I was listening to an episode recently where they talked about the Lincoln Project for a very long time. But they seemed to focus on the guy actually producing the ads and only once, while reading an excerpt from a bio, did they mention that the tea-party was koch funded. And then they go right back to talking about these ads as if they were a divine and inspired vision of some guy that just so happened to be a former tea-party dickhead.
The people who funded the tea party and rightwing protectionists. Globalism as a boogie man isnt just about thinly-veiled antisemitism, it's also about Koch, Malone and Kroenke not wanting to have to compete with foreign private equity in their scheme to take over every industry. These guys funded and promoted the tea party with their fossil fuel money and media empires. And now the Lincoln Project is the same exact rhetoric and being produced by the same exact people and it seems like people want the story to be the content of the ads instead of the rightwing dipshits behind it.
The way they talk about USPS is the same. They keep talking about whats happening to the USPS as though that has anything to do with how or why it's happening or how we can stop it. Fedex and UPS have been $10+ million a year for decades in an effort to privatize the industry and trump is just the only guy dirty enough to take the heat for it.
Fedex Owner - Frederick W. Smith
Lobbying Totals: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary?id=d000000089&fbclid=IwAR1i048MvcLwAzOsSw3q4hZlEqEIpd_RlbnleTG9xYSJ091Tae8Ss75zMXI
UPS Owner - David P. Abney
Lobbying Totals: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/lobbying?id=D000000081&fbclid=IwAR0JKZf1fWDHewDxfZNTA5rbcoBhUWtPMAeFfSb9aFiQSijZ1LJJeNY6Ln4
if the media (which the chaps are a part of) was framing this as "Look at these two actual people using their money to take away a public good" it could actually change things. I think we need to go on the offense and make every single political issue about the financials beneficiaries.
What the donors want is politics. What politicians say they believe is just pop culture.
Who are these "chaps"? They sound like libs. The hosts of this website's official podcast, Citations Needed, do usually explore the financing behind the news.
I just clicked play on their most recent episode. It's covering HG TV and gentrification. But I'm worried they're going to fall into the same trap as the Chapo guys. HG TV is owned by discovery inc which is owned by John Malone.
Abstractions can't be our enemy. Real people are the oligarchs working against us and EVERY bit of vitriol about this issue of gentrification and HGTV and media bias against certain groups needs to be directed at the very real person who is entirely in charge and the main beneficiary of these businesses AND the political policies that support them.
I'm now ten minutes into Citations Needed without hearing the name of a single villain. Just lots of "targetish" language. "Shady developers", "predatory lenders", etc... are phrases with zero value. We need to go one step further every single time we use phrases like that and say "Shady developers like Jared Kushner" or "predatory lenders like Tom Steyer".
Just now on the recent episode of Citations, the host said "look at donald trumps biggest donors, half are real estate developers"....We need names!
Seriously corporate personhood isn't real. People are the mechanism for political change and the people bankrolling the most violent policies are names that never show up on any coverage, including our favorite leftist pundits.
I think what happens is that these podcasts are serving as an introduction to the shady shit that oligarchs do and to left wing views in general.
The issue is that they never go further. What you're talking about is a combination of investigative journalism and propagandising on behalf of the left. I can see this working well in unions and other collective action organisations where you can get a mass of people to do something about it instead of just consuming like on a podcast.
The issue is what do we do about it. Because even if you find out who these people are and who they're donating to then it's not going to make a lick of difference. Even if we bombard legislators with emails telling them to return the donations, they're going to turn around and say no. No one is going to go out and protest a donation to a politician.
But this is the problem. The right isn't a series of "random things with a rightwing theme" they shit is always tied to larger movements and real direct action. The entirety of mainstream leftism says this same kind of "jumping off point" argument for why they aren't doing more.
And I actually think that isn't even really the issue. What I'm suggesting is harder. It takes more work. It's real easy to say "big pharma is benefiting from...." but you have to do an extra three googles to get to the point where you can say "Michael Pearson the CEO of Valeant is benefiting from...". Finance and corporate structures are designed to make it harder to actually find out who is behind what but that can't be a reason for our side to just give up and be vague, alex-jonesian morons.
I completely agree. And knowledge for its own sake is worth having, it gives you power. I'm legitimately asking what we do with the knowledge? How can we use it to effect change in our workplace or our communities?
Look at the anti-soros campaign. That shit worked. He is now way less effective at whatever the fuck he is actually doing (which probably ain't much) because of the amount of public vitriol directed at him. The shape of that isn't what makes it evil. Evil men should be on the receiving end of vitriol and negative, public attention. It really does matter.
The difference between one person saying "Spectrum Cable is a piece of shit" vs "John Malone is a piece of shit" isn't much. But multiply that difference by a thousand or a million and we have one less oligarch able to act without consequences. But we've literally seen that a thousand or a million people thinking "spectrum is a piece of shit" can NOT help anything at all. Let's just try the other way.
Liberalism is just performative leftism hooked up to right-wing business models. Part of the reason it works is because they can performatively vilify an industry without ever naming the bad actors that finance them. We need to make every single political statement about corruption to include the name of a person benefiting from that corruption. We have to follow the benefit up the chain, not down.
