Three years ago, describing an Australian white supremacist charged with massacring 49 people in New Zealand, the New York Times (3/15/19) wrote: “On his flak jacket was a symbol commonly used by the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary organization.”
The New York Times (10/4/22) shares a “handout photo” from a paramilitary organization that was founded to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen.”
What a difference a war makes! A Times story (10/4/22) in the paper’s Ukraine War news roundup began:
Commanders of Ukraine’s celebrated Azov Battalion have held an emotional reunion with their families in Turkey, Ukrainian officials said, honoring the fighters released from Russian confinement last month as part of the largest prisoner swap since the start of the war.
“Celebrated” is an odd word to describe a group whose founder urged Ukraine to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen (subhumans)” (Guardian, 3/13/18). Its official logo features the Wolfsangel, a runic icon adopted by the SS that’s become “a symbol of choice for neo-Nazis in Europe and the United States,” according to the ADL. (To dispel any doubt about what the symbol means, Azov used to superimpose it on a Black Sun, a Nordic design beloved by Heinrich Himmler.)
The Azov movement has linked up with other far-right groups across Europe and in the United States, including the Rise Above Movement, a violently racist group based in Southern California (New Republic, 7/9/19). Azov is “believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States–based white supremacy organizations,” according to an FBI report (RFE/RL, 11/14/18).
But Times reporter Enjoli Liston indeed went on to celebrate the group:
The group’s defense of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol—the southern port city decimated by Russian forces in the first months of the war—has become a powerful symbol of the suffering inflicted by Russia and the resistance mounted by Ukraine.
The story’s headline: “Released Azov Commanders Have an Emotional Reunion With Family Members in Turkey.” The accompanying photo shows the fascistic unit’s commander sharing a joyful hug with his wife.
Not a word in the eight-paragraph story gives any hint about the ugly far-right politics of the unit, incorporated since 2014 into Ukraine’s military structure (when it was rebranded as the Azov Regiment). The Times did, however, find space to convey to the Azov fighters, from Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska, “Thanks from Ukraine, from the president and all the people for whom they are fighting.”
ACTION:
Please tell the New York Times not to treat neo-Nazis as heroes.
President Joe Biden on September 1 delivered a roughly 25-minute primetime speech from Independence Hall in Philadelphia about Trumpism’s threat to US democracy. Primetime, that is, for the two major US television networks that aired it live: MSNBC and CNN. The others—ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox—opted not to carry the address, because they deemed it “political” (Washington Post, 9/2/22).
CNN is one of two major US TV networks that aired President Joe Biden’s speech live from Philadelphia.
Across the Atlantic just over a week later, King Charles III addressed Britain and the world about his 96-year-old mother’s death and his preparations to take over the solely symbolic role of British monarch. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox all presumably found it more newsworthy than the President’s remarks, because they carried it live (MediaMatters, 9/9/22). (CNN and MSNBC carried both Biden’s and Charles’ speeches.)
Biden’s speech urgently named MAGA Republican ideology as an imminent threat to democracy, rejected violence and extremism, and condemned conspiracy theories. The “political” speech took an explicitly bipartisan tone, with Biden repeatedly claiming that Trumpism doesn’t represent the majority of the Republican party, and appealing to the American public regardless of political affiliation to defend democracy.
“I’m an American president—not the president of Red America or Blue America, but of all America,” he said.
Charles’ speech, on the other hand, was essentially a eulogy. He waxed poetic about Queen Elizabeth II’s public and private lives, praising her “warmth” and “humor” and the “sacrifices” she made to uphold her “duty.” It was appropriately vague and inoffensive for a figurehead whose job is to be apolitical.
Despite the President of the United States’ speech being patently more relevant to the American people than the symbolic figurehead of another country’s address, the latter had not only more networks airing it, but nearly as much analysis and coverage in the 48 hours surrounding it as the former: A Nexis database search of ABC, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS and Fox transcripts the day of and the day after each of the respective speeches turned up 113 mentions of Charles’ speech and 116 of Biden’s.
The networks varied widely in the relative amount of coverage they gave to the two speeches. ABC and NBC had roughly twice as many segments on Charles’ speech compared to Biden; Fox and MSNBC had closer to twice as many segments on Biden’s speech. CBS and CNN had roughly similar numbers of segments on each speech.
