The current political trend in western countries has been described by the mainstream media, and the political establishment as a 'racist movement', a 'fascist movement', etc, (or at least, it has been implied). But just because racists support a movement, does not make it a 'racist movement'. What are these movements actually about?
What if all this is actually an anti-neoliberal, anti-globalist uprising? Has inequality become too great? Are people just fed up being treated like a 'commodity' by faceless corporations, paying them stagnant wages, primarily caring about profits for shareholders? Are people fed up with having to rely on zero-hour contracts to provide for their families? Are they fed up with a lack of good education and opportunities, for all? Are they fed up with government cuts taking any sense of community away from them? Are they fed up seeing our governments intervene militarily abroad at huge expense whilst doing nothing about rising homelessness and poverty back home? Are they fed up with having more and more, dare I say it, immigration, 'forced upon them'? In an ideal world, I would love everyone to embrace immigration and multiculturalism, but whilst so many are struggling to get by, it is unrealistic. (And being anti-mass migration is not racist).
Yes, there ARE racists in these movements; racists have always existed and will always be attracted to any remotely nationalist movement. There is also a lot of 'xenophobia', but as I say, it should not be surprising, given the circumstances that a lot of people live under (low pay, few opportunities), that hostility towards 'outsiders' will fester. Thus, a degree of nationalism is understandable, and only a result of decades of poor government policy.
It makes perfect sense for the 'establishment' and for the media (aka corporations) to wish to smear these movements; they want to keep the status quo, for financial reasons, and to please their middle class, liberal readers. The people who support them are shunned, insulted, patronised, and generalised; everyone MUST be on board with the free-market, corporate, globalist agenda; anyone who isn't, is on the road to Nazism.
(Conservative tabloid media hasn't done this so much. Rather, it was the constant and sensationalised coverage of immigration, in newspapers like the Daily Mail, that encouraged the nationalist sentiment).
In my opinion, it is partly as a result of these movements that we now have this 'fake news' agenda, being pushed heavily by the political establishment and media. They're either being purposely deceitful, or they actually genuinely believe, that ONLY Trump and Brexit voters were looking at 'fake news'. There's simply no other explanation as to how these events could have come to pass; Brexit/Trump voters are all idiots and can't decipher real and fake. It's not like there was any 'fake news' from the EU Remain campaign is it? I'm pretty sure we're meant to be in a recession by now...
Interestingly, tabloids like the Daily Mail (and conservative news like FOX, in USA) are not pushing the 'fake news' agenda as much. I'm sure it's probably cynical, but it's interesting, given that the DM were/are one of the only newspapers on the side of the 'nationalists'; it supports my argument that this agenda is only being targeted at them.
Personally, I'm yet to come across any actual 'fake news'. I think it's existence is being purposely exaggerated by the liberal media and politicians. If Remain had won the EU vote, and if Hillary had won the US election, would anyone be talking about 'fake news' right now? The liberal establishment lost and they need a scapegoat; Anything to avoid looking at the ACTUAL reason for this swing against them. If I were a Brexit voter (or a Trump voter), I'd be offended by the insinuation that 'we' are the only believers of 'fake news'.
All news is biased, to varying degrees, but little is 100% false. Yes, there are some sites that tell complete lies, but they have been around for a long time. There's nothing new here. Shouldn't we be encouraging people to use critical thinking and to research everything they read, rather than censoring? And yes, a lot of news outlets are creative with the truth, but if we're going to start closing all of them down, we will also need to close down much of the mainstream media, who are often very 'creative'.
The hypocrisy of the mainstream press (and politicians) demanding an end to this so-called 'fake news' is laughable. As seen during the EU referendum campaign, the media propaganda and bias in the UK is immense. Also just look at the biased and excitable coverage of our disastrous, imperialistic, neoconservative 'regime change' wars in the Middle East, or the way Jeremy Corbyn (and Bernie Sanders) have been treated with such contempt, or the way the west's arms sales to Daesh supporting and Yemen bombing Saudi Arabia is barely reported, or the way the current NHS crisis is being ignored by some. THIS is 'fake news'. I've spent the last month trying to understand what's been going on in Syria, having seen through so much misinformation and biased reporting on the day of east Aleppo's liberation; I've had to rely almost entirely on independent news sources in order to find some kind of 'truth'.
The liberal establishment and media are threatened, and this 'fake news' agenda is an attempt to distract from the realities of these anti-establishment movements; to take back the readers being lost to these 'fringe' sites; and to regain the control that the internet is taking from them. Anybody who goes against the mainstream is a 'conspiracy theorist' and any news not reported by a 'reputable news organisation' will soon be labelled fake. Facebook are already hiding certain articles from timelines, and Youtube (Google) are now demonetising some videos that go against mainstream opinion.
'Fact check' websites will be used more and more by these 'reputable news organisations', but these too will have a bias. Politifact, for example, is seen as having a left-wing/liberal bias. Plus Facebook's new 'fact check' system is funded by Democrat donors.
Will these 'fact checking' websites be checking the mainstream (liberal) media, or just independent news, and statements by politicians?
We now have a situation where much of the mainstream media, a lot of which is owned by just a few very wealthy men, (some of whom often collude with politicians), and most of which are politically aligned to neoliberalism, is trying to take back full authority on news publishing; AND we have the reality that western governments have gradually been bringing in tighter controls on civil liberties, (they can now monitor pretty much everything we do online), supposedly purely to prevent (western created) terrorism, but it will also conveniently allow them to more easily handle any possible 'nationalist' (anti-capitalism/neoliberalism) uprising.
If you're concerned about fascism, perhaps you should be focusing your concern elsewhere...
(Edit: ITV have reported that the government are now considering setting up a committee for looking into 'fake news'. This is turning into full-on government censorship).
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