The Guardian has just published an actual, non-fictional op-ed that is titled “Is my Jewish three-year-old too young to learn about antisemitism?”, about a concerned mother who is teaching her toddler about the Holocaust in case Jeremy Corbyn becomes Prime Minister.
The Guardian. Not The Onion. The Guardian.
Have we reached Peak Anti-Semitism in the Guardian yet? Hilary Freeman writes a column on teaching her three-year-old about anti-semitism – in case Corbyn ever gets elected https://t.co/x7ui8woGqr
— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) August 23, 2018
“Perhaps they’re right and it is too soon even for this gentle introduction,” muses Hilary Freeman. “I certainly don’t want to frighten or traumatise my daughter. And yet, in the current climate, with accusations of antisemitism in the Labour party making headline news virtually every day, and a rise in antisemitism all over Europe, this is an issue that is pertinent to her life and to her future, not just a story in a book. Many Jews in the UK are feeling very unsettled.”
I mean, wow. Just… wow. I’m seriously tempted to spend the rest of this article just typing “wow”. I wouldn’t copy-paste it, either. I’d type it all out with punctuation and with feeling.
Surely this is as far as they can take this whole “Corbyn is a secret Nazi” narrative? Surely? How could they possibly take it any further into cartoonish lunacy than this? “Terrified by Tory polling decline, I took my cocker spaniel on a tour of Auschwitz”?
I hate mocking the fear of antisemitism, which is a real thing that does happen and should be condemned unequivocally. Even more, though, I hate the British media for making it both extremely easy and one hundred percent necessary to mock them for it.
They say that Corbyn is a secret Nazi who loves antisemitism over and over and over again like it’s a real thing despite the complete absence of anything remotely resembling facts or evidence, then publish op-eds by ostensibly terrified mothers citing “accusations of antisemitism in the Labour party making headline news virtually every day” as the basis for her fear of her three year-old daughter winding up like Anne Frank. And then when this unconscionable behavior sees Corbyn decrying the mass media and pushing for reforms, the British press responds with headlines like “Corbyn is following the Donald Trump playbook on persecuting the media”.
MSM: Why are you a Nazi?
Corbyn: I am not a Nazi.
MSM: So you're saying that the Jews who say you're a Nazi shouldn't have a voice? That they should be loaded onto a train and burnt to ashes?
Corbyn: No! You're being unethical.
MSM: JEREMY CORBYN ATTACKS MEDIA JUST LIKE HITLER— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) August 23, 2018
They can make this link because across the pond the narrative is being spun that the President of the United States is treating the mass media propaganda machine unfairly. Last week hundreds of outlets released coordinated op-eds decrying Trump’s “war” and “assault” on the “free press” because he occasionally says mean things about CNN, meanwhile completely ignoring this administration’s horrifying attempts to silence WikiLeaks and persecute Julian Assange for practicing journalism.
“We are not the enemy of the people!” these outlets proclaimed with one voice, chanting as one, repeating the same mantra over and over again like a hypnotist. “We are not the enemy of the people! We are not the enemy of the people! We are not the enemy of the people!”
Oh, fuck you. Yes you fucking are.
A free press is essential to our democracy, but much of our press isn’t very free at all.
I want media workers to be free to do their best work, not held back by billionaire owners, tech giants or the state. #ChangeTheMedia
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) August 23, 2018
The mass media absolutely are the enemy of the people. Without question they are. They are the enemy of our entire species.
“Neither the great political or financial powers of the world nor the population in general realize that the engineering-chemical-electronic revolution now makes it possible to produce many more technical devices with ever less material,” the brilliant inventor and systems theorist Buckminster Fuller once said. “We can now take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever known. It does not have to be ‘you or me,’ so selfishness is unnecessary and war is obsolete. This has never been done before. Only twelve years ago technology reached the point where this could be done. Since then it has made it ever so much easier to do.”
Fuller said this in 1981. So why hasn’t it happened yet? Why hasn’t humanity turned its creativity and resourcefulness toward human thriving instead of warfare, exploitation, domination and ecocide?
