled in the hole by deleting his earlier and wrong interpretation of the story”
Neither does Scott Adams come out of the episode with any honour.
Frankly, I’ve stopped listening to his pablum.
@Paul
There is a big difference between the people who “built” these organisations – which were created in support of some originally productive idea – and the people who now run them. They achieve their positions through politicking, and direct their energies towards looting the value of these companies, and seldom add anything productive. Their skills are cronyism, lobbying and virtue signalling, and their main concern is to set up the next gig.
There is little to distinguish a CEO and a successful politician – they are the same people who took different career paths. It is one of the reasons they all get along so well at Davos and other events. Sometimes the builders are also seduced down the same corrupt paths. Extreme wealth, power and success will do this to people.
So it no surprise to me that they should behave in this way.
A few random thoughts on this question:
— I admit that i do not even know what Viacom and Comcast are, and i feel no need to look up wikipedia right now: this week, my main concern is the Australian Open.
— The question is heavily loaded: it assumes not only that
(1) behind actions which are objectively anti-capitalist, there is a conscious intention of destroying capitalism;
but also that
(2) there is such a thing as “capitalism” that can be destroyed.
— We might rephrase the question to reduce the “loading”, e.g.
“why are the actions of (AT&T, Disney, and other media companies that i never heard of) objectively anti-capitalist?”
In this case, i can think of more than one possible answer, but the most important thing seems to me that there is no need for a single answer: different people have different motivations, and even a single person can, and often does, have more than one motivation.
— All the same, people like me, who reduce everything in politics to power relationships, have a ready answer:
the executives at AT&T, Disney, etc, are part of the ruling class (i.e. the people who have most of the power of persuasion+coercion), and therefore they act in ways that preserve+expand the power of the ruling class.
Snorri – I said what the companies owned, so you have no reason to look it up on Wikipedia.
As for the sort of stuff they push out on ABC, CBS and NBC – well perhaps you do not watch television. So I will choke back my anger and answer you politely.
Even leaving aside the collectivist bias of their news and current affairs coverage, many of their “entertainment” shows are now dominated by Marxist tropes, not just hatred of Big Business (ironic – considering that Big Business makes the shows that encourage people to hate the rich and big business), but also Frankfurt School stuff on race, gender and so on.
The stuff they produce is very obviously influenced by Frankfurt School ideas – it is not even very subtle any more.
The question is not “what are these companies” – I have explained that, or “what are they doing” – I have told you what they are doing (assuming you do not watch English language entertainment television – fair enough, there is no reason why you should).
The question is WHY are they doing this? WHY are the spreading this collectivist (indeed often Frankfurt School) stuff? Other commenters have tried to explain why – as I was unable to explain why.
At the end of your own comment you do come up with a theory of your own Sir. But your theory rests (and you honestly confirm that it rests) on the assumption reducing “everything in politics to power relationships” – sorry Sir but that does not work.
For example the policies already in practice in (for example) California do not benefit a “ruling class” – although (yes) they may be being pushed by one. Ever higher government spending, taxes and crazy regulations whilst (at the same time) pushing policies that undermine basic order – that has turned, for example, San Francisco from a wonderful place to what is becoming a horrible place.
This does not benefit the rich people who dominate politics in these places – it does not help their power either. It is the victory of IDEOLOGY (ideas – in this case false ideas), over interests.
They are NOT stupid – they know the polices they push (for example the higher tax rates) will mean they are worse off, just as they know that getting rid of vagrancy laws (which the left started to do, via their control of the Supreme Court, as far back as the 1960s) will make the streets a nightmare. They do the things they do because they think it is morally correct to do them – they are quite sincere.
One could interrogate someone like Nancy Pelosi or K. Harris and not find any hidden motive – because they really do believe in this stuff.
But why? Why do they believe it?
It is not lack of intelligence (the people in charge of the big companies are often very intelligent) and to blame it all on the education system (which I have done in the past) does not answer the question of why some people believe what they are taught, and some people do not.
Of course (as you will have guessed Snorri) I do have an agenda here. If it could be understood WHY these people believe this madness – then, perhaps, a way can be found to “reach” them, to enable them to see that these ideas are not good – that they are bad. That they will lead to terrible consequences.
That what we are seeing is not some temporary teething problems with collectivist policies – but the opening signs of vastly worse horrors to come, if such policies are continued.
A wonderful new society will NOT emerge from the ashes of the old private property based “capitalist” society – they (the “mainstream media” and so on) need to stop what they are doing, they need to be shown that what they are doing will DESTROY them (“ruling class” or not) as well as everyone else.
They need to stop what they are doing (via the mainstream media, the education system and-so-on) – they need to stop in their own interests, as well as the interests of everyone else.
The problem is how to convince them of this fact – that they need to stop. And I have no answer to that problem.
May I offer a perspective? The BIG business is not anti-capitalist. It is anti-market and anti-competition. ie it fosters a cartel and club mentality which in turn is tribal and sort of statist.
Under the banner, truth can be stranger than fiction: The two hour video of the Lincoln Memorial event was shot by one of the Black Hebrew Israelites. This is the video that blew the first narrative out of the water and exposed Phillips as a fraud and not for the first time.
Make no mistake about it, those kids were targeted to be set up in a variant of the âcry bully hoaxâ. They were just lucky that 1) they didn’t take the bait and 2)the fates intervened in the form of the BHI video, or they would have been persecuted indefinitely and their town turned into Ferguson MO. I refer you to Professor Jacobsonâs website, Legal Insurrection, for more insight into this tactic; he has been the targeted by BDS types.
It cannot be overstated and repeated often enough how lucky those kids are. To quote NEO:
âThat was the video that proved Phillips was lying. And that was the video he never thought would exist.
And if that longer video hadnât existed, Phillips would have succeeded in the technique that Professor Jacobson has described, because no one would have believed the students against the word of this righteous Native American elderly guy.â
https://www.thenewneo.com/2019/01/22/the-covington-incident-activism-and-how-to-provoke-and-shape-a-story/
To me, the way in which Phillips carefully phrased his viet-vet claim to be heard as “I am a Vietnam veteran”, yet have plausible deniability if ever challenged, is one (yet one more) of the tells that this incident was premeditated activism-101 of the kind described here (h/t instapundit and neo, whence I reached it). It would doubtless have worked if the other videos had not happened to exist.
Of course, another – hilarious – tell is Phillips’ angry complaint yesterday against Sandmann (the Covington student): “He stole my narrative”. đ
@ Paul Marks January 20, 2019 at 10:23 pm
@ Barry Dixon January 23, 2019 at 11:40 am
The major corporates envy governments’ power to dip into the livestock’s pockets and take what they want.
They want crony corporatism, where they will sit at the right hand of government and share in the looting. They will cease to make what the customer-turned-livestock want and give them what they ‘need’.
It will make the corporatists’ lives so much easier and they can get fat on milking the livestock, while the livestock starve, and the WHO will congratulate the relevant governments on the slimness of their livestock. And there will be more champagne and caviar for the politico-bureaucratic-corporatist elites to quaff while the people die from starvation, hypothermia and readily treatable diseases.
How many basket case countries does it take to make wannabe crony corporatists realise it doesn’t work, and still won’t work when they try to do it ‘properly’? Or do they really, really want to make the whole world look like Venezuela?
DP
“Donât call ⊠them the âmainstream mediaâ because they are not this any more.”
They never were “mainstream”. “Mainstream” implies that they reflect the culture and politics of a majority of people, which they do not. They are advocates of Left-wing regressivism, and as such, I refer to them as the Dominant Regressive Media.