“Fake News!” “Fake News!” The hypocrisy meters have been melting down for the past several weeks as the master practitioners of fake “news” have been screeching, screaming, and pointing fingers about a supposed new “epidemic” (Hillary Clinton’s word for it) of “fake news.” On the one hand, it has been deliciously amusing to behold the unmitigated hypocrisy of left-wing politicians and their establishment media collaborators expressing hysterical alarm over the supposed existential crisis posed by the “fake news” phenomena.
On the other hand, a not-so-amusing fact is that the discredited establishment fake news media apparently still have sufficient clout amongst the establishment Democrat and Republican politicians to stampede them into passing legislation that could easily be used to suppress all dissent to political correctness and the globalist agenda. Thus, Republican leaders joined Democrats during the opening days of December to pass the “bipartisan” Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, as called for by Hillary Clinton. (See Dr. Ron Paul’s commentary on the “fake news” charade and the dangers of the new Orwellian efforts supposedly aimed at combatting it here.)
This illustrates that even though recent opinion polls (not to mention the even more telling Election Day poll) show that much of the American public totally distrusts the so-called mainstream media, and even though the former media giants have been hemorrhaging their audience share to alternative media, the mainstream media still wields sufficient influence to help pass laws that can do real harm. They may be the “dinosaur media,” as critics in the independent media like to say, but a Tyrannosaurus Rex thrashing around in its death throes can still be deadly — until it finally crashes to the ground and vital signs go flat-line.
The new media fixation with “fake news” since the November 8 elections bespeaks desperation and panic amongst the would-be ruling elites. They’re reeling from a huge double whammy. First, the historic Brexit vote in Britain in June. Ouch! Second, the historic Donald Trump upset in November. Double Ouch!
Neither of these unthinkables was supposed to happen; how could it be? All the “smart money,” all the establishment politicians, all the “prestige press” predicted that defeat for Brexit and Trump were sure things. Following their humiliating Brexit defeat, the globalists were enraged. James Traub, a propagandist for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) brain trust, wrote an amazingly arrogant piece on June 28 for Foreign Policy entitled, “It’s Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses.” Presaging the current media mania over “fake news” and the supposedly mindless booboisie who believe it, Traub tells us in his subtitle, “The Brexit has laid bare the political schism of our time. It’s not about the left vs. the right; it’s about the sane vs. the mindlessly angry.”
“The schism we see opening before us is not just about policies, but about reality,” says Traub. The Brexit vote won, he declares, because the “ignorant people” believed the “lying” and “cynical” Brexiteers. “Did I say ‘ignorant?’” Traub asks. “Yes, I did,” he answers, then continues: “It is necessary to say that people are deluded and that the task of leadership is to un-delude them. Is that ‘elitist’? Maybe it is; maybe we have become so inclined to celebrate the authenticity of all personal conviction that it is now elitist to believe in reason, expertise, and the lessons of history.” Yes, the Brexit vote proved we “ignorant masses” need elite cognoscenti like Traub, Clinton, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, et al., to “un-delude” us.
But then the “ignorant masses” struck again, rejecting the Elites’ handpicked sock-puppet, Hillary Clinton. To top off the pain of these ignominious defeats, opinion polls, as we’ve already mentioned, show the American public now has almost zero trust in the Elites’ “mainstream” media.
What to do? Blame the alternative media and social media. Yeah, that’s the ticket! “It is now clear that so-called fake news can have real-world consequences,” Hillary Clinton warns. We are facing an “epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda,” she declared. “Lives are at risk…. It is imperative that leaders in both the private and public sector step up to protect our democracy and innocent lives.” President Obama, likewise, has taken to warning against the threat posed by “active misinformation” and “propaganda” on the Internet.
Hillary Clinton lost the election, goes the current MSM “fake news” meme, because America’s “ignorant masses” believed Russian propaganda and fabricated social-media stories instead of looking to CNN, the New York Times, and other “reliable” news avatars. Fake news? Those now leading the noisy chorus on this tune are the most notorious practitioners of propaganda, deception, misinformation, and disinformation — and outright lies.
President Obama denouncing propaganda and misinformation? ObamaCare all by itself is a towering edifice of propaganda and lies, as the bill’s architect, Jonathan Gruber, infamously boasted in videotaped admissions. (See video here.) Remember the Obama claims that “if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan,” and that the individual mandate “is absolutely not a tax increase.” Well, those lies have “real-world consequences,” as Hillary puts it, and “lives are at risk” as a result. Then there are the multiple pledges by Obama never to go to war in Syria, while the evidence shows he was planning to do so all along. To make that publicly palatable he used the “fake news” lie that Syrian dictator Assad was using sarin gas against his own people. Obama’s Syrian war has cost lots of innocent lives as “collateral damage.” And since the predictable refugee waves have materialized, the Obama administration has lied repeatedly, falsely claiming that all the refugees he is bringing here are being carefully vetted, even while his top intelligence and law-enforcement officials admit they have no way of vetting them for security purposes.
