I have never encountered the term "woke" without a significant portion of irony. When someone is described as "woke", it means that they are not "awake", but in fact blind to their own fallacies and prejudices, while calling someome else out on some issue.

@And Woke has been used non-ironically politically since at least the 1970s.

I just want to point put that Orwell most likely wasn't predicting anything in his books, the issues described therein already were a real thing, although he obviously exaggerated to make a point.

@TomášZato-ReinstateMonica I would instead say that he was extrapolating the trend that he perceived.

It's bizarre to me that this answer talks about "gatekeepers to the mass media" and then goes on to give examples of Trumpist slogans (setting aside that "there is no climate change" is, IMX, a misrepresentation of the actual position promoted; and setting aside that it was Trump's administration that implemented Operation Warp Speed in the first place). It's obvious that such gatekeepers - the prominent decision makers at social media companies; and the owners of the most prestigious news outlets like NYT/WaPo; and the heads of academia - overwhelmingly lean left.

@KarlKnechtel NYT/WaPo/CNN/MSNBC/etc lean heavily center-right, pro-capital, and neoliberal, and those who have most heavily, consistently, and thoroughly leveled criticisms at them are leftists. For example Chomsky, whose referenced book and documentary Manufacturing Consent is practically entirely focused on directly attacking these institutions. I would suggest checking them out, for example this clip where Chomsky makes many points I assume you would agree with. I don't think you know what "left" means if you think NYT/WaPo are "left"

The historical sense of "left" hardly matters any more. For our purposes, in an American context "left" means "tending to support the Democratic party" and "right" means "tending to support the Republican party". But if you insist on hewing to those terms (fair play; I am similarly particular about "liberal" and "conservative") - those sources are all extremely and in-lockstep anti-Trump. (Except perhaps on the rare occasions when he did vaguely pro-war things.)

They're also clearly opposed to the culture of the "red states". The nicest thing you're allowed to say about poor white people from the Appalachians is the kind of stuff that was in Hillbilly Elegy, and even that was controversial. This is a political culture that appears totally unable to understand why Hillary Clinton's "we're gonna put a lot of coal miners out of business" line in the 2016 campaign was perceived by so many as tone-deaf, or how the "basket of deplorables" rhetoric was parallel to Mitt Romney's "47%" line.

The point is, the slogans used as examples were universally mocked by the "gatekeepers of mass media", who constantly claim to stand against the "tidal wave of misinformation and fake news" (even as they, for example, lie about Rittenhouse supposedly carrying a gun across state lines, and edit video to paint a 5th-amendment-violating state ADA as a hero because something something white supremacy which wasn't even argued at trial). The examples are completely incongruous with the premise set up at the beginning.

@Kai "lean center right" lol is that your example of double speak and misinformation? MSNBC is HARD left. CNN is left. WaPo is left. What world are you in that hard left media platforms are "center right"? mediabiasfactcheck.com/msnbc allsides.com/news-source/cnn-media-bias allsides.com/news-source/washington-post-media-bias

@WernerCD unfortunately you are just demonstrating that you yourself have been conditioned by the extremely restricted range of discourse present in US media. Just because these corporate-owned outlets occupy the leftmost mainstream discourse in the US allowed in the Overton window does not make them left-wing. All of these outlets were extremely hostile to the Bernie Sanders campaign for example and heavily supported the centrist candidate Joe Biden, and Bernie is a moderate by e.g. European standards.

None of those outlets are hostile to things that leftists are interested in, e.g. class struggle, labor unionization, universal healthcare, prison abolition, attacking the carceral state, attacking the military-industrial complex, fighting US imperialism and militarism, ending poverty, abolition of borders and ending of nation-states, radical redistribution of wealth, reparations for descendants of slaves, mutual aid, actual bona fide critical race theory, etc. etc. These are things that a "leftist" might care about, and these are not things which you will find advocated for on those networks.

If you would like to see what "leftist" news can look like, the only semi-mainstream option would be Democracy Now!, which is entirely nonprofit.

