By Thomas R. Eddlem
The regime media — that proportion of the media dedicated to preserving the Deep State’s warfare state, surveillance state and corporate welfare programs — is on the warpath against Tucker Carlson getting exclusive access to January 6 Capitol riot video. Yesterday, the professional scolds on CNN were tsk-tsking about the alleged danger to democracy precipitated by McCarthy’s action giving more people access to information on the riot:
“Let’s take a 30,000 foot view. I cover media; I cover tech. This is becoming a bigger trend. You have Elon Musk hand-picking journalists that he’s going to do these big doc dumps with so that they can set a narrative around what’s happening there. You have Kevin McCarthy doing the same thing at Fox. This is how you create this shock-and-awe factor so that you can recreate the narratives that you want. It’s the new tactic for people in power. So don’t expect this to go away. Moving forward, expect a lot of people in power to pick their favorite outlets and journalists and do these leaks.”
— Sara Fischer, CNN Media Analyst, March 7, 2023
I have to admit there’s an element of truth in saying people in power cherry-pick outlets that will act as stenographers for the regime. The regime reporters are experts in psychological projection:
But the reality is the mouthpieces of the regime only protest when documents are released with the idea that the American people would get more information, and the stewards of those documents are heterodox personalities like the great reporter Matt Taibbi or Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. When the New York Times and Washington Post anonymize and spread unsubstantiated claims by intelligence and government officials uncritically, thereby giving no real information to the public, there’s never a peep of protest about how that skews democracy. There’s never a self-reflection about why they were selected for special access to the regime’s opinion, or the price they must pay for that ongoing special access.
The complaint across the media the last few days has been that Tucker Carlson had given the American people more information, not that any of the footage was falsified. I should add that I have problems with Carlson’s reports on Jan. 6, which I think are one-sided in some respects. The media’s response was far worse than any charges I could levy against Carlson, however. They essentially argued:
The nerve of Kevin McCarthy allowing information outside the corral established by the bought-and-paid-for media gate-keepers!
The horror of Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi ripping off the veil obscuring FBI/ODNI social media censorship!
Back during the Cold War — the first Cold War, before we were supposed to hate Russia again — entire dictionaries were written to translate statements of Soviet officials into their real meanings.
Today, the regime has acquired a patois similar to the the old Soviet state leaders, though of a more tiresome, annoying wokist variety. In the wokist dialectic (to use the Marxist-Leninist term) employed by legacy media and leading establishment officials in government and finance, many words are said for an effect or for the labeling the heterodox rather than to be used as genuinely descriptive.
In a wokist world where using the article “the” is an “othering” microaggression, as in “the Ukraine” or “the Democrats” or “the Cherokee,” the wokist dialectic today doesn’t hesitate to “other” anyone outside of the Deep State orthodoxy. The regime doesn’t mind “othering”; that’s actually its specialty.
Thus, a “far rightist” is someone on the right who’s far from the regime narrative of war and surveillance. And a “far leftist” is someone on the left who’s far from the regime narrative of war and surveillance.
Rush Limbaugh used to quip that “a hate group is a group the left hates.” It wasn’t quite correct, because the Deep State regime encompasses both the official left, the neo-libs, and the official right, the neo-cons. The regime encompasses most of the Republican and Democratic Party leadership, along with — most importantly — the permanent bureaucracy in the executive branch of the federal government, which includes the surveillance state and the mass media it has a measure of control over. But let’s face it, a “hate group” is a group the regime hates.
The Anti-Defamation League provided a handy example of this just yesterday on Twitter, defining “classic anti-Semitic rhetoric” as expelling from government “warmongers, driving out globalists, casting out communists, and throwing off those who hate our country.”
I had fun with it on the party’s Twitter handle:
But there’s a whole world of words and phrases that can be given newer, more accurate meanings when they’re said by regime sycophants. For example:
“A dangerous concession to the enemies of democracy”: Giving the American people access to raw video footage of the January 6 riots.
“Giving intelligence to the enemy”: People like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, who give information to the American people.
AntiSemitism [the regular kind, not “classical”]: (1) Anyone who opposes foreign aid to Israel, Saudi Arabia or Egypt (2) Anyone who speaks favorably about Palestinian rights.
Russian propagandist: Any rando American who expresses an opinion against US involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian war or foreign aid to Ukraine.
Kremlintarian: A libertarian opposed to foreign aid to Ukraine.
CCP lover: Someone who opposes getting the United States militarily involved in a Chinese-Taiwanese war.
There’s lots more that could be written, but I don’t have the time to write the authoritative Deep State-English Dictionary compendium. And even though I don’t have that kind of time, there’s great benefit in thinking in terms of the wokist dialectic whenever you turn on the boob-tube, wander over to a legacy media website, or listen to a statement by anyone in a position of power in the federal government.
Thomas R. Eddlem is the outgoing chairman of the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts. And while he’s not running for re-election as chair, he is running again for State Committee, and would like to continue to remain Communications Director. He considers this column a job interview for the post.