Three Right Wing Lies Even Democrats and Mainstream Media Believe
There is a common misconception that only stupid people believe propaganda. Another misconception is that all Right Wing propaganda is aimed at Right Wingers. Surprise. A lot of propaganda is aimed straight at you, and is probably influencing you, even if you are a Democrat or a mainstream media journalist.
Below are three Right Wing propaganda lies that most non-Right Wing people believe. If you believe them, don’t feel badly. You have tons of company. Anyone can be vulnerable to propaganda.
The way this works is that first the Right Wing needs to persuade mainstream media to believe the lies. Unfortunately this is incredibly easy to do.
How Mainstream Media Strategies Enable Political Propaganda
https://conatusnews.com/mainstream-media-political-propaganda
Once people working in mainstream media are persuaded and start spreading a lie, everyone is surrounded by this point of view. People can’t get away from it. It’s so widely held that it seems to be common “knowledge.”
Lie #1
That the “news” — including all new things that are said or done by Trump — is important and urgent. That you should overwhelm yourself and stress yourself out to keep track of every bit of “news.”
Steve Bannon spoke about this propaganda strategy in the article below and is quoted as saying “The Democrats don’t matter…The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” I tried to link to this article but Medium won’t allow it. You can google for it, if you want to read it.
Has Anyone Seen the President by Michael Lewis, Feb. 9, 2018 at www.bloomberg.com
The Right Wing has flooded media with shit as a way to block or minimize the circulation of truths that could reveal Right Wing lies. Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at NYU, has written about this. He thinks news organizations should stop sending seasoned journalists to White House press briefings — that the organizations should only send interns. He also thinks news programs should not invite guests who spout streams of lies and obfuscations. He’s right.
There’s no news there — only lies. News media don’t need to cover every Trump rally live either. They can report that it happened after the fact. Unimportant things that won’t affect our lives don’t need to be covered intensively, or even at all.
The Reality: Even if news organizations let themselves be flooded with lies or trivia, the rest of us don’t have to follow.
We don’t need to keep track of all that.
If we are stressed out from the news, we can ignore it and do more fulfilling activities. Even those of us who are activists can just sign up for an activist organization email list. Then when there is a protest or something else we can do about a problem situation, we’ll get an email. The rest of the time we can be free to ignore the news, if that works for us.
Anyone needing to de-stress is welcome to check out my essay on the subject.
For anyone interested, here is a book that discusses how it doesn’t work to overload ourselves with too much information. The book describes ways to “underload” ourselves so we can reap the benefits of choosing how much information to imbibe.
If we clear our minds often and for long enough, the political results could be phenomenal. Some of the most powerful ideas for the Resistance will likely come from people who make it a priority to clear our minds, to keep revitalizing ourselves.
You can practice it a bit now or soon if you like, looking up for a few moments when you want to rest, or when you find a topic to which you want to give some thought.
Politically, our main focus needs to be to get out the progressive vote for Congress, state and local political positions.
That’s it. There are no other political actions needed. We have plenty of time to live our lives and have fun.
Please do spend a few minutes more here though, reading about two other lies that most liberals believe. Believing a lie can drag us backward without our realizing it. And it can be easy to let go of it, once you realize it’s a lie.
Lie # 2
Some propaganda lies are like negative hallucinations. The usual kind of hallucination is seeing something that isn’t there. A negative hallucination is NOT seeing something that IS there. Every culture has its blind spots. Most Americans are blind to the pervasive and powerful influence of propaganda on us.
Part of this is due to the fact that we are surrounded by advertising and marketing messages constantly and think of this as normal. Political advertising or propaganda just seems like one more type of marketing.
Lie #2 is:
One specific kind of negative hallucination we have right now is that we don’t know why so many Trump supporters still support Trump. This is one reason why people still click on the thousands of articles in newspapers, and still watch TV shows, where poor down and out Rust Belt Trump supporters are interviewed.
It’s as if people believe that finally the 500th or so interview will shed some light on this apparent mystery.
The Reality: Interviewers only need to ask Trump supporters where they get their news. Then we will all know what they believe. Most of them believe what their supposed “news media” tell them. We can also tell how much fear and anger have been stoked by noting where they get their news.
