Petition to Support Mark Crispin Miller and Academic Freedom
If you believe in academic freedom, as well as free speech overall, please consider signing this petition, and sharing it with others who believe that higher education must be free from censorship of any kind, whether by the state, corporations, foreign interests, pressure groups, or by the university itself.
A full professor in NYU’s Department of Media, Culture and Communication (since 1997), and a recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller, Guggenheim and Ingram Merrill Foundations, Prof. Miller teaches a course on propaganda, focusing not only on the history of modern propaganda, but — necessarily — on propaganda drives ongoing at the time.
The aim is to teach students to identify such drives for what they are, think carefully about their claims, seek out whatever data and/or arguments have been blacked out or misreported to protect those claims from contradiction, and look into the interests financing and managing the propaganda, so as to figure out its purpose.
On Sept. 20, after a class discussion of the case for universal masking as defense against transmission of SARS-COV-2 (in which discussion she did not participate), a student took to Twitter to express her fury that Prof. Miller had brought up the randomized, controlled tests—all of those so far conducted on the subject—finding that masks and ventilators are ineffective at preventing such transmission, because the COVID-19 virions are too small for such expedients to block them.
Prof. Miller urged the students to read those studies, as well as others that purport to show the opposite, with due attention to the scientific reviews thereof, and possible financial links between the researchers conducting them, and such interests as Big Pharma and the Gates Foundation. Prof. Miller followed up by providing the links to the former studies (not easily found on Google, though they have all appeared in reputable medical journals), and other materials, including a video of a debate on the subject.
The student was so outraged by Prof. Miller even mentioning those studies that she called on NYU to fire him:
I hope @nyuniversity, @nyusteinhardt, and @mccNYU agree that this professor should not be trusted with educating and advising students, and I hope they take immediate steps to relieve him of these duties. 8/
— Julia Jackson (@julia_jacks) September 21, 2020
Having contacted NYU’s bias response line to report him, and getting no satisfaction there, the student kept on tweeting her demand for Prof. Miller’s termination, due to his “unhealthy amount of skepticism around health professionals,” and a range of other posts that she had seen on News from Underground, Prof. Miller’s website, and found no less insidious, misreporting that their sources were “many far right and conspiracy websites,” and therefore, evidently, not worth reading.
The student’s call provoked a storm of tweets, many attacking her, and others thanking her—one of which was posted by Prof. Miller’s department chair, promising to act on her demand:
Julia, thank you for reporting this issue. We as a department have made this a priority and are discussing next steps.”
Soon after this pledge of institutional support, the dean of NYU’s Steinhardt School (in which Prof. Miller teaches), together with a doctor who advises them on COVID-19 policy, emailed each of Prof. Miller’s students (without putting him on copy), starting with a ritual nod to “academic freedom,” then hinting that the studies noted in that class were dangerous misinformation. To set them straight, the two advised the students to consult the “authoritative” CDC—specifically, its list of several recent studies finding that masks are effective against COVID-19.
(That the CDC itself, as well as Dr. Fauci, had, until April, publicly adhered to the consensus of those “dangerous” studies went unmentioned.) The two concluded with a stern reminder that the students are obliged to mask on campus (although Prof. Miller had made quite clear that he was not suggesting that they break NYU’s rule, which he observes himself.)
Thus that student’s tweets immediately prompted NYU to take her side, and several media outlets to attack Prof. Miller for his dissidence, without interviewing him. The following week, NYU followed up by urging him to cancel his propaganda course next term, and, instead, teach two sections of his course on cinema. Their rationale was that it would be “better for the department,” because enrollment in the latter course is always high; but then so are the enrollments for Prof. Miller’s propaganda course, which has earned the highest praises from its students.
For testimonials from Prof. Miller’s students click here.
Below is the text change.org petition, you can sign it here.
We the undersigned support the academic freedom of Prof. Mark Crispin Miller, now under siege at New York University for urging students in his propaganda course to read scientific literature on the effectiveness of masks against transmission of COVID-19.
We see his situation as but one example of a growing global trend toward rigid censorship of expert views on urgent subjects of all kinds; so this petition is not just in his defense, but a protest on behalf of all professors, doctors, scientists and journalists who have been gagged, or punished for their rights to freely research, study, and interpret data on a variety of matters regardless of their controversial nature.
Censorship is nothing new. We have been edging toward it ever more for decades, as both academia and the media have long discouraged free investigation and discussion of urgent public questions of all kinds, as those who would attempt to tackle them empirically have been slandered as “conspiracy theorists” or “truthers” and other slurs deployed to shut them up, or purge them as purveyors of “misinformation,” “fake science” or “hate speech.”
Such censorship has blocked the sort of open, civil, reasoned give-and-take without which higher education—indeed, any education—is impossible, as is scientific progress overall.
We see Prof. Miller’s situation as a flashpoint in the struggle not just to reclaim but to protect free speech and free inquiry. NYU officials have no right to intervene in Prof. Miller’s courses or message his students surreptitiously undermining his integrity as an instructor.
They have no right to deprive him of the courses he was hired to teach and they should not join in a public smear campaign against the very rights they should uphold at a university.
That so stated, we urge that NYU respect his academic freedom, and thereby set a good example for all other schools with faculty who dare contest official narratives. Otherwise, “education” there will be mere training for compliance, stunting students’ minds instead of opening them—a practice fatal to democracy, and, finally, to humanity itself.
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Hi, I saw a brilliant interview with MCM talking on censorship historically and why its wrong and his personal experience somewhere and thought I’d saved it. Anyone got a link to this as I cannot find it anywhere on Google.
A University which censors a professor and information is as useless as (my father used to say) “hind teats on a boar.”
Can anyone at ‘Admin’ tell me why a comment I made yesterday evening has not appeared ?
It registered with a tagged message which read, ‘checking for spam’. There were no links – no hypertext, included in the comment, so that made little sense to me. It has not appeared in the (still showing) thread and has disappeared.
Any ideas ?
usually …if you have replied to a ‘friend’ of the house …and the content is not ‘positive’ …
you run the risk of deletion ..dont ask! censorship is a very personal ‘thing’ on this page WHAT you can and WHAT u cant write ..
Most cowardly ?
no tace is left not even a note to tell you its been delted ….all traces removed
Then again who cares man 🙂
let them stroke their ego once or twice a day …
.
Sam, Sophie,
Anything ?
Or are comments like that of ‘Run!Now’ correct ? I hope not.
‘OffG is dedicated to open discourse and free expression’ [foot note blurb] ?
For the sake of clarity, the comment has now been put up.
An explanation maybe ?
Perhaps the professor should teach a course on irony next term.
Wow, Karens take on many different forms. A busybody looking to forge a career by hijacking issues and generating a network via social media platforms. These people are dangerous neo puritans.
I find myself somehow reminded of the missionaries that were used to give colonialism moral cover a couple of hundred years ago. Globalisation is the new colonialism, and so called human rights issues the moral battering ram that christianity was back then.
You will be forcibly converted !! Its for your own good !! Take your vaccine you poor oppressed primitive !!!
Looks like a setup deliberately intended to get Prof. Miller ousted from his position. The “student” was possibly a plant.
I find it unlikely a student gets planted for these kind of purposes, because you simply don’t have to: There’s an enormously populated pond to fish from, some useful idiot will turn up at some point. This Julia Jackson even jumped out of the water!
its not hard AT ALL to imagine students planted for such purposes. I know personally two examples.
To my mind, rather than calling for freedom it’s best to call for the actual truth.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a Trauma-based Mind Control Psychological Operation in the form of a massive “live” Full-Scale Pandemic Exercise just like 9/11 was a massive “live” Full-Scale Anti-Terrorist Exercise.
The similarities are so very obvious between the two psyops and we see the similarities with other psyops too. Psyops have very distinctive MOs although I think it’s generally only the very big ones that have the two major streams of propaganda, one being directed to the masses and one to the skeptics.
The most important thing about 9/11 is that it is a perfect template for how they dupe us in multiple layers with its two major strands of propaganda:
— one aimed at the masses (terrorist attack)
— one aimed at the anticipated truthers (callous murder of 3,000 people by the US government)
Reality: Buildings were damaged and destroyed, planes were faked and death and injury were staged (fake jumpers, fake witnesses, fake survivors, fake “loved ones”, controlled opposition agents keeping truthers’ focus on buildings and away from the planes because faked planes means faked deaths and faked deaths of any kind are a slippery slope to questioning all the deaths). For goodness sake all they had to do was evacuate everyone from the buildings (and we can infer they ensured as few people as possible were in them in the first place).
Similarly with COVID-19 there are two major strands of propaganda
— one aimed at the masses (pandemic and massive response required)
— one aimed at the skeptics (virus but not pandemic, response inappropriate)
Reality: No virus, no nothing, Emperor’s New Clothes par excellence
When you get how all these events follow the same pattern it makes it so much easier to understand and predict how they will roll out and what you will see in them.
From understanding that injured people in psyops have that clear “drill” injured look about them or are otherwise unconvincing, I predicted (and no one’s corrected me so far) that all the media stories about alleged COVID patients would contain anomalies or be otherwise unconvincing.
From being very familiar with nonsense “miracle survivor” stories in 9/11 and other psyops I predicted that these would be told us for COVID. They are.
It’s truly all so simple. Call out the truth. The truth obviates the need to call for freedom. Call out the TRUTH.
9/11 and COVID-19: The Parallels
https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/911–covid-19-the-parallels.html
I’m familiar with Mark. His advocacy for banned books is commendable. And this attack on his freedom of speech, while he goes along with the masking abuse, is awful. But I have the same problem with him as I do with Off Guardian. He pushes Camelot propaganda. Camelot propaganda is the establishment (and here I do ‘not’ exclude those who are usually against establishment, fascist nonsense; ‘all’ types and political persuasions have drank this Kool-Aid.) view that JFK and his brother were heroes rather than what the historical facts will show, namely that they were establishment and big fans of counterrevolution and counterinsurgency. General Maxwell Taylor said that JFK should be viewed as the father of modern day counterinsurgency (State terrorism). Sorry. I think Mark should be supported here, but I’m not a super fan.
Is that why Lee Harvey Oswald shot him?
Your question is so vague, and, I’m guessing, rhetorical, that I actually don’t what it is. Don’t waste my time and I won’t waste yours.
He looks like such a nice guy, its good you changed his picture, and I hope he prospers after being wrongly sacked. Good luck to him.
