Last Sunday, only hours after The New York Times published a blockbuster story revealing that White House counsel Donald McGahn II has been “cooperating extensively” with the special counsel investigation, President Trump resorted to one of his favorite attack lines.
The corporate media and the people who “believe” in CNN, MSNBC, NPR (sponsored by the splc), cbs, abc, et al vomit. are the enemy of free Americans and the rest of the world.
From the article:
" Given all the commentary that followed Trump’s use of “enemy of the people” early this year, much of which highlighted the historical baggage associated with it, the president either knows — or should know — its connotations. His continued use of it verges on incitement."
This reminds me of the way R.M. Nixon used to enjoy waving Churchill’s V-for-victory double hand signal at crowds—knowing that it was now used by youth as a peace sign, he was sometimes heard to say, “That drives the hippies crazy.”
Sadly, it seems that no president—regardless of how egregious their conduct may be, or of how many their victims—will ever be charged with incitement.
hahahaha, the free press doesn’t exist. It’s a frigging unicorn.
There’s a press beholden to its editors, owners and advertisers. If that’s “free”, than the word means nothing.
The corporate press is an enemy of the people. It’s arguably the biggest enemy of the people, because it is that press which maintains the perception of legitimacy for this misrule. Frankly, Trump undersells the menace. That’s because he doesn’t have an objection to bad journalism on principle. He only dislikes bad journalism that goes against him.
Trump’s a Fascist. Attacking the Free Press is what Fascists do.
I confess to getting some vicarious pleasure in Trump’s railing against the MSM, the propaganda arm of the oligarchy. Though I don’t agree with his end game, it is time somebody deflated their balloon.
As soon as you see “Free Press” used in an articles headline, you can be pretty sure it going to be a defense of the indefensible. It akin to phrases like “Right To Work” and “Operation Enduring Freedom”. The writer thinks one can not possibly be against the right to work, enduring freedom and the “Free Press” so must support the content of the article itself.
The reality is there is no free press, the war on terror has nothing to do with Freedom and the Right To Work is another Corporate backed meme used to block unions.
Several stinkin’ horrid things done by this apparatchik of the unDemocratic Party in this piece of propanda masquerading as an article.
(There- have I made my biases clear so you can read what I right knowing them? Good.)
First of all this propaganda piece seems to limit the press to the corporate press. I’d fall over in a faint if Andrew Boyle believes that InfoWars isn’t an enemy of the people and shouldn’t have been removed from almost every single social media platform in an obvious coordinated action. I’d also be surprised if Andrew Boyle would go to bat for the World Socialist Web Site and against Google’s recent algorithms that have reduced them showing up in searches.
Second, as others have pointed out, the corporate press is not free, it is a slave to the handful of big giant corporations who control what they can report. We know this because Ed Schultz told us he was ordered to not cover Sanders by MSNBC, when he had planned on covering Sanders’ announcement of running and doing an interview with him, at the very last minute. Shortly after that they fired him.
Furthermore, these corporate propaganda outlets are not independent of the state, they are part of the revolving door between the public and private sectors of the Military Industrial Complex that now is better understood as the Military Security Media Industrial Complex. They may not be taking orders from the Deep State, but they are taking orders from the same Plutocrats, who also give orders to most of the Deep State.
The alternative press is what is free, free to be on the Left or on the Right, both forbidden by the corporate press. (I don’t like the press on the Right, but those sites are free to be that since they don’t get orders from the corporations.)
Another terrible aspect of this article is conflating the President expressing an opinion on what the corporate press reports on him, stating it is an enemy of the people or fake news, with actual censorship. What this article wants is for the corporate media to attack him and he bends over backwards and says, “Thank you for kicking me in the ass, can I get somemore?” If he doesn’t do that, then he is somehow being a dictator.
Yet this administration is continuing the previous administration’s actual real work to engage in real censorship and to prosecute journalists. Yet that doesn’t seem to be a problem for Boyle. You’d think an article attacking Trump for being against a Free Press would mention Julian Assange. But no. Why? Because the propaganda arm of the plutocrats doesn’t like Assange and wants him prosecuted and censored.
A broken clock is right twice a day. One of those instances for Trump is when he says the corporate media is the enemy of the people. I doubt Trump is thinking about the weapons of mass destruction lie the corporate media sold, which caused the death of millions of people. But here they proved themselves definitely the enemy of every family in the USA that had a member killed, wounded, or harmed in that unjust war sold by them and their lies, not to mention the Iraqi people whose suffering is exponentially worse than that of their invaders.
If Trump had the support in congress he would absolutely move to censure the press. His grassroots supporters approve.
Trump has the majority in Congress. The article tells us his supporters think he should do what you say.
So what’s keeping him? If that’s what he wants to do when he criticizes the corporate press then why doesn’t he do it?
I’m sorry. I disagree with almost everything Trump does. I don’t think he is very smart and I think he is a scam artist. But I don’t buy into the phony resistance garbage that accuses him of things that just aren’t so.
