In the six years or so that I’ve been writing online, I’ve been motivated, more than anything else, by the emails of young lefties who write to me. They write to me, usually, because they’re facing some sort of crisis of conscience. These crises are inspired by particular events, particular political controversies. But almost always, they have the same basic dynamic: these people– sometimes as young as 20, sometimes as young as 17– have convictions, moral convictions, that the world of progressive media does not allow.
These are convictions such as “American drones should not be killing innocent Muslims” or “President Obama should not be putting Social Security cuts in play” or similar. They are, in other words, convictions that are left-wing but which cut against the agenda of the Democratic party, which means they cut against the needs of “progressive” pundits and writers, who are beholden to the Democrats for their livelihoods. It’s not merely that these young lefties find progressives reject their positions. It’s always that they are so resolutely, deeply, gleefully nasty about it, that the self-appointed guardians of liberalism are so utterly and unapologetically ruthless in prosecuting the case against left-wing criticism. These kids have been raised in an environment where any political action other than pulling a lever every two years is taken to be inherently ridiculous, and yet find themselves without a party to call home. So they write me and ask me things. I give them answers, when I can. Mostly, they ask me why it has to be this way.
Well, it mostly has to be this way because our media, broadly defined, is the public relations firm for our economic elite, and since the elite have the money, our media will say what the elite want. And what they want is to ensure that plutocracy is the order of the day for both parties, even while I acknowledge that there are real and important differences between those parties. But the other reason it has to be this way is because this is what the redbaiting, hippie punching progressives want. This is what they really care about. I’m not reading minds; that’s what their words teach us.
So take, for example, Jon Chait, who’s got a third degree black belt in hippie punching. He writes for New York magazine, which is appropriate, given the empty, affluent cultural progressivism of that publication’s presumed readership. He has recently graced us with a piece titled “The Pathetic Lives of Putin’s American Dupes.” This is emblematic of Chait, and emblematic of the world of American progressivism: disagreeing with conservatives, but actively contemptuous and hateful towards anyone to the left of Rahm Emanuel. Consider, for example, Chait’s admiration for Jamie Kirchick, one of our most consistent and unapologetic warmongers, someone who has pushed again and again for more murder of Muslims throughout his career. Kirchick and people like him are responsible for Iraq, the massive miscalculation of our escalations in Afghanistan, our secret war in Yemen, and countless other fiascoes that have killed our soldiers, burnt our money, wasted our diplomatic capital, and otherwise damaged the United States. The RT reporters that Chait hates with such zeal have done– well, nothing, really. Nothing at all. Just as a bonus, Chait throws in a little love for Rosie Gray, Israeli apartheid’s insider in the land of listicles, because if there’s anything a “progressive” hates as much as leftists, it’s Palestinians.
So that’s how you get to become the political champion of America’s most self-impressed magazine: by attacking a powerless, actively-reviled foreign television network while cozying up to an unapologetic neoconservative. Conservatives have no friends to their left, and neither do progressives, and that’s all you need to know about American politics.
This is why so many young American leftists are so thoroughly, permanently alienated from mainstream politics, why they seek out people like me to talk to– because conservatives value and cultivate their extremists and what passes for the left, in America, hates and despises its extremists. It’s not just a refusal to take up left-wing causes. It’s the blanket assumption of the deep, personal failings of anyone who doesn’t want to get into bed with the Jamie Kirchicks of the world, of anyone who thinks that Americans have a deeper moral responsibility to oppose American slaughters than to oppose media bias in a network no one in the world considers unbiased.
RT is propaganda. It’s also, sometimes, a useful source of journalism. It’s useful because American media is also propaganda. It may not be as directly influenced by a government as RT. It may not be as relentless in its biases as RT. It may not be as directly corrupt. But it’s propaganda– pro-American, pro-capitalist, pro-status quo propaganda, and anyone who tells you otherwise is somehow who hopes to wring money out of it. CNN’s conduct during either of our wars in Iraq has been relentlessly militaristic and no less biased towards the American government’s interests than RT has been towards Putin’s misadventures in Crimea. (Those misadventures, by the way, are quite popular among the people who live there, although the US media will never tell you so.) MSNBC, meanwhile, advances whatever version of events in Crimea is least damaging to the Obama administration; FOX News, the opposite. If you think you’re getting something called “real news” while viewers of RT are getting something called “propaganda,” you’re a child or a fool. That’s how you get somebody like Chris Hayes, who once wrote openly and unapologetically about imperial privilege, desperately signalling his Very Seriousness throughout the conflict in Ukraine, trying to shore up his moderate credentials. That’s how radicals become TV hosts.
Glenn Greenwald made a simple point recently: during the prelude to the Iraq war and the initial days of that conflict, American media was as thoroughly biased towards American nationalism and militarism as RT is now towards Russian nationalism and militarism. For this, he was excoriated by American progressives, although that’s not saying much; Glenn is excoriated by American progressives no matter what he says. And if you’re actually paying attention, if you care enough to really read what they say and how they say it, you’d recognize that they have so much more enthusiasm for going after people like Glenn than they do for going after conservatives. And all the young politicos who obsess over what they write learn those lessons.
The United States, by any rational estimation, is one of the most destructive forces in the history of the world. This condition should concern Americans above, beyond, and ahead of any resistance to any other country’s actions, by the most basic and non-negotiable theory of democracy imaginable. That so many resist this fact speaks to their desperate desire to see their country as a perfect, nurturing mother, rather than as the destructive force history tells us it actually is.
Anyone who spends any time reading Jon Chait’s archives, if they’re honest, will conclude that Chait is far more animated and passionate about attacking people on his left than he is about attacking people on his right. That matters; it filters out into our culture. He’s far from alone. It’s the progressive obsession. And it matters; it’s why he and they lose. Politics is a fulcrum, and the extremes define the center, and as long as the Jon Chaits rule, dispensing baubles to the culture bunnies who read New York for its celebrity coverage, we will keep finding ourselves in a world where the debate is not whether to cut food stamps but how much cutting we should do.
I don’t exist in the rarefied strata people like Chait do– there’s the benefit of speaking out for the world’s moneyed interests, again. If a humble blog post like this one could ascend to that altitude, it would be criticized by the progressives I describe here in terms they would never use against conservatives. Conservatives they disagree with; leftists, they hate. That’s been the most consistent message of my political life. Maybe, someday, in the far future, they might endure enough failure to actually think this over, to ask themselves if there’s some connection between their massive hatred of the people who sit a few feet to their left and the perpetual failures of the American left. But that day isn’t today, or tomorrow. Being a good Democrat means never having to say you’re sorry.
Me, personally, I welcome their hatred. I have been dealing with it for my entire adult life, and I have family history at my back. But it’s those lefty kids that I worry for. I remember, in the run up to Iraq, the daily smear campaigns, the pure, naked contempt from the decent progressives who supported Bush’s war. I think about it every day. And I think about the utter loneliness, the near-total absence of genuinely left-wing voices in our media to support those of us who opposed the war. We were right, incontrovertibly and totally, although even today they can’t admit to that without larding their admissions with qualifications. Ten years on, I think about the people who are the age I was then, and I think about Jon Chait, sweating in his apartment, hating them for fighting against the moral bankruptcy of our nation, and these words come to me easily. Those kids deserve better. Every word I’ve ever written has been for them.
Wonderfully said. Thank you.
“Anyone who spends any time reading Jon Chait’s archives, if they’re honest, will conclude that Chait is far more animated and passionate about attacking people on his left than he is about attacking people on his right.”
I doubt it. He does lean right on foreign policy and education, but these topics show up in a tiny proportion of his writing. He is most animated by a sustained and pretty relentless attack on mainstream Republican economic policy and ideology. Note the book he wrote. (Much more focussed and polemical than, say, Yglesias, who is always looking for a libertarian-ish economic point to squeeze in alongside his redistributionist commitments. And I even sort of like Yglesias.)
Yeah, I was confused by this as well. I read Chait every day since I like his writing style, and he’s relentless in mocking conservatives and Republicans for being stupid liars. When Freddie says he’s more animated about attacking liberals, that just doesn’t comport with the reality I’m familiar with.
Similarly, Chait attacking RT is somehow used in this piece as an example of Chait attacking lefties. That doesn’t make any sense to me; he’s attacking RT and those defedending Putin because Putin is a conservative authoritarian and Chait is more liberal than that. He’s attacking them from the left. How is this an attack ON the left?
I’m confused by this, and it sort of undermines Freddie’s whole post.
Chait does on occasion engage in the sort of hippie-punching Freddie accuses him of. And in fact here’s a post where he responds to Freddie accusing him of doing so. Meta!
http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/jonathan-chait/81631/confessions-hippie-puncherignorer
But you’re right, the vast vast vast majority of his withering contempt and sarcasm is directed to his right (and toward Ohio). And it totally does undermine Freddie’s entire point.
Actually, Ethan, if you read Chait’s piece, you’ll see that Freddie’s totally right. It is Chait who makes a connection between RT and the left. First, by comparing the commie defenders of the Soviet Union to the defenders of Putin. Then by introducing the whole discussion of Putin apologists with an excursus on Stephen Cohen, whose left-wing credential Chait keeps flagging: “Russologist for the left-wing Nation. Cohen is a septuagenarian, old-school leftist who has carried on the mental habits of decades of anti-anti-communism seamlessly into a new career of anti-anti-Putinism.” Then by dwelling on the left-wing followers of RT, and criticizing the left-wing critics of Kirchick’s performance on RT, and on and on. So despite what you correctly say about RT, Freddie’s right to say that Chait is engaging in hippie punching here.
So does any mass-media not qualify as propaganda in your view?
Merriam Webster: “ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc.”
OED: “The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a political cause or point of view. Also: information disseminated in this way; the means or media by which such ideas are disseminated.”
Ethan: Thanks for the official definition.
The piece described the American media as propaganda containing some journalism, which I interpret to mean that the point of view promotion trumps information dissemination. The examples he’s picking are much stronger than just the idea that objectivity doesn’t exist and that we’re all biased.
