WEBVTT - The Tech Fascist Takeover of the Media 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:06.400 All Zone Media. 0:00:06.600 --> 0:00:09.560 Welcome to it could happen here a podcast about how 0:00:09.640 --> 0:00:12.240 freedom is a joke in our Lives of the punchline, 0:00:12.480 --> 0:00:17.760 I am your host, Mia Wong. Long ago twenty thirteen, 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:20.800 in a galaxy basically exactly where this one is now, 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:24.880 Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and now a terminal fascist, 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:30.320 purchased The Washington Post. This was a sign of things 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:34.680 to come. The danger of the American free press is 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:38.120 and has always been, that we do not have a 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:44.639 free press. We have a capitalist press. Writing and especially reporting, 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:48.839 is a material product. Journalists have to eat, they have 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:51.400 to travel, they have to go places, they have to 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:56.560 meet people. All of this requires capital. And the problem 0:00:56.680 --> 0:01:00.480 with all of this requiring capital is that the capital 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:03.600 is not a neutral entity, and the people who possess 0:01:03.760 --> 0:01:11.560 capital have interests. Fast forward to twenty twenty, as protests 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:14.600 and uprisings raised across the United States against the police 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:18.760 and white supremacy, a battle broke out inside of the 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:22.840 New York Times newsrooms and editorial staff about the newspaper 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:28.400 publishing an opinion piece called send in the Troops, calling 0:01:28.440 --> 0:01:31.759 for You've Guessed it, Sending in the troops to attack 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:36.080 protesters published by a member of the American governments named 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:42.440 Tom Cotton. Editors resigned in outrage debates raised across journalists slacks. 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:46.440 It was the culmination of decades of battles about the 0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:50.440 direction of politics and race in the United States, fought 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:55.600 simultaneously in the streets and in the newsroom. Twenty twenty 0:01:55.960 --> 0:01:59.480 was a significant danger to the ruling class. The actual 0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:02.520 ideology that was so dangerous it had to be destroyed 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:06.919 was this. If the premise of twenty twenty is true, 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:10.480 which is that the US is a structurally racist country 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:14.840 founded on slavery and genocide, and that reproduces those same 0:02:14.919 --> 0:02:19.920 violences through the prison system, which has legal slavery in 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:23.720 it from the structure of the Thirteenth Amendment, and reproduces 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:29.640 it again through the police, then the American project is indefensible, 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:37.000 and here there be dragons. The ruling class needed to 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:41.560 move to stop it, and so they created what they 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:44.720 would call, I guess, a new ideology, but was really 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:48.000 a continuation of centuries old strategies, this time rebranded as 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:52.280 anti woke. One of the avatars of anti woke was 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:56.240 Barry Weiss. Barry Weiss is that the New York Times 0:02:56.240 --> 0:03:00.160 at the time was an ideological diversity higher, which is 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:04.440 to say, affirmative action for why conservatives as affirmative action 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:08.560 has only existed in the figments of the minds of conservatives. 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:12.560 She was given a cozy make work job at the 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:16.079 beginning of the Trump administration as an opinion staff editor 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:18.280 and writer for the New York Times. She was hired 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:23.720 specifically to bring in more Trumpian figures into the opinion section. 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:27.280 This is, and I cannot emphasize this enough, this is 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:31.840 the fever dream of affirmative action in the conservative mind right, 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:33.880 and these are going to be about to people who 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:37.560 really hate affirmative action. But again, what they are being given. 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:41.360 They are being handed by the most important newspaper, probably 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:44.520 in the entire world. You know, she was handed a 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:49.440 job because she was a fucking right winger. Now. Weiss 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:54.720 was part of the shall we say, conversations at the 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:58.040 New York Times about again whether or not a newspaper 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:03.480 should print a letter from a sitting US representative calling 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:08.160 for the deployment of US soldiers against the American people. 