Stuffy intellectuals who’ve spent too much time indoors might scoff and say it’s because Fuller was wrong, that it is simply human nature that we should all be scrambling to get to the top of the heap by clawing at each other’s flesh and stepping upon each other’s heads until we kill our ecosystem and choke to death on dust and ashes.
I say that’s bullshit. The reason we have not turned our creative power toward health and harmony instead of death and destruction is because we are being manipulated by powerful people who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. And they are doing so using the mass media.
Q: What's the difference between Jake Tapper and a prostitute?
A: One gets paid handfuls of cash to do shameful and degrading things which tear apart the fabric of society, the other makes an honest living as a sex worker. https://t.co/ySsPU0SrAX— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) August 23, 2018
Humans don’t want to suffer and toil in order to make a few billionaires even more rich and powerful than they already are. Literally nobody wants that for humanity besides those billionaires and their immediate underlings. The reason we haven’t yet used the power of our numbers to create a system wherein everyone gets their basic needs met and we all work in collaboration with ourselves and our environment instead of poisoning our air and water and spending medicine money on bombs is because there are screens in our lives convincing us all day in and day out that this is not in our best interest. Keep consenting to increasing degrees of corrupt crony capitalism. Keep voting for the same oligarch-owned two-headed one-party system day in and day out. Keep ignoring how the US military is the worst polluter on earth and how the cost of the Iraq war could have purchased the planetary conversion to renewable energy.
Day after day after day the public’s psyches are pummeled with these deceitful narratives which manufacture consent for war, exploitation and oppression instead of health and thriving. The only thing keeping us from rising like lions in unvanquishable number as in the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem and creating a healthy world is because we are imprisoned in a psychic cage made of propaganda narratives. The billionaire-controlled mass media are the enemy of the people in the same way a cage is the enemy of a bird.
We have native parrots here in Australia. Sometimes I think about how cool it would be to have one for a pet, but then I look outside and see the galahs and cockatoos playing around in the trees and think, “Nah.”
The billionaires who control the mass media lack that part of themselves. They are our enemy.
But we are the many. And they are the few. And we are waking up.
___________________
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24 responses to “Mass Media Is The Enemy Of The People Like The Cage Is The Enemy Of The Bird”
On august 30th Time Warner Cable (now called Spectrum) removed RT from its channel line-up in all of New York and New Jersey in a blatant act of censorship. There is no other cable company that carries it, so it means either watching it online or moving to Canada. There is no other network news source that is not flat out propaganda inside the US.
Get ROKU. RT is on Pluto TV, a free network available with a ROKU streaming devices
“The Guardian. Not The Onion. The Guardian.” Yep! They used to call it “a quality paper” !
It’s such a cruel world so Hilary Freeman could also as well maybe introduce her toddler to the revisionism and Holocaust-denial (two characteristics of anti-Semitism and Jew-hatred, I’m afraid) of… Go figure! … Israeli PM, Bibi Netanyahu !!
From Haaretz, October 21, 2015: “Netanyahu: Hitler Didn’t Want to Exterminate the Jews” —
“Prime minister tells World Zionist Congress that Hitler only wanted to expel the Jews, but Jerusalem’s Grand Mufti convinced him to exterminate them, a claim that was rejected by most accepted Holocaust scholars.”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/netanyahu-absolves-hitler-of-guilt-1.5411578
Civil war coming to a muslime invaded country near you! And not before time. Thumbs up to the German protesters who dared to raise their voices. And thumbs down to New Zealand MSM for failing to report any of this (nor the Corbyn antisemitism scandal), but still scraping the bottom of the Trump witch-hunt barrel.