The abuse of this teacher is terrible and makes me so sad and angry. What is happening to this teacher could happen to me or to any of us. It must be stopped. Thank you for shedding light on it. The department head at NYU should be ashamed. Students can show poor judgement, but faculty members should back each other. I hope the department head learns and corrects his thinking and actions. He is acting with great cowardice. Time will bring more clarity and more truth. I am copying and pasting another comment I made on the Covidean Creed statirical piece on OffG:
As this time passes — and it will quickly, I think we all should be asking — Who spoke up (and is speaking up) and who stayed silent and scared, trying to force others to comply as well? How did you treat people who questioned and tried to think independently — when it has been and is very hard to do so? Who protected children and young people who have had to endure this? Even the U.S. CDC director has said that suicides have been shockingly high among high school students — as many have known intuitively that these lockdowns would kill people of all ages. Other published reports have said that 25 percent of young people, 18-25, have seriously considered suicide in the last six months. Who stood up to try to keep food supplies open, so people did not starve to death? Who continued to follow along with the lying and deception to make money? Because of fear that speaking up for truth or conscience would cost them business or profits? Who made money off this fiasco? Who wrote the checks? Who got paid?
As this fiasco dissolves, and it will, what will matter most, I think, was how you treated people. Were you an a**hole, calling the police or health department on your neighbors or on small church schools, trying to survive, for example, or calling authorities on your fellow workers? Were you snide and ugly, even bullying to others, over face masks? Were you (and are you) terrorizing children with this nonsense that you bought whole? Did you contribute to scaring children and young people into not seeing their friends or relatives for months or scaring them away from doing all things that give their lives meaning (under the guise of “protecting the vulnerable” when you were really just worried about saving your own a** from some phantom). Did you do all this without question (similar to how people bought wars — and death camps — for profit and lies while their neighbors were sent to die — because they could not bare the cognitive dissonance that they were mislead, were wrong and then correct their thinking and change their beliefs).
What will you do now, going forward?
I am hoping that people will learn a lot from this time. I know I have.
Well put. “As this fiasco dissolves, and it will, what will matter most, I think, was how you treated people.” That will be what Jehovah God and his chief representative think as well. I would add, our relationship to Jehovah, the righteous Judge, will also be important.
The Department Head has nothing to be ashamed of – he’s just following the modern dictates of the University. Either tote the establishment line or start sending out resumes because you will be sacked. He’s just following orders – isn’t that what we’re all supposed to do? Just waiting for the right student to come along and throw a hissy fit because she didn’t like something in the syllabus. Nothing to be ashamed of here.
What’s a ”bias response line” when it’s at home?
Seems its new normal speak for a snitch line:
“Despite the creation of a “Bias Response Line” for students to report offensive and inappropriate situations at New York University, the editorial board of the campus student newspaper is claiming that the line is unresponsive to their needs.”
From: https://www.nyu.edu/about/policies-guidelines-compliance/equal-opportunity/bias-response.html
How dare they be unresponsive to these delicate little flowers’ needs?!? I find that offensive and inappropriate!
I’ve signed this petition. However I am not keen on petitions. They always ask for money and people should be aware that Change and other host companies make billions out of this. I am not sure any money goes to the causes they host,
FWIW, I had exactly the same response. I used an alternate e-mail address, and when the expected “benevolent nagging” e-mails began arriving within minutes after I signed the petition, I immediately unsubscribed.
I realize that commenting on Internet sites is arguably no better than “clicktivism”, but as you suggest I don’t trust host companies that purport to be entirely benevolent and altruistic.
I also despise the amoral pseudo-pragmatism that tolerates or condones what used to be correctly perceived as “sharp practices”, e.g. being endlessly pestered and urged to continuous participation, or in other instances being subjected to mendacious
fundraisingbegging requests.And change.org are funded by the Gates foundation of course .
The Grievance Studies Affair is a three-part documentary by Mike Nayna, beginning with the Evergreen State College Day of Absence affair of 2017.
Pushing Back on Grievance Studies with Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying.
She’s got that duper smirk. Same as Bill and Melinda Gates.
I would not take it amiss if something happens to that scumbag fascist politically correct student instigating this. Don’t expect the system to rectify matters when the fascist types are given free rein against free speech and reality.
These are the “snowflake puritans” who would be lost without a sentimentality-driven craving for attention.
The sad thing is that they often hijack genuine human rights movements to further their narcissism.
Seizing the means of cultural production.
Documentary maker Mike Nayna has helped to highlight the field of Grievance Studies and its impact on students and the corridors of power in the universities.
Stephen Hicks & Mike Nayna discuss seizing the means of cultural production using the weapons of PhDs and Passive-Aggression.
I wonder whether all of those philosophers are social distancing, wearing masks and squirting chemicals on their hands every five minutes?
This is coming the world over if people don’t rise up and stop it. In response to a lawsuit, the University of California has revised a flu vaccine mandate, but is now planning court-like hearings to assess eligibility for religious exemptions.
—
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/uc-breaking-news-university-of-california-makes-tactical-retreat-revises-executive-order/
Oct 1, 2020
Breaking News: University of California Makes Tactical Retreat, Revises Executive Order
By Richard Jaffe, Esq.
As you may know, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and I (with the able assistance of Children’s Health Defense chief legal guru Mary Holland, Physicians for Informed Consent’s human vaccine encyclopedia aka Greg Glaser and San Diego ace litigator Ray Flores) filed an injunction lawsuit to stop the University of California’s (UC) executive order requiring all students, faculty and other employees to get the flu shot by Nov. 1 or face not being able to work or register for class. We filed on Aug. 27, the executive order having been published on Aug. 7.
The UC filed its response to our motion . . . [and] . . . issued a new executive order revising the mandate. . . . [Now] the UC is setting up in effect religious inquisition courts, but with no published court procedures.
—
G.K. Chesterton – Eugenics and Other Evils (1922):
The thing that really is trying to tyrannise through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen – that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the Government will really help it to persecute its heretics. Vaccination, in its hundred years of experiment, has been disputed almost as much as baptism in its approximate two thousand. But it seems quite natural to our politicians to enforce vaccination; and it would seem to them madness to enforce baptism.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/08/01/how-to-take-back-control-of-your-mind/#comment-214373
In the past, young people and students have always been reactionary and challenged authority – this was standard fare at establishments of higher education in particular, but was never allowed to deliver inappropriate power into the hands of the learners. In the 21st century we have social media which offers extreme exposure to these activists out of all proportion to their status as learners.
Regrettably, the weak authority displayed by ‘management’ within these institutions exacerbates the learner’s power of expression beyond all measure and impacts the teacher’s authority. It is time that adults, charged with the responsibility of restraining aberrant behaviour in our young, grow some male organs and properly discharge their duties rather than siding with inappropriate puerile behaviour.
It is a sad reflection on our suffering educators who are struggling under adverse social trends endemic in our society today. Modern communications technology has delivered caustic negative effects on our grown-ups such that the juveniles have come to believe that they can run the show. These modern-day students need to find some humility in their learning process and subscribe to a standard of behaviour reflective of their presumed superior intelligence. Woke doesn’t do it.
young people and students have always been reactionary and challenged authority
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Ah, you are quite right THX-1143, thank you. I meant ‘radical’ – Oh dear, not a typo just an old man losing it in the morning! I use an online dictionary/thesaurus but it missed this one.
you’ve still got it wrong, either ‘reacdtionary’ or ‘radical’ means opposing established authority, aka (usually) ‘the state’ – which is what Mark C Miller is doing – the students are being good servants of the state, and opposing Miller’s radical stance … pretty bad sign when university students become agents of the state hunting down real reactionaries …
But I see it as students opposing authority from my own experience. Are they not challenging the status quo as indeed is Mark – just in differing ways?.
I don’t see how you get there – Miller is opposing ‘authority’ (which in this case is not even that, really, he is just telling students to read some other POVs and think for themselves – oh the horror!!!!), and the students are condemning him for doing so and supporting the diktats of the state ???? How is that challenging any ‘status quo’ ??
I wonder whether Mark is opposing authority. Does he tell people that the covid 19 pandemic is a hoax. Does he direct students to websites run by people like James Corbett, Dan Dicks, Ryan Christian, Del Bigtree, RFK, Sherri Tenpenny, Andrew Kaufman? What he did do, and it’s mindboggling, was perfectly reasonable from any standpoint. It was exactly what someone who carries the label of ‘educator’ should do.
I think telling people they should think for themselves is about as anti-current-authority as you can get … you don’t need to advocate any particular positions, just tell people to read widely and sort things out for themselves – the authorities really hate this idea, because pretty much everything the ‘authorities’ are saying these days about anything important is lies, and lies are very vulnerable to people checking around for more perspectives … hence the great danger of people like Miller telling people not to blindly believe said ‘authorities’ etc
“you don’t need to advocate any particular positions” But I need to and anyone who has anything to say about important matters will do that. There’s two ways to teach. You can be authoritarian, as in ‘This is what I think’ period. ‘Covid 19 is real’ period. Or you can be authoritative, not as in special but as in genuine, democratic and helpful. ‘Covid 19’ is a made up disease and I’ll tell you why I think so and I’ll give you my references. Have a look.
One way involves dialog. It’d democratic and productive, since it includes a positive feedback mechanism. The group that includes you and those who you instruct, and vice versa, can examine all the relevant sources of information and members of that group can correct other members as need be. Everyone teaches and learns and improves – together.
sure, I don’t think we have any fundamental disagreements here – encouraging open dialogue as you suggest, even if you have one opinion but encourage dialogue from others who might disagree, is exactly what the authoritarian state does NOT want, esp in contentious matters where they are quite evidently pushing some kind of lie, as with the covid crap …
Acknowledged. So the question becomes, Was Mark’s class assignment in relation to masks an example of him speaking out? Or was it an example of him being silent about covid 1984. You can’t be neutral on a moving train. A failure to vote against covid 1984 is a vote for it.
I think his very suggestion that the students should check some essentially anti-covid phantom menace stuff indicates he was speaking out – note, there is nothing in the article about what he may or may not have said during his class, just the suggestion his students do some independent research and thinking. And being a good teacher – in my opinion, a ‘good teacher’ does not tell students what to think about any question – that is the definition of propaganda and indoctrination, no? The good teacher, whatever his opinion, encourages a lively debate about any issue, encourages his/her students to examine all points of view carefully, and come to their own conclusions, in the knowledge that most of them are going to come to his opinion if they follow his suggestion. A suggestion which, of course, I think we can be very certain the covid-purveyors would never do, because, as noted above, they have to know they are pushing lies, and diligently researching students would quickly uncover enough evidence independently to expose those lies.
Acknowledged.
Miller re-tweeted Whitney Webb’s latest article on the secret Project Warp Speed military contracts, adding his own comment referring to the project as “sinister.”
As an NYU alum, I was emproudened!
(Yeah, we learned words like that at NYU. Emproudened. And don’t try to say it’s not cromulent.)
That’s good to know.
It’s clear enough what austrian peter means. We don’t need to make an issue out of it.
oooo – is this ‘tried and found (very) wanting’ wardie again??? LOL – still smarting are we?
I’m not sure about that. Reactionary impulses and actions are usually centered in the State. With the way the term is usually used by writers, we see that reactionary polices etc are rightwing.
