Intelligitimate
29th August 2009, 17:08
I haven't had cable or satellite since "Black Thursday" June 18th, when Charlie switched to the NAGRA 3 encryption standard and made millions start putting up their rabbit ears. Not that I spent much time watching Fox News anyway. The last bit I had watched and paid any attention to was Mike Huckabee's program. Something always struck me as vaguely endearing about this guy. He always seemed honest in the primaries, the most 'liberal' of the Republican candidates, and he definitely was the most humorous of the candidates, what with him also making fun of the fact Chuck Norris was campaigning with him.
So I was at a friend's place yesterday, waiting around for sun-down, when the local Jewish Center gives away free food and beer. I turned on the TV and started scrolling through the channels, and thought I'd stop on Fox News for a bit. I have been hearing the right-wing shills have been getting much worse lately, but I wasn't exactly prepared for what I saw.
http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=011008&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=8794815&referralPlaylistId=playlist
This is just a fourth or so of the program. The rest of it is Glenn Beck calling for his listeners to not be afraid of name calling, which is just getting them ready to be called racists and Fascists. Much of it is just incoherent demagoguery, with crap like "radical revolutionaries" and "giant multinational corporations" getting together behind closed doors and deciding how to "take from him and give to him" (code words for taking from white people and giving to black people).
Now, we could be like liberals, and simply dismiss this as the ravings of an idiot. This would be more probable, if the same basic message were not being repeated in all right-wing media. While I think Glenn Beck is a genuinely unintelligent person, as opposed to just an opportunist, this would be a mistake. The media is one of the most important institutions of bourgeois power in America. It makes and breaks politicians and consciously shapes the realm of what is 'acceptable' political discourse in its favor. Clearly Glenn Beck is just reading a script, written by someone else, and approved by producers and editors, who are in turn trusted to carry out the will of top management and Rupert Murdoch, who are just selling the attention span of the American public to other transnational corporations to push their products.
If anyone has watched OutFoxed, you'll realize just how controlled the political message is on that network, and that it is basically crafted by the Republican Party. While the Republican and Democratic Parties are both bourgeois parties, they objectively do not represent the same interests. Bourgeois Democracy is simply about managing the affairs of the capitalist class, who do not always share the same interests. In general, the real divide between the Republicans and Democrats can be described as labor-intensive industries vs capital-intensive industries. Generally neither side steps outside certain boundaries, as it is never a good idea to bite the hand that feeds you. However, the current rhetoric of the Republican Propaganda machine must mean there is a lot more disharmony than is typical, and possibly certain sectors aren't willing to back down.
Traditionally fascism rears its head in the face of imminent revolution. That certainly does not appear to be on the table any time soon, yet we seem to be seeing 'Brown Shoots' starting to appear out of the astroturf. The international bourgeoisie have sent millions to die to settle their struggles with one another, and we already know that the American bourgeoisie have the balls (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot) to attempt a fascist coup, and the Northern bourgeoisie and the Southern slavocracy went to war with one another a few decades before that.
Clearly the unity of the bourgeoisie is not always constant, and when they can not come to an agreement, there can be a sharp struggle until one side or the other definitely loses. What does this mean for the Left, especially given the highly racialized context in this struggle? While I hate the Democratic Party to no end, it is beginning to appear to me like Popular Front tactics will become a necessity in the future.
So I was at a friend's place yesterday, waiting around for sun-down, when the local Jewish Center gives away free food and beer. I turned on the TV and started scrolling through the channels, and thought I'd stop on Fox News for a bit. I have been hearing the right-wing shills have been getting much worse lately, but I wasn't exactly prepared for what I saw.
http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=011008&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=8794815&referralPlaylistId=playlist
This is just a fourth or so of the program. The rest of it is Glenn Beck calling for his listeners to not be afraid of name calling, which is just getting them ready to be called racists and Fascists. Much of it is just incoherent demagoguery, with crap like "radical revolutionaries" and "giant multinational corporations" getting together behind closed doors and deciding how to "take from him and give to him" (code words for taking from white people and giving to black people).
Now, we could be like liberals, and simply dismiss this as the ravings of an idiot. This would be more probable, if the same basic message were not being repeated in all right-wing media. While I think Glenn Beck is a genuinely unintelligent person, as opposed to just an opportunist, this would be a mistake. The media is one of the most important institutions of bourgeois power in America. It makes and breaks politicians and consciously shapes the realm of what is 'acceptable' political discourse in its favor. Clearly Glenn Beck is just reading a script, written by someone else, and approved by producers and editors, who are in turn trusted to carry out the will of top management and Rupert Murdoch, who are just selling the attention span of the American public to other transnational corporations to push their products.
If anyone has watched OutFoxed, you'll realize just how controlled the political message is on that network, and that it is basically crafted by the Republican Party. While the Republican and Democratic Parties are both bourgeois parties, they objectively do not represent the same interests. Bourgeois Democracy is simply about managing the affairs of the capitalist class, who do not always share the same interests. In general, the real divide between the Republicans and Democrats can be described as labor-intensive industries vs capital-intensive industries. Generally neither side steps outside certain boundaries, as it is never a good idea to bite the hand that feeds you. However, the current rhetoric of the Republican Propaganda machine must mean there is a lot more disharmony than is typical, and possibly certain sectors aren't willing to back down.
Traditionally fascism rears its head in the face of imminent revolution. That certainly does not appear to be on the table any time soon, yet we seem to be seeing 'Brown Shoots' starting to appear out of the astroturf. The international bourgeoisie have sent millions to die to settle their struggles with one another, and we already know that the American bourgeoisie have the balls (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot) to attempt a fascist coup, and the Northern bourgeoisie and the Southern slavocracy went to war with one another a few decades before that.
Clearly the unity of the bourgeoisie is not always constant, and when they can not come to an agreement, there can be a sharp struggle until one side or the other definitely loses. What does this mean for the Left, especially given the highly racialized context in this struggle? While I hate the Democratic Party to no end, it is beginning to appear to me like Popular Front tactics will become a necessity in the future.