#right wing propaganda machine

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Democracy is being murdered before our eyes. The truth is being replaced by Republican propaganda. Right-wing fascist oligarchs are buying up the media and using it as a tool to support their Republican puppets. Republicans introduce legislation written by fascist corporate oligarchs. We are nothing more than wage slaves in a dystopian nightmare.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 16, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

A legal filing today in the case of Dominion Voting Systems against the Fox News Corporation provides a window into the role of disinformation and money in the movement to deny that President Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.

Dominion Voting Systems is suing FNC for defamation after FNC personalities repeatedly claimed that the company’s voting machines had corrupted the final tallies in the 2020 election. The filing today shows that those same personalities didn’t believe what they were telling their viewers, and suggests that they made those groundless accusations because they worried their viewers were abandoning them to go to channels that told them what they wanted to hear: that Trump had won the election.

The quotes in the filing are eye-popping:

On November 10, 2020, Trump advisor Steven Bannon wrote to FNC personality Maria Bartiromo: “71 million voters will never accept Biden. This process is to destroy his presidency before it even starts; IF it even starts….  We either close on Trumps [sic] victory or del[e]gitimize Biden…. THE PLAN.”

FNC’s internal fact checks on November 13 and November 20 called accusations of irregularities in the voting “Incorrect” and said there was “not evidence of widespread fraud.”

On November 15, Laura Ingraham wrote to Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity: “Sidney Powell is a bit nuts. Sorry, but she is.”

On November 16, Carlson wrote to his producer, Alex Pfeiffer, “Sidney Powell is lying.”

On November 19, FNC chair Rupert Murdoch wrote: “Really crazy stuff.”

Hannity later testified: “[T]hat whole narrative that Sidney was pushing. I did not believe it for one second.”

Fox Politics Editor Chris Stirewalt later testified, “[N]o reasonable person would have thought that,” when asked if it was true that Dominion rigged the election.

The filing claims that FNC peddled a false narrative of election fraud to its viewers because its pro-Trump audience had jumped ship after the network had been the first to call Arizona for Biden, and its ratings were plummeting as Trump loyalists jumped to Newsmax. “I’ve never seen a reaction like this, to any media company,” Carlson wrote to Suzanne Scott, chief executive officer of Fox News, on November 9. “Kills me to watch it.” On November 12, Hannity told Carlson and Ingraham, “In one week and one debate they destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable.”

They went to “war footing” to “protect the brand.” For example, when FNC reporter Jacqui Heinrich accurately fact checked a Trump tweet, correcting him by saying that “top election infrastructure officials” said that “[t]here is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” Carlson told Hannity: “Please get her fired. Seriously…. What the f*ck? I’m actually shocked…. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”

Heinrich deleted her tweet.  

The filing says that not a single witness from FNC testified they believed any of the allegations they were making about Dominion. An FNC spokesperson today said, “Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.”

Today, part of the report of the special purpose grand jury investigating possible criminal interference in the 2020 election in Georgia was released under court order. It explained that 26 Fulton County, Georgia, residents, three of whom were alternates, made up the grand jury, and 16 of them made up a quorum, enabling the jury to conduct business. Beginning on June 1, 2022, the grand jury heard testimony from or involving 75 witnesses, almost all of it in person and under oath. It also heard testimony from investigators and got digital and physical media.

The grand jury found “by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election.” It also reported that “[a] majority of the Grand Jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” and it asked the district attorney to “seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”

Also today, in the wake of the inauspicious first hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on February 9, a bipartisan group of 28 former officials who were part of the Church Committee wrote an open letter to Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH). Republicans have claimed Jordan’s new subcommittee is a modern version of the 1975–1976 committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-ID), that discovered illegal wiretapping of U.S. citizens, CIA operations to assassinate foreign leaders, drug testing on government personnel, discrediting of civil rights and anti-war activists, and so on.

