Posted on 02/19/2019 6:54:04 AM PST by servo1969
Why did the media fall so swiftly for the Jussie Smollett hoax right after falling for the Covington Catholic hoax? The easy answer is bias. And that might have even been the right answer a generation ago.
These days the media isn't biased. It's tribal.
Bias leads us to make mistakes. But the media wasn't making a mistake when it loudly broadcast false claims with plenty of red flags about Trump supporters wearing red hats. Just as the media wasn't making a mistake when it spread fake news about attacks on Muslim women by Trump supporters after the election. This wasn't an error due to prejudice, but an active effort to reinforce tribal prejudices.
The Covington Catholic story in particular was not newsworthy by any rational definition of the term. The media insisted on making it news because it perfectly encapsulated the tribal prejudices of its base of urban and suburban lefties by pitting anti-abortion kids in MAGA hats against saintly minorities.
There's another example of tribal hatred masquerading as news in the news now.
Prime Time Sports, a small sports memorabilia store in a Colorado Springs mall, announced that it was going out of business. Malls are emptying out across the country and there was no reason why the closing of a mall shop selling Cubs t-shirts and Patriots mini-helmets should have ended up in hundreds of papers around the country. But the reason why its closing ended up in major papers and news networks, including CNN. says a great deal about the malicious nature of political tribalism on the Left.
"A Colorado store that boycotted Nike after its Kaepernick ad will close," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gloated about the misfortune of a mall store 1,400 miles away.
"He stopped selling Nike products because of Colin Kaepernick," the Washington Post breathlessly reported. "Now his store is closing."
The fate of a 2,000 square foot hole in the wall placeholder in a dying mall had somehow become of crucial interest to the opinion-shapers and policymakers of the nation's capital. But when Kermit Gosnell, the abortion doctor suspected of hundreds of cases of infanticide, was on trial, the Post dismissed it as a "local crime" story. Those are the same tribal priorities that led the media to be outraged that Governor Northam wore blackface 34 years ago, but not that he now backed infanticide.
The headlines sum up why the national media found the closing of a mall shop so newsworthy. The owner had dared to buck the media's tribal message that Colin Kaepernick was a civil rights hero. Going out of business was his punishment. It was a story of just deserts. A moral lesson for America.
Stand up to our social justice mega-corps and we will destroy you. And then dance on your grave.
Stories of ordinary people punished for their political views have slowly become a staple of the media. These often focus on some random person caught on video in what can be spun as a politically incorrect moment during a confrontation, and then being followed around by the cameras as their lives are destroyed. The Covington Catholic case is the most famous of these types of tribal humiliation stories.
Their existence says everything about where the media, its parent leftist movement and America are.
In a liberal society, people from different tribes can agree to disagree because they recognize their mutual humanity. In a tribal society, the 'other' is less than human. Tribal narratives are about the superiority of 'our' people to 'their' people. Outrage at selective incidents is used to dehumanize the 'other' tribe, to call for violence against them, and then to urge their utter destruction.
Or, as New York Times columnist Sarah Jeong once tweeted, "#CancelWhitePeople".
Tribal superiority is reinforced through ritualistic acts of humiliation of the other side. Media stories like the one about a sports store in a failing mall going out of business 'count coup' on conservatives.
Once upon a time, America was a liberal society. And Americans were able to coexist together.
It's easy to see what we have lost by what we now have. A tribal society is governed by mysteries and absolutes. Morality is relative and contradictory. The only real absolute truth is the superiority of the group. Divisions between tribes are therefore absolute. Unity is possible only against a common enemy.
And so we've lost science and replaced it with scientism. Science was a set of techniques for testing the accuracy of answers. Scientism is the conviction that anything a politically correct PhD says about the entire planet or the universe must be believed with a religious fervor because it makes you a more moral person.
Religious tolerance and tolerance for all different ideas have also become casualties.
In a tribal society, the other tribe is evil because of its ancestry and beliefs. These two are intermingled, as they were in Nazi Germany or among the leftist exponents of 'white privilege'. Your tribe is superior because of its ancestry and beliefs. The enemy tribe is evil because of its race and its beliefs.
Racial tolerance has been replaced by racial tribalism. Coexistence is held to be a physical impossibility. The new racial theorems claim that 'whiteness' and 'blackness' are in perpetual conflict, and that racial justice can only come by recognizing this conflict and doing everything possible to destroy 'whiteness'.
There's nothing progressive about this narrow-minded tribalism. Instead the 'progressives' have destroyed what was once a liberal society while declaring that their tribal hatreds and prejudices, their intolerance and refusal to listen to other points of view, are justified by tribal outrage and grievance.
All other forms of morality and justice have been supplanted by the tribal representation of 'diversity'.
Tribal warfare begins with outrage, it escalates to raids and then to war. The media is already saturated with the tribal outrage of victimhood. The purpose of outrage is to declare something unacceptable. Media tribal outrage depicts almost any conservative views as unacceptable causes of tribal suffering. Every day, conservative views are responsible for the murder and oppression of minorities. Like Colin.
The next step in the tribal war is the raid. The raid is a brief skirmish that inflicts harm and humiliation on a tribal foe, demonstrating his weakness and the strength of the raiders. It raises the morale of the tribe, encouraging it to embark on a conflict, while weakening the morale of its targets to resist.
The media has been conducting these tribal raids for some time now. Over time the intentions behind them have become more explicit. Stories that reinforce the tribal conviction that conservatives are morally inferior give way to stories that seek to economically and even physically punish conservatives.
