The overall idea that press here in America is free is not true in the sense that mainstream new organizations have a vested interests in preserving capitalism and validating the social structure of class domination. I’m not saying you can not get independent forms of information from other sources, but the way we in this country understand/process information given to us is by the “big name” media outlets. Those same media outlets having their own interests and narratives to play by spinning stories certain ways, publishing certain authors, and maintaining the idea of what the “free press” is at large.
I have PCUSA things and have had IWW publications sent to me through the postal service. But the postal service is not the media or press. It is a shipping and mail service. They don’t care what is sent as long as it is not certain harmful things (drugs, explosives, etc). And find me media sources either the press or news outlets that have hardline Marxist Leninist on there that are not used as a way to vilify the left.
The overall idea that press here in America is free is not true
I agree. The American system is riddled with censorship, media blacklisting, and other forms of speech and media suppression. Even then, plenty of leftist ideas and propagandists manage to wiggle their way through in large part because the system is a patchwork profit-driven laissez-faire model that is far more concerned with collecting rents than dictating a uniform ideological message.
I’m not saying you can not get independent forms of information from other sources, but the way we in this country understand/process information given to us is by the “big name” media outlets.
Most "big-name" media outlets are legacies of a prior system in which the major gatekeeper of distribution was material costs. You can get the NYTimes more easily than Jacobin or InfoWars because the NYTimes has a robust national distribution model and these others don't. But the internet has flipped that model on its ear. Now the market-force is about user engagement not production/distribution efficiency. And NYTimes has under-performed relative to more provocative distributors. This has lead to efforts by legacy media to implement more old-school models of censorship, blacklisting, and source suppression.
You can call the US for coordinating with big social media outlets to clamp down on contrary views. And these are violations of the principles of Free Speech. But the theory that Free Speech / Press doesn't exist simply because a model for maximal successful distribution does exist confuses the idea of strict legality with the idea of successful marketing/propagandizing.
You can have both liberal media institutions and a narrow-minded set of high-publicity views when your audience has been primed to reject alternative viewpoints. You can have both a very strict illiberal censorship regime and a proliferation of fringe views when your audience is too curious or cynical to accept the mainstream outlets as trustworthy.
But the postal service is not the media or press. It is a shipping and mail service. They don’t care what is sent
Right. Exactly. They're a general public service that allows for the free flow of information. They are expressing a function of a Liberal State to facilitate the free flow of ideas irrespective of content.
And find me media sources either the press or news outlets that have hardline Marxist Leninist on there that are not used as a way to vilify the left.
We have any number of publications - from Teen Vogue to Jacobin to RevLeftRadio podcast - that employ Marxist analysis and express MLM ideological positions.
No need! There's a free and independent Marxist media right now! https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2018/05/03/rulers-of-the-world-read-karl-marx
I feel you are missing the point I am making. Just because media in a capitalist society mentions or brings up Marxism or communism sometimes, does not make that free media. It’s about the way the information itself is laid out and the perspective it is worded in. It is about the narrative the msm is trying to craft in order to change public opinion about that topic.
Example, Bezos owns the washpost. You will never find an article criticizing him in any way, because the private censorship of it will not allow it. They may talk about Marxism or socialism, but it will never be in the same demeanor that corporations or bezos himself is talked about.
I’m not entirely sure what the point is you’re making here? It’s just a walk of text like it’s a leftist meme. Are you defending the media in general or the western, capitalist version of it? You can obviously find other forms of information and news besides the mainstream, but that is specifically what I am talking about in my original comment.
I feel you are missing the point I am making. Just because media in a capitalist society mentions or brings up Marxism or communism sometimes, does not make that free media. It’s about the way the information itself is laid out and the perspective it is worded in. It is about the narrative the msm is trying to craft in order to change public opinion about that topic.
I agree. Tucker Carlson talking about Marxism isn't the same thing as Slavoj Žižek talking about Marxism.
That said, Žižek isn't invisible to the public. There is no one outright banning him from participating in media discourse. Twitter isn't shutting down his account for having Marxist dialogues. He is fundamentally free to talk about Marxist doctrine with whomever he pleases in pretty much any public space - even the heavily corporate and capitalist-dominated ones.
Example, Bezos owns the washpost. You will never find an article criticizing him in any way
Not in the WaPo. But I see plenty of critical pieces aimed at Bezos by way of Common Dreams and even one or two from the NYT. Not to mention the salvos from rags like Breitbart. There is not a void of media criticism for Bezos. What we more often see is hagiography out of Bezos-friendly journals which prompts criticism from rival media. Its often centered around some click-bait superficial news cycle commentary, though. Real Marxist critique simply isn't reprinted in the tabloids.