The mdia are clearly whitewashing the government plans for regime change. You know it does not originate with Trump for if it did it would be targeted for ridicule. Mic has pretty much succeed in overthow of Trump he is puppet.
a possible explanation on why buckminster fuller’s prophesy did not eventuate:
this widely-shared wealth is what the global elite realised decades ago and decided this would trigger the end of their reign of power over all of us. capitalism needs shortages (real or fake) to survive. without shortages there is little competition and no hierarchy (with them at the top).
so they started to breakdown our expectations of universal prosperity and ensure that increases of wealth went to themselves and not us.
that was the beginning of the hoarding of billions of dollars — not so they could live more luxurious lifestyles but to keep it away from us.
JFC – maybe YOU are imprisoned in this psychic cage – and maybe you think EVERYONE else is too – but you would be wrong. You’ve done it again – introduced endless conjecture and speculation, conflating what is a well-known problem and pretending this is YOUR evidence.
Sigh… your really messing things up of late. Only you know why.
Individuals are responsible for what they consume. Nobody is forcing this down our throats. If you want to be brain washed by the ‘mass media’ that YOUR damned fault because your too stupid or careless to be cautious about what media sources you are consuming. It’s that simple.
And the media has a market objective – that’s what a free enterprise DOES. Profits and readership are part of the game all business entities engage in. Just because their “media” does not negate their attempts for their bottom line. Your allegations are that the mass media is “responsible” – which negates individual responsibility. You don’t have to consume it. You can get your news or stories or whatever it is you are reading, hearing or watching any place you want (in most societies).
And you really blew it here – “The reason we have not turned our creative power toward health and harmony instead of death and destruction is because we are being manipulated by powerful people who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. And they are doing so using the mass media.”
No, the reason we have not turned our creative power toward health and harmony is because of what we are as a species. And what we are is what you already know – very adept at death and destruction and interested in only getting what we want and to hell with everyone else. The mass media is owned by companies that put profits first – but hey, that’s their right to do so, even if we don’t like it. But that doesn’t change the core story one bit. We are a terrifying species of mass murderers with few redeeming qualities.
We were never designed by evolution to live in dense groups, or sit on our butts all day and pretend we’re decent human beings. That all works as long as their is an abundance of resources to choose from, a society governed by laws and enforced by guns and prisons and a legal system, and cooperative agreements that we’ll try to get along – until we don’t. Until one of us snaps from the unnatural pressures of modern existence, debt slavery, force obedience or just for the hell of it, and then we become known for what we already always were – killers.
Yeah, I used to blame the ‘mass media’ until I saw through this sham. Yes, the narratives are false, but we’re enabling these narratives by embracing them, devouring them and then teaching them to our children. But the fault is really ours. If someone ones to use their “creative power toward health and harmony” there is NOTHING STOPPING YOU – except of course, you yourself.
You make it all sound like they’re holding a gun to your head. This isn’t even remotely true. You are responsible for you and what you do with your life. You’re stuck having to operate within an injust, unfair system, but that still doesn’t make the media responsible for what you do – or don’t do. That’s all still up to you.
And who the fuck is Corbyn? The point being – stop conflating your subjects into issues that aren’t even relevant. Aren’t YOU also using the mass media platform of the Internet to manipulate YOUR readers to YOUR point of view and perspectives? Holy crap – I am too!
All this finger pointing keeps missing the mark. It’s not what you, I, or anyone else says that matters (including the mass media) – it’s what you DO that counts the most. You can point all ten of your fingers up at the sky cursing God or whoever from your grave and it won’t make a damned bit of difference. Nobody cares (because of what we truly are), but what you DO while you’re still vertical is up to you – and nobody is stopping you.
I went through the same finger pointing rants for decades until I finally realized that this was fucking pointless. You’re not going to change the world behind a keyboard like you think. Especially when you consistently miss your targets.
“The mass media absolutely are the enemy of the people. Without question they are. They are the enemy of our entire species.”
Uh, no. Absolutely not. Yet another broadside that utterly misses whatever the hell your target was supposed to be. The mass media is just another corporate entity engaging in the business of profits – buy it, watch it, read it or listen to it at your own peril, but claiming that they are the “enemy of the people” is like claiming General Foods is the enemy of the people. You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to, and like anybody with half a brain should realize, some of this isn’t good for you.
