This pejorative was fairly famously used in Germany leading up to and during WWII, often in combination with Jewish-controlled also as pejorative. Both points were repopularised in the US around 2016 or so by Richard Spencer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_B._Spencer). For some reason both are now entering more mainstream usage among the right.
Yes, calling the media liars is a thing the Nazis did. However, it's not a good reason to equate someone with Nazis because lots of other people from all parts of the political spectrum have called the media liars from time to time. And a number of times, the media has even deserved it. I challenge anyone who disagrees to go take a dive in historical newspaper archives.
Well, I wouldn't shut down or lock out any press. I wouldn't shut down Jewish-owned press either. All news and media is biased, and there's no such platonic ideal of honesty. Then again, I don't have "enemies" that I need to destroy so maybe you're asking the wrong person.
> This pejorative was fairly famously used in Germany leading up to and during WWII,
Presumably you mean "dishonest". Do you think OAN is dishonest and perhaps disruptive to world peace?
Thinking the press is dishonest does not make one a Nazi. Even if disliking the press were a sign if despotism, Clconsider what makes Nazism unique compared to other despotic regimes, disliking the press ain't it.
I don't think any free press is disruptive to world peace. Even if you get your wish and shut up any outlet you personally find dishonest you're not going to achieve world peace. At least not the kind I'd like to live in.
No. They are propaganda outlets, and must not be considered separately from the Republican Party.
The current mechanism is
1) Fringe theory gestates in the internet.
2) Fringe theory gets into the podcast network and is covered
3) Relatively famous personality comes on a Fox program and mentions the theory
4) Government figures repeats theory that was covered on the news
5) Fox repeats government coverage
People on the right who have alternative theories, simply do not get air time. They aren’t suppressed, they are simply not competitive.
In a more economic framing of their efforts - they have found a way to offset the costs of inaccurate content to the future.
So they are now able to “sell” cheap “junk food” content, while the center and left spends more effort in forming more accurate content.
The center and left publications, for all their flaws, still stick to journalistic norms.
But today the NYT is more a site dependent on its wordle revenue than its subscription revenue. Consolidation of markets means advertisers do not need smaller local newspapers, and platforms get the lions share of attention.
There is no business model to sustain a free information economy.
> The center and left publications, for all their flaws, still stick to journalistic norms.
Up until about 2016 I would have agreed to this. After the last month or two, I don't see how a rational human can think this anymore. Neither side has any mainstream news outlet which tries to be honest in its reporting. You want facts? The talking heads have their own YouTube channels now. If you can find a decent selection of them, they provide more honest reporting and far better analysis than the media on either side provides currently.
I'd be surprised if anyone believed everything the press said. It doesn't even seem possible as different press outlets will say conflicting things. But even if someone did, that isn't really an argument that a free press is an enemy of world peace so I'm not seeing how your point is related.
Let me try. About 125 years ago there was something called the Spanish-American war. It only lasted 4 days so most people forget about it. It was basically started by the press, specifically by Hurst. It is where we get the term 'yellow journalism'.
Basically the press claimed that the Spanish sabotaged a US navy ship called the USS Maine. The Maine had a boiler accident which caused it to explode but the press claimed it was the Spanish. The government used this as an excuse to take the remaining bits of Spain's empire away from them. So that might be an example of the press being 'an enemy of world peace'. No, I'm not sure the current media would do that. But it is an example of a free press starting a war to sell fish wrap.
It's always fun to compare Trump quotes against other presidential quotes.
Jefferson: “The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
Reagan: "There is no more essential ingredient than a free, strong, and independent press to our continued success in what the Founding Fathers called our 'noble experiment' in self-government"
FDR: "If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free."
The issue comes in theory vs practice. Obviously in theory a free press is absolutely key to a free society, but in practice the press often ends up with different motivations. Another, rather more famous comment from Jefferson on the press [1]:
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"To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood.
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.
General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.
Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into 4 chapters, heading the 1st, Truths. 2d, Probabilities. 3d, Possibilities. 4th, Lies. The first chapter would be very short, as it would contain little more than authentic papers, and information from such sources as the editor would be willing to risk his own reputation for their truth. The 2d would contain what, from a mature consideration of all circumstances, his judgment should conclude to be probably true. This, however, should rather contain too little than too much. The 3d & 4th should be professedly for those readers who would rather have lies for their money than the blank paper they would occupy."
I'll take a a free press over an authoritarian controlled one any day. A boot stamping on a human face forever is not the kind of world peace I'm interested in, even if it's my boot. But I can understand the allure for a certain kind of person.
It's exactly because I know what our dishonest state-owned press reports about Trump and what they did report about Biden, and I also know what is happening in the US.
If Trump sneezes we find out that sneezing is something Hitler did, if Trump stops a war in Gaza we hear how one time Hitler talked about ending wars.
Our dishonest state-owned press is against wars except when Hamas loses, then they think that war may not have been that bad and want to tell us all the good things about war and the bad things about peace.
Biden was senile for years and the press were telling us it's a right-wing conspiracy theory, until the point the Democrat party dropped him because he was senile.
> Biden was senile for years and the press were telling us it's a right-wing conspiracy theory, until the point the Democrat party dropped him because he was senile.
You, uh, you do know this whole idea is right wing propaganda, right? None of that is what actually happened, it's what right wing media says happened.
We all saw the debate. Barry even ghost wrote a book about how senile he was. The gasslighting can only be pushed to a certain point, and we passed that point years ago.
Not really. Biden had a press pool like every president before them, and the press was free to disagree with him. He just didn't do interviews.
Trump's DoD just threatened to revoke press credentials of anyone who reported on things they didn't authorize. Also, the other current scandal is one of the people reporting on RFK both slept with him and gave him positive coverage, which is wild.
Trump regularly kicked reporters out of the press pool for saying things he didn't like and then took over deciding who can be in it and who isn't.
It's not really transparency if you make sure to include only people who promise to say what you want them to say, is it?
> “I think he finds the press to be very disruptive in terms of world peace,” Trump said. “The press is very dishonest.”