There is a reason Markos Moulitsas is not allowed on MSNBC but Pat Buchanan is.
This is from an amazing article on the corporatist astroturfing ingrained in our media and politics that I found on Alternet. It details current Chinese and Western Neo-Corporate paid astroturfed trolling online.
For his film (Astro)Turf Wars, Taki Oldham secretly recorded a training session organized by a rightwing libertarian group called American Majority. The trainer, Austin James, was instructing Tea Party members on how to "manipulate the medium". This is what he told them:
alternet.org
To find out more, go below the fold
Crossposted at The Progressive Electorate.com
. . . The trainer, Austin James, was instructing Tea Party members on how to "manipulate the medium". This is what he told them:
"Here’s what I do. I get on Amazon; I type in "Liberal Books". I go through and I say "one star, one star, one star". The flipside is you go to a conservative/ libertarian whatever, go to their products and give them five stars. ... This is where your kids get information: Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster. These are places where you can rate movies. So when you type in "Movies on Healthcare", I don’t want Michael Moore’s to come up, so I always give it bad ratings. I spend about 30 minutes a day, just click, click, click, click. ... If there’s a place to comment, a place to rate, a place to share information, you have to do it. That’s how you control the online dialogue and give our ideas a fighting chance."
Over 75% of the funding for American Majority, which hosted this training session, comes from the Sam Adams Alliance. In 2008, the year in which American Majority was founded, 88% of the alliance’s money came from a single donation, of $3.7m(13). A group which trains rightwing libertarians to distort online democratic processes, in other words, was set up with funding from a person or company with a very large wallet.
alternet.org
Bold text added by the diarist
Here is a full interview with Taki Oldham by Cenk Uygar of The Young Turks. It is a long video, so I will try to find a transcript for those who would be helped by having one.
Going back to my point above about Markos and that old lizard Pat Buchanan, there is a reason that Markos is no longer invited to the media circus and Pat will always get a hoop to jump through, it is because Pat will NEVER EVER call someone a corporatist and Markos will. Pat will never ever call a liar a liar like when Markos told Tom Tancredo what he can do with his 5 Vietnam deferments. Pat will always sell the corporate snake oil, even while he tells minorities their brains are too inferior to learn.
It almost seems like the Corporate Owned Media doesn't want to even discuss differing opinions. Deficit cuts are on the table. Job creation is not. Ending the war is NOT on the table, cutting social security is. When the only Republicans on tv are insane and the only Democrats on tv are moderate, republican leaning corporatists, something is very, very wrong. The game is rigged.
Liberals are shunned, conservatives and moderates are fawned over. The country inches right no matter who wins the elections.
Should this astroturfing surprise you? Of course it should not. Our entire media is astroturfed bullshit and corporate propaganda packaged as "The News". This should surprise no one. As people who are fighting against corporatism, greed and corruption, we should call it out every time we see it. Who is paying for their speech? Because if it is paid speech, it is NOT free.
The alternet piece where I found this article was printed under the title Are Right-Wing Libertarian Internet Trolls Getting Paid to Dumb Down Online Conversations?
Included in the article is this bit of information
The weapon used by both state and corporate players is a technique known as astroturfing. An astroturf campaign is one that mimics spontaneous grassroots mobilizations, but which has in reality been organized. Anyone writing a comment piece in Mandarin critical of the Chinese government, for example, is likely to be bombarded with abuse by people purporting to be ordinary citizens, upset by the slurs against their country.
But many of them aren’t upset: they are members of the 50 Cent Party, so-called because one Chinese government agency pays 5 mao (half a yuan) for every post its tame commenters write. Teams of these sock-puppets are hired by party leaders to drown out critical voices and derail intelligent debates.
To derail intelligent debate. That is the goal of the Corporatist. To derail intelligent debate and give more advantages to the rich. Everything else is just filler.
Or as Mel Brooks once wrote, "all you got to know is, everything is showbiz!"
While Wall Street sings "Heil myself!"
Peace and love to all.
You can follow me on Twitter @JesseLaGreca
