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This week on CounterSpin: The grandson of the elderly white man who shot a Black teenager in the head for ringing his doorbell told the Kansas City Star that their relationship had unraveled as his grandfather began watching “Fox News all day, every day,” and sank into a “24-hour news cycle of fear, of paranoia.” Those words had a poignant resonance for many people who feel they’ve lost family members and friends to a kind of cult, that’s not secret, but pumped into the airwaves every day. Hate-fueled and hate-fueling media have political and historical impacts—and interpersonal, familial ones as well.
The Brainwashing of My Dad—the 2016 film and the book based on it—reflect filmmaker, activist and author Jen Senko’s effort to engage the multi-level effects of that yelling, punching down, reactionary media, as well as how we can respond. We hear from Jen Senko this week on CounterSpin.
Transcript: ‘This Media Is Meant to Change People, and It Does’
Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of a potential UPS strike.
The most productive thing people moved by this report can do to help is take a hard look in the mirror and ask themselves how tolerant and loving are the endless calls to silence dissenting voices, nationalist accusations of treason, the condemnation of half the country as a basket of deplorables, constant warmongering, and the rest of the ceaseless barrage from the stenographers to power at MSNBC and others who make a grotesque mockery of the left. I look to FAIR to see past the distractions of culture war and expose hypocrisy, not contribute to them.
I dunno… I don’t see how doing any of those things you recommend is gonna stop pissed off idiots with guns from consuming media which keeps them pissed off and ready– practically yearning– to shoot first and ask questions later.
Your program” brain washing of my dad” failed to mention that Tucker was the only major media host to critique the Ukraine War. As someone who has listened to your program since the beginning I have noticed reluctance to cover this war. Are you drinking the National Security States Kool_Aid?
I don’t understand the connection you’re trying to make. Is it: “Because Carlson is critical of the Ukraine War, he’s not capable of brainwashing people with deceitful hate?”
It appears some people might have confused this site with the Federation for American Immigration Reform? First, far be it for me to defend Hillary Clinton, but she never said half the country was deplorable. I think that Tucker, on the other hand did say this on his nightly rants what with his “vermin infested” cities, potshots at the unhoused, undocumented workers, feminists, etc., he really did hate at least half of Americans.
As for his anti war cred, He seemed to believe that Ukraine took away from the larger project of declaring war on border refugees, China, and BLM protesters.
Don’t get me started on his working class bona fides.