This, by @djrothkopf is a confrontation with the difference between narrative established by the GOP and the reality behind it.
1/ Something the corporate media which shape our perception should have explained a long time ago already. thedailybeast.com/republicans-ar…
2/ Republicans are bad for the economy. The very statement is a confrontation with decades of established narrative - political PR.
It requires explanatory journalism to punch through it. And even then it is not self-evident for us to acknowledge the reality behind the PR.
3/ Once it’s clear that Republicans have always been bad for the economy, it gets worse. Just like its agenda, agency and behaviour has escalated, so have its goals over time.
1/ In our ingrained reductionism we forget that none of this began with one man, instead what we face is the product of decades of agenda - foreign and domestic.
A multiplicity of vectors engaged in a discourse coalition provisioning agency.
2/ Even where the different vectors of this discourse coalition of authoritarianism engage in internecine conflicts, as with Trump and Pence, the agenda remains sacrosanct.
Its agency remains focused on that agenda. Long games.
3/ The vectors are variants of authoritarianism.
From fascists to corporatists, oligarchs to zealots, cultists to Quislings, abusers to white collar criminals - on a foundation of Might Makes Right mentality, connected by a force dynamic of transnational organized crime.
This by @froomkin is a really good read, presenting a tough question crucial to our current challenges.
1/ Why don’t folks in media sound the alarm? The article explores several angles, each of relevance, but there are some blindspots. presswatchers.org/2022/11/why-ar…
2/ One answer resonates with a broader societal issue: many of us have forgotten what democracy means: how everything we have and get to do depends on it.
In this regard folks in media are no different from many of us. But there is a distance between media and society.
3/ Functional media function as a Fourth Estate, in our country the concept is pretty much a cultural mythos: we do not have a Fourth Estate, we have media operating under conditions of oligarchy.
2/ Even now we underestimate the power of narrative, often we ignore it. It strikes me as peculiar because we see the consequences of a toxic variant of it every day: accelerationist narratives. accresearch.org/shortanalysis/…
3/ The challenge with a narrative driven antidote is that it needs to match the requirements for what it has to engage. In our case, nascent authoritarianism.
We need to realise that the pattern didn’t start with one man, it’s a product of cultural engineering: 🧶
2/ Don’t get me wrong, amazing work. But as an old woman whose family came here from Weimar Germany, I can’t help but remember that it’s never pro- or opponents, but the conformist / establish / passive majority which gives permission to authoritarians, or not.
3/ This kind of format, visuals, pacing, I would love to see that with an explainer part on how our economy is under threat, how the threat plays PR while preying on what enables us to secure our rights.
What would you consider effective for out-group targeting?
On November 17, 1998, something extraordinary happened in Moscow.
1/ A high-ranking member of the organized crime unit at the FSB (Russia’s FBI) held a press conference. Go figure.
2/ His name was Alexander Litvinenko, and he told the world that Russia’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies had been taken over by organized crime.
He called Russia, “A Mafia State.”
3/ One year later, Vladimir Putin became President of Russia. But during Litvinenko’s final months at the FSB organized crime unit, Putin was his boss.