If austrian peter is speaking from the right wing, then “reactionary” fits, THX-1143;)
“…a reactionary or reactionist is a person or entity holding political views that favour a return to a previous political state of society that they believe possessed positive characteristics that are absent in contemporary society… in right-wing politics… it is commonly used to refer to a highly traditional position, one opposed to social or political change.”
wikipedia
We’re all reactionaries in relation to the New Normal then.
If that student is so superior to the Professor, one asks why she is so mentally subnormal that she needs to shell out money to study?
What a disgraceful student, what a disgraceful faculty, what a disgraceful University.
Against study, against scholarship and most of all, against examining evidence and drawing conclusions.
That young woman should be asked if she also believes in punishing lawyers who present contradictory evidence in courts of law? Is she such a dictator that legal due process is unacceptable to her?
I hope her parents are truly, truly ashamed for having created such a monster….
And I hope all the rest of the students in that class consider seriously whether to transfer their studies elsewhere to teach the institution that if it abandons scholarship, it has abandoned its sole raison d’etre.
Why does everyone assume this young woman was a legitimate student and not an agent provocateur sent to do exactly what she did? Are the intelligence agencies et al above using “kids” to do their dirty work?
We should check her out. Seriously.
I don’t know. We don’t know. Until we do, we can talk about ‘the student’ and ‘the professor’.
Does anyone actually believe a student has such enormous power that she can single handedly create a firestorm simply because she is dissatisfied with the course instruction?
This was so clearly a set-up. Granted, everyone has to walk on eggshells and go through the motions of pretending this was all brought about because a precious little student’s sensibilities were hurt.
But I don’t have to. I’m free to call it for what it obviously is: a set-up.
Again, Who knows? I think people are ruined. Now, Would the fascist authorities be ready, willing and able to exploit (instaged) incidents like this?
Well said.
Dangerous times, but with social media, internet sites like Off-G, GrayZone, etc., people can see the sham of Western Democracy for what it is.
Sad that a young(?) student thinks like that!
When I was at UK college, there were a few tory-types, but most were rebellious agents for change. Seems the tables are turned!
There were many not only positive but thankful ratings by students of Crispin Miller’s Propaganda class linked. This student may be in a minority of one, for all we know.
Read Miller’s awesome book “Boxed In” for a great example of inspired bashing of Reagan’s fake amerikkka.
https://worldchangebrief.webnode.com
US Govt Comes Clean On Assange
plus comprehensive trial coverage
“New study shows: Fear of corona changes sleep and dreams.”
https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-lockdown-dreams-1535312
I read around here (I don’t know why) to relate the covid to Nazism, when the coronavirus and everything it contains is the son, father and holy spirit of the victorious democracies. Let’s see if you find out now …
What is going on at the moment is completely insane, regardless of your religious or non-religious upbringing. All the newspapers print the same complete and utter rubbish, almost all copied and pasted from the same CIA/MI6 Central Source.,,and The People on the TV Screens read The same scripts, almost in complete unision multiple times every day.
Most of it contains hardly any truth – they make most of it up, and the bits that are funny, weren’t meant to be funny. They knew they were speaking a load of crap, live on TV, and tried exccedingly hard not to show any emotion, when they knew it was a load of complete shite. After the live broadcast, they run to the loo and throw up. It’s all in the off-takes.
Tony
The Daily Mail was by far The Most Interesting Online Newspaper to Read Today. I know it was full of Sh1t as usual, and they are of course as coarse as normal but they had several very interesting articles with Great Photography too and Political Implications…
I know they fake loads of stuff as well, but they are a slight improvement on all the Copy and Paste plebs. I mean even George Monbiot can write, even if it is usually a load of crap. However even I can agree with him sometimes even if he is an even bigger tw@t than Luke Harding – who no one takes seriously.
Once a proved multiple liar causing home. No Trust Again
We do notice these things. They are all being paid by The CIA and UK Intelligence Services, and Threatened too, according to their sxxxxx Preferences
The first thing The Daily Mail did today was to Portray Live Nicola Sturgeon giving a Speech appearing completely Insane. And I agree with that. She is.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/index.html
Tony
I’m afraid it’s way too late to fight for academic freedom; those days are over.
let us hope they rise again … and work to keep the idea alive until this period of total madness passes …
here’s the phone number and email for the dean of steinhardt: 212-998-5000
[email protected]……who funds Steinhardt? tech? pharma? anyone got any info?
Professor’s Miller’s unwavering stance in support of free thinking and free speech and a real analysis of what we are bombarded with day after day by the so-called mainstream media and other organs of propaganda deserves our unflinching encouragement and defence. These are, after all, inalienable rights, the bedrock of human liberty.
This from UNISON….
“Thousands of key workers died during the pandemic looking after us.
In the public services nurses, care workers, cleaners and more made the ultimate sacrifice to help others.”
Really? Those thousands of public service workers were unable to resign and take their skills elsewhere?
There is no state sponsored slavery nor call-up style National Service/public service in the UK so those ex- workers must have taken an adult view of their job prospects and stayed exactly where they were out of financial choice I would say.
Anyway, is there a list of who they were and what they are supposed to have died of and on what date they permanently left the public service so to speak?
More to the point, can such list be INDEPENDENTLY or forensically audited?
there was some kind of study awhile back that showed NHS workers actually had a lower covid death rate than the public at large ….
Dear UNISON, those in bed are the patients, not the other way around.
This from UNISON….
everywhere we go children end up sexually abused
we also employed known pedo’s and then when we find out we put them somewhere else with children
If you want more hyperbolic BS get over to the NHS Confederation and take a look their work on the NHS reset , (sponsored by novartis)
Folk need to realise the wholesale reorganising of Society is well underway. The argument about whether the illness exists or not is almost irrelevant now.
Vast swathes of new digital industries are being created, keep abreast at sites like biometrics update .com
Atos.net recent report “what will the World look like after the covid crisis “ – these people (and many others) are advising Govts.
There is a modern gold rush for the embedded bullshit jobs holders (ref David Graeber) and they aren’t going to give it all up just because of a few inconvenient facts like people not really being ill.
Unfortunately previously fully right-on people like Prof miller are finding out the hard way that giving too much license to idiocy over many years by allowing educational delinquency to flourish has come back to bite them.
Welcome to the realities of human nature.
Your task, if you wish to accept it, is to turn the world on it’s head, make the ‘left’ into the oppressors, the censors and the authoritarian demons and make the far-right into liberators, the freedom fighters, and the saviours of the working man.
Forget history, forget ideology, forget Marx, the young are clueless, they won’t even notice.
Mark Crispin Miller is not your usual academic. He has guts. Not just guts, but a brilliant mind and the heart and soul of a true scholar and professor whose art of teaching is to help students to think deeply and come to their own conclusions, not to repeat cliches and a party line. In this age of increasing censorship and propaganda, he is a rare bird. He deserves everyone’s support as the propagandists try to shut down free speech and academic freedom.
Our very own Lord Neuberger has an intersting insight into our state (UK).
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/oct/07/brexit-strategy-puts-uk-on-slippery-slope-to-tyranny-lawyers-told
The Groan has hidden that between two other pieces that hides it a bit. Should be front page. Starmer should be banging on about it non stop. But he is suddenly ‘Sleepy Joe’ in the issue that he was floated on!
I may do a GroaniadBalls piece on it for these who wonder whatever happenedtothelikelyladsandladies who got us here as a anti-OnG site.
Dung, Were you here, cos if you were, you have my complete respect, cos I wasn’t.
I posted about it as soon as I saw it, but then watched and listened to it on my Sennheiser Head Phones.
The photography was exceeingly good, but The Sound was awesome particularly with the extremely wide sound stage and stereo sound seperation.
It looked and sounded as if I was there.
You probably know the camera and sound crew. They are really good now. Probably One Man.
“Old man arrested by police for protesting| Freedom of speech dead in 2020|Julian Assange Protest”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUUym5b7fC4&feature=emb_logo
Tony
Solidarity with Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, protesting against lockdown, Journalist Neil Clark on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/NeilClark66/status/1313916059880128512?s=20
I tried to post this yesterday morning, but it got stuck in the approvals pipeline.
—
“It is Governor Death and the Deblasio-Virus doing their version of Kristallnacht.” They are not merely channeling their inner Adolf, they are attempting to out do it.
Also Rockland County is on full lock down again. A big shout out to all those in Monsey and New City! The “NY SCAMDEMIC BOYS” need to go.
https://imgflip.com/i/40bn08
https://twitter.com/amuse/status/1313951312602636288/photo/1
Huge crowds of Orthodox Jews gather in Brooklyn burning piles of face masks to protest synagogue closures by Governor Cuomo.
Oct 7, 2020
“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
~ Frederick Douglas, 1857.
been thinking that for awhile now …
Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Smith points out that there were two separate protests – the mask burning and the dancing – and that he was at the latter. In this interview with Del Bigtree, and in reference to a specific news report, he states:
3:20: The protest was about burning masks . . . and people recognising that a new religion has taken over; that’s the religion of Public Health. The religion of Public Health is superseding in the J-ish community. It’s superseding the Torah . . . It’s superseding the Constitution of the USA. And under the Public Health religion all measures are justified to force compliance because is for everyone’s benefit.
10:00: Public Health is a separate religion that comes from the cult of scarcity fighting against the God of abundance.
—
The Highwire with Del Bigtree
October 9th, 2020
NY J-ish Neighborhoods Targeted Again!
For the second time in 18 months, the J-ish Orthodox community in New York State has been targeted by public health officials and bureaucrats, causing heated protests in the streets. Last time it was during a wave of measles, now it’s new strict #Covid19 lockdowns. Del has a candid conversation with NY Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Smith, who explains why the community is rising up, and also has a sobering message for all Americans.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/hqRir1kgcdT0/
h/t gorden
https://off-guardian.org/2020/10/11/the-great-reset/#comment-256763
—
Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Smith
Compliance leads to more compliance
The Great Reset explained, in eloquent simple language.
Oct 2, 2020
Vaccine Wars
i am a semite these ashkanazi like miller are all front men gangs counter gangs
controll all sides
init
https://twitter.com/NeilClark66/status/1313948234658742272?s=20
it is difficult
one cannot trust a kahn,khan,coen a miller
he has had a lifetime on the tit of the rokerfella fatted golden goat
the problem is like gnome chumpski,robert fisked,saymore hershey bar kid and the hitchens family they are all zio owned
so cannot be trusted
show me a goy i can defend i am sick of ashkanazim victimhood
mainly self inflicted
Another university child with possible intelligence influence getting airtime again. It’s always a small university group that starts all the sjw style moaning that the likes of the daily fail and the s*n amplify
Here’s an example of “pick your fights”…
Support Mark Crispin Miller? Yes:)
Support Qanon? lol
“Tweet
OffGuardian Retweeted
OffGuardian
@OffGuardian0
So #Facebook banned #Qanon. This the moment everyone has to say that’s unacceptable, even if you hate the Qanon crowd, because #censorship spreads. Either all speech is free, or none of it is.”
hmm…
Congratulations on completely missing the point. The support is for FREE SPEECH, regardless of the fact they are trash. What part of that are you missing?
lol
So the intelligence operation called, Qanon, is getting kicked off the intelligence platform, Facebook, and you’re crying about free speech? Too funny 😀
Stick to emojis, that is your level.
fuck off moron
https://twitter.com/OffGuardian0/status/1313630021492277249
OffGuardian
@OffGuardian0
So #Facebook banned #Qanon. This the moment everyone has to say that’s unacceptable, even if you hate the Qanon crowd, because #censorship spreads. Either all speech is free, or none of it is.