JR says, “No, the reason we have not turned our creative power toward health and harmony is because of what we are as a species. And what we are is what you already know – very adept at death and destruction and interested in only getting what we want and to hell with everyone else.” And on and on in the same vein.
I heard it said a long time ago, “Ask a person about human nature and he will describe himself.” In years of observation I have found this to be nearly always true. I suspect this is true above, and in Greenie’s comment below.
”. . . manipulated by powerful people who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. And they are doing so using the mass media”
.
”MANIPULATORS” for the status quo:
Remember to include the government political system, the co-opted legal system, identity politics (including tribalism, exceptionalism, McCarthyism, flag worship), co-opted NGO’s, religious institutions, the public education system, the higher education system, the so-called ”think tanks” – and the global/financial/capitalist economic system (with the support of the white-collar, high-income professional class and, of course, the very wealthy class).
I love you and your thought processes. This article is splendid but misses a very important step. What we see and read in the “MSM” is the stuff that ADVERTISERS hope will entice us to notice their ads so they pay for the talking heads and copy writers. With the intention that we will thus buy their stuff and thus keep the whole machinery of what we call Western Civilization -running. I see a similarity to our over consumption to the over production of whole cities and the cheap stuff the Chinese sell to us.
Basically we humans do not know what to do with ourselves. If we are not needed to build cars, grow food, and if we become a nuisance to others if we travel to their cities, what are we to do! What are humans “for”?
We can examine our narratives, we must, and hopefully come up with a reason for our existence.
I agree with most everything Cailtin wrote above – as is often the case – but not this:
“The reason we have not turned our creative power toward health and harmony instead of death and destruction is because we are being manipulated by powerful people who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. And they are doing so using the mass media.”
To lay the blame for millions of years of human evolution on mass media controlled by the super-rich…
I wish it were that simple – I really do – but it just isn’t.
We are a tribal species whose individual members act solely in what we believe to be our highest self-interest. This often means we war on members of tribes considered “other” for various desired outcomes, including fame, glory, increased wealth of various kinds, a desire to avoid scorn or punishment for not participating in raiding violence, and kicks.
That we are often manipulated into this and suffer terribly as a result of inflicting such suffering is objectively true, but it does not change the fact that rationality does not exist as an operative governor of human behavior.
Self-interest – including our often mistakenly perceived self-interest – is the whole of human motivation.
This is as likely to change as pigs sprouting wings, but in millions of years, who knows?
There may be pigs flying alongside Strayan parrots, and people guided by a desire for the rational best outcome for ALL humanity.
MSM are to blame for the amount of debt now in the world, they are the ones who sell debt as being “economic growth” and sell the Keynesian Economics bullshit that was developed and implemented by the Rothchild Bankster Cartel Criminals in 1913, a Global plan of total Global Control. MSM are the ones who sell debt as “prosperity”, an illusion built on debt, and you are correct to call them out for what they are, liars and criminals, whoring to the elite Corporate Scum such as the Rothchild Group, Goldman Sach, JPMorgan, Koch Brothers, Chevron and the others that are hiding in the shadows.
MSM are the prostitutes who got us here, got us into past wars and getting us in future war, they are the ones assisting in theft of the working and middle-classes wealth, they are the ones getting us READY for total enslavement to a system we the people do not want, they are the ones stealing our freedoms and privacy, by their deceit and outright lies that they continually feed to us through their daily dirty corrupt media!
My full support for everything you have said, 110% Truth!
Hillary Freeman–if she were to recognize her true lineage and come to terms with it–would nothing to worry about. She is undoubtedly an ashkenazi jew from eastern Europe and has no more Semitic blood in her than I do. The anti-antisemitism to which she refers and actually a very rational reaction to– the to numerous to mention–atrocities that these mongol-turks have wreaked upon the world. See Henry Makov’s article to get an idea of what I am referring to: https://www.henrymakow.com/002030.html.