The journalists tweeting about Nick Sandmann of Covington Catholic and his "punchable face" were demonstrating that the ultimate purpose of tribal narratives about the evil of the 'other' in his MAGA cap is to escalate that outrage, demonstrations of inferiority and ritual humiliations into violence.
The deluge of disgust, contempt and hatred is a tide that can only wash up on one bloody shore.
Different tribes can coexist in a liberal society, they can separate in a federation whose divisions are governed by strict rules, or, hatred and anger will funnel them into an escalating tribal war.
The media is the voice of the leftist tribes reinforcing their identities, policing their boundaries and stirring up hatred, outrage and violence against the rest of the country. It lets no incident pass it by that it can use to stir up more tribal enmity, whether it is a boy in a red cap in Washington D.C. or a mall store closing in Colorado Springs. It has become the greatest enemy of a tolerant and open society.
I wonder when leftist “historians” will depict Confederates wearing MAGA hats.
I don’t know if tribal is the right concept. Does tribal describe Stalin’s control of Russia or Hitler’s control of Germany? This is a very modern phenomena, most fully detailed in fiction by Orwell and in non-fiction by Solzhenitsyn. It’s much more powerful than tribal. The author is right, however, when saying “bias” doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what’s going on here. I just have a problem with the idea of “tribal” being a fit description.
How about this “Frontline” interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBC-9k3y1ew
Abel and Ola Osunadairo must have been channeling Dave Chappelle before they attacked Smollett.
Journalists are no longer interested in being objective and reporting factual events. They’re interesting in being spin doctors pushing their own narrative.
Jussie Smollett hurts Gays, he hurts African-Americans, he hurts the USA, he hurts himself and his career is finished. He will become like Kathy Griffin, Jim Carrey and the USA biased media. These game s are over......folks. Trump will win big time in 2020.
Probably soon. In any case, if this kerfuffle cause ‘juicy’ to do something to himself——————watch out, because-—TRUMP!
Why did the media fall so swiftly for the Jussie Smollett hoax?
Why did the media fall for the Bush national guard memos?
Why did the media fall for the Duke Lacrosse rape story?
Why did the media fall for the UVA Rolling Stone rape story?
Why did the media fall for the Russian collusion election story?
These are the only major stories on the top of head.
These questions are asked all the time and yet they don’t seem to be learning.
Something just struck me two days ago while watching a documentary on a history channel.
All Native American land is always described as “sacred land”.
I wonder when leftist “historians” will depict Confederates wearing MAGA hats.
*********
It happened in Charlottesville in 2017 — the media and virtue signalers depicted everyone who went here just to protest statue removal as a violent white supremecist.
he hurts himself and his career is finished.
I don’t think that is true at all. Can you give me some evidence of someone on the left being held accountable?
Smollett is black and claims to be queer. His fame results from playing in a black genre TV series.
A black said to be queer will get work in that tiny genre
To Greenfield's credit, while he seems to get it, he has a wider, more general audience which forces him to use metaphors as code words to describe the situation.
Not those of us freed from the shackles of correct thinking, however. No, we're free to properly and correctly call the social conflict CW II. Conjecture as to "tribes" isn't necessary, which allows a more concise summation of "tactics".
That is, in all war time planning and execution, there are goals, objectives, strategies and tactics. The enemy controls a key asset in the form of its militarized information wing. Division and discord are no different from bombing targets and occupation plans when considered in total. The idea of a vanguard group to shock, surprise and soften a target is a very old concept.
Once viewed in this context, surprise, outrage or dismay (oh, I can't believe this is happening in America!) are unnecessary emotions. It's just the war, and the enemy is just utilizing and deploying some of its core assets.
BFD - in the end game, they are no match for actual action, with the end result being occupation and barred participation. A 'reconstruction' if you will.
What the hell is an indigenous elder? It’s like sanitation engineer for garbage man.
Old degenerate meth heads deserve respect from no one.
The media and the left are complicit in wanting to eliminate Whites (Christians), especially males. To do so, they have to generate hate. Since there is no reason to hate, the left makes up stories and promotes them.
The left is obsessed with their hatred for Whites. They are doing everything they can to eliminate Whites, after taking all their money.
Good analysis. Good post. Thanks.
I agree...he will get work from his nutcase pals and buddies...but...he will never amount to a hill of beans. What a dummy. And...he might end up in jail for being cute, committing a felony, but, as dumb as one person can get. brain dead dude, brain dead Media!!! LMAO!!!
You are right, and I would add a couple of other ingredients.
But first, having been a student of anthropology for more years than I care to say, the author is right about the tribal tendency to name itself by the word which means “the People” in their language, and to name their enemies “the bug-eaters” or some other pejorative, and the tribal outlook as us vs the world, and the tendencies in warfare to chip away at territorial boundaries, and to humiliate the opponents’ warriors when they capture them (all very valid and observable in ethnological studies).
Your mention of Solzhenitsyn is very valid. His observations, and those of Pasternak, show from their eye-witness perspectives the cruelty and illogic that comes about when ideology (a term owing its very existence to the advent and inveighing of Marxism) prevails over genuine ideas and ideals.
And then I would go one further: the present ideological divide has more to do with spiritual dynamics than anything else I can think of. The author’s use of the term “scientism” holds up one side of the divide, while a dual-ideal of Judaeo-Christian values and the US Constitution hold up the other. The two are in a death-struggle at the present time. The former is of the devil, the latter is of God, simply stated.
Nkechi Amare Diallo/Rachel Anne Doležal was fired at Eastern Washington University and removed by the Spokane City Council as Chair of the Police Ombudsman Commission. She was later charged with felony theft by welfare fraud and second degree perjury last year. She lied about her assets and was financially secure while she was receiving welfare and claiming to be broke.
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