@WernerCD I suspect you really don't know much of anything about what Marx wrote or what communism is about or its myriad manifestations and implementations the world over. The fact that you conflate communism, Marxism, and socialism shows you really don't know what these words refer to. But I'm talking about material reality. Just take universal healthcare, the UK has a government-run universal healthcare system, are they "commies/socialists/Marxists"? Leftists want universal healthcare, none of those stations you listed support it.

There are literal communist parties represented in some European parliaments. That is "hard left". The "hard left" in US mainstream media discourse is, at best, center-left, vaguely pro-social-progressive (supporting civil liberties like gay marriage for example), but never harshly attacking the status quo or promoting real material changes.

@KarlKnechtel I find your statement that the "historical sense of 'left' hardly matters any more". While it's true that the usage of the term left in US media discourse does align with its historical usage, that doesn't mean that the underlying ideas which the term used to describe have disappeared. Leftists (in your historical sense) very much exist and have all sorts of complex in-depth critiques of both Democrats and Republicans in the US, and about all the topics you listed. They have a much different view as to why Clinton lost and Trump won than is generally present in the mainstream

Certainly they exist (and in fact I usually enjoy their company). My point is that the terminology doesn't change the underlying argument. The post claims an intent to impugn one group, then gives examples that impugn a different group.

Arendt is not a good source twitlonger.com/show/n_1sb9tk7

I am inclined to partly agree with Karl. However one chooses to categorize the editorial position of major news outlets (center left, center right, far right, far left), they are politically very different from Trump. The examples from Trumpism (which could indeed accurately be characterized as fascist in nature) have little to do with the scope of opinions common in "mass media," which tends to be overwhelmingly against Trump and his philosophy.

@Kai I think you are mistaken about the scope of the opinions debated in major US media outlets today. Universal healthcare is the most obvious case: one can find dozens of editorial and columns in favor. A few examples.

As another example, there are many columns in these outlets dedicated to eliminating what some refer to as the carceral state, writ large. That might be cheating, so here are some that use the term explicitly: This and this, for instance.

Prison abolition? Mutual aid? Even outright abolishing borders? These ideas are no longer outside the realm of discussion in the very outlets you mentioned.

Or, in other words, a video from ten years ago about a documentary that was already twenty years old by someone who was reflecting on what they had seen of the media ecosystem over the last few decades is not the best reflection of the scope of discourse in modern media. As much as it annoys many on the right and, paradoxically, some on the left, and despite the rise of right-wing radicalism in the form of Trump, the center of gravity of US political thought has shifted left in many respects.

@Kai "I suspect" and I suspect you support those ideas because the failures "aren't real marxism". 100m+ dead and counting? Not real! fake. Just like the idea that American left is left. "none of those stations support UHC" lol the left in the US absolutely supports UHC - including those stations. Maybe you've heard of the ACA? It's the first step in that direction (Destroy the market so the government can save it - built on lies upon lies, of course). You say I don't know marxism because I won't ignore the failures of it... yet you show limited knowledge of the US spectrum...

@WernerCD - There appear to be many misconceptions in your arguments, such as the notion that the ACA is meant to "destroy the market so the government can save it." The US left is in fact at least somewhat left-wing to the extent that political complexities can be summed up in a binary scale (and based on my experience, may well have left the vaunted European left behind in many respects when it comes to anti-racism), but they are not closet Marxists as you seem to believe. Equating Soviet totalitarianism with Marxism is also somewhat incorrect.

@Kai Stop spreading lies. Just because someone isn't stupid enough to be Communist doesn't mean they're not left-wing.

@user76284 - Political orientation is not really a matter of intelligence, but rather about what people value morally. I know communists, capitalists, anarchists, and lamentably even the odd fascist, who are all quite intelligent. All of these systems can be made to "work" (for those who value what they provide and don't care for what they do not), so there is little to stop an intelligent person from supporting them.

@Obie2.0 Continuing to support a failed ideology like Communism that has repeatedly caused mass murder and mass starvation, after all the Communist experiments of the last century, is indeed an act of stupidity, whatever other qualities the adherent may possess.

