<img attachment="image.jpg" align="right" title="Dogs Fighting">Lately, I'm seeing a lot of otherwise solid news sources start sniping at each other for no other reason that they disagree on some issues---or agree on issues, but disagree on how to address them. It's really sad to see, but there it is. I know that this is how standard media works, but it's starting to bleed more and more into the world of my more esoteric newsfeeds. For example, Jeffrey St. Clair at CounterPunch will not stop sniping at Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, and Jimmy Dore as right-wing shills---even though there is no truth to this whatsoever. It's basically just purity tests: anyone who deviates too far from the orthodoxy---as established by the writer---is branded right-leaning, or right-adjacent, or "drifting rightward", or just "fascist. This has to stop. And, for the record: Chris Hedges is not right-leaning, or right-adjacent. That is so over-the-top ridiculous that David North of the WSWS should be absolutely ashamed of himself for even writing such a thing. And his newspaper should bar him from ever using Twitter again. And it's not just David North at that newspaper. The article <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/03/02/gvhy-m02.html" source="WSWS" author="Andre Damon">White House and US media revive the Wuhan lab lie</a> takes a non sequitur potshot at some of the only independent journalists left, <bq>The public advocacy by the FBI of the Wuhan lab lie has exposed individuals like journalist Glenn Greenwald, comedian Jimmy Dore, and journalists Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate of the Grayzone, who are orienting ever more openly to the fascistic right.</bq> What the fuck does that even mean? Why shoehorn this patently untrue disparagement in here? It's not a competition, numbnuts. I don't know that the FBI pretending to agree with these journalists (and one comedian) suddenly makes them fascists. I'm growing a bit tired of the WSWS screeching about fascists everywhere---sometimes suspiciously when their targets disagree with them on certain facts, while agreeing mostly on a lot of policy positions. It smacks more of online pissing contents---of Twitter bullshit bleeding over into the pages of the newspaper. I think Andre Damon and David North need to take a deep fucking breath and quit Twitter. It's turning them into morons. This is not to say that I haven't cringed at Max Blumenthal and Jimmy Dore at times (see <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=4390">Homo Ignoramicus</a>), but I've also seen them doing good work (see <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=4651">Max Blumenthal and Mnar Adley on Ukraine</a>). Dore has also done good interviews (see <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=4162">Boogaloo = Boogie Man</a>), although the cited interview made the WSWS fill its pants right up. If you read the linked article, then you'll see that it did: Eric London of the WSWS went out of his mind at Jimmy Dore <i>daring</i> to purport that he's a leftist while interviewing someone who the WSWS had deemed right-wing. If you listen to the interview, though, the guy doesn't sound very right-wing at all. He sounds ... kind leftist. <h>How it should be done</h> Some writers at the WSWS see fascists literally everywhere. It's a good newspaper with overall very high-quality reporting, but their opinion stuff is absolutely cringe-inducing, at times. The problem with the WSWS is that their approach is a complete dead end. You don't have to go all the way to meet people, but you have to be at least willing to meet them halfway---to <i>talk to them</i> and try to <i>convince them of your ideas</i>. How the fuck does the WSWS propose to build a movement when they're screeching at 90% of the populace about what useless bags of fascist shit they are? That's not how you win support. That's not how you build a movement. You don't have to convert to their ideas, you morons; you pretend to listen while <i>converting them to yours</i>. Trust me: I have a family whose politics are nothing like mine, but they love me, and I shame them into pretending to have my politics while I'm around. I bludgeon them with logic, counteracting their FOX News. I hope that I'm annoying enough that people end up carrying a mini-version of me in their heads---one that pipes up when they're lazily accepting some bullshit argument without evidence. It's really the only way. It's not easy and it takes practice, but I <i>despair</i> at the hard-line intolerance I see in like-minded people at places like the WSWS. David North is taking a run at <i>Chris Hedges for being a fascist</i>. What fucking planet is North even on? <h>Wrong on one issue == ... fascist</h> <bq>Particularly over the past year, Blumenthal and Mate have fully embraced the pandemic policy of the far right, promoting Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, leading authors of the Great Barrington Declaration,</bq> That makes them wrong on that issue, but not fascists, you indentitarian, nuance-free <i>Spassbremse</i>. <h>Professional Jealousy?</h> Although sometimes I feel that there are just a bunch of otherwise good writers and journalists who are simultaneously petty enough to carry grudges for decades, constantly dredging up somewhat minor details about their chosen enemies in order to try to convince their enemies that that person could <i>never</i> ever possibly be capable of having a good idea or of promoting an useful opinion or idea. The article <a href="https://yasha.substack.com/p/lots-of-twitter-files-and-no-politics" author="Yasha Levine" source="Immigrants as Weapons">Lots of Twitter Files and Nowhere to Go</a> provides such an example, where he takes a run at his former colleague Matt Taibbi (they'd worked together at least 25 years ago) by making a completely ludicrous argument about an action being useless because it not action led to immediate change. In this case, he declares the Twitter Files DOA, but then also throws Assange and Snowden under the bus for good measure. <bq>And even if there was some kind of coherent politics in the fight surrounding the Twitter Files, there’s still a bigger problem: More information doesn’t cause political change by itself — not if there isn’t a strong political organization that can turn this information into action and political empowerment. <b>Wikileaks — Julian Assange’s project to change the world by letting state secrets flow — was a great example of this failure. And so were Edward Snowden and his leaks.</b></bq> What a dumb thing to say. Assange and Snowden did change things: just so significantly that the author can't remember what it was like before we all knew that the U.S. government couldn't be trusted. The erosion of trust in the U.S. didn't happen by itself. It was pushed by people like Assange and Snowden. I think Levine is butthurt because he wrote an entire book about <i>Surveillance Valley</i> and no-one is citing him. In the same vein, Yasha still seems to be wicked butt-hurt over Matt's Substack doing much, much better than his own. Yasha generally comes off as butt-hurt these days. So, instead of acknowledging that some people seem to have managed to get at least some people to listen, he has to disparage everyone else's work in order to pretend that no-one could possibly garner attention for the issues that he'd reported on. This probably makes him feel better about himself---and, hey, whatever helps you sleep at night---but it's bullshit.