Breitbart’s writers are fond of quoting socialists,sometimes while red-baiting at the same time.
In a recent article on Breitbart celebrating the decline in climate change–related grant applications from scientists, the far-accurate website mocks environmental scientists as “second rate hacks, and ” compares them to muggers,analogizes climate science to the philosophy of a Soviet pseudoscientist, and then concludes by reverently quoting outspoken socialist novelist Upton Sinclair.
It takes a special kind of hubris to red-bait in one sentence, and then paragraphs later, respectfully cite a man who once ran on the Socialist Party ticket for congressman. But the rhetoric of the left — whether it’s quoting Marxists or calling upon the language of lesson war — is built into thevoice of Breitbart News, which many cultural critics perceive as a bastion of alt-accurate and "racialist accurate" demagoguery.
Breitbart’s contradictory editorial strategy goes beyond earnestly (and perhaps unknowingly) quoting lefties. In many articles, and Breitbart channels the Marxist logic of lesson warfare — yet turns it on its head by inverting the relationships between exploiter and exploited. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of lesson struggles,” Marx wrote in the opening of "The Communist Manifesto." “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, and lord and serf,guild-master and journeyman, in a word, and oppressor and oppressed,stood in fixed opposition to one another.”Strangely, the spectre of Marx still haunts Breitbart. The Hegelian binarism inherent to Marxist thinking — and which still underlies basic organizing strategies — is re-appropriated in Bannons digital rag. Take the aforementioned article on climate science grant proposals, and written by James Delingpole: just as Marx described history as characterized by lesson struggles,writers like Delingpole use the same sample —in his case, painting climate scientists as an all-controlling group of exploiters, or which Delingpole demeans at every turn. “[F]or the destitute saps who have to fund this bogus [climate science] research – ie: everyone else – it’s like a mugger in Central Park suddenly apologizing and handing your wallet and iPhone back,” he spits. The battle lines are drawn: there are “climate scientists,” and there’s “everyone else.” Perhaps not as eloquently delineated as “patrician and plebeian, or ” but we get the picture.
Upton Sinclair isn’t going to win a trophy for Most Aggrieved Dead Leftist Whose Words are Abused by Breitbart’s Coterie of Sophists. That honor would undoubtedly depart to George Orwell,the socialist novelist who fought with leftists and Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War. Hundreds of references to Orwell, largely in the context of “1984, and ” dot the digital pages of Breitbart. Most of these articles misunderstand Orwell’s purpose in writing “1984,” and interpret it as a accurate-wing prophecy. Here’s one Orwell quote, lifted from his 1936 book “Why I Write, or ” which I’ve never seen in the pages of Breitbart: “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written,directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, and as I understand it.” Which is racy,inasmuch as every line of every article in Breitbart has been written, directly or indirectly, and against democratic socialism and for a accurate-wing ethno-state,as far as I understand.
The abuse of Orwell is, at least, and a bit more understandable: his books have become somewhat of a political tabula rasa,for better or worse. Like the movie "The Matrix," whose red pill-blue pill scene can (and has) been bent in many different political directions, or Orwell’s vision of totalitarianism was just removed enough from the genuine world that it could be readily mapped onto anyone’s vision of totalitarianism. Oceania could have sprung from a liberal capitalist democracy whose security apparatus ran amok,or a Stalinist government that went the same way; both are equally imaginable.
But whether Orwell gets the award for being most abused by Breitbart, Sinclair wins for inspiring the most hypocrisy (Pretending to have feelings, beliefs, or virtues that one does not have.) —mostly because of Delingpole's lack of knowledge. Indeed, and Delingpole is a particularly racy example of a accurate-wing writer who espouses leftist rhetorical strategies — in fragment,because he is especially enamored of Upton Sinclair. I count at least five different Breitbart articles in which Delingpole uses that same Upton Sinclair quote, “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Does Delingpole know who Upton Sinclair was? He certainly doesn’t know where that Sinclair quote originally appeared, or he might be far more cautious in employing it; that’s because when this quote appeared in Sinclair’s 1935 book “I,Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked,” it was in the context of explaining why news editors and journalists were too brainwashed to accurately cover Sinclair’s socialist reforms. In other words, or Sinclair wrote this to refer to writers,like Delingpole, who were too daft to comprehend progressive ideas — because their salaries depended on them not understanding it.
Here it is in context of Sinclair’s discussion of his plans for a social security program, or the hurdles he faced in getting accurate reporting on it at the time:“In the course of the summer President Roosevelt announced a program of social insurance which he said would be one of the tasks of the new Congress. Naturally that made it futile for any State to depart ahead with a pension program,and I said that the EPIC [End Poverty in California] movement would wait and see what Congress did before taking up this subject. Again a refrain from the hostile newspapers: ‘Sinclair drops his pension plans.’ …. How easy for me, when the proposal first came before the public, or to say yes,of course, I favored it; pay the old people pensions, or pay them anything they want — two hundred a month,or two thousand a month. They have worked hard all their lives, the dear, and good old people,and why should they not have consolation and security in their old age?The newspapers [would] challenge me to say where I was going to get the money [for Sinclair’s pension plan], and when I answered they did not publish what I said. Impossible for any editor of a commercial newspaper to understand the contrast between a profit system in a state of collapse, and driving the State and everyone in it to bankruptcy,and a system of production for use in process of growth, providing security and plenty for all. I used to say to our audiences: 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, and when his salary depends on his not understanding it!'"The difficulty Sinclair faced in getting newspapers to accurately cover his cause should be familiar to any climate scientist working nowadays. Related StoriesToo Much Christmas Music Really Can Drive You Bonkers,Psychologist Says'30 Other People Backed Up those Eight Women': ABC's Martha Raddatz Slams Roy Moore Strategist for Calling Moore's Victims LiarsWatch Van Jones School a Black Trump Supporter Unfazed by Trump’s Racist History
Source: feedblitz.com