The letter’s authors reminded Jordan that while the chair of the committee had been a Democrat, its work had been carefully bipartisan, and its members investigated both Republican and Democratic administrations. They had rigorously reported facts in context, “resisting political temptations to assemble misleading mosaics from isolated tidbits.” They had also protected ongoing intelligence and law enforcement operations.

The committee’s 2,700 pages of exhaustive research were also bipartisan and resulted in the creation of Senate and House intelligence committees to provide congressional oversight of intelligence, as well as the establishment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The former staffers of the Church Committee advised Jordan to follow the model he claimed, remaining objective, grounding the committee’s findings in relevant evidence and applicable laws.” They urged the subcommittee to “consider in good faith whether [Trump attorney general William] Barr and [John] Durham,” whom Barr appointed to discredit the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian operatives, “themselves may have strayed into such weaponization.”

The Church Committee staffers warned Jordan that if he wanted to claim the mantle of that committee, he would need to move forward with the “same spirit of cooperation and bipartisanship.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[an-absolute-nightmare]

me: india is not secular anymore it's turning into a hindu nationalist country :(

my so called liberal and open minded parents: india is not secular anymore it's turning into a hindu nationalist country :D:D:D:D:D

[lenbryant]

Fox “News” settles to the tune of $787 million.

[wilwheaton]

Vladimir Putin understands better than Democrats and Democratic donors how to seize control of a nation. And Democrats damn well better learn the lesson, and fast. Forget about the economy and even abortion: it’s the media, stupid! When Putin wanted the Central African Republic (CAR) to give him multiple gold and mineral mines in that resource-rich country, the first thing his agent, Yevgeny Prigozhin, did was to buy a radio station and start running propaganda about the benefits of the CAR creating closer ties to Russia. Similarly, when Putin wanted to put Trump into the White House, he had Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency — a massive, well-funded troll farm based in St. Petersburg — use swing-state polling and other internal RNC confidential information to send more than 100 million targeted Facebook impressions to swing state Americans.

Inside the fight to overcome America's dangerous right-wing media machine

[gikairan]

It's actually kinda horrifying how little political literacy there is among Johnson supporters...

They're saying things like "we voted for him, having him as PM is the countries will, getting rid of him is undemocratic!!

When, uh, that's not actually how the UK electoral system works....

The parties pick their leader. You need to be a registered member of the party to vote, though rules for voting for a leader are different in each party.

When it comes to a general election, the pm is only on the ballot in ONE constituency. The rest of the country ONLY votes for their local MP. The party with the most MPs has their leader become the PM.

37% of the country voted Tory, and because of FPTP, they had the majority of MPs. Not many of those votes would have been for Johnson SPECIFICALLY. A very small number of people in the country had any say about Johnson being PM.

And, like, this is absolutely the strategy. It's to prey on people's political illiteracy, the slow Amerification of our country, to make people believe the PM is elected by the people when... They aren't. To make people angry at the possibility that the truly evil human in power might be ousted for being truly evil, so the truly evil person can't be ousted without risking a British version of the horrifying events of J6.....

Let people believe the PM is elected by the people, like the American president is. Stoke fears about "overturning democracy" that started being stoked over Brexit, and now apply it to the PM. Don't correct the misinformation. And now you can say "well don't get rid of the dangerous, evil man - people will riot if you do".

Even though an ACTUAL majority of the country want the PM GONE.

[opencommunion]

since zionists want to act obtuse about why we're criticizing a superbowl ad, here's an explanation from before the ad even aired. it was openly designed to act as pro-genocide propaganda. fighting antisemitism is a worthy goal but that's not what's happening here:

"The New England Patriots’ 81-year-old owner, Robert Kraft, writes seven-digit checks to the right-wing Israeli lobbying machine AIPAC, but his personal, political, and financial ties to Israel run deeper than the occasional donation. The multibillionaire married his late wife, Myra, in Israel in 1963 when Kraft, then 22, was older than the nation itself. Together they set up numerous business, athletic, and charitable ties to Israel, a record of which is proudly proclaimed on the Kraft company website. In particular, the Kraft Group boasts of its 'Touchdown in Israel' program, where NFL players are given free, highly organized vacations to see 'the holy land' and come back to spread the word about 'the only democracy in the Middle East.' (Not every NFL player has chosen to take part.) Kraft also attends fundraisers for the Israel Defense Forces, currently—and in open view of the world—committing war crimes in Gaza."

