Friday, August 21, 2020

The CorpMedia's Codswallop Conundrum.

AllTheirBreitestIdeasWhereNotNamed
BartVille


It would appear that the American CorpMedia is waking up to the fact that a growing number of 'legitimate' primary-winning Republican candidates espouse all this deep state stuff that leads straight to the 17th letter of the alphabet.

And yet, still, they can't quite bring themselves to call this stuff what it really is.

Thus, in today's NY Times piece by  Matthew Rosenberg and Margaret Haberman you see soft descriptors and vague source attributions like the following:

...internet-driven conspiracy theory...

...It is instantly recognizable among QAnon adherents, signaling what they claim is a coming conflagration between President Trump and what they allege, falsely, is a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile Democrats who seek to dominate America and the world...

...A small but growing number of Republicans — including a heavily favored Republican congressional candidate in Georgia — are donning the QAnon mantle, ushering its adherents in from the troll-infested fringes of the internet and potentially transforming the wild conspiracy theory into an offline political movement, with supporters running for Congress and flexing their political muscle at the state and local levels...

...Since the theory first emerged three years ago, he (Mr. Trump) has employed a wink-and-nod approach to the conspiracy theory, retweeting its followers but conspicuously ignoring questions about it...

...There is hardly universal support inside the (Republican) party for QAnon. Many of its leaders in Congress and powerful donors are privately horrified at the spread of the movement’s themes. And while some Republican voters are well-versed in QAnon, a majority of them are unfamiliar with the particulars of the movement.

“QAnon is nuts — and real leaders call conspiracy theories conspiracy theories,” said Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, after the president appeared to endorse QAnon this week....

...QAnon followers are increasingly taking on the trappings of a discrete political movement, though one with beliefs untethered from reality. There are more than a dozen Republicans running for Congresswho have signaled varying degrees of interest in the movement. One candidate has attracted a campaign contribution from the Republican National Committee, and another has raised thousands of dollars from established conservative groups like the House Freedom Fund...



So.

You are a reasonably conscientious news consumer and when you are done with pieces like this, from the front page of the most influential print media organ in the world, you will likely to conclude that this is a terrible bit of crazed lunacy, lunacy that is only now being exploited by Mr. Trump and his most gullible acolytes, sprang up pretty much from nowhere somewhere in the deepest, darkest recesses of the anonymous 17th letter of the alphabet part of the internet.

Sure thing.

Except, if you are really paying attention you will also see the following from Martin Pengelly in the Guardian:

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs has blamed the “deep state” conspiracy theory for the arrest of Steve Bannon, the former Trump campaign manager who on Thursday pleaded not guilty to a charge of skimming donations from a fundraising campaign for a border wall with Mexico.

Bannon himself is a key propagator of the theory that unknown government operatives are working against the Trump administration – but has also said the idea is “for nut cases” and should not be taken seriously...



Hmmmm....

It would appear that the 5 W's of journalism still matter.

Perhaps fine folks like Mr. Rosenberg and Ms. Haberman, as well as their editors, should use all of them all of the time.


.

5 comments:

NVG said...

https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/here-are-qanon-supporters-running-congress-2020

RossK said...

Thanks NVG--

Will be important to track the extremism in one of the two major American political parties.

However, in addition, when the attempts to pretend that this was all just an aberration post-Trump comes, it will also be important to track where all this purpose-built nonsense came from.


.

Keith said...

Starting Monday it's the RNC convention.

Worth watching to see who they put up as speakers for the cause, and if we ever get to know, who said thanks but no thanks.

RossK said...

Keith--

Apparently, those very fine firearm-brandishing folks from St. Louis have been selected to speak.


.

Scotty on Denman said...

The CPC convention winds up today, one day before the RNC in the USA. Unsurprisingly, these two neo-right parties, respectively of the two largest bilateral trading nations in history (yes, still, because China’s US trade is so heavily weighted with exports that, despite its huge size, isn’t really bilateral), are experiencing the same moribundity now that four decades of “trickledown”, neoliberal, market fundamentalist claptrap has finally twigged voters, many—if not most—of whom are getting frustrated by yawning income disparity, erosion of public services, and quickening ecological degradation. As heightened partisanship was their first resort (anti-Liberal in Canada, anti-“L-word” in the USA), so it is their last—and in this sense only they appear conservative —otherwise they are really neoliberal usurpers of traditional conservative parties who aim to hobble democratic sovereignty so it can’t tax and regulate the stateless private monopolies they are building.

The Q-Anon phenomenon is really an extreme of partisanship: subscribers “believe” in the way Eric Hoffer’s True Believers do—a virtue~ or partisan-signalling device that obviously has noting to do with the other components of government, policy and politics. The reason of course is that the neo-right movement has become disgraced with its cynical grab at power and wealth, the lies it told to sustain it for as long as it did, and now, in decline, the absurd sloganeering and preposterous paeans required to keep an increasingly chauvinistic (well, okay, totally chauvinistic) base within the circled wagon-laager. Partisanship has rather become a symptom of panic.

Donald tRump’s antics speak for themselves: the man’s an inveterate, incorrigible liar and his base therefore accepts his lies, no matter how absurd, to signal their loyalty—in fact, the more absurd, the more loyalty is required to stay on board And the more proudly it must be worn. This is a forty-year acculturation underlaid by a five-and-a-half century phenomenon of globalization during which the USA (and the rest of Greater Anglo-Saxony) achieved the most privileged rank. It is complex and has been troubling since Calvin.

Canada’s equivalent are plainly the far~ or neo-right parties: BC Liberals, Albetar’s UCP, the Saskashewan Party, the CPC—and virtually all, nominal conservative parties (none of which are really conservative anymore). We will be treated to another episode of pathetic caterwauling tonight as the hapless federal party writhes in its throes, infested with bigotry, busted at its perfidy, discredited by its own record. Most notable is its steady, abiding and increasingly obsessive partisanship—the thing it got started with when Progressive Conservative leader Peter MacKay, one of the front runners in tonight’s contest, betrayed his party members by throwing in with the Anti-Canadian neo-rightist Stephen Harper: unstinting enmity for non-Harperites and jingoistic-cum-surly chauvinism. The only conservative trait this usurper ever had—difficulty with change—is, ironically, sinking the supposed ‘Enders of History’: if the CPC wasn’t so transfixed with winning power and showed a modicum of cooperative compromise, it would look more like a real conservative party instead of a reactionary gang of disingenuous, dangerous and dastardly conjurers. But all it seems to say is: defeat the evil JT.

As if Covid wasn’t warning enough—in addition to serious social and ecological challenges—the CPC paean of “getting back on track” definitely rates as absurd enough to equate with the ultra-partisan Q-Anon movement. It’s just the Canuck version: kinder, gentler peace, order and good government that we haven’t had for decades—if we ever really had it.

Enjoy your evening, everybody!