12:59 AM · Oct 7, 2020
—
Question everything, and be like water.
Free speech includes the freedom to be wrong, embarrassing, to make a fool of yourself etc. Everyone is wrong once in a while, so if there’s no right to be wrong, there’s no free speech at all.
State propagandists should be outlawed, not supported. And Qanon, the Tump-loving operation are definitely propagandists. And who on earth with a brain would give a shit who gets kicked off of Facebook? Use another social platform, problem solved.
A few days ago somebody asked me here why I give a shit that Twitter keeps locking my account, keeps censoring offguardian etc. The problem is that you’ll be forever preaching to the choir if you only use alternative media. If you want to reach the normies, you have to go where they are, which also means mainstream social media. So I disagree that the issue of social media censorship is irrelevant. A “choice” between accommodating to censorship or being banned is not really a choice.
Facebook was designed as an intelligence-gathering operation. Qanon supports the neocon zionist war criminal U.S. President as a savior. You’re picking the wrong fight, this is not a free speech fight.
Q is not censored on facebook this is marketing racket bollocks
what the numbers of Q grow on the build up to the selections
they siad they got banned a few times already thery can be found on Facebook very easy i see many on twitter posting the bullshit
I know, but so is the entire internet. If you don’t want to be surveilled at all, you have to go on the deep web, or live entirely offline. From a liberal perspective it’s still a free speech fight, because that’s what social media *claims* to be – an open platform to give a voice to the common citizen, blah blah. So they’re supposed to at least pretend to care about free speech. They shouldn’t get away with not even doing *that.*
But Facebook is just a private corporation not designed for free speech, only intelligence gathering and programming. It’s a propaganda platform run by the State. Free speech has nothing to do with it.
Q is not censored on facebook this is marketing racket bollocks
watch the numbers of Q grow on the build up to the selections
they siad they got banned a few times already they can be found on Facebook very easy i see many on twitter posting the bullshit
I’m not surprised, ame.
State propagandists should be ‘exposed’ and the rest of us should be ‘free’ to expose them.
Yes
A side note as to what’s going on:
“The Reiss Center at NYU’s Law School: A think tank for the national security establishment and the Democratic Party
Part 2: The Reiss Center’s role in the impeachment crisis and anti-Russia campaign
The New York University IYSSE
11 December 2019
PART ONE | PART TWO
Through both its fellows and its publication, JustSecurity.org, the Reiss Center is closely integrated into the anti-Russia campaign of the national security apparatus and the Democratic Party, and their efforts to impeach Trump on a pro-war and anti-democratic basis.
There is a direct connection to the anti-Russia campaign and impeachment efforts by the Democratic Party and intelligence agencies through Andrew Weissman, who is a distinguished senior fellow at the Reiss Center. Before he came to the Reiss Center, he was the lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office from 2017 to 2019, while the Mueller report was being prepared.” https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/11/nyu2-d11.html
If “stuff” keeps going in the direction it’s going professors like Crispin will be forced to participate in student/teacher criticism sessions and re-education camps.
I don’t know about the re-education camps but I really don’t like the way that people are threatened because they express views that challenge orthodoxy or are just plain unpopular. I happen to believe in the science and I’m prepared to engage with others who feel that the Covid measures are a hoax (or worse), I’m interested in what drives their conclusions. What I am adamant about is that we cannot censor or censure their opinions.
The only time people need to be careful is when they’re in a role like President Trump’s. You’ll recall the infamous bleach incident where a carelessly worded statement by Trump caused a bit of a panic by bleach manufacturers. Apparently a relatively small percentage of people were prepared to take him literally — it was only 11%, the manufacturers reconed, but that’s still a lot of people.
I despise the politicization of a virus to advance a reactionary authoritarian agenda using the fucking Russiagating Democratic Party.
Evidently the CIA state-run mainstream media news lack a sense of humor and took the drinking bleach cure seriously.
Every trick in the book is being used to shove the two most unpopular candidates Biden and Harris down our throats.
They’re not unpopular. Kamela Harris is our junior senator and she’s actually really good — unlike many politicians she’s known as a consensus builder. Both of them are rather right wing, they’d probably be happy in the old school Republican camp, but at the present time we can’t afford to be picky. We’re really stuck in a French sort of dilemma — if you recall the got stuck with Macron because the alternative was lePen. We have a really awful and utterly incompetent government that is not only a global figure of fun but it honestly doesn’t know how ridiculous it is. Its thrashing around dissipating our soft power and goodwill abroad while systematically threatening our civil liberties at home (not to mention looting the place and so on). Its amazing what short memories people have — a lot of the officials are Bush 2 retreads and sure they can’t have already forgotten what a comple shit show that Administration was and how it all nearly came crashing down around our ears?
(In case you don’t believe me, check out concepts like “unitary executive”.)(Compared to the danger we’re in Covid is small beer indeed.)
Kamala is an empty vessel Hillary puppet who couldn’t secure one delegate during the Democratic Primary. Her sister served in a key position during Hillary’s 2016 campaign.
In addition, she’s corrupt. Her staff presented her with a 52 page indictment against Mnuchin and she refused to prosecute because he contributed to her campaign.
Her record on criminal justice is reprehensible. Not to mention her interventionist foreign policy and Zionist mentality.
Biden won’t last a year and then this piece of crap will sit in the Oval Office.
As ever in this life you don’t just look at the individuals but the team. The Trump team is not so much uninspiring as dangerous. Can you think of a meaningful alternative?
LePen or Macron?
The Democrats at least pays lip service to democratic norms. The Republicans are busy dismantling them. This direction leads to a dangerous dictatorship. The slide doesn’t happen overnight, its in stages like boiling the frog, but once it passes a threshold getting things back will be difficult to impossible — a dictatorship or theocracy will be the ‘New Normal’.
(I think you’re also forgetting that one of the prerequisites for holding office in the US is that you are acceptable to AIPAC. The interventionist foreign policy is the policy of the US, it desperately needs to change but its a bit like racism, its baked into the institutions so winkling it out is going to be difficult and take time. (Interventionism is born of the same mindset that bred racism, the idea that our civilization is superior by definition.) Anyway, we have to think positively or we are doomed. I’m not prepared to give up even though given my age and profile I’ll do just fine under a hard right Republican dictatorship. Its the rest of you that will be screwed — and don’t entertain any fantasies about civil resistance, read your history,when push comes to shove you’re all cannon fodder regardless of what end of the cannon your’re facing.)
“Dctatorship or theocracy will be the ‘New Normal’.”
That hyperbole might appeal to your liberal terrified friends, but what you’re saying is total bullshit. Your using the same MSNBC propaganda that’s proliferated nonstop. Obama/Biden’s policies are why we have Trump.
I’m sorry, this assertion just doesn’t make any sense. Obama was elected in 2008 because of a number of problems stemming from the Bush 2 administration — mismanagement (Katrina e.g.), abuse of constitutional freedoms (‘unitary executive’) and an economy in free fall. The situation was stabilized but (IMHO) not really sorted out. The next couple of years were occupied with healthcare cost management — a significant problem for several decades — and with the Republican leadership’s obsession with making Obama a one term President (a stated objective).
Its hard to describe to anyone who wasn’t there the popular disgust with the Bush 2 administration. The 2008 election was a landmark — I am a poll worker and I was run off my feet that day, literally everyone in our precinct voted, The Republican strategy since then seems to have been to sow popular dissent (remember the ‘death squads’?) and stoke all sorts of conspiracy theories. This may have been an effective short term electoral strategy, a sort of political schorched earth strategy, but its left us with a Republican administration that’s been largely destructive of the norms and customs of American political life. Its been suggested – see “Let The Eat Tweets” — that the reliance on fringe groups for support has led to the situation where the tail wags the dog, we have a GoP adrift with no clear policy except to pander to its more extreme elements.
If you thought that Trump would lead a populist revolution then I’m afraid that you were conned. Its not the first time in history that this has happened, it seems its the inevitable result. Its an unfortunate fact of life that populism appears to be the tool of choice of dictators,
Obama won in 2008 because Bush had an approval rating of less than 30% and CIA Obama promised hope and change. Eight years later the disgusted electorate knowing Obama’s Citigroup appointed cabinet was a criminal operation said fuck you to the Democratic Party and voted for the buffoon.
And once again the crooked Dems cheated in the 2020 primaries anointing Biden a candidate who couldn’t even fill a high school gym with supporters. And compounding it with a lackluster running mate who dropped out of the primaries early not even reaching the election in her own home state realizing she would have lost.
Your deceptive statements only hold water because most of the population has the retention of a flea, or should I say a “black fly.”
LOL, Black flies matter…….
In my view, Trump has a lot of support in middle class America. His base are not fringe extremist groups. Rather it is extremists who have taken over the Democratic Party and they are destroying the country.
The Democrats pay lip service to democratic norms while imposing totalitarian measures. Even if I agree that many Republicans have theocratic tendencies , both parties/factions are anti-democratic and the corporate Democrats are part of a global totalitarian project. For the world, the nationalist/MAGA Republican right are much less of a threat than the globalist Democrats.
to say the democrats at least pay lip service to democratic norms is just completely delusional – they refused to accept Trump’s victory 4 years ago and started a 4-year witch hunt to remove him from the presidency, and are now pushing for mail in ballots which are an open invitation to massive vote fraud, which they will try to use to win an election everyone knows they are going to lose if it is done fairly – and they reject voter ID, another open invitation to fraud – etc etc
“Compared to the danger we’re in Covid is small beer indeed.”
Yeah let’s forget the atom bomb falling on us and watch The Disney Channel.
Hello George
You so often express exactly what I’m thinking. Thankyou.
BTW are you the George Mcl who comments on Phil Roddis’ blog?
Yes I post on Philip’s blog. He has recently linked to the J Cook article and I’ve posted a response to that.
Which may be my last response thereon. I just read his latest contribution, drafted several responses …and eventually felt a sense of utter futility. I reckon he just doesn’t get it. A few months back he mentioned that some of his erstwhile aquaintances decided to split amicably from him over irreconcilable disagreements over COVID. I’m starting to feel the same way.
I’ve frankly been amazed at your patience and reasonableness George. I gave up months ago.
