So the New York Times has either been slipping hallucinogens into its editorial room French Press coffeemaker or, more likely, it has taken complete leave of its senses. This was borne out clearly in a story titled Undercover With the Alt-Right, which ran on September 19.
Let’s begin by pointing out that while it presents itself as a news report, this is in fact a strange hybrid of documentary and faux-journalism, and published in the Opinion section. In reality, the piece was a promotional spot for a multimedia project called Hope Not Hate, which is based out of the UK.
Obviously such a project is not by definition suspicious or undeserving of praise. But when you have the Times running this sort of stuff in such an ambiguous fashion, failing to indicate that it is promo for a documentary film, one is forced to ask what the fuck is going on — and not because one should always be skeptical per se as much as because this is a newspaper whose laurels are consistently fluffed in public by its own pathetic boasts about accuracy and fairness.
Next, let’s be honest about exactly who is being targeting here. This is not a paper being read on construction sites across America; the Times is the newspaper for a certain set of cosmopolitan latte liberal Democratic Party voters who have next to no idea what they are talking about when they say the word “fascism.”
The typical Times reader has absolutely zero grasp of political economy and how the forces within it can mutate into fascism. As such, they are effectively being manipulated by this piece of writing in the same way that a horror film manipulates a pack of teenagers. Take this video for example:
Here you seen this secret recording of a conversation with Jason Reza Jorjani, in which he brags and boasts about having contact with the Trump administration via Steve Bannon.
Really???? That’s it?!?! They didn’t even do a public records request to confirm if this guy has ever in fact been in contact, in some fashion, with the Trump White House? This is piss-poor journalism and it is allowed to fly because the Times knows that it will provoke an outpouring of twerp boasting from its readers, similar to the way that a bunch of hens (or perhaps sheep) act when someone throws a firecracker in the middle of the flock.
Just to be clear, I don’t think that the alt-right is a joke and I do not think that its relatively few real members should be totally brushed aside as purely a case of media hyperbole. There are, indeed, some nasty people out there who are worth worrying about.
But Professor Noel Ignatiev, who has specialized in the study of the Civil War and racism, said recently in a long article worth reading, “The only way to overcome the divisions within the working class is to confront them directly. The problem of white supremacy must be fought out openly within the working class. Without a direct challenge to the race differential and to the institutions that reproduce it, all denunciations of white supremacy and all appeals for working-class unity, are empty words. In fact, they may do more harm than good.”
By this he is referring to the various state and private business organs of power that perpetuate systemic racism. Which, to get to a key point, would be the major advertisers for the Times, including the big players on Wall Street.
Just to state the obvious.