That's a good point about soros actually. Spreading it in memes actually works.
I know it is itself a meme on here but the meme war does have an effect on people's perceptions, especially terminally online boomers. If it's our ideas out on the table in meme form then that can only be good. And if those memes are pointing at overtly corrupt people then that will cause anger. Everyone hates corruption except oligarchs, even the right.
EXACTLY! Low-information punditry sucks for its own sake and knowing shit is even dope in a vacuum. There is no good argument against name-checking donors in every single tweet/post/comment. The difference between liberalism and leftism is whether or not it can actually help people. I think communicating this way would actually help people.
The guys on chapo but it applies to every single leftist podcast I listen to. Trashfuture is the only one that really tries to keep connecting every story back to the actual financiers the policies they push.
I just listened to the last two episodes of Citations Needed about HG TV and i dont think they even once mentioned the guy who owns it, John Malone. He owns 2.2 million acres in the middle of the country and much our countries cable infrastracture as well as Formula One, Discovery Channel (HG TV parent company), SiriusXM, LiveNation and just recently got the DOJ to bend over and let him transfer control of iHeartMedia from his holding consultancy (Baine) to his personal assets.
Malone wins from every side of gentrification. It keeps the real estate market focused on metropolitan areas and their suburbs while he buys up massive tracts of land in the middle of the country. The anger from the displaced people loosing their community to gentrification makes his liberal enemies look bad and basically creates an endless political cycle of "liberals vs black folks" that helps him push rightwing candidates that'll then deregulate on his behalf.
What politicians want is pop culture. What donors want is politics.
only once, while reading an excerpt from a bio, did they mention that the tea-party was koch funded
Probably because that's common knowledge, especially among people who listen to
leftistliberal podcasts. Here's a Will Ferrell movie from eight years ago that has Koch brothers stand-ins as the mustache-twirling villains behind politics. It's not a new story:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Campaign_(film)
Fedex and UPS have been $10+ million a year for decades in an effort to privatize the industry and trump is just the only guy dirty enough to take the heat for it.
"Trump is the perfect president because he takes the heat for all the shit they wanted to do anyways" is also not exactly a new take. It's a recurring theme on CTH and a bunch of other places.
What's common knowledge? That the Kochs funded the tea party? Is it common knowledge that the Kochs are probably funding the Lincoln Project? And that none of these movements are JUST the kochs? It's the Kochs, Devos', Malones, Kroenkes, etc...
You thinking that koch-like figure in a movie is the same as actually vilifying the real life man, Charles Koch, is just pure liberalism. Things that don't lead to direction action, don't help. Things that CAN'T lead to direct action (like a mediocre, major studio comedy) CAN'T help.
The only thing about my take that's new is this: We need to name-names on every issue, every single time.
"SiriusXM" needs to be "John Malone's SiriusXM" every time. "Livenation" needs to be "John Malone's Livenation" every time. "HG TV" needs to be "John Malone's HG TV" every time.
Being vague and talking in generalities is easier but less effective. lets do the hard work.
What’s common knowledge? That the Kochs funded the tea party? Is it common knowledge that the Kochs are probably funding the Lincoln Project? And that none of these movements are JUST the kochs? It’s the Kochs, Devos’, Malones, Kroenkes, etc…
Yes, all of that is common knowledge.
You thinking that koch-like figure in a movie is the same as actually vilifying the real life man
I don't think that. I'm pointing out that if you're vilified in a mainstream movie for distorting politics with your money, then it's common knowledge that you distort politics with your money.
We need to name-names on every issue, every single time.
That would be tedious and unnecessary, because again, what you're describing is something everyone listening already knows. And for the few people who don't know, they still pepper it in every now and then.
“SiriusXM” needs to be “John Malone’s SiriusXM” every time. “Livenation” needs to be “John Malone’s Livenation” every time. “HG TV” needs to be “John Malone’s HG TV” every time.
Doing this risks sending the incorrect message that that individual is the problem and that their removal is the solution, which it is not. Someone exactly like them would replace them in whatever capacity. The actual problem is the system that allows that to happen.
You're not working towards a solution with the kind of reasoning you're employing here. Capitalism, theory and politics aren't real. They're vague ethereal concepts that we use to describe very real things, what humans do. We cannot ever deal with this shit via a theoretical frame works. Capitalism is a scam being perpetuated by actual human beings in their day to lives via massive institutional corruption. Targeting the people that keep capitalism going is the only realistic way of every having an effect on capitalism as a whole.
It's sorta like corporate person-hood worked on a lot of us. We target 'industries' and 'corporations' with economic 'theory' instead of targeting the people at the top of the scam. John Malone is personally invested in every societal ill we have. And I can find a John Malone-type in every major industry. This man is exponentially more dangerous than the Koch network and almost no one even knows his name.
Targeting capitalism instead of the worlds most powerful capitalists is like trying to catch the stream from a broken sink for the rest of your life instead of trying to stop the leak. Media and tech oligarchs build and maintain a fascist-making machine (called pop culture) and we need to focus on stopping them from making new nazis.