Inventing Reality: Past and Present

By Youhanna Haddad

Capitalist countries like to claim that they have the freest media. President Joe Biden frequently reiterates America’s supposed commitment to a free press. In a similar vein, the British Broadcasting Corporation has repeatedly lauded the United Kingdom’s ostensible “freedom to publish.”

These statements often feature alongside denunciations of the alleged unfreedom in other countries — particularly those adversarial to Western hegemony. Such criticism tends to take on a certain form. Westerners claim that these adversarial powers tightly curate their media, only allowing information that reinforces state agendas. A recent (retracted) article in The Wall Street Journal, for example, accused China of “parroting lies” via their “solidified grip on information.”

But China is far from the only target. Whether it’s nations in Latin America and the Middle East, or Russia, the Global North’s prominent media institutions frequently remind viewers that information coming out of these places should be heavily scrutinized, with particular caution advised toward state-sponsored media. 

Since the Cold War, the imperial core has honed this rhetoric, which not only espouses the superior integrity of its media institutions but also attributes that integrity to a supposed respect for free speech rights. This narrative sounds good. But it rings utterly hollow upon closer scrutiny. In reality, free speech does little to keep the interests of capital from dictating the “news” Western media reports. As Lenin described over a century ago, “[In] capitalist usage, freedom of the press means freedom of the rich to bribe the press, freedom to use their wealth to shape and fabricate so-called public opinion.”

In the United States, just six corporations own a whopping 90% of the news media. This centralization demonstrates that, despite what seems like an abundance of options, the media is controlled by a tiny capitalist minority. And this minority is united by an overriding monolithic interest: profit. That means the media is only really free to report what doesn’t threaten the bottom lines of its owners.

But that is far from the only source of bias. Oftentimes, Western media institutions act at the direct behest of their governments. While the full extent of such collusion is often hidden in classified documents, what little has trickled into the public view vindicates the belief that “free” Western media is a fantasy.

The history of collusion between Western governments and media megacorporations is both storied and unsettling. Consider the 1975 Church Committee, which was organized by the United States Senate to investigate potential abuses by the CIA, NSA, and FBI. The Church Committee formed after several major news stories broke implicating the Department of Defense and CIA in the surveillance of civilians and covert assassinations of foreign leaders. 

One of the most disturbing findings was the explicit confirmation of CIA involvement in domestic and foreign media. The Committee confirmed at least “50 CIA relationships with U.S. journalists or employees of U.S. media organizations.” Additionally, it demonstrated that the CIA had control of two European press services — one of which was subscribed to by “over 30 U.S. newspapers.” With a notable lack of remorse, a senior CIA official told the Committee that, “Whether or not this type of overseas activity should be allowed to continue is subject to differing views and judgments… [in my opinion] we would be fools to relinquish it because it serves a very useful purpose.”

CIA defector Colonel John Stockwell corroborated this practice of media corruption. On his assignment to the Angolan Civil War, he allegedly headed a CIA campaign to disseminate news stories that slandered the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola and their Cuban reinforcements. According to Stockwell, a full third of his CIA personnel in Angola were career propagandists. One startling falsehood they reported was a totally fabricated execution of 17 Cuban soldiers for the rapes of Angolan women. Framed as an act of feminist liberation, the imaginary victims supposedly executed the perpetrators by firing squad. This tale made its way to the front page of the Toronto Star — Canada’s largest daily newspaper — the Globe and Mail, and local papers in Winnipeg, Halifax, and Montreal. 

More recently, a 2019 bombshell in The Washington Post revealed that — even in this century — United States’ military campaigns are shrouded in lies to make them more palatable to the American public. Generals, senior federal officials, an Afghan War czar, and a Bush-era secretary of defense all confirm that the war in Afghanistan was unwinnable while claiming that there was “no way” the United States could lose the war when interviewed. Federal officials faithfully chanted “steady progress” throughout the duration of the war despite knowing that their objectives were bound to fail via the means they were employing.

Today, the world's eyes are on Ukraine. Russian troops have been in the country for over nine months after Ukraine, against Russia’s repeated warnings, moved to join NATO. Since the invasion began, the United States has spent $68 billion to aid the Ukrainian government and military.  

While modern Russia is thoroughly capitalist, it's easy to see why NATO — the world’s preeminent imperialist alliance — views it as a threat. The country has the world's largest nuclear arsenal and its security interests are directly opposed to NATO’s objective of expanding eastward toward Russia’s borders. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was not unexpected by any stretch of the imagination, Russian leaders have expressed for decades that their ability to defend their nation from invasion or global conflict would be severely compromised if NATO was permitted to expand toward its borders. 

Most infamously, declassified State Department documents confirm former Secretary of State James Baker promised Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward” in 1990. To the contrary, NATO has admitted 14 former Soviet or Soviet-aligned states since then.

