Media Influence

Neal Gabler on Creating the Perception of Value

/91 Comments/in /by

Neal Gabler is the author of An Empire of the Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, an essential text on Jewish domination of Hollywood. Now he sees Hollywood ‘s image factory spreading out over the entire culture (“Hollywood’s Perception of Value Versus Real Value: America emulates movieland’s way of measuring the worth of things, which teaches us to place the perception of value over value itself“; LATimes, Oct. 21, 2012).

We have become obsessed with measurable worth. Movie grosses, TV ratings, salaries, lists of the most powerful are all ways that a society sets a valuation on things — the perception of value as opposed to value itself. Another way to think of it is that valuation is to value what popularity is to being the best. …

 Hollywood, by inundating us with all these rankings and by reinforcing this tendency in the culture, has done such a good job of promoting valuation at the expense of value that we now live in a valuation society where valuation subordinates nearly everything else.

One might even say that America has been remade in Hollywood’s image, not so much because it emulates movie glamour or behavior or language but because it emulates Hollywood’s way of measuring the worth of things and teaches us to place the perception of value over value itself. Hollywood success is the new American paradigm.

Gabler has an interesting list of other areas where this phenomenon can be seen: Higher education , the art world (definitely a no brainer; he mentions the execrable Damien Hirst), and the financial industry (inflated valuations based on image [Facebook; one might also mention the tech bubble of the late 90s). Of course advertising lives on image creation.  Read more

Johan Galtung on Jews

/494 Comments/in , , , , /by

Johan Galtung

Johan Galtung is a prominent Norwegian academic, the founder of the field of peace studies and author of more than 100 books and more than 1000 scholarly papers. He has also been officially labeled an anti-Semite as a result of recent statements, at least some of which are sensible.

Galtung believes that historical anti-Semitism is based at least partly on Jewish behavior: On the rise of anti-Jewish attitudes in Germany during the 1920s,  he says that it was “not unproblematic that Jews had key niches in a society humiliated by defeat at Versailles.”

He distinguishes between predicting anti-Jewish behavior and justifying it: “In no way, absolutely no way, does this justify the atrocities. But it created anti-Semitism that could have been predicted.” In the same way, he argues that medieval pogroms were motivated by the role of Jews in usury: “The Jews played a role in demanding payment from indebted peasants.”

This of course violates the dogma that all anti-Jewish attitudes and behavior are completely irrational—the result of things like Christian religious ideology or individual psychopathology—rather than reality-based conflicts of interest. In the modern world, Galtung claims that “the Jews control U.S. media, and divert for the sake of Israel.”

“Six Jewish companies control 96% of the media,” wrote Galtung. He included the names of journalists, publishers, TV networks, and movie studios, that he claims are controlled by Jews. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch was also included on the list. “He’s not Jewish, but many of the people under him are,” wrote Galtung, in reference to Murdoch. “Many of them are fanatically pro-Israel,” he pointed out. Immediately following these claims, Galtung wrote that “seventy percent of the professors at the 20 most important American universities are Jewish.” Galtung bases his doctrine on an article written by William Luther Pierce, founder of the “National Alliance,” a white supremacist organization.

In a later article defending his position, Galtung provides some great quotes, as from Ruth Wisse of Harvard: “to young Jewish journalists, that they should not ‘see themselves as seekers after wisdom and truth, but as part of the Israeli Defense Forces’ (13/02/12).”

The  issue of the loyalty of American Jews is a canard?? Read more

Israeli anti-immigrant riots: Ignored by the organized Jewish community and the mainstream Western media

/94 Comments/in , , /by

Haaretz caption: Israelis protest against African migrant workers in South Tel Aviv

Peter Beinart has become a thorn in the side of the organized Jewish community, this time pointing out  that the same Jewish organizations  (the ADL, the American Jewish Committee, AIPAC, and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations) that are quick to condemn anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe and the US have not mentioned the recent riots in Tel Aviv in which Jews attacked African immigrants. This video captures some of the  intense passions aroused in this situation.

 

This is yet another example of moral particularism by the Jewish community. While forever taking advantage of the Western tendencies to moral universalism, Jewish organizations simply pursue what’s best for Jews. There’s a strong conceptual link between this behavior and the behavior noted in Andrew Joyce’s excellent series on the 19th-century Russian “pogroms” where Jewish organizations actively engaged in deception on the form and scale of anti-Jewish behavior.

Read more

Policing the Media: National Review Fires John Derbyshire

/194 Comments/in , /by

Peter Brimelow has a wonderful article at VDARE.com, mentioning John Derbyshire’s firing from National Review and noting that

in the last few years, an astonishingly long list of MSM journalists have been eliminated because they challenge, or are thought to be about to challenge, the MSM’s Leftwing consensus—for example, Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan. Even Rush Limbaugh has come under attack.   (“Help VDARE.com Save Immigration Patriots From Living In “A State Of Constant Fear”!”)

Brimelow might have added  Rick Sanchez, Helen Thomas, and now M. J. Rosenberg. Yes, Alan Dershowitz and the rest of the organized Jewish community (including the ADL, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and “major Jewish leaders”) are rejoicing that Media Matters “separated itself” from Rosenberg, who was fond of calling the Israel Lobby “Israel Firsters.”

One can only imagine the pressure put on Media Matters, their contacts in the White House, and on Jewish donors like Penny Pritzker who are the backbone of funding for both the Democrats and Media Matters. For Media Matters, what goes around comes around: They have been influential in getting rid of people like Glenn Beck removed from Fox News by pressuring advertizers, but they cannot withstand the financial fallout of a campaign by Dershowitz to get rid of one of their own staffers for political reasons.

