Corporate Media Doesnt Resist Trump; It Profits From His Extremism (Left Forum Video)

I spoke at The Real News Networks 2018 Left Forum panel Making Real News in the Age of Trump.Below follows video and a transcript of my speech. I discuss how the same corporate media outlets that created Donald Trump later rebranded as The Resistance and yet they cheer on the far-right billionaire-in-chief when he bombs countries and expands wars.

To the commentariat, the myth of American exceptionalism is sacrosanct, murderous militaristic foreign policy is unquestionable and bipartisan, and the people abroad killed by the US and its allies are unworthy victims.Transcript Ben Norton at Left Forum 2018Today I want to address several different things. I want to largely focus on international politics and whats called US foreign policy.

I dont like that term; you can use imperialism, there are other terms, US military aggression, US wars. But Ill use the term foreign policy somewhat loosely. And I also want to talk about Trump and the presentation of Trump by media outlets, and how it relates to international politics.

So first of all, I think Paul [Jay] raised a very important point about infantilization. And frequently media outlets, when they do cover Trump I mean, I think some media outlets, once hes been elected, they have been somewhat fair. Of course it goes without saying that media outlets gave billions of dollars of free advertisements to Trump during the presidential campaign, while ignoring and attacking Bernie Sanders.

We saw that Trump would have rallies in which he would incite against immigrants, incite against minority groups and people of color, incite against women and Muslims, all with no, not even any analysis, not even any pushback; he would just get an entire platform to speak for an hour, and just spew lies and vitriol.But whats interesting is the rebranding post-election. So now some of the same media outlets that helped create Trump, as Michelle Wolf pointed out I think, she was also attacked by media outlets for her speech [at the 2018 White House Correspondents Dinner], but she pointed out, toward the end of her speech, very cleverly, she said, she joked that the media treats Trump as an ex-boyfriend: You say you hate him, I think you secretly love him, because he helps you sell your books; he helps you make money.

Les Moonves one of the most highly paid media executives in the world, he famously, infamously remarked that Trump might be bad for the US but hes great for us; were making lots of money; the money is raining in.But lets talk about the Washington Post. I think whats very fascinating is the Washington Post has rebranded.

Now it has Democracy dies in darkness. Well that would have been a great slogan in, say, 2002, when the Washington Post of course helped sell an illegal disastrous war that led to the death of 1 million Iraqis, that destabilized the region, that gave birth to what we eventually call ISIS, which was originally al-Qaeda in Iraq. So its important to understand how many of these media outlets, the Washington Post certainly not being exceptional, have tried to capitalize off of The Resistance in the age of Trump, because its profitable, when they actually created him in the first place.

And what I think this also underscores is how there are certain norms within corporate media in the US that cannot be challenged. And this is gonna bring me to foreign policy. But part of the subtext of that is US American exceptionalism, the idea that this country is uniquely great, and Trump represents a unique perversion of that greatness, that this country was great.

Hillary Clinton herself: America is already great. Is it?Lets actually talk about that.

Trump says he wants to make America great again. Of course the question is, when was America great? Professor [Gerald] Horne underscored this perfectly, better than anyone else can, that this is a country, its a settler colony, founded on one of the most massive genocides in human history, then in which hundreds of thousands and millions of people were brought as slaves, and subsequent generations were enslaved, and lived under a system of racial apartheid until the 1960s.

So when was America great? In the 1970s? Okay.

I mean are we gonna return to the 70s? To the 80s?But that narrative is never challenged, even by ostensibly liberal and progressive media.

The notion, again, is that Trump is a unique perversion. Even when it comes to the issue, as Paul [Jay] mentioned earlier, of horrific abuse of immigrants. Well, we frequently hear the idea is that Obama was this great president who helped immigrants, and he may have had some issues, he may have been bailed out the banks and given billions of dollars of taxpayer money to the corporate sector, but he at least you know did not incite this hate.

Thats true. But the Obama administration also deported more people than any other administration. The Obama administration was responsible for 2.

7 million people being forced out of this country, the vast, vast majority of whom did not have any kind of criminal record. And whats interesting is with this recent story that Paul mentioned, of 1400 migrant children who have been separated from their families and are missing, which is an absolute crime, it should be taken before the International Criminal Court, if the US actually recognized it. Whats interesting about this point is that on social media there was a photo of these young children held in a privatized detention center that looks like a prison; its effectively a privatized prison.

That photo, that has been viral, was actually a photo taken in 2014; it was a photo from the Obama administration. So we need to understand these systems of oppression that certainly Trump represents an acceleration of, and I agree with Professor Horne that we cant downplay the severity that Trump and these far-right forces represent. They are objectively worse.

But fascism does not come out of nowhere. It is a system that is built up, and its a movement that is built up over many years. And we have to understand how the Obama administration and previous administrations played a key role in fueling that.

