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Episode 47: American Magnanimity - Spinning Crimes Against Humanity as Benevolence Aug 08, 2018

Show notes

Since there's been America, there have been American war crimes, and since there have been American war crimes, there's been a parallel cottage industry of hacks, shills and propagandists willing to not only apologize for, deny and downplay these crimes, but actually spin them as benevolent charity.

While Karl Rove mastered the art of taking a politician's weakness and projecting it onto one's opponent, the American political and media class has mastered the art of taking the most blatant crimes and injustices and spinning them as something actually good for the subject being oppressed, cleansed or killed. From family separation to slavery to cutting people off welfare to endless war abroad, step into the Citations Needed Hall of Funhouse Mirrors to see how the most egregious offenses to human decency get turned into evidence of innate American humanitarianism.

We are joined by friend of the show, The Intercept's Jon Schwarz.

Episode 46: The Not-So-Benevolent Billionaire, Part II - Bill Gates in Africa Aug 01, 2018

Show notes

Russia, as we all know, has sinister "oligarchs" whereas in the United States, we are told, we have "philanthropists," "job creators," and "titans of industry" who earn their wealth through hard work, moxie, and guile. Aside from a few cartoonishly evil billionaires – like the Walton family, Peter Thiel, and the Koch brothers – the average American has a warm and fuzzy feeling about the super wealthy.

The most notable of these Benevolent Billionaires is Bill Gates, whose foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, operates the largest overseas "nonprofit" regime in the world, worth over 40 billion dollars–– twice that of the next biggest foundation. The Gates Foundation receives almost uniformly softball coverage from the media, many of whom receive funding from Gates through various investment and donor arrangements, both from his personal coffers and the foundation that bears his name.

In Part II of this two-part episode, we ask how the media is - or isn't - holding Gates accountable for his deeply ideological, often opaque efforts in sub-Saharan Africa.

We are joined by Mariam Mayet, executive director of the African Centre for Biodiversity.

Episode 45: The Not-So-Benevolent Billionaire: Bill Gates and Western Media Jul 25, 2018

Show notes

In this two-part episode we ask how much this network of patronage effects Western media's overwhelmingly positive and uncritical coverage of Gates. How can one can be critical of this type of massive outsized influence without devolving into paranoia? What is the nature of the capitalist ideology that informs Gates' so-called philanthropy? And how do his programs often harm those they allegedly aim to help?

We are joined this week by Dr. Linsey J. McGoey, associate professor of sociology at the University of Essex and author of the book, "No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy."

Episode 44: RussiaGate, Year 3 - Using the Nonstop Specter of Russia to Tarnish Black Activists Jul 18, 2018

Show notes

For over two years, the U.S. government has been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election - interference broadly considered to be in favor of candidate Donald Trump. As a result, a bizarre flip has occurred with the Right and Left: Polls show liberals now trust the FBI and CIA, while many right-wingers – though by no means all – suddenly act concerned about the so-called "deep state." Liberals have been turned into even more extreme hawks, not just on the issue of Russia, but anything that shores up support for American intelligence agencies broadly seen, fair or not, as a check on the unhinged Trump administration. Given that so much of RussiaGate coverage is about the alleged manipulation of Black activists, anti-fracking protesters, the Green Party –and even Bernie Sanders supporters - to attack Hillary Clinton and her campaign, the consequence has been the media, time and again, framing Leftist dissent as de facto Russian propaganda. Today we ask: how does the fever pitch of Russia coverage, in the aggregate, harm Black activists and movements? What are the historical antecedents for these red-baiting attacks? And how can Left solidarity work to dull the effects of these efforts to marginalize and delegitimize voices for justice? In Part II of this two-part RussiaGate episode, we are joined by Anoa Changa, host of The Way with Anoa podcast.

Episode 43: RussiaGate Year 3 -- How Liberals' Martial Posture Harms the Left Jul 11, 2018

Show notes

For over two years, the U.S. government has been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election - interference broadly considered to be in favor of candidate Donald Trump. As a result, a bizarre flip has occurred with the Right and Left: Polls show liberals now trust the FBI and CIA, while many right-wingers – though by no means all – suddenly act concerned about the so-called "deep state." Liberals have been turned into even more extreme hawks, not just on the issue of Russia, but anything that shores up support for American intelligence agencies broadly seen, fair or not, as a check on the unhinged Trump administration. Given that so much of RussiaGate coverage is about the alleged manipulation of Black activists, anti-fracking protesters, the Green Party –and even Bernie Sanders supporters - to attack Hillary Clinton and her campaign, the consequence has been the media, time and again, framing Leftist dissent as de facto Russian propaganda. Today we ask: what is the collateral damage of RussiaGate on left-wing activists and media? Who does Red Scare 2.0 benefit, and how can we be honest about "foreign influence" without losing our minds over it? In Part I of this two-part episode, we are joined by Jacobin's Branko Marcetic.

