“The American Left has relied on its mastery of the media,” writes Thomas Lifson, “enthusiastically aided and abetted by the 90% of national political journalists today that are progressives of one stripe or another – for its political power for decades.”
Yet what has the American Right done in response? Not nearly enough. Here is Lifson writing at American Thinker:
A reader strolling down the street in Chicago spotted a recruiting poster for “Activist Jobs,” a bit of an oxymoron. “Activism” by implication is volunteer work undertaken because the goal sought by the acts in question is so important to the “activist.” Goal-oriented acts that are compensated are called “work,” not “activism.” But in the photograph below, the two different categories of endeavor are conflated:
The confusion is deliberate and speaks to a larger strategy of the Left, also based on deception.
The American Left has relied on its mastery of the media – enthusiastically aided and abetted by the 90% of national political journalists today that are progressives of one stripe or another – for its political power for decades. Ever since the 1950s, the left has been deliberately creating events in order to attract media attention that pushes a narrative confirming the justice of their demands. It learned that the new medium of television was perfect for creating artificial dramas that would sway support its way.
The Civil Rights Movement was the first to discover this video dramaturgical approach to politics, when racist politicians in the South (every one of them a Democrat, a fact that has been consigned to Orwell’s Memory Hole) brutalized black demonstrators asking for the right to eat at a lunch counter next to whites, or other perfectly just demands. Television audiences worldwide grasped who the villains and heroes were, and the struggle was won once the narrative took hold among Americans. Inevitably, defenders of the old order were marginalized, looking horrible.
In the case of the civil rights struggle, justice triumphed from the activism, as this powerful new weapon was exploited. But the media lesson was learned principally on the Left, as conservatives, and Republicans especially, generally are inept (at best) in managing appearances, which is why the title “Stupid Party” has more than a little justification.
Read more: American Thinker
Image credit: Werner Buol / American Thinker.