I’m a long-term friend of his and assumed he would do his research and come to the same conclusions as me (us). Seems not, in fact he and many other former academic colleagues appear to refuse to do any research on the ‘virus’, the stats or anything actually related to what is the central core of the issue. I find this astounding. Though retired I’m still a union member and am left literally breathless at the lack of any questioning of the narrative and collusion in destroying the profession in the regular UCU email updates, both local and national. They strike me as akin to those who when crossing the road don’t look at the traffic as it then can’t harm them!
Fearful and superstitious seem to sum up much of their behaviour since the beginning of the year. I often wonder if C-19 had been limited to either Africa, South America or the ME many of the left would have seen through it and be advancing the same arguments as here at OffG.
I have left a response on his blog but not to him but one insufferably supercilious jackass called Dave Hansell who predictably launches into “erudite” put downs of all us “morons”.
I like Philip but I note that he seems to be increasingly retreating into photographic nature journal entries. Well it’s his blog and he can do what he wants and I can understand him wanting to “get away from it all”. But this does tends to negate the very title of Steel City Scribblings.
I have also noted a certain passive aggression where he complains about the “rudeness” and “fanaticism” of the skeptics but fails to see (as I have seen) provocation from the mainstream Left. Not least from Mr Hansell.
At the risk of sounding like a cyber stalker, I located a couple of threads where you comment on Phil’s site. This one is interesting:
http://steelcityscribblings.uk/wp/2020/04/13/a-tale-of-two-doctors/
It features a typically interminable dithyramb from Mr Hansell which depressingly spouts all the then current reporting on COVID with no critical detachment at all. And it’s doubly depressing to note that this dates from as far back as April 14. Note the combination between the self-congratulatory “erudite” presentation, a self-assumed superiority, and an astonishingly uncritical swallowing of the reportage. (“…. whatever convenient assumptions are made to make the model fit the pre-arrived at/pre-chosen straight out of the microwave pet theory…” – well, Dave, I’d say it’s more admirable to have a “microwave pet theory” than to swallow one pre-packaged all for you!)
And note Philip’s response where he is looking forward “to hearing the war stories of doctors, nurses and other frontline health givers both in the West and across the world” from previous years before sarcastically adding “I’m not finding these easy to track down through online searches.” Again, note the odd naïveté with regard to the COVID reporting.
Don’t get me started on DH or even Mr condescension Bevin, who I see has added the definitive word (not) on PR’s blog.
PR and DH act like the classic ‘good cop, bad cop’ combo, with the good cop regularly reigning in the bad – which proves just how fair and objective he is!
They use the usual tactic of accusing their opponents of doing what they are guilty of, along with shameless labelling and characterisations – that you rightly challenged.
I’ve always thought that if you try hard enough, eventually you’ll get through to someone. Seems I’m wrong where C-19 is concerned. It’s analogous to religious belief and thus impervious to reason.
I don’t know if you’re “still there” Mark but you’re possibly the only one here who would give a shit about the topic of me on Philip Roddis’s site. I refer to that article where he reproduces the J Cook piece. Here’s what happened:
I gave an initial response to the Cook piece. Philip responded amicably. Then we had two typically snotty entries from bevin and Dave Hansell. I responded to both. No reply. Then Philip asked me to expand on my own views which I did, and he came in with a promise to check up on an article I referred to. He’s done this before but never got back to me. I doubt if he will this time. But that’s OK – I reckon there’s no point in pushing.
And that was that. But I see that this Hansell guy has come in with another comment. I viewed it with that sense of apprehension where you expect to be attacked and you’re already anticipating what you might say …and his comment is the most convoluted pedantic gobbledygook on definitions of various “Lefts”.
I mean – what can you do with that?
Here’s the whole thing if you can be bothered:
http://steelcityscribblings.uk/wp/2020/10/08/cook-on-covid/
I followed it George. ‘Wrong and strong’ pretty much sums them up.
And tonight I caught a blast of the news churning out more COVID wank figures of so many thousand who may have died or caught it or exploded with the relentless monotony of it all and I marvel again at this mainstream Left who can still insist that the establishment are trying to cover it all up!
I presume you are still there, Mark. Philip has decided to enter the COVID fray again with this:
http://steelcityscribblings.uk/wp/2020/10/21/three-takes-on-cv-19/
Which may duly appear on OffG. I was going to respond to his odd reference to “the Big One; the killer pandemic epidemiologists have been telling us since SARS 2003 is a matter of when not if.”
Interesting isn’t it? So, it seems some groups were already primed for the reception of COVID.
Anyway – I lost the incentive, feeling it was pointless. I can only conclude that Philip, along with most of the mainstream Left, has been hooked on the endless zombie movie that is the news. His mind is therefore fixed on pandemics. So, I think I’ll pass.
Note Mr Hansell is in there with a comment. I glimpsed something about skyrocketing hospital admissions and a typical remark about people not prepared to “use their grey cells” and “do the heavy lifting”. That was enough. I can only assume he will be heavy lifting in some corner of the net somewhere. I’ll leave him to it.
What caused the bleach problem was the media deliberately misconstruing Trumps comment and amplifying their distortion across the networks. They do it all the time. It is outrageous.
Alas. the media doesn’t really have the influence it did in this age of Tweets and other social media. The words came straight from the horse’s mouth. I’m no Trump fan but I understood what he was trying to say — he was really making a pig’s ear of things, he really needs to learn when to shut up — but that’s not how the real world works. There are people who will take him literally so he has to be very careful what he says.
One area the media does have a lot of influence is Fox News. This is watched by a segment of the population — one I’m all too familar with — and they tend to watch it exclusively. It tends to bend the news to an agenda; its not the only offender but its the one that’s taken disinformation to a new level, almost an art form and then some.
Trump, bleach …
NYU Steinhardt should rename itself NYU Joseph Goebbels.
And make Julia Jackson give the courses.
Although I’m adamantly anti-Fascist — so by extension anti-Nazi — I happen to be one of Gobbels’s fans. He might have been a Nazi SoB but he was a very clever and insightful Nazi SoB, someone who had groundbreaking insights about the production and use of propaganda.
Just because you disagree with someone doesn’t mean they’re stupid, incompetent or whatever. In fact it might be precisely the opposite. We’re actually in a rather Orwellian frame of mind these days where the culture has been manipulated to the point where black is indeed white and where two plus two does really make five. It is just a matter of perspective, we’re told.
Oh gtfo. Goebbels was the WORST of all Nazis.
There are plenty of really bad Nazis but Reinhard Heydrich was probably the worst of the bunch by a large margin. He wasn’t just nasty but really smart.
There are lots of Nazi officials that would have functioned just as effectively in similar roles in a different government — in fact many lower level officials that survived the war went on to roles in the (West) German government. This is worth keeping in the back of your mind; its one of the pillars of the Banality of Evil, the idea that a truly horrible setup can be built on the backs of ordinary people ‘just doing their job’. It really can happen here.
Indeed it is. Happening here.
Masks are nothing but Gessler’s hats.
They have already and quite correctly been assessed as the equivalent of the Hitler salute as well.
It’s enormously sad, ironic, dangerous and telling that a uni course on propaganda has laid that and the death of Science and Enlightenment bare.
That ‘student’ and those ‘professors’ that fired him have really understood NOTHING.
A hitler salute. Yup.
I just do not understand why ignorant people don’t get that the pandemic never happened, and it never will.
Because they’re ignorant?
Willfully ignorant.
I notice the Great Barrington Declaration was thrown out by the Government. Surprise, surprise. When will people realise it’s not about a virus?
the point of the article – the power of propaganda to create good little proles who believe what the propagandists want them to believe, and are aggressively active in pushing those who resist the propaganda to get with the program – very scary times right now
Actually, why not include Donald Trump?
Is Julia Jackson in the pay of the Dems?
Is she really a student?
Now there’s a thing!
That was my first thought, that he was targeted.
Absolutely.
As I have stated elsewhere, I think she was probably a plant in a setup to deliberately get Miller ousted.
When the ruling and professional classes deny freedom of expression or make it dangerous, then we know they are serving and protecting their own power and privilege, not the agenda they promised voters, not the nation. These elitists and dumb snobs ignore the plebs and silly democracy by assuming superior knowledge about what’s best for us all. They see us as their subjects, as dumb sheep needing their guidance, not as citizens or equals. So we know they no longer understand democracy, that tyranny or war on the people has begun, and that authoritarian politicians, typically servants of globalist and corporate interests whose advisors are now dictating key policies, are the enemy.
This story is really about demonising the left, and this poor chap is a victim of that narrative. There is has been a campaign in the US to demonise civil-rights and left-wing activist, it has been running for 60 years. They even murdered some folks. In fact they murdered, banished and destroyed a large number of folks over the years. And as their agents, it is the US Corporate media that make this kind of story possible, by ensuring the professor was sacked. It was not the university or the moaning student who did it, it was the media.
This campaign against the left has become so successful, and life so surreal that most Americans now and even some British fools, are more afraid of ‘the left’, then they are of the neoliberal right who is systematically looting what remains of their wealth.
This happens, during a period of the most extreme neoliberal excess in our history, when the left have been so neutered and marginalised they are fighting secondary political issues, around race and gender politics, subjects unrelated to peoples economic well being, making the left totally irrelevant.
This onslaught against the let is happening at a time when the neoliberal billionaires are reducing their own tax, removing environmental regulations, poisoning the water, denying even the most basic of workers rights, or job security, and reducing working conditions to slavery levels, when the average worker can’t afford decent housing, medical care, education for their children, or even vacations. Yet they still hate the left far more.
This is why America remains one of the great wonders of the modern world, how did they train people to lose sight of their own interests, so completely and so convincingly?
The UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are not one whit better. The most concentrated forms of the rot are to be found there.
australia who owns it now?
usa china rothschild?
the queen is on the way out phillip on ice
in the background israel
the aussie are the lab rats for many techniques and technologies already used in china
I’m pointing to the “Five Eyes” countries which are the testing ground for these fascist experiments…
Or it is simply just that the line dividing both your definition of the left and right is a Chinese wall at best and now the masks (sorry!) are off.
Socialism is a powerful idea, look into it. If you understood what it meant, you wouldn’t even try to pretend it doesn’t exist. The CIA don’t.
“Socialism is a powerful idea”
What “socialism” are you referring to? Second World socialism? The welfare state? The collectivist approach to issues in general?
The fact that the CIA, or anybody else for that matter, thinks that something exists means nothing. Check out the appeal to authority fallacy.
The left/right, socialist/capitalist, liberal/conservative, etc. dichotomy doesn’t exist. Not the way it’s painted. There does exist a collectivist/individualist dichotomy, and both of these approaches have their place in the world, but socialism as a universal concept is idiotic. It aims to impose collectivist solutions to areas where it makes no sense. After all, it’s been tried – both in the totalitarian Second World and in the purportedly free, democratic First World the where socialism was a) exploited by unscrupulous pricks and b) resulted in atrophying people’s natural abilities and increasing their dependence on the establishment.