Many Trump supporters are authoritarian followers, described here by Canadian psychologist and researcher Bob Altemeyer.
Right Wing media glorify President Con Artist as if he were the nation’s savior. They lie about his imaginary accomplishments. They scapegoat Democrats or minorities for Republicans’ failures — when they mention GOP failures at all.
These “media” are not actually news organizations. They don’t bother to report news — unless they find a way to put a pro-Trump or anti-Democrat spin on it. They are simply machines for nonstop negative campaigning against Democrats, with a bit of positive campaigning for Republicans thrown into the mix.
Such “media” also keep repeating the lie that mainstream media can’t ever be trusted — thus sealing Right Wing media consumers into a bubble, which truth never enters.
Some of us who have some extra time and attention to spare, are fighting propaganda, for example by contacting advertisers on Right Wing propaganda media and asking them to withdraw their ads. If you want to join us, feel free.
Help! Our Nation Is Drowning in Right Wing Lies and Propaganda. Here’s How to Change That
Lie # 3
I’ll note one more Right Wing lie that liberals believe, and then leave the rest for a later time, so you can get back to releasing stress or whatever you do to have fun and rejuvenate yourself.
Lie #3 is:
That mainstream media have a Left Wing bias and must constantly bend over Rightward, to correct the bias and be fair to the Right Wing.
In spite of Right Wingers’ complaints to the contrary, there are no major media organizations that have a Left Wing bias. For example, Washington Post and New York Times actually quote twice as many Republicans as Democrats in their political coverage. Both papers have large numbers of Right Wing columnists.
Also, during the election campaign, the supposedly “Left Wing biased” media gave more negative coverage to Clinton than to any other candidate.
During Trump’s campaign, Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica were able to play mainstream media, Right Wing media and social media like fiddles. Bannon immersed media in propaganda that bashed Hillary Clinton. That’s how the Right Wing got likely Democratic voters not to vote for her.
One strategy Bannon and Cambridge Analytica used was to form a supposedly nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization to do “nonpartisan” research. The Hillary Clinton hit job book Clinton Cash came out of that. Yet New York Times and Washington Post published excerpts from it, just as if it were true. That was a serious error for which neither paper has apologized to the nation. They should.
Nowadays, if mainstream media or social media show a preference for circulating the truth over lies, or call out the lies of the Trump administration, or decline to supply a platform for hate speech, Right Wingers tell the owners and managers of such media “You are showing Left Wing bias.” Unfortunately, these owners and managers sometimes believe it. Then they bend over even further Rightward to try to be “fair.”
That needs to stop. Democrats need to pressure media to report truth, to deny platforms for hate speech and to acknowledge that doing these things is just good journalism — not Left Wing bias.
The Reality: Mainstream media have some longstanding habits like bothsidesism — — acting as if both parties do every action equally, even when they don’t. These habits cause media to be helpful to Trump and other Right Wing liars, even as Trump tries to destroy media credibility.
Such media habits worked in the past when both parties were arguing their positions in good faith, in a mostly truthful way. Those times are over. Media need to change. My suggestions for changes are in the essay about media that I linked to above, right after the third paragraph of this essay.
Most major mainstream media bend over so far Rightward to appease complaining Right Wingers, that they end up having a Right Wing bias.
Mainstream Media Have Unintentional Right Wing Bias
There is no chance that there will ever be a major Left leaning media company that can stand as an equal and opposite force to Right Wing propaganda media. This is because most Left Wing media are real media that do journalism and report news. Right Wing propaganda media don’t.
Right Wing propaganda media are simply vehicles for nonstop negative campaigning against progressives. These media cover only news that fits this purpose — news they can spin in a way that bashes Democrats, scapegoats minorities or praises Republicans. The rest of the events that occur are simply omitted.
Progressives generally respect truth and genuine news coverage. So a progressive nonstop propaganda machine that pretended to be news, as Right Wing propaganda media do, would have no audience. Such an organization could never get off the ground.
Thanks for your attention. Now feel free to go out — or stay in — and rejuvenate yourself. You deserve it.