Hillary Clinton decrying fake news? Yes, the same Hillary who falsely claimed the deadly Benghazi attacks were the result of an anti-Muslim video; who falsely (and repeatedly) claimed she had not transmitted classified and “top secret” material on her unclassified e-mail service; claimed (falsely) that Donald Trump had proposed to abolish the Veterans Administration; and falsely claimed that “the Wall Street guys are trying so hard to stop me,” when, in fact, the biggest Wall Street players were shoveling tens of millions of dollars into her campaign. And this short list doesn’t even scratch the surface.
But, let’s jump to the real fake news culprits, the ones who make the lies and propaganda of the Obamas, Clintons, and Kerrys (and the Bushes, Kissingers, and McCains) possible. When it comes to pure fabrication, no one tops the so-called elite media. Some of the better-known examples of exposed fabulists are: Jason Blair (New York Times), Janet Cooke (Washington Post), Mike Barnicle and Patricia Smith (Boston Globe), Jack Kelly (USA Today), Stephen Glass (The New Republic, Rolling Stone), Brian Williams (NBC), and Dan Rather (CBS). More important than the much-publicized frauds perpetrated by the aforementioned reporters are the mostly forgotten crimes of New York Times men such as Walter Duranty and Herbert Matthews (to name only two notorious propagandists out of many who deserve mention). Duranty intentionally covered up Stalin’s genocide-by-famine of 7-10 million Ukrainians during the 1930s (see here and here.) Meanwhile, Herbert Matthews was whitewashing communist atrocities in Spain during the same period — and demonizing the anti-communist forces. He then went on to an assignment as a romanticizing propagandist for Fidel Castro in Cuba. We saw the same thing in China, where Mao Tse-tung was endlessly glamorized, while his democide of tens of millions was ignored, minimized, or even outright denied. Yes, fake news does take innocent lives.
What about the fake news — which was promoted by virtually all the usual MSM offenders — that an unarmed young black man, Michael Brown, was gunned down in Ferguson, Missouri, by a white police officer while holding his hands up and pleading “Don’t shoot.” That was a lie, as some of the media perpetrators (such as the Washington Post), have since admitted.
Ferguson was not an isolated incident, of course; we have seen it over and over again: the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case, and anti-police protests in Baltimore, Milwaukee, Chicago, Dallas, Charlotte, etc., which have led to violence, riots, and murder. Media lies have repeatedly incited racial turmoil, from the infamous Al Sharpton/Tawana Brawley case to the fraudulent rape charges against the Duke University lacrosse team. The media have done more to destroy racial harmony and incite hatred (and take lives) with these malicious fake news stories than anything the KKK or Aryan Nations have done, or could have done.
“The Russians Are Coming! the Russians Are Coming!”
The most ludicrous posturing in the “fake news” gambit features Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, the New York Times, CNN, etc. holding forth as dauntless champions against Putin’s evil Kremlin. They are hoping that Orwell’s memory hole has swallowed all records of their long-running support for communism/socialism/collectivism and their history of vicious attacks on anti-communists. Are “progressive liberals” of this sort not the same “experts” who refused to see the genuine threat of communism during the decades of its most virulent and open march across the globe, who scorned, smeared, and persecuted Senator Joseph McCarthy (who has been vindicated by history), and who invented “McCarthyism” as the ultimate opprobrium with which to brand all those who warned of the real communist menace? For the past century, since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the “progressives” of the pseudo-liberal Left — in the media, academia, politics, think tanks, and business — have been in love with Soviet Russia, and with every other communist dictatorship. Even Putin, who is now a flavor out of favor with the elites, was celebrated as a charming ally just a few short years ago by the same globalist elites who are now blasting him as the evil lord of Mordor.
Please recall that it was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who was in the forefront of that elite cabal, orchestrating the “reset” of relations with Putin. Here at The New American, we were not taken in by the Kremlin’s new charm offensive, or by the effusive overtures of Bush, Clinton, Obama, and the establishment media toward Putin. Unlike them, we have suffered no illusions (or delusions) concerning the life-long KGB-FSB agent. (See, for instance, our January 22, 2007 cover story, “Putin’s Russia.”)
We have not had to flip-flop or revise our views on Putin like the supposed “experts” who once viewed him as comrade and now see him as demon. We saw him as a dangerous, evil man, and still do. Would he hesitate to hack our e-mail, websites, and Internet servers, or sabotage our elections? Obviously not, if it fit the Kremlin‘s strategic objectives. So, we should be willing to look at evidence of same. Ah, but that’s the key: evidence. So far, we have seen none. And Putin is far from the only one who might have a motive to throw the election. So far, the strongest available evidence indicts those who are screaming the loudest about “fake news” and “Russian hacking of the election.”
Photo: AP Images
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