I’m not entirely sure what the point is you’re making here?
That Free Press / Speech exists as a policy. Its a thing that you can (and we mostly do) have in a liberal society. The merits of liberal free speech are what are debatable. But the exigency of the policy is indisputable.
Is a false claim. These policies exist and are in effect throughout much of the Western World.
The existence of Free Speech / Press simply isn't a threat to institutions of Capital. You can distribute all the Theory you want without any meaningful obstruction.
Where Capitalists push back - and push back hard - is in any effort to galvanize people into action. The SEIU can print a thousand fliers without anyone lifting a finger. But as soon as you actually try to strike, the hammer drops.
That Free Press / Speech exists as a policy. Its a thing that you can (and we mostly do) have in a liberal society. The merits of liberal free speech are what are debatable. But the exigency of the policy is indisputable.
Free speech isn’t a policy. It’s a philosophical idea that does not have the same weight as actual policy laid out in law. We have freedom of speech in the dumb as fuck constitution, but history shows that the government can take it away at any point. Things like free speech have as much power as we the people living under the system of government that drew them up give them. The government cracks down all the time throughout our history on people they think are using it against their interests. COINTELPRO and assassinations are a perfect example of this.
And I wasn’t saying in my example that Bezos never gets criticism. I literally said that in the paper he owns you will be hard pressed to find any. Which just shows that private censorship is a real thing that exists currently.
I’m honestly getting major :LIB: vibes the more I read your replies. Most leftists who actually apply a Marxist critique/viewpoint understand the futility of arguing freedom of speech being a real thing. Especially if you bring it up as a “policy” of a government lol
That becomes a policy when the domestic bureaucracy implements it as such.
We have freedom of speech in the dumb as fuck constitution, but history shows that the government can take it away at any point.
So long as it doesn't, "Free Speech" is the policy of said government.
The government cracks down all the time throughout our history on people they think are using it against their interests. COINTELPRO and assassinations are a perfect example of this.
The historical focus of COINTELPRO has been on activist communities - people actually attempting to realize their rhetoric through deeds rather than just distributing newsletters. The FBI didn't shut down the whole NAACP. It focused on the folks who organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Most leftists who actually apply a Marxist critique/viewpoint understand the futility of arguing freedom of speech being a real thing.
And yet here you fucking are. I guess we're both :LIB:s
The overall idea that press here in America is free is not true in the sense that mainstream new organizations have a vested interests in preserving capitalism and validating the social structure of class domination. I’m not saying you can not get independent forms of information from other sources, but the way we in this country understand/process information given to us is by the “big name” media outlets. Those same media outlets having their own interests and narratives to play by spinning stories certain ways, publishing certain authors, and maintaining the idea of what the “free press” is at large.
I have PCUSA things and have had IWW publications sent to me through the postal service. But the postal service is not the media or press. It is a shipping and mail service. They don’t care what is sent as long as it is not certain harmful things (drugs, explosives, etc). And find me media sources either the press or news outlets that have hardline Marxist Leninist on there that are not used as a way to vilify the left.
I agree. The American system is riddled with censorship, media blacklisting, and other forms of speech and media suppression. Even then, plenty of leftist ideas and propagandists manage to wiggle their way through in large part because the system is a patchwork profit-driven laissez-faire model that is far more concerned with collecting rents than dictating a uniform ideological message.
Most "big-name" media outlets are legacies of a prior system in which the major gatekeeper of distribution was material costs. You can get the NYTimes more easily than Jacobin or InfoWars because the NYTimes has a robust national distribution model and these others don't. But the internet has flipped that model on its ear. Now the market-force is about user engagement not production/distribution efficiency. And NYTimes has under-performed relative to more provocative distributors. This has lead to efforts by legacy media to implement more old-school models of censorship, blacklisting, and source suppression.
You can call the US for coordinating with big social media outlets to clamp down on contrary views. And these are violations of the principles of Free Speech. But the theory that Free Speech / Press doesn't exist simply because a model for maximal successful distribution does exist confuses the idea of strict legality with the idea of successful marketing/propagandizing.
You can have both liberal media institutions and a narrow-minded set of high-publicity views when your audience has been primed to reject alternative viewpoints. You can have both a very strict illiberal censorship regime and a proliferation of fringe views when your audience is too curious or cynical to accept the mainstream outlets as trustworthy.