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:11.840 She saw this as an opportunity not to resist a 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:15.440 obviously tyrannical program by again, a sitting member of the 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:19.560 United States government. She saw this as her moment to 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:23.600 do a grift. Now, in this moment, she resigned from 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:26.480 The New York Times in a huff raving about the 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:30.279 quote lack of ideological diversity, who had a giant rants 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:32.960 about how the Twitter is not the massthead of the 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:35.479 New York Times. Blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah. Again. 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:38.800 I kind of emphasize this enough, like that she was 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:42.159 brought in as a right wing affirmative action higher in 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:46.960 order to appease the demand from the ruling class. I 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:50.400 guess for like pro Trump people, they already had electric 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:55.160 right wingers. This is completely unhinged. But you know, she resigns, 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:56.760 and she has this big press tour in the right 0:04:56.839 --> 0:04:59.719 wing press trying to talk about how she was canceled, 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:02.760 and of course none of this ever even happened. Right 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:05.520 We can debate the effect to which cancelation ever was 0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:07.599 even really a thing or did anything at all, But 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:10.320 she was not canceled. She literally resigned of her own 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:12.279 free will. She was not forced out. She chose to 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:15.240 leave in order to pursue a career as a right 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:18.720 wing grifford in other fields. Namely Substack, where she ran 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:21.040 a newsletter that was sort of rebranded as like, oh, 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:23.320 it's a media outlet called the Free Press. It's like, no, 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:25.919 this is Barry Weiss's Substack. Come on, what are we 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:29.560 doing here? What are we doing here? Now? Weiss is 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:33.919 not a journalist. She is a right wing idea loge. 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:38.640 She's also a hardline Zionist. If you want to go 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:41.440 into all of the absolutely unhinded shit that Barry Weiss 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.000 has said and done over the years, all of the 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:47.080 just unbelievably somophobic shit, all of the weird racist shit, 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:50.200 all of the anti immigrant shit that she said, there's 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:54.039 a very good John Oliver thing about her. She is 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:57.200 part of this story. But if we spent this entire 0:05:57.200 --> 0:05:59.560 episode just talking about how much she fucking sucks, we 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:02.960 would be here for like two decades now. In a 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:05.719 just world, none of this would matter at all. This 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:08.720 would just be a conservative walking off from the free 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:11.360 job that she was given by the New York Times, 0:06:11.400 --> 0:06:13.080 stomping off at a huff and going to start a 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:17.880 substack whatever. Who cares. This is not a just world. 0:06:18.200 --> 0:06:21.920 This is the United States. She now controls one of 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:25.880 the most powerful and important news organizations in the United States. 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:29.839 The story of how she got there is the story 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:34.440 of the future of the American media. Unfortunately, for all 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:38.280 of us, the story is astressingly simple. Barry Weiss and 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:41.800 her outlet, I'm using that in immense quotations. Again, this 0:06:41.880 --> 0:06:47.440 is just a substack was bought out by one Larry Allison. 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:52.520 Larry Ellison then appointed Weiss to be the ideological hatchet 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:57.839 woman for his takeover of Paramount, which owns CBS. There 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:01.560 was no secret plan, there was weird strategy. There was 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:05.520 no Illuminati cabal behind the scenes. It didn't require any 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:08.760 effort at all. All you have to do in order 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:12.160 to install a right wing hack as the editor in 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:17.920 chief of CBS News is by the company. The results 0:07:18.520 --> 0:07:22.080 have been devastating. I would call what happened to resegregation. 