From the billions in aid to Ukraine, it’s clear the United States is investing heavily in the outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Much of that aid is designated for weapons that are not yet manufactured, suggesting the United States is ready to support the neoliberal Ukrainian government for years to come. This means that — just like in Vietnam and Afghanistan — the federal government is dedicated to a long-term conflict with little regard for any public resistance they may encounter. Ask yourself: When in its history has the United States heavily funded a fighting force that was trying to improve living standards for any group of working people?

Today, we face a nonstop barrage of pro-Ukrainian media. Major news outlets have been reporting optimistically on Ukraine’s war efforts, while Russian troops remain planted on Ukrainian soil since February. Western bourgeois media is clearly trying to make NATO’s investment in Ukraine seem worthwhile, as they have done to support the invasions of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

You don’t have to be a Putin apologist to understand that Western powers see Russia as a threat to their hegemony. Those with a deep respect for human life should hope to see an expedient and diplomatic end to the conflict, with no further expansion of NATO. Unlike the United States and her allies, we should not support the effort to include Ukraine in NATO at any cost. This position is nonsensical, and only remains publicly acceptable due to the tireless media campaigns of a supposedly “free press” in the Global North.

Youhanna Haddad is a North American Marxist of the Arab diaspora. Through his writing, he seeks to combat the Western liberal dogmas that uphold racial capitalism.

Socialism's Increasing Popularity Doesn't Bring Media Out of McCarthy Era

By Joshua Cho

Republished from FAIR.

Ever since the Great Recession in 2008, and accelerating with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential run, there has been a resurgence of popularity and interest in socialism in the US, and an increasing skepticism of capitalism. A 2019 Pew poll (6/25/19) reported that 42% of respondents had a favorable view of socialism, with particular sympathy shown among people who are Black (65%), Latino (52%), have family incomes below $30,000 (50%) or are between the ages of 18-29 (50%). In a 2019 Gallup survey (12/18/19), 38% saw socialism positively—more than the 34% who identify as conservatives (Gallup, 7/27/20). Gallup (11/25/19) noted that Millennials were especially attracted to socialism, with slightly more viewing socialism positively than capitalism.

Democrats across the country view socialism more positively than capitalism, with a large majority willing to vote for a socialist as president. Despite questions of what the term “socialism” means to Americans, this growing interest has provoked articles decrying the “problem” that socialism doesn’t freak out Democratic voters the way it does other Americans (Slate, 2/24/20). The Columbia Journalism Review (5/8/18) noticed that while “the radical left in the U.S. has felt invigorated in recent years,” it still hasn’t “earned left-wing voices column inches in most mainstream outlets,” with coverage limited to being “about those voices, rather than by them.”

Looking at the representation of socialism among the hundreds of pundits in corporate media, one can be forgiven for almost thinking socialist pundits don’t exist.

The New York Times opinion writer Elizabeth Bruenig appears to be the only pundit employed by corporate media who both explicitly identifies as a “socialist” and makes arguments for some form of socialism in the U.S. (Washington Post, 3/6/18).

Laurence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s Last Word, identifies as a “practical European socialist,” and argues that “we’re all socialists now,” because even Bill O’Reilly is in favor of “socialist programs” like Social Security and Medicare. The MSNBC host claims to “embrace” the label in order to “counterbalance” the excessive influence of McCarthyism in the U.S. (LA Times, 3/16/13), but it’s difficult to discern a distinctly socialist perspective in his commentary.

Straightforward advocacy of socialism is something you very rarely see in corporate media (Washington Post, 3/6/18).

The Hill’s Krystal Ball (2/17/19), cohost of the show Rising, criticized Trump’s remarks claiming that “America will never be a socialist country” for presenting the false dichotomy of “smash-and-grab capitalism” or “what’s happening in Venezuela.” The class-conscious commentator described Sanders and other democratic socialists like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as “messengers for a compelling message with an actual vision.” Although she seems not to explicitly embrace the “socialist” label like Bruenig or O’Donnell, it may be fair to describe her as a democratic socialist pundit, because she often speaks favorably of the ideology, and provides a friendly platform to socialists on her show.

It appears corporate media give some degree of space for pundits to call for replacing capitalism with a new system, so long as they don’t identify themselves or that new system as “socialist.” Times columnist Michelle Alexander hasn’t explicitly identified as a socialist, but has argued (6/8/20) that “transforming our economic systems” is necessary to achieve “racial justice” and a “secure and thriving democracy,” while approvingly citing figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, Albert Einstein, Hellen Keller and Paul Robeson, all of whom argued that the U.S. “must move toward some form of socialism.” The Post’s Katrina Vanden Heuvel also hasn’t called herself a socialist, but has argued (12/10/19) that “capitalism is broken,” and that we need a “new system to better serve the common good,” without describing this new system as “socialism.”

Although CNN’s Van Jones was involved in the early 1990s with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a defunct Maoist Bay Area group, since 2000 or so, he’s identified with the “green capitalist” movement instead (Green America, Fall/2007).