The “narrative” grew from Freud to his nephew Bernays [“Propaganda”] who was instrumental in crippling the country of Germany [30% of US citizens where of German heritage] with his involvement in “negotiating” the Versailles Treaty–and then later came Virginia Slims and Madison Avenue [the lowly gentile can be easily induced to buy what he doesn’t need].
Corbyn is a brave and critically crucial candidate whom should be adamantly supported, if we are to move beyond the (primarily) ashkenazi billionaires–and so– rather than giving the charade of antisemitism a branch to cling to–we should be discussing the very real and present dangers of anti-gentilism–and put the world’s perpetual victim/aggressor into a safe haven where they can do no harm to themselves [Makov] or to the world’s [95%] of population gentiles.
The MSM is irrelavant.
The wish to distract and irritate.
Dont give them that power.
I have not looked at nyt in couple years, cnn in maybe 5 years. Never used twitter or facebook.
Dont be provoked. Just do as you should do. Be a positive force.
Jeremy Corbyn is a” nazi” in exactly the same way that Martin Luther King was a ” communist” , which ,of
course is not at all. But , characterizing those two people that way is the ultimate argument “ad hominem”
and the easiest way to demonize two men whose message(s) are wooden stakes aimed straight at the heart of the gold sucking vampire oligarchy and the media outlets (Guardian included ) that they own.
P.M.W.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was interested in socialism and was just beginning to support it when he was assassinated.
So true. Some of us know it and a great many sense it. the question is if we can get enough woke people to reach critical mass before the neo-feudal oligarchy destroys us all.
Correction! Re my comment… No it was not deleted! BDS. Moosad (sp) is here. Got to go fight the Terrorist’s! Is Odroner & Co. (Non Profit) making millions on Netflix? I hate the half white Pigs. I hate all Pigs. Blacks yellow and all colors. Help the people and animals , etc. Enjoy! BDS
my comment about dual Reps. in Us was deleted?!!!!!!!! Chuckies Back. Who do they work for? Taitors? MIC?
Brilliantly put, Caitlin. The treatment of Corbyn by the British media is disgusting. Problem is he is a genuinely nice man and should have attacked the first manifestations of the antisemite smear rather than turning the other cheek. The big mistake was to reject Ken Livingston because of his statement ‘Hitler was a Zionist’. It was not strictly true, as is the case for most throw away lines, but contained a significant truth as the Zionists and the Nazis collaborated in the late 1930s on a plan to ship German jews to Palestine. You can read about it in the book ‘The Transfer’.
One small point: I agree with Buckminster Fuller about availability of resources save for the problem of Jevons Paradox. This states that improved efficiency in the use of a resource actually leads to increased consumption. e.g. people who buy a car that is more economical on fuel than the one they had before then tend to drive more miles than before.
What’s wrong with traveling more? We should enjoy the freedom to roam the countrywide, and experience it any way we wish. Our knowledge would increase, our anxiety would decrease, and our economy would flourish. Paradoxes have a way of changing things for the better, once the tsunami of change and disruption rolls over us and we accept it as inevitable and uncontrollable. I haven’t found anything to disagree with Buckminster Fuller about, or Caitlin Johnstone either for that matter. She is spot on, hell she’s the all seeing eye. Thank God for that.
SAW THIS AND THOUGHT… It is Official. Who Controls Who? Who are u… “We Won’t Be Fooled Again” No No…Way. Educate and Wake! Once again TY CJ. Truth is Good. Free Assange and others…Put a Cog In The Wheel.
I love you Caitlin Johnstone.
I’m not into using pejoratives, Caitlin is, sort of. Sometimes she’s spot on!!! OK, usually she’s spot on, I was referring to her use of pejoratives.
I look at how we are distracted from addressing real problems by the constant attacks on Trump’s sexual life, and Russian boogeymen. It’s disgusting and more disgusting how easy it is for us to be manipulated that way. OK, a pejorative would feel great right about now.