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:25.920 There was a large scale firing of non white employees. 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:31.920 NBC eliminated the editorial teams for NBC Asian America, NBC Black, 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:37.000 NBC Latino, and NBC Out. NBC Out was the queer one. 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:41.240 They fired Gail King. They did some stuff that frankly 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:43.160 sounds like a joke. I'm just going to read this 0:07:43.240 --> 0:07:47.280 quote from the root and the CBS News bureau in Johannesburg, 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:50.920 South Africa has been shut down, with coverage of Africa 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:56.800 shifting to London. That is again, they closed the South 0:07:56.840 --> 0:08:00.600 Africa Bureau. This is a CBS bureau in South Africa 0:08:00.680 --> 0:08:04.960 and moved their coverage of Africa from Africa to London. 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:08.640 If a hardline Marxist ideologue had written this in nineteen 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:12.280 sixty seven, no one would have believed them. And in 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:14.640 the process, what they've done here is they've destroyed the 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:18.320 NBC outlets that were responsible for doing a whole bunch 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:22.520 of comfort for different groups of non white people. Right NBCBLKS, 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.720 EMC Black did a whole bunch of very good coverage 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:29.600 of the uprising in twenty twenty. Right NBC Asian America 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:31.760 did a bunch of good work. NBC out was a 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:34.559 place where you could occasionally find a transperson who was 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:38.200 allowed to write. And all of that is gone because 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:43.760 one man, Larry Allison and his son David Allison, bought 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:49.240 the fucking media company and installed this unhinged right wing 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:54.800 hack as their ideological secret police. I don't even know 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:59.920 what you would call this position. The ideological purge executor. 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:04.359 I guess you could call it of CBS. Now, obviously 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:08.280 there are multiple aspects to this. We'll talk about Larry 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:10.959 Ellison himself in a second, because he is a very 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:15.239 important figure. But first, before we talk about the consolidation 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:19.600 of capital into increasing monopolies. Let's go here from some 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:35.600 of those monopolies, product services. Let's go we are so back. 0:09:37.840 --> 0:09:40.960 One of the obvious driving factors behind what has become 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:44.839 a right wing fascist takeover of the media has been 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:48.680 the consolidation of capital into increasing monopolies. Now, it's been 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:51.720 a very, very famous thing in the US to say 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:55.000 that most of American media is controlled by five companies. 0:09:55.480 --> 0:10:00.640 Here's the thing. Even those five companies can always be 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:04.560 consolidated into fewer and fewer companies. Right as the companies 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:07.000 start to struggle, and as any one of them sees 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:09.800 weakness in the other ones, you get attempts to buy 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:13.600 them out. And this is what happens with Paramount, which 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:16.840 is again the parent company that owns NBC. So the 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:19.600 way that it's framed, if you read it in the press, is, oh, 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:23.120 it was a merger between Skydance, which was Ellison's sort 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:27.520 of outlet, and Paramount. But that's not really what happened. Really, 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:32.319 what happened was Paramount was bought by Ellison and Skydance 0:10:32.320 --> 0:10:35.640 and they were merged together after that. And this is 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:38.520 a problem with the concentration of capital. 0:10:38.720 --> 0:10:38.880 Right. 