“Socialism” itself is a very contested term, and many self-described socialists may not consider some or all of these pundits to be genuine socialists. Conservatism is also a broad range of ideologies, not all of which are consistent with each other, which also has self-identified conservatives who denounce others as unworthy or inconsistent with the label (New York Times, 1/14/15; The Hill, 12/16/19). Conservative audiences are not expected to approve of all pundits who identify as conservatives, or who speak favorably of conservatism. Likewise, while some socialists may be unsatisfied with these figures, it is still significant that there are pundits who embrace being labeled a “socialist” and explicitly call for alternatives to capitalism within the US.

Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaidó has remarked that “socialist” figures like Ocasio-Cortez would be considered social democrats in his own country (New Yorker, 6/10/20). The Times’ Paul Krugman (2/13/20) is no socialist, but he has criticized Bernie Sanders for presenting himself as a “socialist,” rather than a “social democrat,” making himself “an easy target for right-wing smears.”

It’s more common to see criticism of capitalism (New York Times, 12/4/17)—but still not very common.

One can find criticisms of capitalism in corporate media, but that is ideologically consistent with liberals or progressives who call for government intervention to deal with market failures. Columnists like the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg (12/4/17), who noted that “capitalism looks like the god that failed” to young people because of the “increasingly oligarchic nature of our economy,” and the Times’ Nicholas Kristof (5/23/20), who condemned “dog-eat-dog capitalism for struggling workers and socialism for the rich,” are critics of capitalism in corporate media who aren’t necessarily calling for socialism.

Other pundits have normalized socialism by claiming it already exists in a limited form, because they conflate all government spending on social programs with socialism—not advocating for socialism so much as claiming that it already exists in the US. Thus the Times’ Roger Cohen (3/8/19) and the Post’s Catherine Rampell (3/21/19) argue that “Europe” demonstrates how “socialism and the free market are compatible,” and dismiss the capitalist/socialist dichotomy as not being a “meaningful binary,” because “all modern countries have elements of capitalism and socialism.” These pundits make arguments similar to O’Donnell’s, defending a socialism that’s hard to distinguish from liberalism, though without identifying with the label as O’Donnell does.

A few other commentators have praised socialism and defended figures who identify as socialists. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes defended Bernie Sanders from McCarthyite criticisms, and praised the Democratic Socialists of America. MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle has made remarks on-air that appear to defend democratic socialism, in addition to explaining why it is a more desirable alternative to communism (NBC News, 2/27/20). The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson has written several columns urging Democrats to embrace the party’s more progressive base (7/2/18, 7/1/19), and described “democratic socialism” as something that is “perfectly appropriate” for Ocasio-Cortez’s district, in addition to endorsing (1/15/15) Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for “economic equality”—which King suggested could be called “democratic socialism” (In These Times, 1/15/18).

Like Hayes and Ruhle, Times’ columnists like Jamelle Bouie and Farhad Manjoo have published numerous columns that appear to praise socialism or policies associated with socialists, but that appears to be the farthest they can go, as neither of them have ever embraced the label (New York Times, 2/6/19, 2/14/19, 10/22/19, 3/11/20).

“Open advocacy of socialism is now a normal part of our political discourse,” writes the Washington Post‘s E.J. Dionne (2/10/19)—but it’s still not a normal part of our media conversation.

When socialism or socialists are discussed favorably, or at least not adversely, it’s often in opposition to revolutionary socialist ideologies like Marxism-Leninism (the official ideology of around 20% of the world’s population, and of the US’s greatest geopolitical rival). Democratic socialism is often contrasted with socialist states of the Global South, whether Communist countries like China or Vietnam, or multi-party systems like Venezuela or Nicaragua, which are frequently presented by even the left-most pundits as justifiable targets of imperialism. Instead, wealthy, predominantly white Scandinavian countries like Denmark and Norway are often upheld as the preferable socialist ideal (New York Times, 4/27/19).

Although the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. (2/10/19) argued that Trump and the Republican Party’s attempts to tar all Democrats as “socialist” and antithetical to “American values” will fail because “open advocacy of socialism is now a normal part of our political discourse,” it’s quite clear that McCarthyism is still constricting political discourse in the US. While socialism is being discussed more often, there’s a huge disparity between its acceptance among the U.S. population and the representation of socialists among pundits at the biggest news outlets in the country. There are almost no pundits employed in corporate media who feel comfortable openly identifying as a socialist and calling for socialism as an alternative to capitalism.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that corporate media outlets owned by oligarchs and the investor class are hostile to socialism, but when socialist pundits are virtually nonexistent at these agenda-setting outlets, despite 76% of Democrats being willing to vote for a socialist, it’s clear that these institutions are intended to propagandize the U.S. population into accepting the status quo. Even when politicians and policies often described as “socialist” are presented in a positive light, the fact that these journalists are uncomfortable embracing the label is evidence that McCarthyism still exercises a formidable restraint on the U.S. political imagination and discourse.