‘Politically charged’
However much time they gave it, each of these networks characterized the president’s speech as inflammatory, ignoring much of its content, and “balancing” it with a chorus of Trump-aligned politicians.
Fox characterized Biden’s speech as a “dark and depressing” “diatribe.”
Unsurprisingly, on Fox News’s Hannity (9/2/22), fill-in host Tammy Bruce whined that Biden “bashe[d]” Republicans in his “rage-filled speech” that she later described as a “dark and depressing” “diatribe.” But this same right-wing indignation could be heard across network news, regardless of their presumed political leanings.
ABC’s World News Tonight anchor Mary Bruce (9/2/22) called the remarks “scathing,” saying the speech “slam[med]” MAGA Republicans. The segment quoted Republican former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who served as UN ambassador for Trump: “It was one of the most unbelievable things I’ve seen in a long time. It’s unthinkable he would be so condescending and criticize half of America.”
Putting aside that Haley’s own history of opinions about Trump are mixed—“He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him,” she said after January 6—the segment did not bring up Biden’s repeated clarifications:
“Now, I want to be very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.”
“There are far more Americans—far more Americans from every background and belief—who reject the extreme MAGA ideology than those that accept it.”
“Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans: We must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than MAGA Republicans are to destroying American democracy.”
Reporter Craig Melvin on NBC’s Today show (9/2/22) described the speech as “politically charged,” and anchor Peter Alexander called it “blistering,” including derisions from Republican California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, without including any voices of those who found Biden’s condemnation of Trumpism necessary. The segment also described the speech being delivered in front of a “military backdrop”—that is, two Marines standing behind Biden. (Marines have been present at other debatably “political” presidential speeches, including Trump’s at the RNC in 2020.)
CBS Morning News’ Bradley Blackburn (9/2/22) chose the word “sharp.” And though CNN opted to air the remarks in primetime, they included the opinion of former Trump White House official Gavin Smith, who posited that threats to democracy are not a priority to discuss in a 25-minute speech, and that Biden should have spoken instead about rising prices (CNN New Day, 9/2/22). (To her credit, anchor Brianna Keilar pushed back against this statement.)
MSNBC’s The Beat (9/2/22) took Biden’s speech more seriously, with anchor Katie Phang calling out the irony of the GOP labeling a speech about the GOP’s divisiveness as divisive. “There’s so many Trump supporters,” she said:
They’re screaming about how Joe Biden now has promoted this divisiveness. But you know, the reality is, they’re not looking in the mirrors, right? There’s this hypocrisy that seems to be the currency that these Republicans are trading in.
Believers in the ‘storm’
Instead of engaging in handwringing over Biden’s tone, these outlets could have investigated the truth of his claims that MAGA ideology—regardless of what percentage of the Republican party subscribes to it—is a threat to democracy. Beyond the deadly January 6 insurrection itself, polling backs up Biden’s assertions that there are widespread anti-democratic tendencies within the Republican Party.
In February, a PRRI report found that a quarter of Republicans consider themselves believers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. When polled on the three central delusions of QAnon, 16% completely or mostly agreed that media and economy are run by a Satan-worshiping cabal of child sex-traffickers; 22% completely or mostly agreed that a coming “storm” will wipe away these elites and restore the country to its rightful leaders; and 18% completely or mostly agreed that violence may be necessary to save the country.
Additionally, the Washington Post (9/18/22) recently questioned 19 GOP candidates running in gubernatorial and Senate races about whether they’d accept the results of the upcoming elections. Twelve either refused to commit or declined to respond. All 19 Democratic nominees committed to accepting the results of the elections.
Sowing distrust in legitimate democratic processes—and resorting to violence in an attempt to prevent them—is certainly dangerous to democracy.
‘A very significant event’
Of course, Charles’ address the day after the queen’s death served a much different purpose than Biden’s: celebrating and remembering a figurehead, versus warning against a rising domestic threat to American democracy. While comparing the content of these two addresses would be comparing apples and oranges, networks’ attitudes toward each are telling.
“Breaking News”: CBS had extensive live coverage from London surrounding King Charles III’s speech.