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:43.240 As capital becomes increasingly more and more concentration, as there 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:46.680 are individual people and also entities that control more and 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:49.880 more capital, their ability to simply swallow the rest of 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:52.720 their competition and consume it increases. And this is a 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:55.560 significant advantage to the companies. To get the swallow this capital, 0:10:56.120 --> 0:10:58.640 they get to absorb all of the intellectual property, and 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:02.480 so now they have control over the property regimes that 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:06.319 allow them to control cultural production, and as a sort 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:11.080 of incidental bonus, they can take control of the media. 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:17.760 Now it's worth getting into the Ellisons themselves now. Larry Allison, 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:20.840 back in the Halcyon Days of twenty twenty, was merely 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:23.560 the eleventh richest man in the world when he quote 0:11:23.800 --> 0:11:26.640 participated in a call shortly after the twenty twenty election 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:30.240 that focus on strategies for contesting the legitimacy of the vote. 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:34.240 According to court documents and a participant, the November fourteenth 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:39.280 call included Lindsey Graham, Fox News host Sean Hannity, Jay Seclau, 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:44.000 an attorney for President Donald Trump, and James Bob Junior, 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:47.360 an eternity for True the Vote, a Texas based nonprofit. 0:11:47.720 --> 0:11:50.439 True of the Vote was a completely unhanged organization dedicated 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:53.480 to overturning the twenty twenty election by doing all these 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:57.440 weird voter fraud things. And they had a strategy call, 0:11:57.440 --> 0:11:58.920 like their attorney in a strategy call with a bunch 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:02.760 of Trump supporters Incline Voting one. Larry Ellison, now again 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:06.960 that was back in twenty twenty. Here in twenty twenty 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:09.839 five and now fighting with Elon Musk for the title 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:13.640 of the richest person in the fucking world. Ellison said, 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:17.320 and I quote, we're going to have supervision. Every police 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:20.160 officer is going to be supervised at all times, and 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:23.160 if there's a problem, AI will report that problem and 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.440 report it to the appropriate person. Citizens will be on 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:29.800 their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:34.079 everything that's going on now in that intervening time. Larry 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:38.640 Ellison is one of the people behind Oracle, and Oracle 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:42.240 has benefited enormously as a company that got really in 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:47.120 on the cloud storage boom. Daven benefited enormously from selling 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:50.040 a bunch of shit to AI companies. Lary Ellison is 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:53.520 also a huge AI supporter, a huge backer of AI, 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:55.680 a huge someone who wants to spread AI, and someone 0:12:55.720 --> 0:13:00.280 who wants to spread AI, you know, very specifically, and 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:04.920 this is very important into surveillance technology. He is also 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:08.640 one of the people who, as twenty twenty went on 0:13:08.800 --> 0:13:11.600 and as the last half decade has come on, and 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:16.040 as the giant sort of backlash against against the uprising, 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:20.640 and as his attempt to reassert racism as the dominant 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:24.600 ideology of the United States and to make sure that 0:13:24.760 --> 0:13:27.800 capitals hold over this country and that white supremacies hold 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:31.840 over this country would be maintained, he has become one 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:35.880 of the large drivers of this entire project. He's not 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:39.200 the only one. Jeff Bezos, as we started this program with, 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:44.520 already owned the Washington Post in twenty twenty five he 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:49.560 went in to very seriously change it. Jeff Bezos on 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:52.000 the now fascist Twitter and we will get to that 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:56.080 in a second. Two wrote and this was a letter 0:13:56.120 --> 0:13:58.000 that he was sent to his staff, and this is 0:13:58.040 --> 0:14:01.280 this is the editorial section to let you know about 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:04.480 a change coming to our opinion. Pages. We are going 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:07.360 to be writing every day in support and defense of 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:11.800 two pillars, personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other 0:14:11.880 --> 0:14:15.360 topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:19.720 be left to be published by others. David Shipley, who 0:14:19.720 --> 0:14:23.600 had been his handpicked editor, resigned rather than lead the effort. 