Nonetheless, the question stands. Is American mass-media notably biased or is it a fair extrapolation that all major news organizations *primarily* serve the interest of economic or political elites.
Slight limiter as I realized I misworded something. “Is American mass-media notably biased or is it a fair extrapolation that all major news organizations *primarily* [to advance the point of view] of economic or political elites.”
I would speculate that the priority given to propagandizing is directly related to the economic, political, and cultural power that’s at stake.
The practice outlined above of punching down demonstrates this. I don’t see anything in the above definitions that implies that everyone is always horrible biased all the time. Rather, organizations with power, status, etc. are prone to, intentionally or not, peddle narratives which seek to secure or justify that power, status, etc.
In this regard the U.S. MSM might be more propagandistic on the whole because of its symbiotic relationship with society and government which have the most to lose. But I think Freddie’s point is merely that, as citizens of the U.S., we have a greater responsibility to be more critical and skeptical of our own propaganda, and that various people who operate in the media have an interest diverting attention to lies and abuses elsewhere.
Ethan Gach:
Thanks for the follow-up.
That makes sense. And yeah, I’d agree that propaganda does not imply horribly biased all the time. Most forms of advocacy involve propagandizing to one extent or another as you are explicitly trying to push an agenda.
Similarly, the piece is punching up and I’d say being a bit hyperbolic in doing but that’s punching for you.
All that said, I’d argue that such a state of affairs means that there’s always going to be an incentive to propagandize that will often be in conflict with the incentive to conduct effective journalism. That under circumstances where there’s a lot at stake (or the opposition isn’t in a position to push back effectively) propaganda is more likely to win out.
However, I think cultivating effective skepticism tends to require cultivating understanding of when the MSM is engaging in propaganda and when they aren’t.
So these 20 year-olds are getting their feelings hurt because the unnamed cabal of progressive pundits refuses to criticize Obama’s drone policy and Social Security proposals? And are being nasty about Russia Today? And this has sparked a crisis of conscience? I don’t mean to laugh, I really don’t, but … wha? I think I agree with you overall point, but such terrible examples.
I think maybe these folks would feel better about their place in the world if they got off the internet and started protesting something. Knock on some doors. Get involved in some activism. Start their own blog even. Honestly who cares what Jon Chait says?
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/199201–.htm
I find your criticism that maintstream liberalism is harder on its left wing than it is on conservatives to be somewhat baffling. Not because its wrong, but because I think you completely fail to see the dynamic at play here. It’s not sinister; it’s basic human nature.
It’s like being in a family – if you look at the playground and someone bullying a kid, you kind of shrug your shoulders, maybe you get upset you go over there and try to stop it. If you find out your brother did it, you (presumably) are pissed off at him and will chew him out for it, drag him by the scruff of his neck home to tell your parents so he can be punished. It’s not that bullying is somehow less acceptable if your family does it – it’s that people feel on obvious sense of obligation towards those in the inner cirlce. And obligation is packaged together with protection and thus discipline. We react more harshly when someone closer to us betrays our values than when someone farther away does, because we feel we have an obligation to convince those closer to us to not violate those values.
Same in politics. Liberals expect conservatives to be rather degenerate. It annoys us, infuriates us, and we fight against it. But it fundamentally is what it is. But when we see fellow liberals acting that way, there’s a visceral reaction to try to “fix” the person who is on your side so as not to embarrass or undermine the in-group.
Now, you can certainly argue that people like Chait are wrong on the merits and that the people to the farther left should win the day, but that’s a different argument, similar to the brother trying to convince his parents that bullying was the right course of action.
So if someone you don’t know breaks into your house you’re less likely to call the cops than if your uncle does it?
Not less likely, but I’d probably be more hurt and angry if I found out my uncle stole something than if a stranger did so.
Your analogy doesn’t work though. Freddie’s criticism wasn’t about the frequency of criticism or the likelihood of attracting it; his criticism was about the intensity and tenor of the criticism.
Your analogy doesn’t work because people on the internet anger me much more than my family, even family I disagree with. I’ve chipped more teeth reading hackneyed internet commentary than I have at my Uncle, unless it’s actually him writing the internet commentary. I guess that’s possible.
Also, I’m much more likely to defend my family against outsiders. Even if I agree with the outsiders. I really wonder at your family dynamic. I am very protective of mine. I will admit their flaws, but I won’t stand for maligning them. The hippy punching isn’t solely an internal dispute. It’s frequently done in agreement with others not in your metaphoric family, conservative media members.
If someone you actively disagree with points out how stupid one of your family member’s beliefs are do you actually agree with them and mock your family members?
If anything I think the evidence points to the journalists Freddie refers to identifying themselves in the family of journalists, not the family of lefties. It makes sense that they punch people outside of their perceived family to enforce the ties they have with the non-leftish members of their journalist family.
Christ, look, it’s true that mainstream American news is often pro-American, militaristic, and ignores inconvenient facts. But comparing American journalistic intimidation—firing, social shunning, mocking in op-eds— to the Russian habit of FUCKING MURDERING journalists who don’t toe the party line is morally deaf.
I love the idea that opposing Social Security cuts is not allowed in the world of progressive media. Citations, please.