On Chris Jansing Reports (9/9/22), MSNBC’s British historian Andrew Roberts called Charles’ speech “very significant.” CBS Evening News’ Norah O’Donnell and Charlie D’Agatta (9/9/22) called it “historic.” On CNN’s Erin Burnett Outfront (9/9/22), CNN International diplomatic editor Nic Robertson foreshadowed the upcoming ceremony that marked Charles’ official ascension to the throne, also calling it “perhaps a very significant event.”
While the death of the 96-year-old queen and ascension of her son might be significant for royalists—and the pomp, circumstance, anachronism and celebrity of the monarchy might be entertaining and appealing to many Americans—it has almost no political implications for the world. That’s because the British monarch’s role is ceremonial, and, as the constitution dictates, apolitical.
But the British monarch is also inextricably linked to the British Empire and is a living symbol of that imperial legacy, as well as of an extreme elitism based on nothing more than the privilege of birth (Economist, 9/15/22). Elizabeth’s death spurred significant conversations about Britain’s brutal, bloody legacy of colonialism around the world and abolishing the monarchy—all of which was left out of the above segments, and the majority of network news coverage.
US news networks instead largely discussed the queen’s death as if everyone agreed on her legacy. “The world mourns the death of Queen Elizabeth,” said CBS Mornings’ Anne-Marie Green (9/9/22), who described the late monarch as “one of the most beloved women in the world.”
‘We need to examine that history’
The entire world was not, in fact, mourning the death of Britain’s queen. On Democracy Now! (9/13/22), Amy Goodman discussed the possibility that “British Overseas Territory” (read: colony) Antigua and Barbuda might cut ties with the British monarch. When asked to respond to the queen’s death, Dorbrene O’Marde, chair of the Antigua and Barbuda Reparations Commission, said:
I’m under no obligation, I think, to be mourning her death. And that is simply because of, I think, my understanding of history, my understanding of the relationships of the British monarchy to African people and Asian people, but to African people certainly, on the continent and here in the Caribbean. And so that my response is perhaps to recognize the role that the queen, Queen Elizabeth II, has played, how she has managed to cloak the historical brutality of empire in this veneer of grandeur and pomp and pageantry, I guess, and graciousness. But I think that at this point in time, we need to examine that history a lot more closely.
The British Empire committed many atrocities during Elizabeth II’s reign (Liberation News, 9/9/22):
The “Malayan Emergency” (1948–60) was a guerilla war fought between Britain and the Communist Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) after the territory sought independence from British rule. During this 12-year-long war (of which eight years were fought under Elizabeth), British forces set fire to homes and farmland of those suspected to be affiliated with the MNLA, sent 400,000 people to concentration camps and destroyed crops with Agent Orange. 6,700 MNLA fighters and more than 3,000 civilians were killed.
The Mau Mau rebellion (1952–60) took place in Kenya when the Mau Mau rebels launched an uprising against colonial powers, white settlers and loyalists in the country. The British launched a counterinsurgency campaign, sending more than 100,000 people to detainment camps where they were tortured, interrogated and abused. The Kenyan Human Rights Commission estimated 90,000 Kenyans were killed, maimed or tortured, and 160,000 were detained in camps.
The Covert War in Yemen (1962–69) cost an estimated 200,000 lives. After the death of Yemeni King Ahmed in 1962, Arab Army nationalists backed by the Egyptian army seized power and declared the country a republic, with popular support. Britain claimed it would not intervene, but supplied fighter jets and weapons to royalist forces.
Bloody Sunday (January 30, 1972) was just one incident during the Northern Irish Troubles, a 30-year fight for independence from Britain. Marchers in Derry, in British-occupied Ireland, were protesting against British legislation that allowed suspected Irish nationals to be imprisoned without trial; the British military opened fire on them, killing 14.
Even though Elizabeth II had no legislative abilities, this colonial violence was enacted to uphold the empire she helmed (Vox, 9/13/22).
‘They know nothing about colonialism’
Fox specifically scolded those criticizing the monarchy, claiming colonized countries should be grateful for the image of stability Elizabeth upheld, arguing she led the decolonization process. Contributor Douglas Murry claimed on Hannity (9/9/22):
They know nothing about colonialism. They clearly know nothing about the decolonization process. They know nothing about the late queen’s extraordinary work with the commonwealth countries. If the queen would preside over this, was it a genocidal empire? Unbelievable. There’d be nobody alive if it had been a genocidal empire. And they smear her with this total lack of knowledge.
