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#media

22 posts16 participants0 posts today

So, I'm just a lady who studies the horrors of fascism and right wing extermination campaigns, but is it a *good* idea to let nazi propagandists completely control the narrative surrounding a fascist government's rapidly expanding pogrom against a highly-vulnerable marginalized group?

truthout.org/articles/trumps-a

Trump’s Anti-Trans Orders Get Most Airtime on Fox News, Report Finds

"In President Donald Trump’s first month back in the White House, Fox News broadcasted more coverage of his anti-transgender executive orders than both MSNBC and CNN, according to a report by Media Matters for America — allowing the right-wing network to shape public discourse on trans people at a critical time for transgender rights.

“The shocking lack of coverage by more liberal media has allowed Fox News to push increasingly harmful narratives about transgender people,” LGBTQ legislative researcher Allison Chapman told Truthout.

In his first 31 days back in office, Trump signed a slew of anti-trans executive orders undermining the rights and protections of transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people. These policies sought to eradicate legal recognition of transgender identities, reinstate a ban on transgender people in the military, cut federal funding for hospitals providing gender-affirming care to trans people under the age of 19, withhold federal funds from schools that allow trans women to compete in women’s sports, and reverse diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives."

Folks, I'm getting pretty tired of explaining to incredulous cis-het people that the larger liberal establishment doesn't care if trans people live or die; the evidence, whether it's raw television broadcast data, a lack of organized protest to oppose anti-trans laws, or maggot collaborators like Gavin Newsome gleefully telling nazi propagandists they make some good points about trans rights, is literally all around you. As both an antifascist researcher and a target of the anti-trans pogrom, I can assure you that this is real and I'm not overreacting. When a government pursing fascist policies and using eliminationist rhetoric officially decrees that there are only two "biologically" determined "sexes" and thus trans people don't exist, they are following an eliminationist blueprint designed to make trans people not existing an enforced reality; if you want to know how that story ends, you should study the step by step process of isolating, de-personing, and demonizing Jewish people that Hitler and the Nazi Party used to justify, enable, and enact the Holocaust. Maybe you already realize this, maybe you know that the fascists aren't going to stop eliminating groups of people they don't like after they get done erasing the existence of trans people, maybe you even care about trans lives on a personal level; but your leaders don't, the opinion makers who control public discourse don't, and the politics being pursued by the larger liberal establishment in the face of an active anti-trans pogrom actually occurring as we speak, make that abundantly clear.

Or, maybe you don't care. Perhaps, like a lot of cis het people, you're not openly transphobic, but you find trans people somehow scandalous, distasteful, or disconcerting, and that's enough to buy your silence and keep you from speaking out against the silence of your leaders and media organizations. I don't know how to make folks who don't think my existence matters care about trans lives if telling them that refusing to speak out and fight back now, means their families, their children, will be next, isn't enough. What I can tell you is that avoiding the subject and hoping the nazis lose interest in erasing trans people from our society isn't going to work, and hasn't worked for anyone else trying to stop a fascist takeover in all of human history.

The fact is that Fox News (and every other fascist propaganda outlet in America) hasn't been pushing a moral panic about trans people (particularly trans women) while gleefully celebrating legal assaults on trans people's right to exist, for no reason; these fascists are dead serious about this, they want their base to be excited about this, and they're putting in the work every day to make sure public opinion continues to favor further marginalizing, punishing, and yes eventually eliminating, trans people. The fact that corporate media muppets and bougie Democrat political strategists can point me to polls showing that the fascists are moving the needle, and defending trans people is unpopular with suburban white voters who picked Trump anyway, doesn't prove their cowardice is justified, it just proves that the larger liberal establishment isn't working hard enough to oppose an anti-trans pogrom; and that, whether you want to believe it or not, puts everyone in danger - even you.