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:26.280 It's not like Shipley had been like a leftist right 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:29.800 but you know, I'm gonna read another part of this letter. 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:33.480 Quote I offered David Shipley, who I admire greatly because 0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:36.000 you know he was the pamback guy, the opportunity to 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:38.920 lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that the 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:41.720 answer wasn't hell yes, that it had to be no. 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:46.760 After careful consideration, David decided to step away. So okay, 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:49.240 what was actually happening here he came in was like, 0:14:49.600 --> 0:14:52.960 our board is not fascist enough, and if you're not 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:57.240 going to make it more fascist, then get the fuck 0:14:57.280 --> 0:14:59.320 out of the way. And the guy he had picked 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:02.440 to run the editor board like three years ago, when 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:05.560 this is unacceptable. I cannot be involved in this. And 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:09.920 left and now Washington Post publishes pieces with titles like 0:15:10.000 --> 0:15:14.120 quote Pam Bondi's welcome Woke rollback, the Justice Department rescinds 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:20.000 regulations encouraging racial preferences, you know, and you can in 0:15:20.040 --> 0:15:23.640 some ways see all of the things that are coming together. Obviously, 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:27.200 Bezos was a major supporter of the Trump administration, is 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:29.600 a major support of the Trump administration. Put a bunch 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:33.320 of money into the unhinged Trump ballroom. And when he 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:37.440 says Justice harn't rescins regulations encouraging racial preferences, they're talking 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:41.240 about anti discrimination ordinances, right, That's what they're actually talking about. 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:45.160 But these people have been so cooked and have stewed 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:49.240 so much in the ideology of countering the ideology of 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:51.760 twenty twenty that they're now doing all of this reverse 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:53.680 racism stuff where they think that if you're not allowed 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:57.680 to discriminate, that's anti white discrimination. And the Washington Post 0:15:58.000 --> 0:16:01.400 has been tanking effectively in the wake of a whole 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:04.400 bunch of a whole bunch of writing editorial changes. Its 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:07.400 audience has significantly declined since this. A whole bunch of 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:10.320 people who subscribed to the Post called it in their 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:14.600 subscriber count is just absolutely pitiful. Now the reach has 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:17.960 been contracting. The paper is going to shit. But that 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:21.720 doesn't matter because the Washington Post is not a money 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:24.480 making outlet. The Washington Post is a chance to shape 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:28.680 the way that the country thinks. And it is better 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:33.080 that you know seven people in Washington, DC, who are 0:16:33.120 --> 0:16:37.400 all identically minded conservatives read the Washington Posts and agree 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:39.760 with it than it is for there to be any 0:16:39.800 --> 0:16:43.080 sort of independence whatsoever from anything on the shop floor, 0:16:43.080 --> 0:16:45.880 from any of the people writing for it. We've also 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:50.800 seen in recent months the elimination of teen Folk Conte Nasty. 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:54.600 Teenvogue's parent company eliminated Team Vogue as an independent outlet. 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:58.160 Teen Vogue had been the furthest left of the even 0:16:58.320 --> 0:17:01.240 sort of mainstream outlets in the US. It had carried 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:04.000 a bunch of extremely good and radical work on race 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:06.920 and gender. It was also one of the few outlets 0:17:06.920 --> 0:17:09.960 with consistent trans writing. And of course, the other aspect 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:13.600 of all of these purges has been unbelievable on hinde transphobia. 