And that brings me to, I want to discuss quickly, foreign policy, and the way its presented by the same Resistance media outlets.So it goes without saying as well that the Washington Post is owned by the richest human being on the planet, Jeff Bezos. He recently surpassed Bill Gates.

It also bears mentioning that Jeff Bezos, as the head of Amazon, has a $600 million contract with the CIA, and does cloud computing for the CIA.Ad the degree to which weve seen two processes simultaneously: these corporate media outlets rebrand themselves as anti-Trump, but at the same time concentrate even further, and push out all progressive media. This is an extremely interesting and extremely dangerous phenomenon.

So weve seen the complete sidelining of many progressive media outlets, that have either folded AlterNet was just bought by the owner of Raw Story; its effectively just Raw Story now. AlterNet basically doesnt even exist anymore; its now the Independent Media Institute. And weve seen this with other progressive media outlets.

And what we see is a centralization on certain talking points. So you can challenge Trump on immigration, but what can never be challenged is of course foreign policy.Because when we look, when is Trump portrayed as presidential?

Of course hes presidential when hes bombing foreign countries, when hes bombing Muslims. Of course the Obama administration, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, in his last year, was bombing seven Muslim majority countries. He dropped more than 25,000 bombs that year.

The Trump ministration is continuing that of course. But Trump is lionized when hes bombing Syria, when hes expanding the war in Afghanistan.So we need to understand that what The Resistance really means is only opposition to Trump on particular policies, and particular policies that are only within US borders.

Because again, the idea is that this country is exceptional; what the US does outside of its borders well, thats up to the military, they can make those decisions; theyre responsible. In fact, were gonna hire them. So MSNBC, CNN, Fox News of course, now, you watch it especially these so-called Resistance outlets like MSNBC they have hired a slew of former CIA, Pentagon, State Department officials, who not only are just talking heads that are interviewed thats common, I mean you see this in the New York Times theyre paid employees.

They frequently, they appear daily, if not weekly.And that brings me to, I wanna talk about a few different things here. So when we look at narratives on these things, Palestine is the most egregious example.

Weve seen this for a long time. Its gotten a little better, but its still not great.So heres an example of this.

These Resistance outlets will humanize the victims of Trump domestically, but dehumanize those internationally. Just today, a 20-year-old Palestinian medic was murdered in the Gaza Strip. She was moving to treat a protester who was shot by the Israeli military the IDF, by the way, has boasted, We know where every bullet landed.

They are intentionally targeting civilians. This medic had her hands up, and she was shot and killed.This is the New York Times headline: A Woman Dedicated to Saving Lives Loses Hers in Gaza Confrontation?

What? She loses hers? What happened?

She was shot, intentionally, by the Israeli military. These were snipers; they know what theyre shooting at. But not just that.

Greg [Wilpert] was talking about [leftist presidential candidate Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador] AMLO in Mexico. Heres a headline from the Wall Street Journal, two days ago: Tropical Messiah: A Trump-Style Politician Is Mexican Presidential Front Runner. Whoa, whoa, whoa, a Trump-style politician?

We have to understand that the whole narrative of US exceptionalism has always ended at US borders. And its always also, it ignores oppressed nationalities within the US borders. This is a settler colony, not just to mention slavery and Jim Crow, but also the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples.

There still are Indigenous peoples in this country; we see with pipelines, we see with cantonment; I mean theyre still grossly oppressed and colonized by this country. So just finally concluding here, I just think its important to understand that, progressive media outlets have a responsibility to understand that we have to look externally at what the US is doing, and not allow what these corporate media outlets present as unique threats to consume, with this kind of nationalist narrative, any kind of left-wing discourse.There are so many examples of this, but I think one of the most egregious failings we can see is the war on Syria.

And I know this is an extremely controversial issue; Im not going to get into it much. But theres a total editorial uniformity on the war in Syria, in virtually every single media outlet. Everywhere.

This is true for even progressive media outlets, for Democracy Now, The Intercept, etc. And they still do good work; Im not in any way rebuking them. But Im saying that we have to challenge this uniformity that is bipartisan.

And its also true just for elements of the left.The Real News has fortunately provided a platform for journalists, and experts, and analysts, and people on the ground to challenge this discourse. And frequently, when we look at corporate media outlets, the people who are making these discourses, who are fabricating them, are themselves attachs of the state.

So we see Washington, DC think tanks dominate discourse, especially on issues pertaining to the Middle East. We see people at the Middle East Institute, which is entirely bankrolled by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, we see State Department officials. These are the talking heads that populate media discourse.

And this is true also for, say, The Intercept, which frequently quotes Charles Lister, Hassan Hassan these are the same figures that are quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post.We have to, as progressives, as people interested in media work, or as activists out here, we have to be able to push back against these narratives that are unchallenged, even by people who say that they want to challenge powerful interests. Originally published at bennorton.

com on June 12, 2018.