No Moral Equivalence Between the Tea Party and the ‘Resistance’
8 Feb 2017 by Joel B. Pollack
Mainstream media journalists have begun to justify the militancy, and violence, of the Democrats’ so-called “resistance” by referring to the Tea Party’s protests at town hall meetings and elsewhere in 2009-10.
But there is no parallel and no moral equivalence between a nonpartisan grass-roots opposition movement that wanted to broaden public debate, and a hyper-partisan “community organizer” campaign that rejects normal politics, aims to disrupt public debate and stifle free speech.
As I documented in my book Wacko Birds: The Fall (and Rise) of the Tea Party, the movement had its roots in opposition to President George W. Bush’s bailout of Wall Street, emerged in the wake of President Barack Obama’s disastrous “stimulus,” and became a potent political movement in opposition to Obamacare. President Obama had wanted his health care bill passed by the late summer of 2009, and sent Democratic members of Congress to their districts to explain a bill they had not read.
To many Americans, this was the third in a series of major pieces of legislation that was being forced down their throats with no real debate. They arrived at town hall meetings to ask questions — and, yes, to protest.
But the real disruption was on the other side, as Democrats organized activists to stifle public opposition. At one town hall in suburban Chicago, for example, left-wing activists conspired to block members of the public from asking questions — and were caught red-handed on video.
To the extent there was violence at the town hall meetings, it was almost always carried out against Tea Party members.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media vilified the Tea Party, playing up Democrats’ accusations that it was a racist organization. The worst of many examples of media misinformation was the false accusation that protesters at an anti-Obamacare rally on Capitol Hill had used the “N-word” against members of the Congressional Black Caucus — a claim for which no evidence was ever found.
Since the midterm sweep of 2010, Democrats have been looking for their own Tea Party — and the media have been eager to help, doting on the new “movements” with generous media coverage while covering up their violence and extremist rhetoric.
First there was Occupy Wall Street in 2011, then Black Lives Matter in 2014-16, and now the “Resistance” — a name hinting at the Hunger Games and ultimately at the Second World War, implying that our elected government is a totalitarian regime.
After Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) had to leave a town hall last week under police guard, and leftists rioted to stop Breitbart Tech editor Mio Yiannopoulos from speaking at UC Berkeley, Republican politicians, understandably, fear for their safety, as Politico’s Rachel Bade reports.
But Bade writes, erroneously: “Protesters have disrupted town halls and other public events, jeering and yelling at Republicans just as conservatives did to Democrats when they were writing the law eight years ago.”
There is no equivalence whatsoever. The Tea Party showed up at town halls to be heard; the “Resistance” is showing up to stop people from being heard. Moreover, they are doing so against a background of lies by the Democratic Party, which is sowing fear with defamatory e-mail campaigns warning supporters about a “white supremacist” presence in the White House, complete with the sort of “targeting” imagery the media belatedly complained about after the Tucson mass shooting in 2011.
There is a path back to political relevance, and perhaps political power, for the left. It is simple: find policies and messages that appeal to the sort of voters who once backed Obama but switched to Donald Trump last November.
Instead, Democrats and their “base” are feeding each other’s hysteria, talking about impeachment as the media openly imagine the assassination of the new president.
They are creating justifications for violence, which false comparisons to the Tea Party only reinforce.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/08/resistance-no-moral-equivalence-tea-party/
‘Liberal Answer to Breitbart News’ Loses CEO Before It Even Launches
8 Feb 2017 by Warner Todd Huston
The much ballyhooed “Breitbart of the left” planned by Clinton apologist David Brock lost its CEO before the site even launched, as investigative reporter David Sirota announced he is bowing out of the project.
After the disastrous 2016 election revealed that his Hilary Clinton cheerleading efforts were woefully ineffective, David Brock went back to liberal donors with his hand out — asking for even more cash to start a new website that he promised would become the left’s “answer to Breitbart News.”
Not long after his initial announcement, Brock proudly reported that he had hired investigative reporter David Sirota as the CEO of the new effort named True Blue Media.
Sirota was said to be preparing to quit his role as senior investigations editor at the International Business Times to lead Brock’s new Breitbart of the left. But now it appears those plans have fallen apart.
This week Sirota sent out an email to supporters and friends to “pass on some personal news” explaining that “circumstances of the job changed” and he is now taking a pass on the role as chief of the left’s answer to Breitbart.
“As you know, I was thrilled to initially accept the proposal to work with True Blue Media because I believe in nonpartisan accountability journalism,” Sirota said in his statement. “However, the circumstances of the job subsequently changed. True Blue Media does not right now have in hand the resources for the kind of independent, nonpartisan journalism I want to continue to do and that is needed to execute on the ambitious editorial strategy that we agreed on. Therefore, I have decided to turn down the job. I wish David Brock all the best.”
Sirota did not elaborate on exactly what had changed between the time he initially agreed to head up Brock’s news website and today’s decision to bail out of the project. But the statement hints to the possibility that Brock is not getting the funding he would need for the sort of fully staffed news organization Sirota had envisioned. Perhaps Sirota doesn’t want to be part of a mere propaganda effort and expected the resources to be able to sustain a serious news bureau.
The news comes on the heels of reports that many top liberal donors are getting tired of David Brock’s many failed efforts to “help” the liberal cause.