Now, as Israel wages war against the civilians of Gaza—more than 25,000 Palestinian have been killed with at least 10,000 of them children—Kraft is again flexing his financial and political muscles in order to defend the indefensible. His Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS) will be spending an estimated $7 million to buy a Super Bowl ad titled 'Stop Jewish Hate' that will be seen by well over 100 million people. Under Kraft’s direction, the ad’s goal is to create a propaganda campaign to counter the reports and images from Gaza that young people are consuming on social media. 

... The content of the Super Bowl ad is not yet known, but FCAS has afforded Kraft the opportunity to make the rounds on cable news saying things like, 'It’s horrible to me that a group like Hamas can be respected and people in the United States of America can be carrying flags or supporting them.'

This is Kraft enacting the mission of FCAS: fostering disinformation. He is far from subtle: A Palestinian flag becomes a 'Hamas flag,' and people like the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets of Washington, D.C., last month to call for a cease-fire and end the violence are expressions of the 'rise in antisemitism.' Without a sense of irony or the horrors happening on the ground in Gaza, Kraft says he is giving $100 million of his own money to FCAS, because 'hate leads to violence.'

Let’s be clear: What Kraft is doing politically and what he will be using the Super Bowl as a platform to do is dangerous. He appears to think any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. For Kraft, it is Jews like myself, rabbis, and Holocaust survivors calling for a cease-fire and a Free Palestine that are part of the problem. Kraft seems to think that opposition to Israel, the IDF, and the AIPAC agenda is antisemitism.

... Right-wing Christian nationalists, with their belief in a Jewish state existing alongside their conviction that Jews are going to Hell, are welcome in Netanyahu’s Israel and Kraft’s coalition. Left-wing anti-Zionist Jews are not. The greatest foghorn of this evangelical right-wing 'love Israel, hate Jews' perspective is, of course, Donald Trump. Kraft, while speaking of being troubled by events like the Charlottesville Nazi march and the right-wing massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, counts Donald Trump as a close friend and even donated $1 million to his presidential inauguration.

No one who provides cover for the most powerful, public antisemite in the history of US politics should ever be taken seriously on how to best fight antisemitism. No one who funds AIPAC and the IDF and opposes a cease-fire amid the carnage should be allowed a commercial platform at the Super Bowl. But given that the big game is always an orgy of militarism, blind patriotism, and big budget commercials that lie through their teeth, perhaps that ad could not be more appropriate. We can do better than Kraft’s perspective on how to fight antisemitism. Morally, we don’t have a choice."

[spartanmuscle]

The High Lieutenant is pleased to receive information about growing numbers of law enforcement officers deciding to join the Program.

The Program believes that it has common interests with Police Departments all across the country - defending the Law and spreading Order throughout America.

/most officers are conditioned to follow orders without question, making them into perfect Guards requires minimal effort/

The Spartan Program is a great way for police officers to continue their work of expanding American Traditions outside of work hours.

/cops are already brainwashed with right-wing propaganda and are easily led to spartan conservatism/

Police cooperation with the Program can lead to higher levels of cohesion within the Police Force.

/the Program can easily turn liberal-leaning officers into huge masculine machines, spreading american values/

Further incorporation of Spartan Guards into the structures of American Police Departments is a welcomed development that will allow the common goals of the Program and the Police to grow and spread.

