In what way was I ever talking about what is achievable for a western left? I said why I hate the free press and want it destroyed. That's like responding to someone saying "death to the american empire" with how under FDR the US was less involved in wars for those first 2 terms and we really are not close to creating a pacifistic american communist state; so really it should be "weakness to flagrant imperialism so we can fund social programs". Its totally missing the forest for the trees.

I cannot fucking deal with these smug fucks. Like I am glad trump made journalists feel upset and scared, they deserve twice what they felt trump was doing to them. Complete scourge on humanity, there is no place for communicating with the jingoistic genocidaires. They serve no positive function in society. abolish the free press

How did that come across as a statement specifically on what "the left" in america can or should agitate for in terms of policy in the present moment? deflecting to "well we cant think about that right now" or "it'd just be too hard" as if that was what was being spoken about is a kneejerk reaction. Who is "we"? why do you presume that statement was about strategy or hopes for policy for the left in america at the moment? All rhetoric does not need to be filtered through american liberal democracy brain, leftist thought let alone shit-posting is not about what is "within-reach" of american radlibs. Dont lower your views and opinions based on that shit. Its defeatism to the liberal pessimism

But even in terms of what "we the left" or whatever can do, there is no media switch for us, never has been one nor can there ever be one. Using our own party press for organizing is super important, but if we are talking pre-revolution strategies and not just what would be the correct way for things to be, then no caring about a more "free" free press is not a project for the left. Amid the most rampant yellow journalism communists organized and unions had their own papers. and when those become illegal, you just keep distributing illegally instead of caring about liberal ideals such as a free press.

We have to say and repeat that the pennies tossed there distractedly into the hands of the newsboy are projectiles granted to a bourgeois newspaper, which will hurl it, at the opportune moment, against the working masses

We do NOT need to turn the media switch back on, that is pure liberalism . Any organizing through newsprint will, like Lenin said, be through its use as a form of collectivized organizing. Not any form of free press or news media. Empowering the media or the fetish for an informed public is not a positive short term fix. The existence of bourgeoise press means any revolutionary movement is at risk, we cannot bounce off of it or use it as a stepping stool. If we can speak openly then do so but do not push for the ability of the enemy to do the same, and do not buy into the idea that there is a "free press".

In all his works devoted to the theme of "capitalism and the press", Lenin saw the bourgeois press as an organic component of the superstructure of capitalist society with all the consequences that this entailed. For example ** he linked the issue of freedom of the press with that of bourgeois freedom generally, the bourgeois attitudes to slogans of freedom of conscience, assembly and speech in the process of historical development (from sincere proclamations when fighting feudalism to blatant opportunism and utter violation when fighting socialism). What freedom of the press for the working people can there be in present-day capitalist countries,** when the printing and publishing, the paper mills and warehouses, the advertising business and so on are all in the hands of the capitalists ? Lenin put this question every time he touched upon the theme of "capitalism and the press". He did not go into a great deal of detail since the answer was fairly obvious. There could be no prevaricating : one cannot talk of any freedom of the press for working people in such conditions, one can only talk of freedom of the press for the propertied classes. "All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake 'public opinion' for the benefit of the bourgeoisie."

The myth of the bourgeois press as an expression of public opinion was created by bourgeois theoreticians of journalism so as to mask its class nature. Bourgeois sociologists saw the category of "public opinion" as existing independently of class contradictions within capitalist society. They always presented it as an arithmetical mean of popular will. It was precisely the bourgeois press, in their view, which expressed that arithmetical mean. They never cared to observe that, before expressing "public opinion", the bourgeoisie spends vast quantities of money moulding it with the aid of that very press, and nowadays with the help of television and radio as well. Bearing this circumstance in mind, Lenin almost invariably put this concept in inverted commas or added "so-called public opinion"

In treating the press as a superstructural category, Lenin arrived at a very important conclusion : the press does more than express the interests of the ruling class, it actively defends them and is a weapon used to safeguard those interests. What is more, it is always both a partisan and a class force No bourgeois paper or journal can stand aside from partisan differentiation of the big, medium and petty bourgeoisie. Lenin regarded attempts by editorial boards to advertise their publications as exclusively non-partisan or being above partisan strife as either political blindness or a deliberate ploy or device calculated to gain a wider readership and to deceive the working people. He always mocked publishers' claims being non-partisan.

https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/lit_crit/baluyev.pdf

You cannot divorce "freedom of the press" from bourgeoise conceptions of freedom, and if your instinct upon seeing the sanctity of the free press be rhetorically shat on is to try to justify it and defend its "utility" or find some other circumstance in which it can be "better", then that is a liberal hangup you still have. Don't determine what you believe should happen or how society should be run be determined by what you can get away with under liberalism. The concept of freedom of the press is liberal, and stating that and that the idea should be abolished and opposed has nothing to do with what progressives can or cannot manage in the US.

The attitude of a leftist towards the free press, particularly on matters of war should be at a bare minimum what Connolly says here

If each country hanged its own Foreign Minister and Cabinet before setting out to the front, wars would not last long; and if a jingo editor were hanged each week it lasted, the most jingo being the first to hang, not many angry passions would be stirred up to make the work of peaceful understanding difficult.

Wanting such a desirable result the workers must realise now that all the machinery of the State, and all the extra machinery now being set up to aid the State, are being deliberately utilised to accentuate the weakness of the individual worker, to intensify the dependence of his dear ones upon charitable and anti-labour organisations, to concentrate in the hands of the enemies of his class all the new agencies of government as well as the old, and in short, to weaken, discredit and destroy every power that the workers have hitherto built up as weapons for their peaceful social regeneration.

Our trade unions are attacked by every insidious weapon, our standard of life is menaced in a thousand evil ways, a corrupt press calls aloud for the suppression of every Irish journal that refuses to prostitute itself. The time is ripe for a forward move against all those gathering forces of evil, every man and woman who has reaped the advantages which organised Labour has won in the past must now rally to the flag. All jealousies must be forgotten, all rivalries laid aside.

Labour is the only force that can save Labour. Rally then to save Labour from its encircling enemies, and know that in saving Labour you save the most effective force for the redemption of Ireland.

Anything short of opposition to this superstructure is assistance to it