With respect, I like the fact you at least tried to make sense of your own opinions. But you are really on to a hiding to nothing with these ideas. I can tell you, if it helps, that you are repeating alt-right talking points, which they though might help to irradiate the left from discourse, and cover their own political origins in the fascist movement. But as arguments go they are baseless and boring. perhaps because it is fundamentally dishonest and untrue to say the left and right don’t exist, they do.
“fundamentally dishonest and untrue to say the left and right don’t exist”
I couldn’t care less if somebody, however you paint them, says the same thing as I do. I don’t form my views based on what somebody promotes or opposes. I form my views based on facts, observations, deliberations.
The “left” and “right” (originally the placement of politicians in the French parliament) do exist all right. Certainly in the minds of people who subscribe to this dichotomy. But on close examination, one cannot but conclude that the left/right divide is nonsense, at least as generally perceived.
The left and right are umbrella terms for what could generally be referred as collectivist and individualist, even though a myriad of other dichotomies are, quite idiotically, associated with this division.
If you accuse me of being “fundamentally dishonest” (sic), then perhaps you might volunteer a definition of what is “left” and what is “right”. What the fuck is “socialism”? Where does it exist or has existed?
Kindly spare me implications that I’m promoting fascism, whatever it might mean mean in your semantically confused mind.
not speaking for Watson or anyone else, just came across this conversation – ‘socialism’ is indeed a powerful idea, it is the idea, basically, that ‘we the people’ can run our own countries and reap the rewards of our labour, rather than being quasi-slaves for the capitalist neo-feudalists who own and control most countries and claim the lion’s share of our work product for themselves and leave us fighting over the remains. it does indeed go back to the days before the French revolution, when those sitting to the ‘left’ of the king were the peasants looking for a bit less oppression, and those to the right of the king were the ‘nobility’ and clergy, who preferred a great horde of powerless peasants keeping them in the style to which they were accustomed, as the saying goes. Carry that on to the late 1800s, and we have workers and farmers banding together under various banners including ‘socialism’ to push back against the capitalist-banker robber barons, and doing so quite effectively. The quite decent societies we live in today were the result of these ‘socialists’ pushing back powerfully against the robber baron class, and getting many concessions that resulted in these decent societies. A much longer and detailed exploration here – It’s not ‘the left’ trying to take over the world and shut down free speech and all that other bad stuff – it’s ‘the right’!! – https://www.rudemacedon.ca/vgi/backgrounders/collectivist%20plot%20omg.html – those who would be Oligarchs have, of course, been pushing back forcefully for decades now to regain their unchallenged ruler status, and as very, very clever and powerful people been winning – the current ‘left-right’ dichotomy is a complete fiction, the true left, as indicated by those wishing true ‘people power’, has been pretty much completely marginalized by lack of acknowledgement in the MSM, and we basically have two branches of ‘the right’ vying to rule. Pointing to Stalin or Mao as ‘damned socialists’ is just another trick of the rulers to detract what is happening here in our own countries.
I’m aware of all that, including the “idea” of socialism, or its extended version – communism, which, incidentally, I find very noble and desirable. In theory, that is. In reality, it’s a utopian concept that can’t work. One major problem is the (un)availability of resources. People will be competing/fighting for resources. The stronger (more deceitful) will win and take advantage of the system. Another problem is the clash between individualist and collectivist approaches and people who contribute to pooled resources vs. freeloaders (this can only be resolved by imposing totalitarian control, which is what happened in the Second World). Private sector milking the public sector. The welfare state, which was a compromise between all of these contradictory forces, was the most workable “socialism” to date, but it’s been pretty much dismantled by being rigged from the inside. The only hope for socialism would be increasing the availability of resources, which, paradoxically, might now be possible with artificial intelligence/robotization. But the way it looks now, AI/robots will be used to enslave the human race instead of freeing it. This is in fact at the core of what’s happening right now. The fact that socialism/communism has been discredited by the implosion of the communist bloc is simple reality. You said it yourself. Most people embrace this or that version of neoliberalism – there is essentially no alternative to it anywhere in the world. The oligarchs have free reign. That’s a disaster. For yhe world is not going back to the old normal (welfare state). It’s heading into a technocratic dystopia with tight government control, governments owned by oligarchs. Possibly everything owned by oligarchs if they keep people locked up until the whole circus crashes. At the same time, people have no alternative (other than the old normal) to work toward, fight for. “Socialism” ain’t it. Too many people have been too indoctrinated to embrace it even if somebody tried and even if it were workable. We have shit and people will be fucked over big time for failing to address public affairs, the ideological foundation of society, politics for roughly the last 40 years.
This would require a quite long mini-essay to even begin to respond to all these things, so I’ll try to keep it short, meaning lots of ‘proactive’ responses to ‘yea but!!’s get left out.
1. I think the resource thing is wrong – we live on a wildly wealthy and abundant planet, and should ‘we the good guys’ manage to take over, the massive waste required for capitalist endless growth and aggression would be reduced massively, allowing a drawback to recovery and sustainable use. AND, as people got more secure and prosperous, the normal demographic shift would happen of lower birth rates, reducing requirements. modern tech would help, in reducing the amount of work needed, again giving us greater wellbeing and alternate sources of everything to reduce the environmental impact of the capitalist berserkers. most people want peaceful lives and to get along with their neighbors.
2. the ‘collectivist-individualist’ thing – I think you’ve got a bit too deep into libertarian propaganda here. If we are all ‘individualists’, then it’s ‘king of the castle’, with a top dog and a bunch of whinging followers, kept in line by simple violence. When ‘we the intended serfs’ band together to defend ourselves against these thugs, we do so ‘collectively’ – which I see as another way of describing ‘democracy’. The notion that a large number of people either choose or accept some totalitarian leader who then orders them around like a herd of identical obedient sheep seems totally nonsensical to me. We either act collectively to resist those who would be kings ruling by violence, or we allow ourselves to be picked off one by one by these thugs. It’s quite understandable the rulers would want to discourage such resistance and this propaganda that people who want to work together to resist them are ‘stupid collectivists stealing from the nice capitalists’ is just such a ploy.
3. welfare state etc – I think you are missing the context here – the ‘welfare state’ and the attendant abuses thereof are essentially a capitalist phenomenon – no capitalist overlords claiming the ‘excess production wealth’ for themselves, no need for a massive welfare state – the socialist cooperatives look after all their people one way or another, no need for ‘welfare’ and attendant abuses. And no ‘welfare bums’ etc, another capitalist-inspired phenomenon – most people do not want to be wage-slaves, many resent it and resist, and one way of fighting back is gaming the capitalist welfare system – but if everyone is more or less equal in a true socialist society, the need for this is gone. You’re going to have some people who think they are better than others (i.e. wannabe capitalist overlords) trying to weasel their way into positions of power and wreck this system, but that’s just something we’d need to watch out for.
4. and one final point – your notion that the game is over, nothing left for us to do – one of Sun Tzu’s observations – if you convince the enemy that there is no point in fighting, you’ve won the battle before it starts. The current overlords are very, very clever, they’ve been basically running the western world since the late 1800s, give or take, directly or indirectly, and are many steps ahead of us in every way (well, I suppose we have the moral high ground …). But they are still vulnerable, simply by force of numbers – as Shelley (I think) said – rise like lions after slumber, we are many they are few.
Don’t give up yet.
If I gave you the impression that I’ve given up, it’s wrong. On the contrary, I’m resolved to put up a fight, more than ever. But it makes much more sense, if not the only sense, to fight FOR as opposed to AGAINST something.
I don’t subscribe to libertarian or any other views. A lot of these concepts are confused semantically and in many other ways anyway. As much as I can (and I sure might be wrong or omit something at times) I formulate my views on facts, observations. Your view of a “socialist” society is naive. I grew up in a Second World country where a system, one pretty much like that you describing, existed. What you refer to “something we need to watch out for” essentially amounts to totalitarianism.
It’s perfectly okay to harbor collectivist (left) or individualist (right) views. They’re like yin and yang, day and night anyway. Both are integral aspects of human existence. The bad guys are those who a) try to hijack either to their benefit and, to a lesser extent, b) dogmatists who apply either concept to an area or issue where it’s unsuitable due to inherent reasons.
Pragmatically speaking, the world needs a system that would allow both individualists and collectivists to fulfill their ambitions while keeping the bad guys out. Can the current incarnation of democracy be fixed to allow that? I wonder how.
I know the verse – it’s from the Mask of Anarchy. David Icke recited it on the other day. How are you gonna make people rise and what will they stand for? We need to talk about a viable alternative people can stand up and fight for. Socialism, as perceived historically, ain’t it.
That’s my point.
hope to see you on the battlefield some day (as comrades, of course!)
Not sure if you’re being serious. You evidently have no idea what “comrade” implies. My guess is that you live under some romantic illusion that you’ve extrapolated from books.
I’m originally from Central Europe. My grandfather was a prominent communist journalist, author. He fought in the Resistance and died in WWII and therefore had nothing to do with the imposition of the totalitarian regime after the war, other than promoting the ideology, but already during his lifetime, the writing was on the wall. Judicious people could and should have been able to see what was coming.
If you think that you’ll have another take on socialism, a) it’s not gonna happen and b) it will end up being a similar failure as the first time around.
FYI, I moved back to my country after the fall of the 1990s when the government was essentially operating based on the Austrian school (von Hayek et al). As much as I don’t necessarily subscribe to these concepts, guess what. That era brought unprecedented prosperity and entrepreneurial activity at the grassroots level. A huge number of small businesses sprang up; the country was bustling with activity. Sure, this was in part due to pent up demand, and there were negative phenomena as well, but the extent of entrepreneurial freedom and its positive effect was unprecedented. Then, the country pretty much aligned itself with the EU, the rest of the world, and large corporations and oligarchs took over. The society of the kind you referred to above, which was being formed, is gone.
I don’t know where you’re from and what sort of life experience you have, but you’re very opinionated and clearly suffering from cognitive dissonance. You sound like a mad professor corresponding from his basement laboratory where you have it all figured out, oblivious to the fact that what happens in the real world is completely different.
BTW, I’ve briefly looked at the referenced website. I’ll read it later, no time now. Looks interesting.
what? how the heck did you get that out of my comment– meant for someone else? hello?
Thanks for the reminder.
I have trouble explaining to younger people that I grew up in a world that benefitted from the socialist excesses advocated by the likes of Bernie Sanders. We didn’t know it at the time, especially as we had a Conservative (UK) government, but it was really a sort of payback demanded by ordinary people for the sacrifices made in the two world wars and the Depression. (There was also an element of competition — we had to demonstrate to our voters that our system worked better than theirs so we had to provide some of the social programs they took for granted.)