Trump tweets and says what he says not to shut down the corporate press but to convince his base that they are wrong and he is right. I don’t jump to the conclusion that he wants to shut them down when he says they are “fake news” or that they are “enemies of the people.”
But those who don’t see that the corporate press is propaganda and opposes Trump because he isn’t what the establishment wants, but instead just think they are noble truth tellers, will obviously believe them when they say that means he is threatening the freedom of the press.
Yeah, I’ll believe that when the people saying that discuss Julian Assange and how both sides of the Duopoly want to arrest him, prosecute him, and shut down Wikileaks.
Well put LibWingOfLibWing… We absolutely have “fake News” but it the fake news that got Trump elected. It is the fake news that prevents a candidate of the people from having a chance of being elected. It is fake news that keeps too many Americans bitter, angry and passionate… but directing all of their energies at the wrong culprits. It is fake news that delivers the Great Western Narrative that divides and conquers there 99%. It is the fake news that serves up corporate vetted politicians for us to choose our executioners and slave masters. To read ‘real news’ it takes effort, time and critical thinking skills, a luxury most Americans feel they don’t have.
The vast majority of working people are exhausted when they get home from work. They need to zone out. They aren’t watching television with shows that keep them from thinking because they want to be uninformed. They do so because they are so stressed they need something that takes their mind off their problems, their terrible mind-numbing jobs, their bills, and the disgusting people who order them around and treat them like garbage. If that doesn’t work they drink or they smoke weed.
They don’t do independent research or take the time to scour the internet to find the truth because they are happy to be dumb. They don’t have the energy to do that.
I just want to say it’s not their fault. It’s part of the way the system is designed.
But they know something the hell is not right. They are angry and frustrated.
His base does not equal the entire Republican Party. That is why he hasn’t fired Jess Sessions or Robert Mueller yet. Too many Republicans who oppose it.
He has spoken many times of wanting to change the libel laws of this country in order to make it easier for politicians to sue the press. If the majority of Republicans agreed with him he would have already done so. But they don’t.
The most dangerous thing about Trump’s attack on “fake news” and media conspiracies against him is the real threat of violence against journalists. It won’t happen now but once he is out of power there will be a reckoning from the far right.
I disagree. Most people just gravitate towards their confirmation biases. Even in this era where there is more information than ever available.
I agree again with you. It is NOT their fault. The system is rigged in such a way that ‘real news’ is not made available to the general public. While it is easy to turn off the radio and listen to Rush Limbaugh or grab a USA Today at the corner convenience store or paper box, the mainstream forms of media have all been co-opted by powerful interest groups. Gone are the days when left leaning tabloids sat next to the “pro-business” publications on every news stand. TV was compromised from the onset with their dependence of corporate ads to exist. Radio met a similar fate when Clear Channel bought up 90% of the stations across the country and banned anything deemed anti-corporate.
Our biggest problem therefore is trying to change the mindset of the general population. Yes, people are angry and frustrated, but they still funnel their blame where the media leads them. “Blame the Democrats! Blame the Republicans! Blame the government! Blame the Liberal conspiracy! Blame the Russians, the Chinese, the Mexicans!” But blame is never directed against the sponsors or their PACS and biased ‘research institutes’ that exist solely for the purpose of undermining the public interest. This is by design, but to date it has been more effective than its architects could have ever imagined.
I have the luxury of understanding what the problem is, but I have no solution as to how to reverse this anti social phenomena. If you have the answer, please fill me in!
Yes, but thanks to Trump, which the left helped elect, we are, as I predicted, forced into the very compromising position of having to defend the corporate media for the sake of defending the concept of an independent media at all!
THINK for fucking crying out loud!
Your explanation does not ring very true to me.
I would often come home from my exhausting $8.00 an hour job on hot, in summer, bitter cold in winter construction sites, and my biggest escape was reading Chomsky, Herman, Zinn, The Nation, The Progressive, In These Times, ZMagazine, FAIR’s newsletters and the like. (real books and magazines - this was before the internet).
Well, obviously you are unusual.
The banality of most media is apparent and the way that news is related to the public is clearly filtered trough the lens of the corporate sponsors of most every broadcast you want to look at.
But that does not mean that excellent journalistic efforts don’t ever occur. For example, I often like Kamau Bell’s “United Shades of America”. I recommend his show on the perspective of native Hawaiians (season 3, episode 9) to everyone on this site.
As other commentators so rightly stated - “What Free Press?”
Re-read Upton Sinclair’s ‘Brass Check’
http://drnissani.net/mnissani/revolutionarystoolkit/brasscheck.pdf
Read John Keracher’s ‘The Head-Fixing Industy’
We must fight the head-fixing industry of the capitalist class to a finish. We must expose its shams, its fraudulent claims, its hypocracies and perversions. Against its “holy” humbugs, we must hurl our simple truths in relation to history and the real part played in social evolution by the class which does the world’s work. We must un-fix the workers’ heads by imparting real knowledge and driving out the falsehoods of capitalism’s head-fixing industry. It is only through thus exposing the class nature of the head-fixing industry that we can prepare the workers’ minds for the need of a revolutionary change.
