Last week, I noted that the mainstream media was largely ignoring Hurricane Helene. As the outrage grew and the eyewitness accounts became more damning, the journalists finally awakened and revealed to all the real problem with Hurricane Helene — the lying liars who were lying about it.
Here are some screenshots on the topic from October 11’s Google News.
We are getting more eyewitness reports from Appalachia as the flood waters recede. Once upon a time journalists would have risked everything for a story like Helene as it happened. But that was then and this is now, and we can hardly expect our current crop of underpaid keyboard-tappers to show such an adventurous spirit. Still, we must give credit for small favors.
The death of 11 family members in Fairview, North Carolina has received some coverage. Biden and Harris have made some soothing words about relief for victims of Helene and Milton. But overall the sufferings of Appalachia, and now Florida, are still being greeted with a collective yawn — or blamed on “disinformation” spread by bots, Putin supporters, racists, conspiracy nuts, and Trumptards (but I repeat myself).
What happened to American journalism? It’s a long story. Let’s start by following the money.
As close to a consensual view as you get in America is that “everyone in America should have equal opportunities to get ahead.” A whopping 97 percent agreed with that statement in a 2007 survey by political scientists Lawrence Jacobs and Benjamin Page. But Wall Street and powerful allied economic and political interests are making a mockery out of this commitment and, indeed, raising questions about whether anyone else besides them can get ahead, period. That’s the source of the populist anger—call it aspirational populism—that is driving this movement and will continue to drive it in the future, if it picks up steam.
Ruy Teixara, “Why a Majority of Americans Are Getting Behind Occupy Wall Street”
New Republic, October 20, 2011
From September 17 to November 15, 2011 protestors occupied Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan’s Financial District. While the protestors came from different races, creeds, and political backgrounds, they were united in their distrust of big banks and big government. The Great Recession of 2007-09 had led to enormous bank bailouts with little attention paid to those dealing with a stagnant economy.
While the professional and managerial classes had largely been spared the brunt of earlier downturns, the Great Recession was felt by prosperous and poor alike. They gathered in New York, and many other cities, to make their displeasure known. They put aside their differences and took on a new identity: the 99% held down by the wealthy and super-wealthy 1%.
Many thought this was the beginning of an American populist movement. But after the encampments were closed, the Occupy Wall Street movement died without a whimper. And the autopsy report suggests this was no death by natural causes. Occupy Wall Street was willfully murdered by the people who had the most to lose should it succeed.
To keep the rabble from complaining about income inequity, the .01% turned the discussion to racism, sexism, ableism, fatphobia, homophobia, and just about any oppression you can name that didn’t involve class struggle. Struggles against “White Supremacy” and “Queerphobia” received lavish funding from private NGOs and corporate donors after OWS.
On September 21, 2012 brothers Omar and Rafael Rivero started a Facebook page they called "Occupy Democrats." This page had little to distinguish it from the many other strident Facebook pages on all sides of the political spectrum. But it channeled the momentum from Occupy Wall Street into partisan Democratic politics. At first those efforts were geared toward Bernie Sanders and other left-leaning democrats. But by September 17 Omar Rivera was bragging to the Miami New Times "If Hillary would have given me $20 million, we wouldn't have President Trump. That's a guarantee."
While it became notorious as a disinformation fountain, Occupy Democrats soon became one of the Left's leading sources for news and information. By May 2020 nearly half the top-performing Facebook videos which mentioned "Trump" were from Occupy Democrats. Those who once protested in the streets now content themselves with sharing memes for likes and upvotes.
In August 2019 I was smeared by the Maine Beacon as a “New Jersey White Supremacist.” After a bit of digging, I discovered that the Maine People’s Alliance accepts donations through ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform. I also discovered that while the Beacon and the Maine People’s Alliance were purportedly non-partisan, they were oddly silent when it came to criticizing Democratic candidates and officials. Organizations once dedicated to progressive causes increasingly came under control of Democratic officials and operatives who massaged the message to their own ends.
Lacking class consciousness, the American Left grew increasingly contemptuous of the homophobic, racist, misogynist Christofascist working classes. They also developed a badly skewed class consciousness of their own. Income inequity and siphoning of money from the lower classes to multinational corporations and hedge funds meant there were fewer opportunities for the petit bourgeois Professional-Managerial Class. (Ahnaf Ibn-Qais and I had a great conversation about this with ACP member and Executive Director Eddie Liger).
As their economic condition grew increasingly tense, the PMCs grew more strident. They channeled the fears that fueled Occupy Wall Street into the loud new religion of “wokeness.” Those who questioned any of the tenets of the new faith soon found themselves ostracized. (Ask me how I know this). Instead of supporting economic justice, the “Left” now mocked the Trumptards with their rusty trailers, missing teeth, and battered pickup trucks. Instead of protesting wars they enthusiastically stood with Ukraine. Instead of questioning the government-pharmaceutical complex, they demanded that COVID vaccine skeptics be rounded up in concentration camps. And of all the PMCs, few were more enthusiastic than the journalists.
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