Early in January, for instance Clinton donor John Morgan complained, “Anybody who gives money to him is pissing down a rathole.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/08/liberal-answer-to-breitbart-news-loses-ceo-before-it-even-launches/
LEAKED DOCS: BROCK CONSPIRES WITH FACEBOOK, GOOGLE TO SHUT DOWN CONSERVATIVE MEDIA
Radical left launches scorched earth policy against free speech
Feb 8, 2017 by Jerome Corsi
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Hard-left political activist David Brock, founder of Media Matters – the father of “Fake News” – is working with co-conspirators Google and Facebook to implement a strategy designed to ban conservative and libertarian websites, including Infowars.com.
This is especially a problem given attempts being made by Eric Schmidt, the founder of the multinational conglomerate Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, to cozy up to the Trump administration.
On Dec. 14, 2016, Schmidt was included in a group of prominent tech industry executives that met with then President-elect Donald Trump in a much-publicized meeting.
On Jan. 17, 2017, Politico reported that Schmidt was sited at an unannounced visit to Trump Tower, where he lunched privately with Jared Kushner, Trump’s real estate magnate son-in-law married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka in 2009, who has emerged to be named a Senior Advisor to his father-in-law in the White House
In briefing book entitled “Media Matters, The Top Watchdog Against Fake News and Propaganda: Transforming the Media Landscape” (obtained by the Free Beacon) that Brock published privately in January to solicit donors, Brock asserts in the first sentence, “The onslaught of well-funded right-wing media brings with it significant challenges.”
This first sentence telegraphs that by creating and advancing the narrative of “Fake News,” Brock is trying to launch what the hard-left calls “a meme.”
That “meme” or theme is designed to discredit news media that dare publish conservative views differing from the hard-left news reported by CNN and MSNBC, as well as increasingly by the New York Times – the object of several recent President Trump tweet attacks.
On the first page, Brock targets Breitbart.com as having received “millions in funding from extremist billionaires close to the Trump administration,” while providing “a nexus point for the so-called alt-right (the newest branding for white nationalism, anti-Semitism, and misogyny) to exploit vulnerabilities through the media landscape.”
Note here that Brock is also creating a narrative – adding to the meme – that the “alt-right” (another term created by Brock and the hard-left to attack conservatives) are haters – characterized as “white nationalists, anti-Semites, and misogynists” – the new hate tags Brock and his co-conspirators on the hard-left intend to apply (along with the accusation of being “racists”) on any news agency that refuses to uncritically parrot a hard-left ideological interpretation of current events.
Brock leaves no doubt that Google and Facebook are his co-conspirators in advancing the “Fake News” meme against news organizations like Infowars.com. Consider Media Matter’s clearly articulated strategy that Brock lays out on page two of his briefing book:
“Over the next four years, Media Matters will focus on achieving the following outcomes:
“Serial misinformers and right-wing propagandists inhabiting everything from social media to the highest levels of government will be exposed.
“Internet and social media platforms, like Google and Facebook, will no longer uncritically and without consequence host and enrich fake news sites and propagandists.
“Toxic alt-right social media-fueled harassment campaigns that silence dissent and poison our national discourse will be punished and halted.” (Bold type in the original document)
Clearly, Brock intends to continue directing Media Matters as a hard-left attack machine with no respect for the First Amendment that will inevitably target news organizations like Infowars.com not only to shut Infowars.com down, but also to punish Alex Jones and all others associated with Infowars.com
On Nov. 14, 2016, six days after Donald J. Trump was elected president, the New York Times reported Google announced a policy that would ban websites “that peddle fake news” from using its online advertising service. Hours later, Facebook updated the language in its Facebook Audience Network policy amending the policy to specify that Facebook “will not display ads in sites that show misleading or legal content, to include fake news sites.”
On Jan. 25, 2007, Recode.com reported that Google, since declaring the policy against “fake news,” has banned 200 publishers from using its AdSense network, an ad placement service that automatically places text and display ads on participating sites based on audience characteristics. Recode further reported Google declined to provide a listing of the banned sites.
On Jan. 26, 2017, Lachan Markay reported in the Washington Free Beacon that Media Matters had launched a petition campaign during the 2016 presidential campaign aimed at pressuring Facebook into prohibiting “Fake News” website to accept Media Matters goal of getting Facebook to “adjust its model to stem the flow of damaging fake news from its platform pages.”
In his briefing book, Brock acknowledged that while Google was a relatively easy sale on “fake news,” Facebook was a much harder sale, with Mark Zuckerberg initially calling the notion that “fake news is a problem” is “crazy.”
So what did Media Matters do?
“In November, we launched a campaign pressuring Facebook to: 1) acknowledge the problem of the proliferation of fake news on Facebook and its consequences for our democracy and 2) commit to taking action to fix the problem.”
Brock reported that “as a result of our push for accountability,” Facebook was responsive to both requests.
http://www.infowars.com/leaked-docs-brock-conspires-with-facebook-google-to-shut-down-conservative-media/
Related
http://www.infowars.com/report-cnn-caught-handing-out-questions-at-cruz-sanders-debate/
http://www.infowars.com/drudge-republican-party-should-be-sued-for-fraud/
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