Starting in the 1970s this started to be clawed back as the old order got their confidence back and memories of what it was like faded (people die and along with them went the memories of the horrors of WW1 and the excesses of the early 20s). The ball really got rolling in the 1980s with Mrs. Thatcher (“There Is No Alternative”) and the result is the society that we know today. Everybody thinks they’re well off even though they’re working harder and longer hours for less purchasing power. They all slavishly support the status quo but then that’s reinforced by popular culture (which if you know your Gobbels you’d realize is the primary propaganda vehicle — its not only devastatingly effective but it also pays its own way).
To borrow a cartoon caption from the 1959 General Election — “You’ve Never Been Had So Good”.
Bernie Sanders is NOT A SOCIALIST. What he wants is a Nordic-inspired welfare state built, as usual, on the backs of the third world. The only difference between him and all the others is the word “welfare”.
Bernie is awful and, as bad as WSWS is (and that’s very), they are at least genuine socialists (but lacking integrity all the same). See what they have to say about Bernie the sheepdog (Bruce Dixon, Paul Street). The one bad mark I have to give Howard Zinn’s awesome “A People’s History Of The United States,” is that he called Bernie a socialist. Perhaps he never had a good look at him. I don’t know. But it was a very bad call.
I should have directed my comment, below, to Martin. Apologies.
The post war social contract was in my opinion mostly driven from a fear of true revolution. Millions of British servicemen who had experienced the evils of war, also disciplined in the military manner were a real, direct and credible threat to the old order. So they gave more than a few crumbs off the table until that threat was managed and matured, literally to the late 1970s. Just wanted to add this to your concise assessment of the previous 70 – 80 years in goode olde blighty.
My strategy now would be to take the Ghandi route with some added extras or the ideas of turn on, tune in and drop out. Direct confrontation and violent unrest is what they are attempting to achieve presently and they would win out right. We need to stop our consent, directly or implied. Let the head rot out.
That’s a correct assessment.
The Second World (USSR) was relatively successful, or perceived so, in the 1950s/1960s. In addition, the strong young generations, things like the Vietnam War, revolutionary spirit, all that was a threat that people might go the communist way at the ballot box. Paradoxically, the Second World cultivated life in the West and was one of the reasons for the welfare state.
Not surprisingly, the welfare state/social contract has been going down the shitter ever since the Second World imploded and “left-wing”, socialist, communist, whatever, ideologies have been discredited.
‘being systematically attacked and destroyed by the more powerful western capitalist-banker class who need to destroy the competition’ would be somewhat more accurate than ‘discredited’ – check out some books by a guy called William Blum for a bit of education you seem to have missed …
I’m getting tired of your patronizing tone. In fact, I’m not too far from telling you to go fuck yourself.
You don’t know f-ck all about how the Second World actually operated. Yes, it was indeed “systematically attacked”, but it was inherently flawed and the consequences of the supposedly “socialist” ideology can be seen still today, decades later.
FYI, I don’t respond to imperatives very well and likely won’t read your books. No need, unlike Blum and you, I have first-hand experience.
not being ‘patronizing’ just trying to help someone who seemed to have their head stuck in some dark place. I see you evidently don’t like losing arguments – ‘go fuck yourself’ is generally the last refuge of that type of person, along with the ‘I don’t need to read your stupid books I know everything already!!’ Right, I’m well impressed with how much you ‘know’.
The ‘second world’ generally refers to the post-WWII ‘Soviet Bloc’ including the USSR and Eastern European countries under basically Soviet control. Nobody ever pretended these countries were ‘socialist paradises’ – and only people under the sway of US ‘WE HATE THE FUCKING COMMIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’ propaganda ever tried to pretend these oppressive totalitarian regimes were examples of functioning socialism. You might consider some context – why did the Soviets take over these countries? As a buffer between US-controlled western Europe and themselves – the US, hardly before the shooting stopped in WWII, had made it clear that the USSR was back on their main ‘enemy’ list, where it had been since the Russian revolution, and as the USSR was very severely damaged from WWII, they wanted a buffer between them and the US as they rebuilt – and as most of these countries had been fighting with the Germans, the Soviets, pretty much understandably, didn’t have much love for them. Not defending any of that, just trying to understand the historical context of our modern world. But let me guess – you don’t GAS. We find our way to a better future by having a better understanding of the past, as Orwell implied in one of his better known sayings.
Obviously you don’t like losing an argument either. Go fuck yourself is a healthy way of letting the interlocutor know that he’s out of line.
If you bothered to read what I wrote above, I was asking for a definition of socialism. A definition of “left”. Never got an answer. You might want to start with that, your allusions above are endlessly naive – you neither t understand what you’re talking about in theory nor have the first clue how ended up various attempts to implement the concept your babbling about in the real world.
I do. Both theoretically and from living in the Second World (the place where the ideas you’re talking about were actually implemented, pretty much the way you describe) the First World and then back in what had been the Second World after it imploded, regardless of the reasons, working on piecing it back together. Oh yeah, the US gave the USSR and the communist bloc super hard time, but that had just about nothing to do with the totalitarianism and at times terror (at times possibly instigated by the US – Operation Splinter Factor) the purported “socialists” foisted on the population.
The problem you have is that you completely disregard the practicability of implementing a societal concept, such as “socialism” or any kind of -ism for that matter – many scheme would actually work and be fair if everybody conformed to the systemic principles. But people are pesty pricks and they don’t give a flying monkey about theories concocted a mad professors like you in the cozy warmth of their salon.
Be it as it may, “socialism”, as understood in the context of the 20th century, is a blind alley, the wrong path to follow. That’s why I originally replied to the remark above. The main reason is that it is perceived as discredited and people won’t embrace it on a mass scale. A new incarnation of a viable collectivist (as well as individualist) world view is needed.
BTW, we’re probably more or less in the same boat. It would behoove you to watch your mouth and tone down the patronizing considerably, especially given your ignorance regarding the issue at hand. Your uninformed inane remarks pissed me off, and the last thing the world now needs is more animosity or enmity.
The establishment doesn’t want us to have this conversation or to know that, or any, (honest) history (as if they need to worry about people reading). For that reason, there’s been a wholesale attack on language in order to befuddle anyone paying attention, even minimally. The fake Left is the establishment Left and it is rightwing. All kinds of Conservatives/rightwingers yammer on about the (truly) horrible things that the fake Left is doing, but they ‘never’ refer to it as the fake Left. What does that do? It disappears leftists like myself and it creates a guilt by association situation for people like me. (I’ve heard that honesty from Conservatives – a fake Left vs a real Left – only a very, very few times. Alexander Mercouris once said something along those lines, but he usually joins his Conservative crowd on the propagandizing.) With regard to the Repubs and the Dems (and here in Canada, the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP), the labelling is different and there’s some differences in design and appearance – only. As Chris Hedges (who I think is off somewhere sheltering in place, a term that he should recognize from his war reporting) reported to Abby Martin, ‘no one talks about the bipartisan passage of legislation’. There’s ‘no’ disagreement between the Repubs and the Dems, when it comes to substantial (yes, that’s a word) things.
Why not using the same weapons against the snitch who denounced and harassed Prof Miller?
Snicthes like Julia Jackson (find her here @julia_jacks) should be dealt with like we dealt with those who denounced Jews to the Nazis: trial and more…
People who still use twitter should go out there and troll her, harass her, insult her, treat her like she deserves: a contemptuous snitch!
You will also find her easily on other platforms for further trolling.
Plus, you will easily find where she lives trough the mock of a university where she’s being brainwashed.
Then gain, troll her, harass her, insult her until she goes to crawl under the rock where she belongs.
Of course, you can also do nothing and whine in your corner while she thinks it’s fine to do what she did…
We will not win against these people by giving the other cheek.
No, because he is a Lefty.
I think people should buy some of his books though, as well as signing the petition. ‘Boxed In’ is one I have read and recommend. Brilliant writer and thinker IMO.
A leftie?
Only someone intellectually dishonest could not mention Dewish propaganda when discussing propaganda.
‘propaganda’, huh? How about era defining, overarching taboo? Works throughout the Anglosphere, anyway.
Did you ever suspect your contemporaries in school were fascists?
Serious question.
I’ve been told my problem is I don’t like people. But I not-infrequently saw fascists.
Did anyone else experience this?
BTW I’m not speaking from a racial or cultural perspective. I mean Stanley Milgram do-anything-on-order type psychopaths in search of a leader.
Then why do you keep refering to authoritarians as ‘fascists’ ?
I will keep labouring this point here, as it is self defeating and absurd. The kind of authoritarian behaviour in this concern is not aligned with fascist ideology. Words and meanings are important.
Authoritarians helped Stalin’s purges, largely because they thought it was the right thing to do, that is was ‘saving the revolution’ from dangerously subversive counter-revolutionary elements. People like Julia fuckwit Jackson are not motivated by some Nitzschean drive for supremacy, rather they are propagandised ‘do-gooders’ who genuinely believe that we are all threatened by the nCov virus.
Fair point. I am trapped by the political lexicon. We don’t have enough words, perhaps.
I looked deeply into Bolshevik totalitarianism. I visited the killing fields. I investigated the identities behind the Sovietised names. The identities of the victims and the perpetrators.
You know what? Time and time again I was met with the same complaint: Why do you have to talk about this, go into this. Let sleeping dogs lie. That’s very much a Russian thing but perhaps there’s a inconvenient truth.
I call it fascism because I think what I discovered, even in Russia’s NKVD was fascism. That’s especially touchy in a nation which defeated fascism at such great cost. But it remains as a gut feeling even though it would never withstand academic partisan scrutiny.
Maybe Bolshevism lacks a corresponding word. Communism owes its roots to collectivism which is as much Christian as it is atheist. Fascism is a militaristic-corporatist obéissance or loyalty that has no parallel in communistic compliance. Yet it existed within the Soviet intelligence apparatus – an apparent anomaly, a non sequitur, a reality.
I think the labels are what confuse so many people today.
Personally, I avoid them altogether, and look at what I consider to be decent, truthful people in a battle against damaged, dishonest people.
We are not threatened by fascism, neo-liberalism or Marxism.
We are threatened by people who have something wrong with them, and either cannot, or will not, see reality as it is – usually because there is something material to be gained from opposing the truth.
Drop the dictionary and pickup the ruler and compass. What is the nature of the “beast”?
A small ideologically aligned and disciplined core group occupies a position above the law for a society. Two (inevitable, deterministic) core-group patterns have emerged historically:
We see this again and again in various guises (enter the Dictionary of Ideologies) but the structure, form, and trajectory of the “beast” remains the same.
We could just call it simply tyrannical.
It must be stressed that the most powerful, most appropriate, and most favorable terrain to contain and rollback the Covid-19 Regime is by Legal Action.
I prefer a simple, useful, definition of fascism. If only everyone embraced it then a lot of wasted time arguing about what is meant could be avoided. Mussolini – probably the figure most identified with fascism – said it was simply the marriage of, and rulership by, the political and business classes. Stick with that. The people are cut out. Obviously, the people are not ‘told’ that they are cut out. But they are.
