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Why is The New York Times so afraid of Zohran Mamdani? (www.middleeasteye.net)
submitted 1 year ago by [M] to c/fediverse_vs_disinfo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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The liberal establishment's war on the New York City mayoral candidate reflects panic over a growing left challenge to Zionist orthodoxy and the mainstreaming of Palestine solidarity

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[–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

Just being charitable here (to be clear I agree with you) - but I think a big contributor to a lot of folks taking these old media organizations more seriously than they should, is how batshit insane the rest of the media ecosystem has gotten.

That combined with the kind of...legacy of trust, for these old "household name" ones? It's hard for us olds to update our mental models in a deep way. I was raised thinking it was a respectable outfit - I know, for sure, that I don't trust them or like them at all today. And yet every time I see "New York Times" my subconscious goes "ah, yep, one of the good ones". Brains are dumb and annoying.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    This is absolutely the case - it takes time to destroy credibility for a large institution considered a "paper of record". And it makes it really easy for them to just "forget" to include certain pieces of information that drastically alter a story's narrative. The BBC is also hugely guilty of this kind of manipulation, with the ceaveat that the truth of it is in plain sight - the BBC is literally a government-run propaganda organ! But hey, you get a bunch of sober sounding people wearing professional costumes to talk to a bunch of "experts", get a bunch of reddit bot farms to post well researched science/tech articles to build a foundation of credibility with your professional classes, and then you start slipping your real content in between the fill. Many people will be trained to accept facts from that environment at that point, and it takes effort to keep on top of it all.

    What's made things so egregious recently is that this approach only works when everyone's half asleep. Hypnotized, if you will. In the context of more and more people being forced into an activist stance by their ethics, morals and in most cases and sadly more importantly (to them) personal situations, it isn't a good approach, because people who are already active will be distrustful and less likely to accept their "content" at face value. From there, it all kind of unravels.

    It's a peacetime control tooling for a sleepy, well-fed, soft population. When things get hard and the reality most people lives is wildly discordant with the "facts" they are shown, it generates friction and resentment. Populism is the result - left or right. Our elites made a very bad bet thinking they could step down this path rather than New Deal-ing their way out of it, because they are already losing control of the situation. The hysterical screeching about Mamdani - in particular kirsten gillibrand's racist tirade - is what it looks like when they panic, stop maintaining the mask and you see what's underneath.

    It's a bunch of magic tricks that the audience just worked out, the bunny rabbit getting pulled out of the top hat is falling to bits and scaring all the children. And all the women. And all the men.

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