Original Post:
I asked, concisely and simply, what was being hidden from us. Most of them just berated me, one user claimed the Syria conflict to which I provided a link to a recent UN Statement on which quite accurately reflected the conflict start to finish. Another user claimed that the recently declassified Nixon era documents about the Chilean revolution and coup, but I was able to find a 1973 archived Newspaper accusing the Nixon Admin of having a hand in it from Times Magazine meaning it was already a mainstream theory at the time.
I am not a tankie, but I can help you out - there are many many examples of this
Some journalists will call any policy even slightly to the left of neoliberalism “socialist”. This is done because the red scare taught Americans that socialism and communism are evil ideologies, despite Capitalism having a much higher death count - think of all the kids dying mining conflict minerals for our iPhones in Africa.
In mainstream press, criticism is focused on individuals and policies, rather than the system itself. In any kind of financial crisis, there is never much mainstream media coverage suggesting that capitalism itself is at fault, it’s always little cracks in the system. There are always going to be more cracks because it is a deeply flawed system.
The media often refers to the democrats as “left wing”, despite democrats being very decidedly right wing. This serves capital by shifting the overton window and preventing people realizing there is no left wing alternative in the United States.
Any economic policies which acknowledges the reality, that taxes being spent on things like healthcare and education are always a net benefit to the economy, are dismissed as somehow delusional or wrong. In the mainstream press, the national budget is treated as being like a household budget, which it clearly isn’t.
The mainstream media is owned by billionaires. Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, The Times (UK) are all owned by the Murdoch family. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. The LA Times, the Atlantic, Time Magazine, the Boston Globe, are all owned by billionaires. It’s obvious that it is in their best interests to mislead us into thinking that capitalism is the best system.
Example, please
In a capitalist financial crisis you receive news about who is at fault. In an authoritarian state owned financial crisis you don’t receive that news because the authoritarian state run media wouldn’t blame themselves.
Democrats are left wing, every policy stance they hold is progressive barring some foreign affairs politics.
There are countless, literally countless, articles and studies talking about the beneficial aspects of social programs in addition to aversion of suffering.
Obamacare, social security, medicare for all, et cetera
This I definitely don’t agree with. We don’t have universal health care and we couldn’t get the first iteration of the IRA because the Democrats don’t agree with those things (among many other massively mainstream ideas) because they are left-wing policies which will anger their donors. The only left-wing people in American politics are random isolated hotspots like Bernie or AOC who constantly have a target on their back in the media as a result.
The Republicans are far worse than the Democrats, and oppose those fairly basic left-wing policies rabidly and unanimously instead of only being wishy-washy about them enough so we don’t have them, but in almost any Western democracy, the Democrats would be the right-wing party, and a lot of the problems we have are because the vast majority of Democrats are complicit in all sorts of crimes against the people.
All of these things have been covered by the media in overwhelming detail nonstop for over a decade.
I’m saying that those are things that were described as “socialism” to scare people away from supporting them (the point #1).
They are socialism, but there are also many articles that only talk about their good points as well. Are you proposing that all western media refuses to say nice things about Obamacare and Social Security? Because I can bring up some examples for you if that’s what you’re saying.
They aren’t socialism you dingus are you serious? That’s literally just spending taxes, what’s what every government does. Decides how to spend taxes
Spending taxes on goods and services for the public is socialism’s barest definition. Roads are socialism. Libraries are socialism.
You want to know what’s not socialism? The USSR.
Socialism isn’t just when the government “does stuff” bucko. It involves the restructuring of political economy to one where workers are in charge of state apparatus
I’m not going to waste my time arguing with someone who clearly has their mind made up, if you want to be a slave to daddy capitalism, don’t let me get in your way.
So you have no examples? What a surprise.
Believe it or not, I don’t wander the fediverse with receipts for propaganda in my back pocket. If I really wanted to, I could spend a few hours putting together a response to your comment with relevant citations, but unfortunately I don’t have all day to spend arguing with people on the Internet, and I didn’t come here for a debate in the first place. I saw you post this:
I responded, concisely and simply, with a few examples of mainstream media acting defensively on behalf of capitalism which I suspected that most people would have personal experience of noticing themselves. I don’t want to waste hours of my time on this, either accept the truth or don’t. It’s not my problem, it’s yours.