Well, it’s happening, the news is being rewritten…
‘Enemy of the people’: Almost half of Republicans say Trump should be allowed to close media outlets
President Trump’s attacks on the media, whom he dubbed “enemies of the people,” have struck a chord with supporters. A new poll found that 43 percent of Republicans want to give him the power to shut down certain news outlets. … Only 29 percent of Republicans believe in the honesty of the media, and 80 percent believe the press treats President Trump unfairly.
We the people are a test bed for a fascist experiment. “Like hounds, people have to be blooded. They have to be given the taste for savagery”, says Anis Shivani in this article by Henry Giroux. Neoliberal Fascism and the Echoes of History.
…neoliberalism and fascism conjoin and advance in a comfortable and mutually compatible movement that connects the worst excesses of capitalism with authoritarian “strongman” ideals. In a thoughtful analysis, Irish journalist O’Toole asserts neoliberalism creates the conditions for enabling what he calls a trial run for a full-blown state of contemporary fascism: “To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialed is fascism—a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon. Forget ‘post-fascist’—what we are living with is pre-fascism. Rather than overthrow democracy in one full swipe, it has to be undermined through rigged elections, the creation of tribal identities, and legitimated through a ‘propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of “alternative facts” impervious to unwanted realities.’ … Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from, and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it. … Trump’s Ministry of Fake News works incessantly to set limits on what is thinkable, claiming that reason, evidence, consistency, and logic no longer serve the truth, because the latter are crooked ideological devices used by enemies of the state. ‘Thought crimes’ are now labeled as ‘fake news.’”
It has been slowly happening all along…
the White House press shop has systematically attempted to warp the truth. Public visitor logs have been made private. The president won’t stop ripping up documents, forcing staffers to meticulously tape them back together to avoid violating the Presidential Records Act. The White House will no longer publicize Trump’s calls with foreign leaders, nor will it release summaries of what was discussed. White House stenographers, who are tasked with recording what the president says, have found their access restricted. Trump recently claimed that an aide who gave an official White House briefing does not actually exist. And when Sanders does face off with the press pool, she does things like publicly argue with reporters over the meaning of the word “no.”
At a mid-July news conference at the Pentagon this question was asked:
Gen. Milley, have you reached out to your counterparts in Europe after the NATO summit to reassure them that the U.S. forces are staying?”
Again, the press officer cut off the question before Milley could answer.
The incident, which left Pentagon reporters furious, was the latest flash point in what has become an increasingly adversarial relationship between Defense Secretary James Mattis’ Cabinet department and the reporters who cover it. Chief among the complaints, according to defense reporters who spoke to POLITICO, are declining access to Mattis and other military officials, as well as a sense that reporters are not receiving the information they need to keep the public informed about America’s military activities. … Some briefings with other officials still happen, but people who used to chat or provide background information more informally are no longer engaging, reporters say. Some reporters told POLITICO that fewer of their colleagues are going to the Pentagon these days, finding it increasingly pointless.
This organized re-storying has left its mark on the Climate Change narrative…
How Did the End of the World Become Old News?
…it has been a month of historic, even unprecedented, climate horrors. But you may not have noticed, if you are anything but the most discriminating consumer of news. The major networks aired 127 segments on the unprecedented July heat wave, Media Matters usefully tabulated, and only one so much as mentioned climate change. The New York Times has done admirable work on global warming over the last year, launching a new climate desk and devoting tremendous resources to high-production-value special climate “features.” But even their original story on the wildfires in Greece made no mention of climate change — after some criticism on Twitter, they added a reference.