Fox News Channel
Truthout · Trump’s Anti-Trans Orders Get Most Airtime on Fox News, Report FindsThe lack of coverage from other networks has allowed Fox News to shape the narrative at a crucial time for trans rights.
Continued thread

Okay, so given Trump's move to undo pardons granted by outgoing US President Joe Biden so he can target DoJ officials who prosecuted him for real crimes he actually committed, and the above-mentioned pattern of Trump's aggrieved fascist ranting transmuting into official, state-recognized reality, while serving to justify oppressive action by the regime, what are we to make of Trump declaring that media outlets that report on him critically, including named organizations MSNBC and CNN, are "illegal" during that same speech at the US Department of Justice? Well, I think for starters it's safe to assume that none of this means *anything* good.

huffpost.com/entry/donald-trum

Donald Trump Claims MSNBC And CNN Are ‘Illegal’ In DOJ Speech

"The president gave a speech Friday at the Justice Department railing against news outlets he says have unfairly targeted him.

Trump singled out CNN and MSNBC, which he called “MSNDC,” claiming those outlets “literally write 97.6% bad about me” and are “political arms of the Democrat Party.”

He added, “In my opinion, they’re really corrupt and they’re illegal, what they do is illegal.”

Trump then argued that media organizations that report negative things about him “are really no different than a highly paid political operative,” insisting, “it has to stop, it has to be illegal” because “it’s influencing judges and it’s really, eh, changing law, and it just cannot be legal.”

He additionally claimed that news outlets cover him negatively “in total coordination with each other.”

Whether they're playing it cool on purpose, or not, this story is once again mostly being reported in corporate media as an extension of Trump's longstanding grievances with anything he perceives as critical media coverage and the outlets that produce it; although boutique "progressive" websites and nonprofit media have been a little quicker to realize why this isn't just "Trump being Trump" anymore and how dangerous it is to assume our new American Mussolini lacks purpose in his actions here.

Frankly, I don't think it's an accident that in the very same speech Trump previewed loyalty investigations into Justice Department officials, and attempted to usurp the power of his Attorney General by declaring himself the country's "chief law enforcement officer," he declared liberal establishment media an active political arm of the opposition party, and accused them of both actively conspiring against him, and engaging in criminal activity. What does it mean when the "chief law enforcement officer" declares media critical of him "corrupt" and "illegal?" And how much more ominous is that meaning when its set against the backdrop of a US president celebrating his election as a victory against (what is now) his own Justice Department, while promising what sure sounds like legal investigations into DoJ lawyers and officials that dared to bring charges against him?

The obviously implication here is that Trump thinks the DoJ should target and prosecute media outlets that are critical of him, he has the right to order the department to do so because he's running the DoJ, and anyone who opposes that activity is likely to find themselves purged from the department at a minimum, and quite possibly prosecuted themselves. What many of the corporate media outlets likely to be targeted by Trump's assault on free speech rights and critical media coverage have passed off as a vengeful old man "playing the hits" is actually a fully formed operation to seize control of the American legal apparatus or at least the prosecution portion of it, redefine what is a crime, manufacture consent to target his enemies with the US Department of Justice, and threaten to punish or dispose of anyone who dares to get in his way over a silly little thing like "the law." Trump may have delivered it like a drunk racist grandpa, but his speech is clearly a calculated attempt by the president to drastically expand his own powers, and prosecute his fascist agenda - whether he's doing it for revenge or not (he is), is ultimately the *least* important factor here.

This then dovetails into the methods by which Trump is actually attempting to accomplish this fascist, anti-free speech bullshit; specifically the larger narrative of unreality the Trump regime is constructing day by day. Trump is working to equate critical media with his political opposition, his political opposition with protestors, and protestors with terrorists, while his larger regime takes actions against that opposition as if what Trump is suggesting here were already indisputable truth. I hate to keep bringing up literally Hitler, the Nazi Party, and the German Enabling Act of 1933, but students of history will gladly tell you that Hitler's playbook for transforming Germany into a autocratic one-party dictatorship looks an awful lot like exactly what Trump is doing here.

HuffPost · Donald Trump Claims MSNBC And CNN Are ‘Illegal’ In DOJ SpeechBy David Moye
Replied in thread

"Rather than denounce the clear and present dangers to our country, many business, religious, media, and other elites continue to support Trump and Musk. Some do this by staying silent, while others follow hollowed-out GOP politicians and Christian nationalist charlatans in claiming that the smash-and-plunder operation masquerading as a government is 'saving the nation.'”

