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RE: When Even Conservatives Hated Capitalism
What the political parties support tends to seesaw throughout the decades. At the end of the day, what they do is always to try and get votes from people.
What the political parties support tends to seesaw throughout the decades. At the end of the day, what they do is always to try and get votes from people.
I agree with you 100%, but at least for this mini-series, I'm not interested in the position-staking of the political parties as such. You're absolutely correct that they are just amorally chasing votes. What I'm interested in here is how political ideologies have shifted over time and how that creates the conditions of possibility for conservatism to shift from anti-capitalist to pro-capitalist and then to veer hard right toward fascism.
I see. Very nice analysis. Where do you believe fake news plays a hand in this?
Depends on what you mean by "fake news." On the one hand, there's the literal fake news promulgated primarily by Russian troll farms prior to the 2016 election. It was referred to explicitly as fake news at the time. On the other hand, there's Donald Trump's appropriation of the phrase "fake news," which he busts out any time he encounters news he does not like. Then he has the gall to pretend he invented the phrase "fake news."
The former is clearly fake. The latter is merely biased. The reality is that all news media is and always has been biased (it's impossible to ever completely eliminate one's own bias)--only now, news corporations have realized they can lean into that bias harder and actually commodify their brand of information-sharing as a product. It's selling emotions rather than information, though.
Personally, I think the problem of commodified news (fake or biased) fits into the problem of mass production and consumption, as the Southern Agrarians (and also plenty of leftists then and since) identified. It sells well but hardly informs, it distracts and deflects, it divides rather than unifies.
I'll get into this more in the next entry or two.
I am very excited for this "series" of yours. If only more people knew about the biases and intended audiences of the media. It would make political debates more of an actual debate rather than just an argument or mudslinging.