This is not just too simple, it is wildly misleading I think.
You say that Mussolini ‘said it was simply the marriage of, and rulership by, the political and business classes.’
I am not aware that he did. I have read a recycled quote atrributed to him (by me on occasion) that goes something like, ‘the union of state and corporate power is the cornerstone of Fascism‘. If you were to read any Fascist ideological writing you would know that he was not referring specifically to ‘corporate power’ in the sense that we understand the term today – as the organised politcal power of transnational private corporations effectively controlling national government in a Neoliberal paradigm through lobbying, regulatory capture, revolving doors and legislative corruption etc.
The word ‘corporate’ means ‘collective’ or ‘united into one body’. This was the common understanding of the term 90 years ago. The essence of Fascism (and I write this not as advocacy) is ethno-nationalism. It is the idea that a nation of people (united by language, culture, history, and to a large extent, race) can form the organising motive force for a nation state.
The political fortunes of the idea of ethno-nationalism are at a rather low ebb in all Western countries. The Golden Dawn Party in Greece has just been sent to jail for long sentences. The ethno-nationalist Patriotic Alternative in the UK has seen its leaders bank accounts frozen. The FBI in the US lists the ethno-nationalists as threat #1 to national secuity. [Israel is the exception that proves the rule].
Everywhere the world turns towards socially liberal values, cosmopolitanism, internationalism, immigration, woke capital, usury, attacks on traditional life. These are the antithesis of ‘fascism’, yet Left writers who object to the Great Reset/ New Normal/ Transhumanist agenda, label it in an inverted way which deflects any real understanding of what is happening.
As you wish. I know that things have changed since Mussolini’s day and his definition of fascism is perfectly applicable to the global government we have, which I call Corporatocracy, which is dominated by the US and directed by the Transnational Capitalist Class.
Historical fascism has its flavors. Those are details. As Tommy Douglas noted, “Once more let me remind you what fascism is. It need not wear a brown shirt or a green shirt — it may even wear a dress shirt. Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.”
Paul Bigioni’s 2005 Toronto Star article, titled “Fascism Then. Fascism Now?,” also makes the point that historical fascism, with its particular character, or trappings, should be seen has having a central character that doesn’t depend on time and place and culture.
I didn’t just dig that up now. I read the article when it was published. It made an impression on me. But, again, See things as you wish to.
“Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.”
Do you really see elites, at this time, fearing that the people may use their political ‘democracy’ to gain economic justice ? I see the precise opposite. Political democracy is weaker than ever. We have been, over the past two decades, censored and propagandised like never before. Civil rights and democractic liberties have been stripped to a meaningless shell of what they were when I was born. The power of ordinary people to organise and exert some sort of collective bargaining upon capitalist states is but a memory recounted in history books. National governance serves international capital. Dissent is largely performative and ineffectual.
Instead of invoking the spectre of racial division or the demonisation of minorities, this particular period in which we live is marked by the dominance of the philosophies that were popularised in direct counter argument to fascistic, authoritarian nationalism. Frankfurt School inspired critical race theory is the preferred flavour of governments, media and cultural promotion today. How can anyone call this fascism?
One of the very first things the National Socialists did on gaining power was to shut down the sex industry of Berlin. One of the first things that was announced on the commencement of lockdown was that Pornhub giving away free material alongside editorials in the Guardian recommending people wank off to online porn.
Fascism was the opponent of liberalism. Much as socialists and conservatives have enjoyed announcing the ‘end of liberalism’ over the past four years, the truth is that were are at its apotheosis. Netflix is in court defending its attempt to normalise pedophilia.
Economic aspects are not nor have ever been separate from the cultural, ethnic and social ones.
If this is the era of fascists, why are all the fascists being shutdown, silenced, de-monitised, and imprisoned; whilst the Leftist anarchists are being funded by billionaires, publicly encouraged, protected from prosecution and their messages boosted by the most powerful institutions of our time ?
‘bolshevik totalitarianism’ – uh-huh – and what about American ‘democracy’ – did you check out the firebombing of Dresden, or Hamburg, and several other German cities with intentional horrendous civilian murders in the hundreds of thousands, for no other reason than trying to terrorize Germans into turning against Hitler? Massive, massive crimes against humanity. What about the similar firebombing of Tokyo, and then of course the nuking of two other Japanese cities, again the main targets civilians, horribly murdered? What about bombing North Korea back to the stone age a few years later, or napalming Vietnam and terribly burning alive hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children yet again a few years later? Rampaging through Central and South America and Africa to make countries trying to find a democratic method capitalist client states ruled by brutal dictators?? The destruction of Baathist (socialist) regimes in the mideast (yes, ruled by strongmen who dealt brutally with their enemies, no different than the Americans dealing with those who dared resist their hegemony – but what are those countries like now? Far, far worse, and breeding grounds for international Jihadism)? And etc etc etc – it seems that your connection to ‘propaganda’ is that of a totally propagandized American prole, hating those you are told to hate and ignoring the brutalities of your masters. (and of course the ‘crimes’ you speak of are far less horrible than you have been taught, some basis in truth of some of them of course, but wildly exaggerated in most cases, with no context about what was really going on in the bigger picture)
Dennis Prager is helpful here: “…mistake” and “evil” are not synonyms. The lockdown is a mistake; the Holocaust, slavery, communism, fascism, etc., were evils. Massive mistakes are made by arrogant fools; massive evils are committed by evil people.” Foolish Boris is a puppet or stooge, not a demon. Most likely his medical advisors or puppeteers are also very arrogant fools, sincerely believing in the Gates vision of dealing with Covid and people. Even Gates may be convinced that he serves humanity rather than his great fear of an overpopulated, collapsing world, and believe that his ‘friend’ Xi Jinping, with his vision of one world under peaceful communist leadership, is a good guy who wants to save us from ourselves too. To know that evil certainly enters at this point, check out the nightmare history of communist societies (120m dead, decades of unimaginable fear and oppression), and what the red emperor is doing right now to 3m or more people in concentration camps because of their race, religion, or political beliefs.
You do have a point, there.
“The lockdown is a mistake”
A very odd mistake – one that is highly co-ordinated with vast resources behind it and an odd propensity to go on and on and on …..
A seven month mistake? I’d get an F in that course.
You could say that the lockdown is a mistake, if you narrow your examination of it. But I would never be caught letting the hoaxsters off the hook that way. It depends on the context of course. I might say that the hoaxsters made a fatal mistake with their hoax and their desire to play God.
this discussion seems to be about ‘propaganda’ – you need to do a bit of reflecting on the propaganda you are spouting there, somewhere between wild exaggeration and outright lies, context free, fed to you constantly by your masters until you just believe it unquestioningly.
I think for critical thinkers and anyone with a rebellious spirit, innate curiosity and willingness to constantly question, it’s going to be harder to find people whom we can tolerate being around because of the level of conformity to social norms which are built around an authoritative society. But it doesn’t make you a misanthrope.
Perhaps you recognized certain unpleasant qualities such as aggression, hostility or sociopathic, sadistic and narcissistic tendencies and was appropriately repulsed.
What I’ve recognized is the universality of the whole “chattering-idiot-monkey” thing.
So yeah, I’m pretty much ready to embrace the “misanthrope” moniker.
I can’t deal with my in-laws, for starters, not because of “aggression, hostility or sociopathic, sadistic” tendencies (although, yes, narcissism factors in), but because they are happy-go-lucky, content, sanguine, bovine goyim who take pride in obsequiously abiding by every oppression against them, and more importantly, every aggression against their offspring (my cherished wife)!
Ha. I try to avoid the company of fools, narcissists or the humorless, which cancels out most of the population, sliding me into the misanthrope category alongside you.
In-laws are always tricky. My husband’s parents are both dead, but they’d be Trumpians to the bitter end. Thanksgiving would be filled with fascinating tidbits from Fox News and their FedsBook friends on ConJob-19.
Someone down-votes a simple snapshot by you of your family life, as it that can be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’!
It’s one of the two trolls who tag team here.
Oh joy! Ditch up- and down-votes would be my recommendation. Force everyone to use his and her words. But that’s me.
The world is ruined. As Jesus Christ said, ‘The road to life is narrow and cramped and few are the ones finding it. The road to destruction is wide and spacious and many are those find it’. The road to life is narrow and cramped in a ‘positive’ sense. We can’t do this and we can’t do that – because that’s what actually caring about law & order means. You can’t just go rob a bank in order to survive. That’s what being principled means. You think not just about surviving, but also about ‘how’ you survive, unlike killer Bill Gates.
Nah, Everyone was pretty decent. Jack Straw President of The NUS was probably the same as he has always been, but I wasn’t really interested in Politics. I was a pretty crap student, and left to get a proper job and a proper education. They even paid me lots of money to educate me.
I didn’t meet any real fascist psychos until I moved to London, and had to deal with my boss. Fortunately I had been on a few psychological management training courses when I was working in Manchester, and tried without much success to modify his behaviour. He was however eventually removed from his job. I certainly didn’t want it, but got it. I then realised how he felt.
He was never that bad, but the stress got to him, and it also got to me. When you are doing a highly technical job, and you are trusted as a boss, you have also got to deal with your staff’s personal problems too, especially like me, and most of the time you are working shifts. It’s a very tough job. The first lesson I learnt, was to have an almost completely seperate social life from work.
Fortunately I was in love with my Girlfriend now wife, and everyone knew, cos I told them, and they occasionally met her at Works Do’s.
To be honest, most of it was a lot of fun, and we worked well together
Tony
When I was about 23, I had several members of my team. One of who’m was a Member of The Socialist Workers Party and one a Member of The National Front, who actually put himself up for Election as an MP…
They used to go to the same riots in Macnhester – chucking bricks at each other
As their Boss, I had to stay Neutral. and Said Them To Both
“You can do anything you like so far as I am concerned, OUTSIDE OF WORK – BUT when You are here at Work You Both Work Together to The Best of Your Abilitity” Which They Did. They had massive Respect for Each Other although at completely Different Extremes in The Political Spectrum.
I never went on a political demo in Manchester, but do have vague memories of being in the back of a car of a few of my staff listening to Lemmy and Hawkwind. I can’t remember where we were going. It certainly wasn’t My Mum’s House.
When I split up with a girlfriend, well my New Girldfriend had two Female Friends, and I did have my own house, and they wanted to have a party in my house…and..but it was never manic – just the occasional ouija party and stuff. That seemmed to work too.
Tony
I know the young kids are dropping dead now of cancer, because of COVID closing all the cancer wards in the USA and UK??????
He died yesterday of Cancer. (They didn’t label his death as COVID yet so far as I know)
Yeh I’m upset too, especially when I realised he was younger than me.
I never really like the song Jump…
This is Far Better.
In fact it is one of my Favourite Rock Songs Ever.
“Van Halen – Aint Talkin’ Bout Love”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-IUB62zDlA
Tony