There are a handful of scholarly and international legal definitions of genocide. “Everyone has to be dead” is not one of them.
Other programs may not have engaged in this kind of royalist admonishment, but they still delighted in the royal corgis (ABC’s Nightline, 9/9/22), swooned over Charles’ “emotion” (CNN Newsroom, 9/9/22), admired his handshaking with the crowd (Fox Special Report, 9/9/22) and saluted his promise of a “life of service” (NBC Nightly News, 9/9/22), with little space given to substantive critique of what the monarchy represents.
Outlets aired King Charles III’s speech live and spent the surrounding hours commending his life in service and glossing over Britain’s colonialism.
As noted, none of the aforementioned TV segments that effusively memorialized the queen and relished in the pomp and circumstance of the monarchy addressed colonialism. In fact, of the total 113 segments on network TV that mentioned Charles’ speech, only 29 mentioned—even in passing—Britain’s colonial legacy or calls to abolish the monarchy. Fifteen of those were from CNN, five from MSNBC, four from NBC, three from Fox (all of which condemned criticism of the monarchy), one from ABC and one from CBS.
CBS’s mention denied that there was any movement for change: “There is no current, no modern, serious movement to abolish the monarchy,” journalist and royal-watcher Tina Brown said on CBS Mornings (9/9/22).
That depends on what you define as “serious.” In Australia, thousands marched for abolishment, shutting down streets in Melbourne on the country’s National Day of Mourning for the queen (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 9/22/22). #AbolishTheMonarchy trended on social media (Forbes, 9/9/22). Pro-republican campaigns in Australia, New Zealand and Canada are expected to gain traction now (Wall Street Journal, 9/11/22).
Many shows repeated the term “colonial past” (e.g., NBC’s Today, 9/9/22; CNN Newsroom, 9/9/22), as if British colonialism is not ongoing. Today, British companies still own $1 trillion of Africa’s gold, diamonds, gas and oil, and an area of land in the continent about four times the size of Britain itself (Guardian, 4/17/18).
Other legacies of colonialism still reverberate: In 2013, Carribbean heads of governments established the Caricom Reparations Commission (CRC) to demand reparations for Britain’s genocide, slave trade and apartheid in the region, citing illiteracy, physical and mental health issues and generational poverty as modern-day effects of British rule and slave trade.
Suffice it to say, worldwide opinion about the British monarchy, the death of Queen Elizabeth and the rise of King Charles is far from unanimous, despite US television news framing Charles’ speech—unlike Biden sounding the alarm over the threat to democracy—as something we all could agree on.
The Wall Street Journal (8/10/22) underexposes its photos of a lithium mine in Chile—the way corporate media traditionallyindicate a socialist dystopia.
True to its name, the Wall Street Journal never fails to lay bare its corporate sympathies. In a recent feature headlined “The Place With the Most Lithium is Blowing the Electric-Car Revolution” (8/10/22), the Journal warps anti-neoliberal and Indigenous resistance to ecological destruction and resource plundering into pesky obstacles to green capitalist innovation.
The story is one of corporate tragedy: The so-called “Lithium Triangle,” a region that covers parts of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, is flush with the white metal that is integral to electric vehicle (EV) and battery production. But EV companies don’t have the full access they want, as Indigenous groups and leftist governments resist these foreign multinationals from taking the spoils and harming the environment while they do it.
‘A major bottleneck’
Thea Riofrancos (Logic, 12/7/19) critiques “‘green extractivism’: the subordination of human rights and ecosystems to endless extraction in the name of ‘solving’ climate change.”
Reporter Ryan Dube deserves credit for quoting one Indigenous leader and one environmentalist about their concerns with lithium production in the region. These South American Indigenous populations reside in what climate justice groups have termed sacrifice zones, or what Thea Riofrancos (Logic, 12/7/19) has called the “extractive frontiers of the energy transition.” Lithium production in places like Chile’s Salar de Atacama induce water shortages, threatening the environment’s biodiversity and the livelihoods of those surrounding the salt flats—and often in breach of Indigenous peoples’ right to prior consultation and consent.