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:18.000 And this was them just destroying what had been a 0:17:18.119 --> 0:17:21.800 very very important outlet on the left for telling the 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:24.360 stories of non white people, telling the stories of workers, 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:27.919 and telling the stories of trans people. And they just 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:30.480 destroyed it even though and this is actually very interesting, 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:35.800 Ever since teen Vogue had you know, shifted to doing 0:17:35.800 --> 0:17:38.399 a bunch of leftist coverage and covering the protests against 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:42.400 Donald Trump in its first administration, and had gone towards actually, 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:46.919 you know, talking about labor and talking about struggle and 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:50.199 talking about unions and talking about you know, the like 0:17:50.240 --> 0:17:53.879 the experiences of people living under white supremacy. Its readership 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:57.760 had exploded, but again that doesn't matter because it's bad 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:01.159 for Donald Trump. And so we're seeing the ideological tightening 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:04.560 consolidation of the media as what had been an outlet 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:06.840 that allowed people to talk about shit was just destroyed. 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:12.160 Now speaking about outlets destroying things ideologically, Hey, product and services, 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:27.359 please don't destroy USOO. Now, as we covered on this 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:32.439 show a few weeks ago, Conde Nasts also fired several 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:38.240 union workers legally for you know, staging a again protected 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:41.880 workplace action, demanding to know what the fuck was going 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:45.640 on with these teen Vogue firings. And that's another aspect 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:49.280 of all of his takeover, which is that these outlets 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:52.560 just viciously and radically hates and this is this is 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:55.480 the ruling classes to people who run these outlets viciously 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:58.760 hate unions. And this is something that's very important to 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:01.359 understand in terms of media unions, because media unions were 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:04.640 also a very powerful force for encouraging diversity because, as 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:07.400 it turns out, workers and this is true, I could 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:10.080 say that someone who's part of a media union less 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:14.000 racist than the bosses, and in fact would like there 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:16.720 to be more non white people and don't like it 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:18.960 when non white people are discriminated against. And this is 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:21.159 one of the things that these media unions and that 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:24.640 unions in general do, is try to help you not 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:28.320 get fucking discriminated against on racial grounds. So of course 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:30.800 a part and partial of this has been the targeting 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:33.560 of the union and that's what we've been seeing at 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:36.000 conte Nast, where they also fired workers who had nothing 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:38.600 to do with teen Vogue and also one of whom 0:19:38.800 --> 0:19:41.200 was on the show and is trans and you should 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:43.720 go listen to that episode because it's very good. But 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:47.280 that's another aspect of this right being consolidation is that 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:51.280 media unions are able to push back against the untrammeled 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:55.480 power of these fascist billionaires to turn news coverage into 0:19:55.520 --> 0:19:59.520 whatever the fuck they want. And that's what's happened at CBS, 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:03.440 where there are an doing giant specials with like Kirk's 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:09.600 Widow and all of these just absolutely deranged, unbelievably bizarre 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:13.000 right wing pieces that they're just sort of airing now. 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:15.760 And in order to you know, stop that shit, you 0:20:15.880 --> 0:20:18.480 need powerful media unions, and this is one of the 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:21.960 things the ruling class is trying to crush now. It's 0:20:22.000 --> 0:20:25.200 also worth mentioning that these fight wing billionaires are trying 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:28.399 to consolidate their hold on social media as well as 0:20:28.440 --> 0:20:31.719 the traditional media. And obviously the largest example of this 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:36.000 is Elon Musk, who's purchased Twitter and has you know, 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:39.800 effectively turned Twitter into another arm of Stormfront. It is 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:43.399 a just unhinged stew of racism and conspiracy that is 0:20:43.440 --> 0:20:46.879 now effectively unusable if you don't want like the most 0:20:46.960 --> 0:20:49.320 racist shit you've ever seen in your entire life, just 0:20:49.680 --> 0:20:53.120 in every single one of your replies. And it's also 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:56.440 become a major, you know, vector of targeting for the 0:20:56.480 --> 0:21:00.480 Trump administration, where