@user76284 - Failed for whom? From the least charitable perspective, one can imagine that an intelligent communist does not care about mass murder or mass starvation, as long as other goals that they value (increased wealth equality, say) are quickly achieved. From a more charitable and arguably more realistic perspective, one might imagine that their model is less Soviet Russia and more Nepal. It would be naive to imagine that mass murder is an inevitable aspect of communism, though there are other problems that are. This is what I am saying: politics is about values far more than methods.

Bizarre answer: It is not antivaxxers making use of Newspeak that is contrary to reality, rather it is the anti-vax-critics which is predominantly the mass media who are skewing language to shut down critical discourse: I remember when they said "The vaccines are 100% safe, there is no way they can induce side effects." and here we are 1 year later with so much evidence to the contrary.

@csstudent - They are still 99.9% safe or more. That is more certainty than most people express when they say that something is definitely going to happen or is definitely the case.

@Obie2.0 "Failed for whom?" For the tens of millions of people who were killed by it. The Great Chinese Famine, the Soviet famine of 1932-33, Holodomor, the Kazakh famine of 1931-1933, the Cambodian Genocide, etc.

@Obie2.0 "It would be naive to imagine that mass murder is an inevitable aspect of communism." It would be naive to think otherwise given the history of Communism. Even East Germany engaged in mass murder as official policy.

@user76284 - And yet, you still have not disproven my argument. Even if one accepts that such events are an inevitable consequence of communism, which I do not, that would hardly illustrate that supporting communism was unintelligent, only that communists felt that mass deaths were an acceptable price to pay for a classless society. Fascism is most definitely inevitably destructive, for instance, but that does not make fascists stupid: they just don't much care for equality, personal freedom, or the well-being of the groups they loathe.

@Obie2.0 "Fascism is most definitely destructive" Are you willing to say the same for Communism? "fascists... just don't much care for equality, personal freedom, or the well-being of the groups they loathe" Are you willing to say the same for Communists? It's becoming increasingly clear that you're just trying to mask your sympathies for the destructive, mass-murdering ideology of Communism.

Yes, comrade, you have discovered me. I am in reality a communist. That is why I say that it has inevitable problems and that some communists might not care about deaths in the pursuit of their ideal society. Just as Karl Marx himself taught me! Now continue walking, citizen.

@Obie 2.0 You are missing the point: let it be 99.9999% even. The issue is how legitimate, intellectual and academic critics were and still are getting shut down and cancelled for simply voicing concerns. Also, I can likewise say 99.9% is still less certain than MSM made it seem like, and the side-effects are still more concerning than the MSM made and make it seem like. The virus also has 99+% survival rate yet MSM make it seem like it's much more dangerous. You see how easy it is to turn the tables? And how invalid this subjective "make it seem like"-line of argument is?

@Adamant Notice that you dodged the question. You clearly have sympathies for Communism.

@csstudent1418 Of course. I already admitted that I am a communist, comrade. There is no need to continue discussing the matter with the bourgeoisie.

@Adamant As expected.

@csstudent1418 Closer to 2% for unvaccinated people, rising to more than 20% in the oldest age groups. There were about 6000 deaths from the vaccine in the US, maximum, for a rate of less than 0.002%.

The two are not numerically comparable.

@Adamant Weak but funny baits. "The vaccine is literally as harnless as glucose." (That was actually said!!) Next thing you hear is it gets you myocarditis and lung embolia LOL, all the while anyone voicing concern was shut down as "conspiracy theorist". You know it too well, but keep ignoring the facts relating to the discussion at hand, i.e. Newspeak that is used to limit the range of critical discourse.

@csstudent1418 Glucose can be more dangerous than you might think, so I could imagine that using glucose has a 0.002% or lower chance of killing someone.

There are a lot of people with diabetic hyperglycemia, after all.

I imagine that some of those people could die from injecting glucose under the right circumstances.

@Adamant they aren't numerically comparable because you're comparing two different things. You are leaving out people who got vaxxed but still died. the odds of dying from the vaccine if you don't get it are, obvs, zero.

@davidsbro Considering that the assertion was that the vaccine is causing a non-trivial number of people to die, people who get the vaccine and die from other things are irrelevant.

Note that 6000 is a very generous estimate. A less generous one would point out that no more than a few dozen cases have been confirmed.