Propaganda Leftovers: The Absurd Arena Live Discussion Board
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Propaganda Leftovers: The Absurd Arena Live Discussion Board
Live chat at 12pm EST with Katie and Wilson in the Substack app chat!
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Hey Useful Idiots,
My journey as a Useful Idiot took me from cheering for a Biden win in 2020 (I’m telling you this in confidence, please don’t out me) to the disenfranchised, gloomy producer you know and love today who chokes down the Sunday morning news shows so you don’t have to. This week marks two years since Useful Idiots went independent from Rolling Stone and I joined the crew. And now, after countless hours of editing food groups, throwdowns, and interviews, it seems my levels of skepticism, distrust, and anger towards politicians and corporate media are at impenetrable levels.
But yet from time to time I still find propaganda leftovers.
Most of the propaganda seared into my brain from years of school, TV, and newspapers has been wrenched out of my brain by the fantastic guests of this show: experts in foreign policy, radical activists, independent journalists, victims of oppression, free thinkers. But as I continue to learn from them, I’ll run into an old topic which no one has yet yanked out.
Just last weekend, as Navalny won the Oscar for Best Documentary feature and the filmmakers gave a speech about the importance of defending Ukraine, I realized that in my Useful Idiot journey I never questioned the years of articles the New York Times pushed about Navalny the freedom fighter in Russia. The same happened in Taiwan and Syria, and in the US I’ve run into policies that, after being told all my life they were the ‘only way’ to do things, I still believed they were true. Some things are so engrained in me that, as distrusting as I’ve become, I still forget to be skeptical.
Do you ever find propaganda leftovers? From SNL’s outrageous representations of politicians like Marianne Williamson, to the liberal motto that we should help the working class but not the homeless, to the reputations of foreign leaders fed to you by corporate media, do you ever have any propagandistic ideas that you let slip through the cracks?
Join Katie and me at 12pm est on the Substack app to share the propaganda that still has its hold on even the bleakest of skeptics.
Propaganda Leftovers: The Absurd Arena Live Discussion Board
Here’s the link to the chat: https://open.substack.com/chat/posts/040c8c54-ec1d-4a31-ad9f-f8b196635074?utm_source=share
I can't think of a specific "propaganda leftover" right now, but I probably will. I can remember many instances since I went fully "a pox on both sides" towards US Red/Blue politics in 2016 that I looked at a "leftover" person/institution and thought, "There is no reason anymore to take their opinion on faith. Not after what 'the left' did to Bernie in 2016."
I was a NYT subscriber for about 15 years. 2016 I watched in real-time as the entire editorial staff walked in lock-step supporting Hillary. Because of the time difference between the US and Europe and how (at the time) the NYT would post on-line content, I saw the content post in the middle of the night US Eastern time. Several times I saw opinion pieces about a Hillary/Bernie debate that were posted within 10-15 minutes after the debate finished, raving for Hillary.
It was clear that these articles could not have been written, reviewed, edited and posted that fast unless they were written ahead of time. It was a real eye opener.
Then the NYT started curating its comments, because there were too many pro-Berne comments.
I posted a comment comparing 2016 Paul Krugman vs. 2006 Paul Krugman. Krugman turned 180° on Medicare for All. My comment was held for hours before posting, making sure it would get minimum eyeballs.
All that together made me question everything I believed about the NYT. And I cancelled my subscription. Something similar happened at DailyKos, although I got a permanent friend out of it, but that is another story.
PS: Sorry I can't join the chats lately. Too much work.