/influencing Police Forces across the country from the inside will allow the Program to spread and exert further influence over the country - it will allow the Program to make sure American Traditions are preserved, that masculinity is not being erased, that Spartan Conservatism becomes the dominant force of America/

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kerry Eleveld at Daily Kos:

Republicans have two distinct media advantages as November approaches: a propaganda machine on the right that creates and amplifies disinformation and a presidential candidate so flawed and broken that his outrageous behavior barely registers among corporate media anymore. Matt Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters for America, illustrated how the media environment benefits Donald Trump by pointing to his remarks earlier this month that his administration would "root out" his political opponents that "live like vermin within the confines of our country." Gertz contrasted this month's coverage of Trump's Nazi-esque language against the wall-to-wall coverage in 2016 of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton referring to Trump's "basket of deplorables." In the first week following Clinton's gaffe, network news outlets spent 54 minutes on her comments. Meanwhile, they only devoted three minutes to Trump's "vermin" comments. The disparity on cable news was far worse, with 1,662 mentions of "deplorables" throughout the first week versus 191 mentions of "vermin."

Trump has lowered the bar so far that the relentless amount of garbage he spews barely causes a blip in corporate media coverage. At the same time, the right-wing propaganda machine routinely fabricates and disseminates controversies to its audiences. Perhaps the most recent example was the easily debunked falsehood that the FBI sought to assassinate Trump when it searched his Mar-a-Lago residence for presidential records he had deliberately refused to return to the National Archives. The bifurcated media treatment of Trump versus that of President Joe Biden incontrovertibly benefits Republicans this election cycle, as journalist Greg Sargent pointed out on The Daily Blast.

[...]

Generally speaking, Republicans who are open to voting for Biden don't believe he stole the 2020 election and were horrified by the violent insurrection attempt, so revisiting that concern is a worthwhile endeavor.  However, if you're talking to voters who are primarily worried about the economy and inflation, it might be better to phrase the question as “who do you think will fight for you?” Democrats are the ones cracking down on price-gouging corporations by capping bank fees and insulin prices, while Trump is promising corporations another $2 trillion tax cut. Younger voters might be the most difficult to reach of all the potential swing voters. As Dan Pfeiffer, former Obama senior adviser on strategy and communications, wrote on Substack Tuesday, TikTok is hurting Biden, especially among young people who are the platform’s primary users. Trump’s right-wing influencers are outgunning progressive firebrands such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on a platform that is featuring political news even as other social media platforms de-emphasize it. 

The corporate media has a pro-Trump (and pro-GOP) bias, and there are ways to combat such bias.

[argentinianidiota]

I'm sick and tired of Argentina voting another right-wing party just so we can all be shocked when said right-winged party makes us lose more and more workers rights to the point of non existence while the fucking president takes a honey moon trip to Italy with her sister so they can fuck each other.

It's fucking exhausting to still be right about peronism and leftism in this country, people see all the rights we fought so hard for and think "the government can't take that away" and vote for the fucking gremlin who wields a FUCKING CHAINSAW MACHINE as a propaganda stunt. You literally vote for your butcher and you still think voting for him makes you any less of cattle, we are, thats the whole fucking point of the proletariat, stop voting for capitalist fucks who prefer to fuck you sideways and vote for someone who at least fakes respecting you so you bend over first.

Antiperonism is a fucking virus that still works on the uninformed and sensationalist, you literally saw 3 different presidencies and still believe one is no different than the other, I hate it, hope people realize they are killing the country and giving it away to an Elon Musk fanboy

[creature-wizard]

Conspiracy thinking on the left

While many of us associate conspiracy thinking with right-wing types, the fact is that no one is immune to conspiracy thinking, and people on the left indulge in it quite often.

I've spoken about how QAnon types believe that everything they see celebrities and politicians do is all a staged drama, which they call "the show." Supposedly, all of the "real" stuff is playing out "behind the scenes."