But these quotations and brief descriptions are eclipsed by pro-production voices, and language describing their resistance as “setbacks,” or a “challenge” to the “battery makers [who] desperately need” the lithium. We are told that the resistance is “stifling” production. That production has “suffered” as leftist governments seek “greater control over the mineral and a bigger share of profits.”
The muted treatment of Indigenous and environmental groups’ concerns works to reduce the “Lithium Triangle” to just that—its lithium. Indeed, the article warns that the entire South American continent could become “a major bottleneck” for the EV industry.
According to the Journal, the collection of countries that compose this “Saudi Arabia of lithium” are not equipped to reap their own land’s valuable resources. The article quotes Benjamin Gedan, acting director of the Latin American program at the US government-funded Wilson Center think tank (who FAIR—4/30/19—noted in 2019 expressed support for regime change in Venezuela):
Latin America specializes in killing golden geese, and one of the quickest ways to do so is through resource nationalism…. This boom could very quickly turn to bust if bad policies are brought forward.
This narrative is as patronizing as it is old. European colonists justified their genocidal conquest of the American continents by claiming Indigenous peoples weren’t properly using the lands they were living on. Today, EV companies and sympathetic analysts claim entitlement to South America’s lithium reserves because its emergent leftist governments won’t cede control of the resource to Western capital interests.
‘Ultimate cautionary tale’
Evo Morales (Jacobin, 10/7/20): “The coup was directed against us and for our natural resources, for lithium.”
The latest corporate worry is on Chile’s election last year of leftist President Gabriel Boric, who seeks to create a state lithium company to compete with private corporations. The country’s proposed rewrite of its dictatorship-era constitution (FAIR.org, 8/1/22) also has multinationals biting their nails, as it would expand Indigenous and environmental rights over mining.
Indeed, the Chilean popular uprisings in 2019 that prompted the country’s ongoing reforms were in part driven by the inequality and harm caused by the nation’s two private lithium producers—one of which has been run by the billionaire son-in-law of the former dictator Augusto Pinochet (Bloomberg, 6/23/22).
But Gedan and the Journal crown Bolivia, the country with the largest proportion of Indigenous people in South America, as the “ultimate cautionary tale” for resource nationalism. The article notes Bolivia’s lackluster lithium production since its former president Evo Morales nationalized the industry in 2008, with hopes to eventually make the country a battery and EV manufacturer itself.
Missing from the history lesson were the barriers Morales’ socialist government faced as a Global South country subjected to economic underdevelopment as a commodity exporter for richer nations. Most recently, that included the right-wing, US-backed coup of Morales’ government in 2019 (FAIR.org, 11/15/19), which—though contested—some believe was driven by multinational corporations who opposed his administration’s lithium production policies (Jacobin, 10/7/20). In any case, the coup illustrated the ruthlessness with which the US rejects Latin American governments that dare question Western control over their political and economic systems.
The Journal’s Dube also seemed to forget that the Morales government’s nationalization of hydrocarbons played a key role in the country cutting poverty by 42% and extreme poverty by 60% (CEPR, 10/17/19), among other internationally praised achievements. Indeed, Morales’ plans for an EV and battery industry in the country was a means to break its dependency on its highly successful state hydrocarbon sector.
Revolution for whom?
Open Veins of Latin America, by Eduardo Galeano
Most curiously missing, however, is critical discussion of the so-called “electric-vehicle revolution” the headline warns South America is “blowing.” A revolution for what? Electric vehicles for whom?
The piece fails to describe the alleged importance of EVs in mitigating the climate crisis. The word “climate” isn’t even used once. While lithium mining will be critical to putting the brakes on the climate catastrophe, it is debatable whether a revolution of individual electric cars will be our savior—rather than, say, a more equitable and much less resource-consumptive expansion of public transportation (Jacobin, 6/10/22).
But perhaps the absence of climate context is truer to the motives of EV companies’ race for Latin America’s golden geese, wrecking environments and lives in the process: corporate profits.
Emergent leftist governments in South America are resisting Western corporations’ meddling because they know that the communities most directly impacted by lithium mining won’t be the ones driving the Teslas at the end of the supply chain. The “revolution” was never for Latin America.