But the big recent story is Derbyshire, an articulate race realist. His critics on the left and among mainstream conservatives are horrified at what Derbyshire wrote, but routinely fail to rebut his ideas. Would even the most benighted liberals want their kids to violate Derbyshire’s rules on “statistical common sense”? I thought of Derbyshire when I read “Report shows widening gap between Ethiopian pupils and other Israelis.” We can expect to find similar stories in the U.S., on the children of Ethiopian immigrants, along with stories on how the schools are failing them.

I’d love to post Derbyshire’s race-realist stuff at TOO, but he’s not likely to want to publish here because we deal with Jewish issues. Race realism doesn’t imply realism when it comes to Jewish issues. I guess being a philosemite does not necessarily protect one from the forces of evil. Indeed, even being Jewish is no protection. As Alex Kurtagic notes, Robert Weissberg was quickly removed as a National Review contributor when it was found out that he had recently given a talk at the AmRen convention. Read more

The Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Affair: Previewed by Hollywood

/152 Comments/in , , , /by

Well, I’m waiting. I’m waiting for something to wake up White people all over the world, especially in America. I’ve thought before there was enough out there to do the job, but people’s survival instincts have yet to kick in. And now we have the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman affair.

I really thought this anti-White media propaganda campaign was a no-brainer, but my brother surprised me by piping up about how terrible it was that a White guy had shot this innocent black boy in cold blood. In other words, my brother had swallowed the media line hook, line and sinker.

What is so discouraging about this is that I’ve kept him informed over the years about racial realism and the real state of crime in America. Further, I’ve situated it in the context of a “culture of critique” explanation showing how ethnic warfare on Whites is being carried out in education, the government, courts, and most explicitly in the mass media. Read more

Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman: Reaffirming the Anti-White Religion

/371 Comments/in , , , /by

Recent photo of Trayvon Martin tweeting as No_Limit_Nigga

Trayvon Martin as usually depicted in the media

You have to be living under a rock not to notice the deluge of media coverage of the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman affair. The accounts I have seen inevitably emphasize Blacks as victims and implicitly at least, the message reaffirms the narrative of Blacks as innocent victims of Whites. This of course flies in the face of data on crime showing that Blacks are much more likely to victimize Whites than the reverse, with the media bending over backwards to prevent any indication that race was a factor. I don’t recall any national media outrage recently when two Black teenagers set fire to a White teenager after dousing him with gasoline, even though they said they did it because he was a “white boy.” This happened only a few weeks ago. Rather than the wall-to-wall coverage seen in the Trayvon Martin case, there was only a brief and fleeting mention in the New York Daily News and no mention at all in the prestigious national media. It doesn’t fit the narrative that the media feasts on and promotes. No angst from Obama; no Justice Department investigation of a possible hate crime.

Indeed, it’s quite common for the media not to identify the race of non-White perpetrators. And somehow Mr. Zimmerman’s Latino background also slips into irrelevance.

Also virtually unmentioned is that Martin and Zimmerman were fighting, with at least one witness emphasizing that Martin had the upper hand just before the fatal shot. Although Zimmerman seems to have been overzealous in his scrutiny of possible criminals in his community, he may indeed have been “standing his ground” once the encounter escalated into violence. Indeed, the Orlando Sentinel reports that the police are sticking with the version that Martin was the aggressor.

Police sources say Martin was the aggressor on Feb. 26, knocking Zimmerman to the ground with a single punch and then climbing on top of the 28-year-old neighborhood watch captain and slamming the back of his head into the ground. Police say this account, given by Zimmerman, is supported by eyewitnesses, according to the Sentinel’s report.

One such witness reportedly told police that he saw Martin on top of Zimmerman, striking the man, while Zimmerman cried out for help. The attack left Zimmerman bloodied, police sources told the Sentinel, and led him to fire at Martin in self-defense.

Police say Zimmerman was bleeding from the nose, had a fat lip and confirm that the back of his head was cut. He received first aid at the scene but refused to go to the hospital and received medical treatment the following day, according to the Sentinel’s sources. (see “Trayvon Martin case: Martin was the aggressor, police sources say.“

The above report also indicates that Martin was suspended from school because he was found with an empty baggie for marijuana, a violation of  the school’s zero tolerance for drugs policy. Read more

A Closer Look at What Happened to Pat Buchanan: Part II

/87 Comments/in , /by

Rachel Maddow: Trying not to cry during interview with Pat Buchanan

Criticism of Zionist Projects Not a Problem at MSNBC

Having found defenders on the left, Buchanan started working for MSNBC in July 2002, the ADL’s disapproval notwithstanding. Criticism of Israel-First foreign policy never seemed to be a problem for him there. James Kirchick, a harsh critic, complains in the Columbia Journalism Review:

The very same “left” which Buchanan decries today as unwilling to hear his voice was more than happy to lap up his commentary in one crucial realm: foreign policy. [James Kirchick, “Pat Buchanan and His Enablers,” Columbia Journalism Review, 23 February 2011]

On Buchanan and Press, MSNBC’s imitation of CNN’s Crossfire, both the rightwing Buchanan and the leftwing Bill Press agreed that the United States should not attack Iraq. Opposition to Zionist or pro-Zionist aggression seems to have been more or less the established view at MSNBC when Buchanan started there.

In addition to Pat Buchanan and Press, MSNBC’s Phil Donahue and Chris Matthews were dishing out skepticism of the justifications for war on a regular basis. Since the current president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, was the producer of Hardball with Chris Matthews during its strongest anti-war period, and since Griffin was also a longtime personal friend of Keith Olbermann’s from the 1980s when they both worked at CNN, it would appear that Griffin does not have any objection to airing anti-war commentary. Read more