Left-leaning people are actually prone to a very similar belief - anytime a public figure says or does something incredibly controversial or ostensibly disastrous, you'll find a number of people claiming that it must have been a carefully-calculated move to gain more publicity. This isn't to say that publicity stunts don't exist, but the kind of people I'm talking about basically believe it's impossible that a public figure is genuinely just a dipshit asshole sometimes. They make the same fundamental error as right wingers by assuming that these people are playing 5D chess. You know how right wingers tend to read everything that doesn't go exactly their way as the machinations of an evil conspiracy? Leftists often do basically the exact same thing, interpreting everything that inconveniences or annoys them is part of a deliberate ploy to keep them oppressed. There are, of course, many laws and systems designed to do exactly that. But sometimes, laws and systems are just designed badly, and people suffer as a result.

Many left-leaning people buy into extremely similar conspiracy theories about Christianity as both Evangelical and New Age conspiracy theorists. Like many Evangelicals, they often believe that the Catholic Church is literally nothing whatsoever more than a tool to deceive and control the masses. (Like yes, the Catholic Church has always been a political force, but that doesn't mean they aren't also generally sincere about their spiritual beliefs.) Like many New Agers, they often believe that Christianity was invented by the Catholic Church and took literally everything from older pagan traditions, in addition to being nothing whatsoever more than a tool to deceive and control the masses. Many view all religions, no exceptions, as nothing more than means of controlling and exploiting people. This hypercynical view of religion makes it easier to believe in things like conspiracy theories about Jews controlling media and finances. Hell, some leftists will basically decide that any work of media they don't personally like must have been deliberately made as fascist propaganda, as opposed to just being created by someone with shit political views, or someone who just didn't think things through - and never will these particular leftists ever stop to consider that maybe they just misread the media. This is no different than those right wing assholes claiming every other movie is full of "Illuminati symbols." Leftists also sometimes fall for anti-pharma conspiracy theories, under the reasoning that because drugs are sold for excruciatingly high prices under capitalism, drugs must have been invented for solely capitalist purposes. They're convinced that after the revolution, the causes of our illnesses will no longer exist and we won't need medication anymore. (Yeah, sorry, serious illnesses have always existed.) So yeah, you are not immune to conspiracy thinking. Absolutely no one is.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

“But when CNN asked Berliner why his essay neglected to mention the impact Trump’s war on the media has had on the public’s trust, he declined to comment.”

The vast right wing propaganda machine funded by dark money from oligarchs launching another coordinated attack against a reputable news outlet.

[livingthedragonlife]

i make good playlists too sometimes. listen to it maybe?

explanations for why i chose the songs under the cut because i miss 8tracks. BIG HUGE SPOILER WARNING if you haven’t read/finished the manga!!!

Pure Love by Mother Mother — I always liked this song as a comforting presence but you could also read it as a sinister one. Definitely leaning into the sinister version here. I was also thinking of the innocent beginnings of the Winged Lion, just a little speck granting tiny desires before it was drawn "like a moth to a flame" to bigger ones. And the rest is history.

Remain Nameless by Florence + the Machine —

But know I'll always be around This can remain the same

Call me when you need me Call me anything you want Darling, believe me Nothing I haven't done before

The King by Anjimile — This one just gives me the vibes of how the power of being a dungeon lord drives everyone insane.

The Cage by Vera Sola — Deeply Mithrun

Under A Dome by Of Monsters and Men —

I'm taking over my own throne I’m holding my heart and it's overgrown I'm kicking out and I’m full of life So why should I cry over northern lights? And it's over now and I'm falling

It Will Come Back by Hozier — This WHOLLEE song is just. The Winged Lion in a nutshell. It's the entire premise.

