We Need “Mass Leftist Media” to Fight the Distortions and Lies of Legacy Media

We seem to be in the midst of a widening crack in the edifice that supports US ideology – denial. Even the most oblivious pundits have been crawling out from under their wormy rocks to confess that, yes, Trump is a fascist. One of the latest is Jonathan Rauch, whose brand new piece, aptly titled, “Yes It’s Fascism,” published in The Atlantic, begins with the predictable subtitle: “Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now, the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny.”

One wonders where Rauch has been hibernating over the last decade. Do luminaries from the legacy media really need to watch videos of public executions on the streets of Minneapolis to grudgingly conclude that Trump and his MAGA henchmen all flaunt the familiar mien of fascism? Rauch does a decent job of cataloguing the various fascist fragments parading before our eyes – attacks on the press, on public education, on universities, on women’s rights, “promiscuous” warfare, the threat to electoral systems, the routine deployment of bluntly racist rhetoric, the expansion and mobilization of organs of state violence, and so forth. Had Rauch simply concluded his confession with his reasonably thorough list, I would have applauded his tone of apology – better late than never. But, somehow, he failed to resist the compulsion to withdraw back into a cocoon of denial:

“If, however, Trump is a fascist president, that does not mean that America is a fascist country. The courts, the states, and the media remain independent of him, and his efforts to browbeat them will likely fail. He may lose his grip on Congress in November. He has not succeeded in molding public opinion, except against himself. He has outrun the mandate of his voters, his coalition is fracturing, and he has neglected tools that allow presidents to make enduring change. He and his party may defy the Constitution, but they cannot rewrite it, thank goodness.

So the United States, once the world’s exemplary liberal democracy, is now a hybrid state combining a fascist leader and a liberal Constitution; but no, it has not fallen to fascism. And it will not.”

A more honest, objective appraisal might have tentatively concluded that Trump has not yet fully consolidated fascist control – that there are still means of potential redress. However, to argue that the US “has not fallen to fascism” is to dodge the most critical question – how did all of this so called glorious democratic history resolve into a fascist juggernaut with massive public, corporate and media support? If America “was once the world’s exemplary liberal democracy,” what has caused tens of millions of people to embrace Trump in a swooning rage? If America’s citizens have abandoned “liberal democracy” with either passionate disgust or weary indifference, then Rauch ought to explain why. The idea that Trump emerged like a meteorite from deep space, to explode upon a formerly healthy ecosystem, has been a strange delusion streaked across the pages of legacy media.

Rauch, astonishingly fails to name the mechanisms that will end fascism other than hand-waving it away with some hastily abridged optimism about Trump’s polling numbers, and the oft repeated nonsense that the MAGA coalition is fracturing – polling shows that it is as strong as ever. Rauch’s piece ought to be seen as strange and disjointed – in essence he tells his readers that Trump is indeed a fascist with the most ominous intentions, while abruptly concluding that we have little to worry about, because (somehow) the US has not, and will not “fall to fascism (and never will).” At no point in this piece are readers advised to resist, engage in civil disobedience, and organize general strikes. Rauch references Minneapolis as an example of Trump’s fascistic use of paramilitary violence, but never utters a word about the intense resolve of the people living in the twin cities who risk their lives to confront fascism. Rauch, in effect, tells these people that the constitution still protects them. Reassurances about the alleged checks and balances of US institutions insult the people being battered and abused by US fascism. You can’t logically both admit that Trump is a fascist while forecasting a happy ending.

In the same online issue of The Atlantic we can read a far more reactionary piece than the one by Rauch, entitled, “International Law is Holding Democracies Back,” by former Bush apparatchik, John Yoo. The Trump administration gambit of bombing Venezuela to “snatch-and-grab” Maduro and his wife is Yoo’s absolute wet dream. This writer has no objection to Trump’s violation of international law, but rather, proposes that international law has become an obstacle to the aspirations of “western democracies,” to remove bad dictators from power and bring in corporations for essential “reconstruction and management.” I am not making this up – nowhere does Yoo suggest, like Rauch does, that the US has become a predatory dictatorship. He continues to luxuriate in the psychotic delusion that the world exists as a bifurcated system of malicious dictators and democratic nations promoting freedom. Yoo concludes:

“Global power is shifting, and old fictions are collapsing. If international law is to retain relevance, it will have to follow power, not pretend to constrain it.”

This is absolutely the worst sort of jingoism, but it hardly represents an anomalous perspective – Andrew Favakeh, writing in ZNetwork, observes that the New York Times has recently run a series of seven op-eds advocating the continued trend of massive military spending:

“Devoting seven editorials to boosting the US military when the country’s own democracy is under threat—and Trump is using the military so irresponsibly and illegally that high-level officers are resigning—the Times demonstrated that its commitment to militarism knows few bounds.”

While we often lament the rise of far right media like Breitbart, Newsmax and FOX, it is the legacy media that has fundamentally deformed the media landscape and castrated the thinking of the Democratic Party base.

That is not to say that platforms like The Atlantic do not sometimes publish excellent journalism like this piece by Vincent Bevins exploring the worst aspects of US imperialism, or this piece by Caitlin Flanagan unpacking the inherent class inequities built into the structures of the US private education system. David Wallace Wells has done some good reporting on climate for the NYT, but the occasional gem does not discount the role that so called corporate “liberal” media plays in the larger scheme of US politics – to push the Democratic Party base toward the “center” and to gaslight “educated” readers to embrace moderate positions on climate, the economy, and, critically, to whitewash US colonial policy so that it appears to be altruistically motivated.

In a sense, the better pieces posted at The Atlantic function as a manner of “intermittent reinforcement” that draws unwary readers to accept centrist and jingoistic offerings. As long as The Atlantic, The New Yorker and the New York Times shape narratives that gain the approval of the corporate elites who pay for their advertisements, the Democratic Party will most likely continue to be a paper-mache barrier against fascism. The legacy media that runs adjacent to the policies and world views of the Democratic Party assure that class issues never usurp the prominence of identity issues. The “left” will never gain control of the above named platforms, but we can call them out and create a more vibrant alternative media system.

There are a number of non-corporate, progressive social media platforms – Secular Talk with the plain speaking, relatable Kyle Kulinski (my favorite media figure), The Grayzone, Democracy Now, Economic Update (with Richard Wolff) and a few others that have growing lists of subscribers, but none of these compete with, say, The Fox News YouTube Channel’s 15 million subscribers, or the NYT’s 5 million YouTube subscribers. Both FOX and the NYT have massive corporate backing. Thus, the left in the US confronts a Gordian Knot – how do we reach a mass audience without the resources enjoyed by those loyal to capital.

The major themes that have to galvanize the left – socialism, degrowth/anti-consumerism, immigrant rights, peace, universal health care, sustainable agriculture/veganism, the organization and enfranchisement of tens of millions of poor people (in my view, the most critical of all issues) – all summon the ire of corporate interests. Thus, “mass leftist media” (a term so bizarre that I wince while typing it) requires the grass roots support of small donors.

Rush Limbaugh was the precursor to Trump – is Kyle Kulinski the left’s retort to Limbaugh? Kulinski has over 2 million YouTube subscribers – triple that and we have a new media landscape.

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