what Twitter is used for now, instead 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:02.680 of being a platform that at one time actually was 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:04.960 able to play a role as a thing that does resistance, 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:08.439 as a tool of protesters and as a tool of 0:21:08.440 --> 0:21:13.120 people who opposed the untrammeled rule of billionaires, it's now 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:17.359 been converted into just racist slop and a way to 0:21:17.480 --> 0:21:20.719 track down anyone who's sort of vaguely centered left and 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:23.840 just put them in the eyes of the administration so 0:21:23.840 --> 0:21:26.639 they can be targeted by the States. And it's also 0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:30.040 worth noting that one of the people who helped bankworld 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:32.439 the purchase of Twitter because Elon Musk couldn't just purchase 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:36.919 it directly, was one Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison is also 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:41.000 part of a massive attempt to buy TikTok. Listeners of 0:21:41.040 --> 0:21:44.320 the show are probably familiar with the whole extremely weird 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:48.760 story about how TikTok was banned last year under the 0:21:48.760 --> 0:21:52.359 Biden administration sort of bafflingly, and then Trump sort of 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:55.080 just broke the law and made it still be usable, 0:21:55.640 --> 0:21:58.639 but has been trying to force TikTok to be sold 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:02.720 to American buyers. And the conglomerate that's supposed to buy 0:22:02.760 --> 0:22:06.280 it is a Larry Ellison thing, so he's also attempting 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:10.560 to buy TikTok. And finally, the story we're going to 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:13.360 close on is that Larry Ellison has been doing a 0:22:13.400 --> 0:22:18.240 hostile takeover bid of Warner Brothers. Now Warner Brothers currently 0:22:18.320 --> 0:22:21.760 is set to be bought by Netflix. Larry Ellison kept 0:22:21.760 --> 0:22:25.720 on submitting bids to them, and his efforts to actually 0:22:25.840 --> 0:22:29.560 get the purchase to go through were consistently denied. But 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:31.760 in the wake of that, they're attempt to get to 0:22:31.800 --> 0:22:33.480 a hostel takeover bid where they just go to the 0:22:33.480 --> 0:22:36.800 shareholders directly and try to buy them out at what 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:39.760 they claim as a higher share price. I'm not going 0:22:39.800 --> 0:22:42.760 to go into that whole thing as a fiasco, but 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:46.040 what is interesting for our purposes is that David Allison, 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:48.280 who's the guy running Paramount, who's the guy who's been 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:53.400 directly running the ideological purchase, has met several times with Trump, 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:56.240 and last time they met, Trump has promised that he 0:22:56.280 --> 0:22:58.960 would change the coverage of CNN in order to make 0:22:59.000 --> 0:23:01.760 it better for Trump. Now. It's also worth noting that 0:23:01.800 --> 0:23:04.199 buying CNN is not part of the deal for the 0:23:04.240 --> 0:23:08.040 Warner takeover bid by Netflix. Right if Netflix takes over 0:23:08.080 --> 0:23:12.000 Warner Bros. They don't get CNN. Under Paramount and Larry 0:23:12.000 --> 0:23:15.719 Ellison's deal. They would get CNN now, even though CNN 0:23:15.760 --> 0:23:17.880 has done a whole bunch of unhandshit like having Ben 0:23:17.920 --> 0:23:23.400 Shapiro on to do fucking electron coverage Jesus fucking Christ. Okay, 0:23:24.080 --> 0:23:26.400 Trump has still been mad at them for reporting even 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:30.600 a tiny bit critically about his administration. And Trump has 0:23:30.640 --> 0:23:34.560 been kind of refusing to pick a side directly in 0:23:34.680 --> 0:23:37.600 terms of the takeover bid for Warner Brothers in the 0:23:37.600 --> 0:23:41.359 fight between Netflix and Paramount, but he's now said that 0:23:41.480 --> 0:23:43.760 he wants to make sure that CNN is sold and 0:23:43.760 --> 0:23:46.439 that it should get new leadership, presumably along the style 0:23:47.000 --> 0:23:50.440 of what happened with CBS. And so this is sort 0:23:50.480 --> 0:23:53.160 of the final phase of all of this, right, which 0:23:53.160 --> 0:23:57.200 is trumpdministration has the ability to use is quote unquote 0:23:57.240 --> 0:24:00.360 antitrust power in order to stop one of these two 0:24:00.359 --> 0:24:04.000 companies from doing this buy out, and Trump administration is 0:24:04.160 --> 0:24:07.200 using the fact that the media is being bought out 0:24:07.359 --> 0:24:10.840 by his allies in order to try to get people 0:24:10.960 --> 0:24:14.920 to buy CNN and simply eliminate negative news coverage of him. 0:24:15.920 --> 0:24:19.120 And I don't really think I need to explain why 0:24:19.160 --> 0:24:21.879 it's extremely bad that the president of the United States 0:24:21.880 --> 0:24:24.400 could simply order a news outlet to be bought out 0:24:24.440 --> 0:24:28.280 and then suddenly it's bought out. I think it's kind 0:24:28.280 --> 0:24:32.719 of self explanatory why that's unbelievably bad, But that is 0:24:32.760 --> 0:24:35.879 the situation that we may rapidly find ourselves in because 0:24:35.920 --> 0:24:39.480 we don't live in anything that even sort of looks 0:24:39.520 --> 0:24:42.320 like a democracy. We live in the dictatorship of capital. 0:24:43.119 --> 0:24:46.240 And a thing about the press under a dictatorship, even 0:24:46.280 --> 0:24:49.600