Western multinationals and their boosters at the Journal may long for a return to the “open veins of Latin America,” as Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano described the region’s outflowing plunder by colonial and neocolonial powers. They may view violating Indigenous rights and destroying ecosystems as the costs of doing business.
But the Indigenous groups and anti-neoliberal movements fighting to keep those veins closed—or open on their own terms—are not the obstacles. The Wall Street Journal shouldn’t frame them as such.
ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the Wall Street Journal at wsjcontact@wsj.com (or via Twitter: @WSJ)Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.
Janine Jackson interviewed Media Matters’ Angelo Carusone about the Alex Jones trial for the August 12, 2022, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: A Texas jury levied $45 million in punitive and $4 million in compensatory damages against Alex Jones, on behalf of the parents of Jesse Lewis, a six-year-old, one of the 26 people whom Jones insisted to his followers—not once but over and over again—were not shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, because they never existed, their mourning families really paid scammers faking grief in a ploy to take away gun rights.
Angelo Carusone has been tracking right-wing media machinery for some time. He is president of Media Matters, and he joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Angelo Carusone.
Angelo Carusone: Thank you.
JJ: Before this trial, as he tried to forestall it, Jones at one point called for one of the Sandy Hook family’s lawyers, called for the lawyer’s head “on a pike.” And then, after the verdict, he was back on his show, saying that it was all an attack on him by “globalists.” Alex Jones learning anything was probably never on the table, but did we? Did you learn anything new about Jones or his operations from this trial?
AC: I think we knew that he was making a lot of money. What we didn’t know until the trial—this is I think what’s really significant about it—is that he’s making not just a lot of money, but he’s doing some really shady things with it.
So, for example, the estimates from their forensic analysis was that he had somewhere between $250 to $300 million in assets. Now, Jones would declare he’s bankrupt. But when you start to unpackage that a little bit, what you’ll find out is that there’s a company which owns a lot of debt to Alex Jones called PQPR; he’s the primary owner of it. And starting right when the buzzards started circling around Jones a couple years ago, he began moving tens of millions of dollars, sometimes payments of $50 million, $60 million, to this company that now owed Alex Jones a debt itself.
So it’s pretty interesting, I think, just the financial part of this is interesting. I think, if I were to sum it up, I would say the one thing we learned is the scale of the revenue that he’s made in this period of time, and then also, essentially, it confirmed that it really is much more of an infomercial at this point than it is a traditional-type programming.
JJ: And you’d think when journalists are looking at it, “follow the money” is kind of a prime directive, right? And here, that would be very interesting. And then even the business plan, if you will—stoke anxiety and then sell survival gear at 100% markup—that’s not really a new plan, as it were.
AC: No, it’s not. The part that is interesting is that he’s managed to convince and capture the attention of some very significant conservative donors. And that means that he has access to donations. In addition to people buying his products, he solicits donations multiple times a day. A lot of times a day.
But he’s gotten pretty hefty Bitcoin donations from anonymous sources, upwards in the realm of $8 million. He got a big $8 million donation in May, a single one, but he’s had other big ones of that scale over the last couple of years.
And one of the donations that always jumps out to me is in the lead up to January 6; this was in November, he was trying to secure a permit for a demonstration in DC. This is before it was even organized, and somebody gave him a half-a-million dollar donation, anonymously, so that he could file for one of the original permits that later ended up getting transferred over for that big January 6 event.
So that part I think is novel and unexplored, just how much people that are in this orbit are willing to give to him from a donations perspective. And once you get a few of those deep pockets, that gives you a lot of operational capacity.
JJ: And my general sense is that you think it’s a mistake to focus overwhelmingly on sifting out what’s special and specific about Alex Jones, at the expense of seeing why and how his playbook, if you will, has been normalized both in the Republican Party and through right-wing media. This is a story where the bigger picture really is the story.
Angelo Carusone: “The content that Alex Jones says on a fairly daily basis is essentially mirrored and reflected through establishment Republicans.” (image: C-SPAN)
AC: Yeah, I think that’s right, actually. If we were to have this conversation 10 years ago, I would say that Alex Jones is sort of an island unto himself. And occasionally Glenn Beck would steal some of his stuff and sort of launder it and sanitize it a little bit, and do it on his Fox News show back then. But he was really sort of on an island unto himself.
