Legitimate alternative media is formed by a gathering of discerning citizens who understand that the fight we fight is about truth vs. falsehood. It isn’t about left vs. right, black vs. white, us vs. them.
In many ways, alt-media has a responsibility to be a counter-weight correction to what Jacques Ellul, in his book Propaganda (1965), called “organized myth.”
Fake news is a form of organized myth.
It ‘takes hold of us and invades every area of our consciousness, stimulating a feeling of exclusiveness [& euphoria, if we conform], producing a biased attitude’ along with it.
Ellul explained that education institutions play a huge role in this process. Marxist indoctrination, for example, from Lenin to Moa, utilizes organized myth (fake news).
Propaganda infused with half-truths are designed to condition people to accept, tolerate and align with the goals, and ideas of power brokers.
Much like the proverbial frog boiled alive in a slowly heated pot.
The emergence of fake news in the West was first properly identified by ex-Guardian writer, Melanie Phillips in her book ‘The World Turned Upside Down.’
Phillips argued that the war in Iraq birthed a coordinated narrative, when many on the Left employed manipulative propaganda through the repetition of “we went to war on a lie”, and manufactured an enemy they called “neo-cons” for political purposes.
Her argument is tightknit. Testimonies and timelines refute the slogan, and expose how major media organizations worked together to orchestrate a half-truth party line, which benefited Democrats in the voting booths, and propelled more and more leftists into positions of power, reach and wealth.
Throughout the Obama era, they rode on the back of the “we went to war on a lie”, and “neo-cons” organized myths, that handed the Left a blank cheque of power, signed by a gullible public.
Monologues and echo chambers perpetuated bandwagon fallacies. Scare campaigns were used to protect falsehoods from facts. Stakeholders on the Left generated an environment of tribalism, fear, conformity, denial and hostility.
Fear of losing this power and domination is what drove the Left’s 2016, reaction to Hilary Clinton’s election loss.
The same power, reach and wealth has been evidenced most recently during the Brexit campaign, the Russian collusion hoax, and now the internal inconsistency of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The #blacklivesmatter movement fails the legitimacy test, when its “claims, cause and concerns” are confronted by the lack of outrage about mass injustices, and suffering that occurs in parts of the African continent.
Consistency matters.
If only black lives in the United States matter, then the Black Lives Matter movement is a farce; proving that it is itself an insidious anti-American product of self-serving fake news, and a propagator of organized myth.
Either all black lives matter, or ‘black lives don’t matter to Black Lives Matter.’ (‘Black Lives Matter?’, Darrell Harrison; Virgil Walker)
The only antidote to organized myth is dialogue, and the freedom of speech this implies is defended by a public, who – thanks to the democratization of the media via the internet – are now not so easily sold on the self-serving fiction Leftists force feed them through the I.V drip of mainstream media.
This is why alternative media is important. It will go where the general populace has been told to tow the line, and it will question what the general populace has been told not to question.
Alternative media has an opportunity to bring the counter-weight correction.
The challenge for alternative media isn’t just found in building the better alternative, it has to be the better alternative, in word, deed and attitude.
Ego kills talent. Therefore, being the better alternative will mean fostering intellectual rigor, and a team spirit within an arena of healthy competition. Facing challenges within, and without head-on.
Being the better alternative will mean loving your enemy, answering them with a firm, gracious “yes” or “no”; speaking truth in love, and wherever possible being above reproach.
Being the better alternative will involve avoiding proverbial land mines. Being careful to not shoot off a foot with the loaded gun the radical Left hands to many on a daily basis.
Building the better alternative will involve not taking the bait, so as to avoid self-sabotage.
In sum, alternative media (for want of a better word) is truth media.
Faith seeks understanding.
Caldron Pool, The Good Sauce and others like Prager U, and The Daily Wire, are an effective multi-ethnic, classical liberal nationalist, Biblical antidote to Leftism, ethno-nationalist, and ethnocentric extremes.
Alternative media questions herd mentality by challenging, exposing and correcting the narrative.
We may not always get it right, but we will strive to live out the Christ-centered ethos of ‘speaking truth in love…having nothing to do with the deeds of darkness, but rather exposing them.’ (Ephesians 14:11; 5:11.)
These thoughts are part of a recent online discussion about fighting fake news, and media bias I had with the Liberal National Party’s George Christensen, and The Good Sauce’s Dave Pellowe.
You can view that entire discussion here:
