Don’t Buy Into Phony Anti-Establishment Schtick

I saw a rant from Mehdi Hasan the other day complaining that the way Elon Musk constantly says the media are corrupt and dishonest “has a massive effect not just on trust and polarization in society, but on election outcomes and political messaging.”

Hasan said that Musk, Trump and their ilk “have cynically created an unpenetrable [sic] bubble around their followers, primed them against a reality-based universe, [and] pre-emptively undermined any negative stories about themselves.”

Hasan is of course correct that the people who listen to Trump and Musk have largely been herded into fact-resistant echo chambers of cult-like loyalty, but it’s worth pointing out that Musk’s claims about the media are absolutely correct as well. The media are corrupt and untrustworthy, and do indeed promote lies and propaganda all the time. Just because Elon Musk says it doesn’t mean it’s false.

One great challenge of our time is that while it’s becoming common knowledge that western media is propaganda and western politics is a corrupt sham, fake solutions to these problems are being marketed to the mainstream by the same powers responsible for them. Donald Trump himself will tell you that the media are lying and the political establishment is run by swamp monsters, and then say that the solution is to support Republicans and trust right wing media. Elon Musk will go on Joe Rogan and say the same thing. In 2028 AOC will probably run for president campaigning on the Democratic Party version of the same faux-populist message, just as Bernie Sanders did.

This dynamic poses a major obstacle to those who yearn for real revolutionary change. It’s becoming increasingly necessary to not just stand against the status quo but against the fraudulent political factions which pretend to oppose it. It’s no longer enough to reject establishment politics and media, we also need to reject the fake anti-establishment politics and media which seek to herd a discontented populace away from meaningful revolutionary movements.

There are probably people reading this right now who’ve fallen into this very trap, who started reading my stuff because they see me opposing wars and criticizing the media and assume I support the same things they support, even as they throw their support behind a fraudulent political movement that’s ultimately designed to keep the wars going and make the mass media propaganda more effective. Last time Trump was president I’d always get his fuzzbrained empire simps trying to convince me their guy was ending the wars and fighting against the deep state, twisting themselves into all kinds of cognitive pretzels when I’d present them with hard evidence to the contrary.

It’s a challenge to push back against this new iteration of mass deception, but recognizing where it’s happening for yourself is fairly simple: just look at what they wind up telling you to support. If at the end of the day they wind up telling you to support Republicans or Democrats, or to support the “good kind” of Republicans or Democrats, or to support any other mainstream western political party, then they’re engaged in the exact sort of manipulation I’m describing here. They’re trying to corral you away from a real revolutionary political movement and back into the mainstream flock. Into one of the mainstream political parties which are explicitly designed to undermine all the revolutionary changes you seek.

As capitalism continues to decay and inequalities and injustices become more and more pronounced, public discontent with the status quo is naturally going to rise. Because they can’t end the political and economic systems the empire is built upon without collapsing it, the empire managers have instead devised ways to funnel that discontentment back into support for status quo politics. They don’t just control the opposition, they control the opposition to the controlled opposition.

The empire managers are always a few moves ahead of the masses. There is simply too much power riding on the continuation of the western empire for those in control to allow an authentic revolutionary movement to emerge which could rock the boat. So they give them fake, decoy revolutions to play with while the empire rolls on.

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/dont-buy-into-phony-anti-establishment