#Musk #Trump #authoritarianism #economy #EconomicElites #billionaires #TaxCuts #media #ChristianNationalism
/3

Mass layoffs have begun at Voice of America (VOA), the U.S.'s government-funded media network. The move came after Trump signed an executive order to effectively eliminate the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which supervises VOA, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and six other federal agencies. Here's more from Al Jazeera. At the second link, find a @CNN story about how the news of VOA's dismantling has been received in China.

flip.it/Bk5AXl

flip.it/Lw_1Eg

Al Jazeera · Trump administration starts mass layoffs at media outlet Voice of AmericaBy Al Jazeera
Continued thread

See #Trump’s executive order to eliminate “non-statutory components & functions” of the following entities “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law”:
•Federal #Mediation/Conciliation Service
• US Agency for Global #Media
• Woodrow Wilson Int’l Center for Scholars inthe #Smithsonian Institution
• Institute of #Museum & #Library Svces
• US Interagency Council on #Homelessness
• Community Devel Financial Institutions Fund
#Minority Business Devel Agency whitehouse.gov/presidential-ac /2

The White House · Continuing the Reduction of the Federal BureaucracyBy the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.  Purpose. 
Replied in thread

The move follows #Trump signing an #ExecutiveOrder on Friday instructing #USAGM & six other little-known agencies to reduce their operations to the bare minimum mandated by the law, saying it was necessary to *shrink bureaucracy* [stop informing the public].

Trump, who clashed w/the #VoiceOfAmerica during his 1st term, picked fmr news anchor #KariLake to be its director for his 2nd term. Lake, a staunch Trump ally, has often accused *mainstream* #media of harboring anti-Trump bias.

Continued thread

Multiple workers at #VoiceOfAmerica, an international #media broadcaster that operates in >40 languages, shared w/Reuters an email that placed them on administrative leave w/full pay & benefits "until otherwise notified."

The emails, sent by a HR executive at the #US Agency for Global Media, the #VOA's parent agency, instructed them not to enter their work premises or access internal systems.

One of my favorite, indie, #scifi short films!

'Who Among Us' is set in a near-future in which a Japanese game show has contestants from across the globe try to determine who among them is an android.

The twist: the android believes it is human.

The prize? $500 million

Watch this fascinating short film with interesting commentary on the human condition:

youtube.com/watch?v=MRtwIvUQ48

Replied in thread

Finally, our team had a wonderful time at #SXSW on Sunday and Monday, where Flipboard and @surf hosted the first #FediverseHouse. Our CEO @mike and the whole team are 100% #TeamFediverse, and were thrilled to meet and talk to so many other open social web advocates. Here’s a feature by @Markoff for @newyorktimes, where Mike, @Gargron and @reckless1280 discuss the rise of decentralized social media, and how it can help publishers and media companies survive and thrive.

nytimes.com/2025/03/06/technol

Mike McCue, the chief executive of Flipboard, sees its new Surf browser as a tool to help internet users communicate without relying on a single centralized service.
The New York Times · Facing the Looming Threat of A.I., Publishers Turn to Decentralized PlatformsBy John Markoff

News continues to flow at breakneck speed and independent newsrooms continue to reveal and analyze what’s happening around the world. Highlights for us this week were @ProPublica's exposé on DOGE’s potential impact on social security, @KnowableMag's explainer on pregnancy at altitude, and a lovely interview by @thecontinent of the beloved Ethiopian singer Mahmoud Ahmed. Please check out these stories and all the others in this thread, comment, like, follow their accounts and give them your money. ⤵️

Replied in thread

UPDATE: Musk attacks Musk Watch
muskwatch.com/p/update-musk-at

"the Musk Watch #DOGE Tracker... authoritatively demonstrated that #ElonMusk had been grossly overstating the cuts implemented by DOGE...

#Musk offered no actual critique of the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker's methodology...

Musk Watch is a four-person team, but we can rock the boat of the wealthiest and most powerful man in the world."