Thousand Eyes by Of Monsters and Men — The dungeon lords can see through all their monster servants. A thousand of them even

Everybody Wants to Rule The World by Lorde — "uh oh shit is getting real"

Moderation by Florence + the Machine — The Winged Lion having absolutely no chill

Never Pleased by Portugal. The Man —

No I'm not Jesus but I'm more than a man I'll never grow old or lonely or sad Still I'm never pleased I'm never pleased

From the corners until I wake up walking as careful can be Careful to miss out on all that I see I'm never pleased

Tethered to the Dark by Anya Marina — The way the Winged Lion can manipulate you in fucked up ways you didn't even know were possible

Dangerous by Son Lux —

Are you dangerous? Carved right into my bed Quick lobotomy Then left me for dead

Mr. Lonely (feat. Fat Lip) by Portugal. The Man — Ultimately, being a dungeon lord leaves you alone and obsessed and with ultimate power that you don't even have full control over.

Forever by Mother Mother — Marcille's motivation but also the Winged Lion's? Marcille essentially never wants to see anyone her loves die ever again, and the Winged Lion wants to feast on desires forever. Unfortunately, entropy.

Guilty Filthy Soul by AWOLNATION — The Winged Lion doing some more crazy manipulation.

Propaganda by Muse — Obviously the dungeon lords are taken in by the Winged Lion's "propaganda," it "eats souls," it "toys with the truth." BUT!! Mortal desire is also something the Winged Lion "can't refuse." It's convinced by its own lies. Did I just blow your mind

Carnivorous by Band of Skulls — Eating yummy desires om nomnomnom

Little Monster by Royal Blood — The Winged Lion wants to eat Laios sooooo bad and this is a song about that.

Animals by Muse — LAIOS IS GONNA ENSURE HIS OWN SURVIVAL!!!!!!!!

Leave My Body by Florence + the Machine — The Winged Lion leaves its own body to steal Laios', for "one grand moment." Laios leaves his own body to be become a monster. But the Winged Lion loses a lot more than its mind in that arrangement! I feel like the "Your history keeps pulling me, pulling me down" part can be interpreted in this context as like... the history of life. Of survival. Finite resources, something the Winged Lion will never understand. Florence Welch did not intend for this to be what her song was about but I don't care it's blorbo time

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Republicans have a massive political propaganda machine funded by Nazi oligarchs. They can make anything into a national issue within a few hours to a few days. They best the drum across cable news, talk radio, internet sites, and then send out every Republican with identical talking points.

[wilwheaton]

Like many of you, I find it hard to wrap my head around the notion that MAGA primary voters are so sheltered from reality by the right-wing media propaganda machine that they would vote for a man accused of trying to overthrow the government and who got civilly adjudicated as a liar and sexual assaulter in the E. Jean Carroll case. Well, if they stuck with him after Jan. 6, 2021, I suppose the slew of indictments that follow aren’t likely to matter to them. Even if he racked up more indictments, these would simply be proof of elites’ vendetta against Trump! Sadly, millions will vote for him even if they acknowledge that he violated the Constitution and betrayed his office. For them, “I’m in it for the tax cuts” or “But the Great Replacement” provide sufficient justification for electing a dangerous, vengeful and utterly unfit candidate. Others afflicted with right-wing-media-induced delusion will go to their graves convinced Trump is a victim. Democracy remains at risk when tens of millions of people willfully abet an unhinged authoritarian’s return to power.

Republican denial

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

leftist liberals love to point out how right-wingers are brainwashed and populist and lie to their own people and have a propaganda machine but think their own holy movement would never. their own perspective is all fact-based and not an ideology. i feel like this implies some sort of mental superiority liberals feel, like „im too smart to fall for propaganda“, like our institutions are not backing individualism and liberalism to avoid change, babe you are defending the sex industry with hypothetical what-ifs and completely ignore the system behind it to focus on personal choice like choices are made in a vacuum💀

no wonder liberalism and conservatism/traditionalism are the most dominant and successful ideologies in the west right now (besides apathy), you are so easy to pander to! because legitimately analysing and dismantling systems and institutions of oppression is scawwy! or its not even oppression because the sex industry is the one system where personal choice beats institutionalised marginalisation! hollow and lazy, just like the right wing.