New Republic: 'Evolutionary Endpoint' of Conservative Media is 'Sheer Propaganda’
"It can be seen in a constellation of right-wing websites... that traffic in xenophobia, homophobia, racism, and social Darwinism.”
8.31.2017
21
With the left's usual combination of psychological projection and complete absence of self-awareness, The New Republic’s Sarah Jones wrote on Wednesday that in the "Trump era," conservative media have reached an "evolutionary endpoint: sheer propaganda."
Of course, a large part of the reason Donald Trump is president is that the American public became fed up with the increasingly blatant propaganda from the utterly left-dominated, activist media, a news media that has only accelerated its ideological activism since the election.
As examples of conservative media demagoguery, Jones cites the National Rifle Association’s recent video in which "conservative provocateur" Dana Loesch “calls on followers to come together in a ‘clenched fist of truth’ to defeat America’s liberal enemies." Jones uses this example because either she can't distinguish literalism from metaphor or, more likely, because for the left, a metaphoric call to action from the right is more threatening than the calls to commit actual violence coming from the far-left Antifa on an almost daily basis.
Another of Jones' examples of conservative propaganda is "a constellation of right-wing websites -- Breitbart, The Federalist, The Daily Caller, Townhall -- that traffic in xenophobia, homophobia, racism, and social Darwinism.” Blah blah blah -- the left has been resorting to these demonizing labels for so long that they have lost all potency.
Jones goes on to argue that Trump’s use of Twitter shows a shrewd understanding that his “supporters [want] a powerful person to voice their own prejudices and fears, their hatreds and ambitions." Or maybe his supporters just like the fact that Trump's aggressive tweets cause apoplectic fits among his haters.
"All of this has contributed to an environment that bears the hallmarks of a budding propaganda state, in which mass media is used to make nakedly emotional appeals to a perpetually inflamed electorate, and marginalized communities (immigrants, people of color, Muslims, trans people) are targeted as national scapegoats.” I repeat: blah blah blah. The left never acknowledges that the right has legitimate concerns about illegal immigration and national security; nor does it acknowledge its own violent, hateful scapegoating of white, Judeo-Christian American citizens as part of its subversive agenda to "fundamentally transform" the United States into the world's largest European country.
Jones attacks Fox News, of course, but to her credit, at least she doesn't stoop to using the pathetically witless "Faux News" name-calling. She dismisses the network’s “veneer of professional journalism” and “the Fox News viewer’s belief that Hillary did Benghazi..." The channel takes "kernels of truth" and "blow[s] them up to conspiratorial proportions. The new propaganda we are seeing is closer to outright fantasy,” she writes. I'm no fan of Fox News anymore, but "outright fantasy" more accurately represents the leftist media's propaganda during the Obama years.
She then complains that "standard conservative propaganda is published in even the most prestigious news organizations," and the mainstream media don't understand this. "CNN…has around a dozen pro-Trump commentators on its roster -- a decision the network justifies as proof of its objectivity and its respect for conservative viewpoints," and "The New York Times just hired a climate denier [Bret Stephens] for its op-ed page." Heaven forbid that the most prestigious news organizations might have some political balance.
She concludes that "Conservative propaganda succeeds because it taps into real fear and a real sense of alienation. It doesn’t have to explain that fear and alienation with facts, as Trump’s campaign proved."
Fear and alienation, blah blah blah. Since when has the left concerned itself with facts? Since Donald Trump pulled the rug out from under them in November.
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