And one of the things that’s different between then and now is that the content that Alex Jones says on a fairly daily basis is essentially mirrored and reflected through establishment Republicans and the traditional right-wing media.
So the “deep state” notion, which is not controversial anymore—everyone says that on the Republican side — that somehow there’s some conspiracy inside government, even now more so with the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. That’s an Alex Jones conspiracy.
And just last night, Fox News was pushing this idea that there was this globalist meeting between Soros and Garland and Biden and all these foreign prime ministers who decided that this was going to be the playbook to take out Donald Trump and subjugate America. But that’s conspiracy stuff that he’s been pushing.
And then the last one is the right-wing media, both talk radio and Fox. They’ve also been pushing this idea that the evidence was planted inside the safe in Mar-a-Lago. They didn’t even know the evidence, didn’t even know what was planted, but they’re already conjuring up a conspiracy.
So that’s very much what Alex Jones has peddled in. And now it is nearly indistinguishable from the traditional right-wing and conservative talking points. And I think that’s the part that’s significant about all this, is that the big players now are doing Alex Jones. Everything is InfoWars. That’s basically what I would say.
JJ: I have to say, I thought that something would change in 2017, when Jones was in a custody fight with his ex-wife and she said, I don’t want my kids around this guy, you know, he’s calling for people to have their necks broken. He said he wants Jennifer Lopez to be raped. You know, I just don’t want my kids around him.
And Alex Jones’ lawyer at the time said that Jones is a “performance artist,” that he’s “playing a character,” and to judge him by what he says on InfoWars, his lawyer said, would be like judging Jack Nicholson by his portrayal of the Joker in Batman.
Now, I’m not naive; I’ve been at this for a minute. But I have to say, I was still surprised that after that, media went right back—not just right-wing media, but centrist elite media—went right back to calling Alex Jones “controversial,” calling him “bombastic.”
Even now, it’s weird to read that Jones acknowledges today that Sandy Hook happened, as though we need to credit any particular relationship between what he says and reality.
I guess I hold some blame for not just right-wing media, but so-called mainstream media, for not, at that point, once his case was, “I don’t believe any of this, and you’d have to be stupid to believe anything that I say,” why didn’t the picture of him change? Why didn’t we start talking about him differently?
AC: And that’s the part that I find so frustrating. And I think that gets back to why I do what I do, and I’m glad you guys exist, too, is that there are some real problems with the way the news media has handled this, and they’re reflective of deeper issues.
They tend to privilege the right wing in a way that I think is ultimately destructive. And at the moment that he acknowledged that it was all an act, I think he should be treated accordingly.
And I was with you, because at the same time that that story happened, let’s not forget that Pizzagate was still fresh in the minds of so many of the Beltway media. Many of them used to frequent that pizza establishment in Washington, DC. Alex Jones was one of the big drivers of the Pizzagate conspiracy. It’s specifically the establishment that was targeted.
And so I thought, to your point, that when he made that argument and said that stuff, and it became so clear that that was his defense, that they would change their narrative, because it would be juxtaposed with the reality of the experience that just happened, but it didn’t.
And Tucker Carlson gets the same pass, right? I mean, Fox News won a lawsuit just two years ago, a little more than that, where their defense was no reasonable person would believe the things that Tucker Carlson says, and yet, the news media doesn’t talk about him any differently either.
And I think that this is part of the inertia that exists in the coverage. It’s not that I encourage them to debunk them all the time, but I do think that what they do is they have a very limited set of boxes that they can apply to individuals, and they very rarely change those.
You know, there are plenty of establishment individuals that get quoted, and they’re treated as “Christian” organizations or “conservative” when, in fact, they’re officially designated hate groups, right?
So it is a deep problem in the news media that they both don’t have the language, and when they do have the language, there’s still so much inertia and hesitancy, I think, in shifting their coverage. I think there’s a little bit of the right wing “working the refs” that ends up poisoning the coverage, too, that is a real problem.
JJ: I’m going to have to end it there, but we’re absolutely going to pick it up again.
We’ve been speaking with Angelo Carusone. He’s president of Media Matters. They’re online at MediaMatters.org. Angelo Carusone, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