Episode 42: 'Populism' - The Media's Favorite Catch-All Smear for the Left Jun 27, 2018

Show notes

With the rise of Trump, Sanders, Corbyn and Brexit, hundreds of pundits, reporters, and talking heads have been warning about the problems of "populism" and its alleged attack on democracy over the past three years. "Populism and immigration pose major threat to global democracy," the Gates Foundation insists. "The Dangerous Rise of Populism - Global Attacks on Human Rights Values," wrote Human Rights Watch in 2017. "Trump's Rise Proves How Dangerous Populism Is for Democracy" NBC says. "Populism is still a threat to Europe," The European University Institute tells us. But what exactly is populism? How is a term that allegedly applies to Hugo Chávez and Bernie Sanders also casually used to describe fascists and far-right forces? Under the thin, ideology-flattening definition of populism, the term is more often than not used as a euphemism for demagogic cults of personality and fascism and as the ultimate horseshoe theory reduction to lump together movements for equity and justice on the Left with those of revanchism, nationalism and explicit racism on the Right. We are joined on this episode by writer and historian Thomas Frank.

Episode 41: The Moral Poverty of Capitalist Healthcare Framing Jun 20, 2018

Show notes

Healthcare marketplaces," "private insurers competing for your business" "insurance subsidies," For years, Democrats bet big on framing the healthcare debate using technocratic, capitalist terms––they weren't going to radically change the system of healthcare, simply accent the existing private insurance-based model making things "smarter," "easier," more "tech-driven."

As the Affordable Care Act faces continued right-wing attacks and liberal-leaning activists increasingly look to single-payer, efforts to radically shift the healthcare system require--before they can really go anywhere--a radical shift in how we talk about healthcare.

On this episode, we ask: How can activists rewire the public's brains when it comes to the topic of healthcare? How can the rhetorical tics of the past be retired, and how can the conversation about healthcare shift from a technical problem to a moral imperative?

We are joined by researcher and writer Natalie Shure.

Episode 40: The Civility Fetish Jun 13, 2018

Show notes

They're not lies, they're "falsehoods"; it's not racism, it's "racially charged comments"; it's not torture, it's "enhanced interrogation." For years, U.S. media has prioritized, above all else, norms and civility.

Mean words or questioning motives are signs of declining civility and the subject of much lament from our media class. However, op-eds explicitly advocating war, invasion, sanctions, sabotage, bombing and occupation or cutting vital programs and lifelines for the poor are just the cost of doing business. What's rhetorically out of bounds - and what isn't - is far more a product of power than any objective sense of "civility" or "decency."

Where did these so-called norms come from, who do they benefit, and why is their maintenance–-even in the face of overt white nationalism––still the highest priority for many liberals and centrists in U.S. media?

We discuss this, and more, with The Huffington Post's Ashley Feinberg.

Episode 39: From Cradle to Courtroom: How The Media Stacks the Deck Against "Defendants" Jun 06, 2018

Show notes

The United States, far and away, has the largest prison population in the world. It also has one of the greatest disparities in their prison population of ethnic minorities in the world. How does a country that prides itself on being a "beacon of freedom" and whose leaders travel the world scolding other countries on "human rights" find itself to be the largest carceral state of the 21st century?

What are the cultural forces that reinforce racist attitudes, deference to the police and prosecutors, and a belief that 7 million people – or, the equivalent population of Washington DC, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, and Rhode Island – all belong in cages or on parole or prohibition.

For this show – recorded live in Brooklyn, NY on May 25, 2018 – we will follow a hypothetical "defendant," the median being an African-American in their early 20's, from birth to the time they sit in front of a judge and, at each point, examine how the media stacks the deck against them. We cover this in five parts, each representing different moments in this chain of events - Birth, Childhood, Adolescence, the Arrest and the Plea – and show how the media conspires to make a not guilty verdict all but impossible.

We are joined by Rachel Foran and Naila Siddiqui of Court Watch NYC.

Episode 38: The Media's Bogus Generation Obsession May 23, 2018

Show notes

"Baby Boomers are bloating the social safety net!" "GenXers are changing the nature of work!" "Millennials are killing the housing market!". The media endlessly feeds us stories about how one generation or another is engaging in some collective act of moral failing that, either explicitly or by implication, harms another generation. It's a widely-mocked cliché at this point, namely the near-constant analyses detailing what Millennials have "killed" or "ruined" lately - everything from Applebee's to diamonds to top sheets to beer to napkins.

The first rule of drama––and by implication, the media––is to create tension. But what if tensions that actually exist in our society, like white supremacy and class conflict, are too unpleasant and dicey to touch––upsetting advertisers and media owners who benefit from these systems? To replace these real tensions in society, the media repeatedly relies on dubious and entirely safe points of conflict, like those between two arbitrary generations. It's not the rich or racism that's holding me back--it's old people running up entitlement spending or lazy youth who don't want to work!

In this episode we talk about why this media trope isn't just hacky and cliche, but also subtly racist and reactionary.

We are joined by Adam Conover, host of Adam Ruins Everything on truTV.

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