[ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media"

[Damien Broderick]

On 7/12/2011 8:51 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote:

> Communists (= dictatorship of the proleteriat, state ownership of the
> means of production, violent overthrow of the bourgoisie, etc etc) are
> as far to the left of "hard left progressives" as "hard left
> progressives" are to the left of Ollie North.
>
> Most Americans are so thoroughly brainwashed by right-wing propaganda
> that they genuinely *believe* that anything non-conservative is
> basically in the socialist/communist/Trotskyist/Maoist nexus.

It's a profound confusion that keeps surfacing on this list, and really 
needs to be put out of its misery. Hard to know how to achieve that, 
though, when as you say it seems that many USians have been so 
conditioned by the likes of Fox and all its predecessors that accurate 
assessment of political variants seems out of reach. And that's 
dangerous; it leads straight into toxic Us v Them brain shutdown.

It was my hope that by reposting the John Pilger article I'd provoke 
some more nuanced discussion of the ways in which exactly this kind of 
foolishness pervades USian perceptions of the media, but hardly anyone 
responded to its substance. (Note that Pilger, a man clearly of the 
left, was originally shut out *without formal bans* because of his 
*attacks* on *Pol Pot* and on US involvement with that disgusting 
communist regime.)

Damien Broderick