Right. Exactly. They're a general public service that allows for the free flow of information. They are expressing a function of a Liberal State to facilitate the free flow of ideas irrespective of content.
We have any number of publications - from Teen Vogue to Jacobin to RevLeftRadio podcast - that employ Marxist analysis and express MLM ideological positions.
Teen Vogue and Jacobin are explicitly not Marxist lmao
Who Is Karl Marx: Meet the Anti-Capitalist Scholar.
The communist scholar's ideas are more prevalent than you might realize.
That doesn't make them Marxist lmao
It is a magazine that discusses Marxist ideology roflmao
http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19480223,00.html I'm so glad we have a free and independent Marxist media
Would love to get back to 1948 levels of Marxist media penetration
No need! There's a free and independent Marxist media right now! https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2018/05/03/rulers-of-the-world-read-karl-marx
I feel you are missing the point I am making. Just because media in a capitalist society mentions or brings up Marxism or communism sometimes, does not make that free media. It’s about the way the information itself is laid out and the perspective it is worded in. It is about the narrative the msm is trying to craft in order to change public opinion about that topic.
Example, Bezos owns the washpost. You will never find an article criticizing him in any way, because the private censorship of it will not allow it. They may talk about Marxism or socialism, but it will never be in the same demeanor that corporations or bezos himself is talked about.
I’m not entirely sure what the point is you’re making here? It’s just a walk of text like it’s a leftist meme. Are you defending the media in general or the western, capitalist version of it? You can obviously find other forms of information and news besides the mainstream, but that is specifically what I am talking about in my original comment.
I agree. Tucker Carlson talking about Marxism isn't the same thing as Slavoj Žižek talking about Marxism.
That said, Žižek isn't invisible to the public. There is no one outright banning him from participating in media discourse. Twitter isn't shutting down his account for having Marxist dialogues. He is fundamentally free to talk about Marxist doctrine with whomever he pleases in pretty much any public space - even the heavily corporate and capitalist-dominated ones.
Not in the WaPo. But I see plenty of critical pieces aimed at Bezos by way of Common Dreams and even one or two from the NYT. Not to mention the salvos from rags like Breitbart. There is not a void of media criticism for Bezos. What we more often see is hagiography out of Bezos-friendly journals which prompts criticism from rival media. Its often centered around some click-bait superficial news cycle commentary, though. Real Marxist critique simply isn't reprinted in the tabloids.
That Free Press / Speech exists as a policy. Its a thing that you can (and we mostly do) have in a liberal society. The merits of liberal free speech are what are debatable. But the exigency of the policy is indisputable.
Is a false claim. These policies exist and are in effect throughout much of the Western World.
The existence of Free Speech / Press simply isn't a threat to institutions of Capital. You can distribute all the Theory you want without any meaningful obstruction.
Where Capitalists push back - and push back hard - is in any effort to galvanize people into action. The SEIU can print a thousand fliers without anyone lifting a finger. But as soon as you actually try to strike, the hammer drops.
Free speech isn’t a policy. It’s a philosophical idea that does not have the same weight as actual policy laid out in law. We have freedom of speech in the dumb as fuck constitution, but history shows that the government can take it away at any point. Things like free speech have as much power as we the people living under the system of government that drew them up give them. The government cracks down all the time throughout our history on people they think are using it against their interests. COINTELPRO and assassinations are a perfect example of this.
And I wasn’t saying in my example that Bezos never gets criticism. I literally said that in the paper he owns you will be hard pressed to find any. Which just shows that private censorship is a real thing that exists currently.
I’m honestly getting major :LIB: vibes the more I read your replies. Most leftists who actually apply a Marxist critique/viewpoint understand the futility of arguing freedom of speech being a real thing. Especially if you bring it up as a “policy” of a government lol
It is absolutely a policy.
That becomes a policy when the domestic bureaucracy implements it as such.
So long as it doesn't, "Free Speech" is the policy of said government.
The historical focus of COINTELPRO has been on activist communities - people actually attempting to realize their rhetoric through deeds rather than just distributing newsletters. The FBI didn't shut down the whole NAACP. It focused on the folks who organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
And yet here you fucking are. I guess we're both :LIB:s
Me trying to explain my original point to you
:wall-talk:
This isn't Reddit, dude.
You just have real Redditor :LIB: vibes is all