The poison that feeds neoliberal propaganda is the idea that choice is the same as freedom. If you can get rid of that, you have a chance. But even lefties are enslaved by it. Think, for example, of the "pro-choice" Planned Parenthood meme.
The problem is quite deep. You would not believe how many of my students in the eighties (at UC Berkeley!!!!) wrote that advertising was good because it helped consumers make informed choices.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- I think we should look at this beyond personal qualities and invective. These guys are foot soldiers, or paid mouthpieces if you will, of a well oiled sophisticated propaganda machine operating on multiple levels. This machine, I may add, make the Nazi or Soviet propaganda look rather amateurish in comparison. Unlike the Nazi or the Soviet model that relied on monopolizing media outlet with one centralized voice, the key to the neoliberal propaganda model is multiple seemingly independent voices quietly whispering the same message.
I have been personally exposed to both types of propaganda and I can tell that the neoliberal variety is far more effective, because it is more insidious. The Soviet style propaganda first and foremost attracts attention to itself, as if saying "attention everyone, here is a propaganda message from our Ministry of Truth." The predictable effect is that people tune out and upfront discredit the message itself regardless of its content. The neoliberal propaganda model, by contrast, operates on an almost subliminal level - it masquerades itself under the supposedly benign content, so it is very difficult to identify it as propaganda.
For that reason, it is incorrect to see joints like NYT in the same way you will see, say, Pravda. Pravda was an obvious mouthpiece of the ruling party and it even said so on its front page. NYT and Co. are not - they are respectable mainstream papers that practice mostly good journalism amidst which - at almost the subliminal level - they smuggle neoliberal propaganda payload. They operate in a somewhat similar way as most of the US visual media, notably TV - a good story carrying the payload aiming to persuade. In TV it manifests itself as commercial breaks - which are easy to identify and thus edit out. In NYT or better yet, NPR, the lines between story and propagandistic payload are much more blurred, so it is difficult to tell when reporting ends and propaganda payload message begins. For example, you may hear a good NPR story about some problem in a distant country but then amidst that story you hear how the locals effectively used a market-based solution to solve the problem. On the surface, it just reports what happened, but by a careful manipulation of emphasis and selective omissions it whispers the message "markets are good".
Unlike the Soviet style propaganda that is very easy to identify and attack, this neoliberal propaganda resembles a guerilla war where combatants blend in with the local population and are very difficult to identify. So if you are careless and attack the entire population i.e journalism as a whole, you do exactly what the neoliberal Al Quaeda wants - you play out the stereotype of you as an 'enemy of civilization" - whether civilization is equated with Islamism or Western rationalism. OTOH, trying to "deconstruct" the situation and identify graft amidst benign and worthwhile context - a strategy that many left-wing writers especially those in the "pomo" tradition espoused - is very ineffective and quickly becomes an art in itself rather than an effective counter-propaganda tool.
AFAIK, there are only two ways to counter this neoliberal guerilla kulturkampf. One is to use the same tactic against them and start planting subtle socialist "payload" in the "carrier" content, especially popular journalism. This, however, requires enormous resources and coordination - neither of which is the left's strong point. The other one is to use "surgical strikes" or drones if you will. That is, identify potential targets and remotely destroy them and their milieu by any means necessary. This means ad hominem attacks aiming to politically, economically, and socially "assassinate" the vulnerable members of the neoliberal establishment - not just journos but businesses financing neoliberal campaigns , intellectuals and even students with neoliberal sympathies - which is the left's strong point. Michael Moore does that quite effectively.
On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 6:27 AM, joel schalit <jschalit at gmail.com> wrote:
> As a fellow Berliner, I hereby confirm, this guy is an asshole. But
> what else would you expect from the NYT? I haven't read it, with any
> seriousness, in years. Precisely, I might add, because of content like
> this.
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 11:21 AM, Angelus Novus
> <fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> "The problem is that Germans have been spoiled by proactive government policies designed to fund affordable housing and promote mixed-income living spaces."
>>
>>
>> http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/bobos-in-berlin/
>>
>>
>> Also love the typical neolib description of "globalization" as a sheer force of nature, that just sort of magically dismantles welfare states.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ___________________________________
>> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>
>
> --
> joel schalit
> skype: jschalit
> tel: +49 1514 0212899
> email: jschalit at gmail.com
> web: www.joelschalit.com
> ___________________________________
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-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money." ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk