A couple of years ago, I
launched my Unz Review, providing a wide range
of different alternative perspectives, the vast majority of them totally
excluded from the mainstream media. I’ve also published a number of articles in
my own American
Pravda series, focusing
on the suspicious lapses and lacunae in our media narratives.
The underlying political strategy
behind these efforts may already be apparent, and I’ve sometimes suggested it
here and there. But I finally decided I might as well explicitly outline the
reasoning in a memo as provided below
The Mainstream Media is the
Crucial Opposing Force
Groups
advocating policies opposed by the American establishment should recognize that
the greatest obstacle they face is usually the mainstream media.
Ordinary political and
ideological opponents surely exist, but these are usually inspired, motivated,
organized, and assisted by powerful media support, which also shapes the
perceived framework of the conflict. In Clauswitzian terms, the media often
constitutes the strategic “center of gravity” of the opposing forces.
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The Media Should Be Made a
Primary Target
If
the media is the crucial force empowering the opposition, then it should be
regarded as a primary target of any political strategy. So long as the media
remains strong, success may be difficult, but if the influence and credibility
of the media were substantially degraded, then the ordinary opposing forces
would lose much of their effectiveness. In many respects, the media creates reality, so perhaps
the most effective route toward changing reality runs through the media.
Discrediting the Media Anywhere
Weakens It Everywhere
The
mainstream media exists as a seamless whole, so weakening or discrediting the
media in any particular area automatically reduces its influence everywhere
else as well.
The
elements of the media narrative faced by a particular anti-establishment group
may be too strong and well-defended to attack effectively, and any such attacks
might also be discounted as ideologically motivated. Hence, the more productive
strategy may sometimes be an indirect one, attacking the media narrative
elsewhere, at points where it is much weaker and less well-defended. In
addition, winning those easier battles may generate greater credibility and
momentum, which can then be applied to later attacks on more difficult fronts.
A Broad Alliance May Support
the Common Goal of Weakening the Media
Once we recognize that weakening the
media is a primary strategic goal, an obvious corollary is that other
anti-establishment groups facing the same challenges become natural, if perhaps
temporary, allies.
Such unexpected tactical alliances may
drawn from across a wide range of different political and ideological
perspectives—Left, Right, or otherwise—and despite the component groups having
longer-term goals that are orthogonal or even conflicting. So long as all such
elements in the coalition recognize that the hostile media is their most
immediate adversary, they can cooperate on their common effort, while actually
gaining additional credibility and attention by the very fact that they sharply
disagree on so many other matters.
The
media is enormously powerful and exercises control over a vast expanse of
intellectual territory. But such ubiquitous influence also ensures that its
local adversaries are therefore numerous and widespread, all being bitterly
opposed to the hostile media they face on their own particular issues. By
analogy, a large and powerful empire is frequently brought down by a broad
alliance of many disparate rebellious factions, each having unrelated goals,
which together overwhelm the imperial defenses by attacking simultaneously at
multiple different locations.
A
crucial aspect enabling such a rebel alliance is the typically narrow focus of
each particular constituent member. Most groups or individuals opposing
establishment positions tend to be ideologically zealous about one particular
issue or perhaps a small handful, while being much less interested in others.
Given the total suppression of their views at the hands of the mainstream
media, any venue in which their unorthodox perspectives are provided reasonably
fair and equal treatment rather than ridiculed and denigrated tends to inspire
considerable enthusiasm and loyalty on their part. So although they may have
quite conventional views on most other matters, causing them to regard contrary
views with the same skepticism or unease as might anyone else, they will
usually be willing to suppress their criticism at such wider heterodoxy so long
as other members of their alliance are willing to return that favor on their
own topics of primary interest.
Assault the Media Narrative
Where It is Weak Not Where It Is Strong
Applying
a different metaphor, the establishment media may be regarded as a great wall
that excludes alternative perspectives from the public consciousness and
thereby confines opinion to within a narrow range of acceptable views.
Certain
portions of that media wall may be solid and vigorously defended by powerful
vested interests, rendering assaults difficult. But other portions, perhaps
older and more obscure, may have grown decrepit over time, with their defenders
having drifted away. Breaching the wall at these weaker locations may be much
easier, and once the barrier has been broken at several points, defending it at
others becomes much more difficult.
For
example, consider the consequences of demonstrating that the established media
narrative is completely false on some major individual event. Once this result
has been widely recognized, the credibility of the media on all other matters,
even totally unrelated ones, would be somewhat attenuated. Ordinary people
would naturally conclude that if the media had been so wrong for so long on one
important point, it might also be wrong on others as well, and the powerful
suspension of disbelief that provides the media its influence would become less
powerful. Even those individuals who collectively form the corpus of the media
might begin to entertain serious self-doubts regarding their previous
certainties.
The crucial point is that such
breakthroughs may be easiest to achieve in topics that seem merely of
historical significance, and are totally removed from any practical present-day
consequences.
Reframe Vulnerable “Conspiracy
Theories” as Effective “Media Criticism”
Over the last few decades,
the political establishment and its media allies have created a powerful
intellectual defense against major criticism by investing considerable
resources in stigmatizing the notion of so-called “conspiracy theories.” This
harsh pejorative term is applied to any important analysis of events that
sharply deviates from the officially-endorsed narrative, and implicitly
suggests that the proponent is a disreputable fanatic, suffering from delusions,
paranoia, or other forms of mental illness. Such ideological attacks often
effectively destroy his credibility, allowing his actual arguments to be
ignored. A once-innocuous phrase has become politically “weaponized.”
However, an effective means of
circumventing this intellectual defense mechanism may be to adopt a
meta-strategy of reframing such “conspiracy theories” as “media criticism.”
Under
the usual parameters of public debate, challenges to established orthodoxy are
treated as “extraordinary claims” that must be justified by extraordinary
evidence. This requirement may be unfair, but it constitutes the reality in
many public exchanges, based upon the framework provided by the allegedly
impartial media.
Since
most of these controversies involve a wide range of complex issues and
ambiguous or disputed evidence, it is often extremely difficult to conclusively
establish any unorthodox theory, say to a confidence level of 95% or 98%.
Therefore, the media verdict is almost invariably “Case Not Proven” and the
challengers are judged defeated and discredited, even if they actually appear
to have the preponderance of evidence on their side. And if they vocally
contest the unfairness of their situation, that exact response is then
subsequently cited by the media as further proof of their fanaticism or
paranoia.
However, suppose that an entirely
different strategy were adopted. Instead of attempting to make a case “beyond
any reasonable doubt,” proponents merely provide sufficient evidence and
analysis to suggest that there is a 30% chance or a 50% chance or a 70% chance
that the unorthodox theory is true. The very fact that no claim of near
certainty is being advanced provides a powerful defense against any plausible
accusations of fanaticism or delusional thinking. But if the issue is of
enormous importance and—as is usually the case—the unorthodox theory has been
almost totally ignored by the media, despite apparently having at least a
reasonable chance of being true, then the media may be effectively attacked and
ridiculed for its laziness and incompetence. These charges are very difficult
to refute and since no claim is being made that the unorthodox theory has
necessarily been proven correct, merely that it might possibly be correct, any
counter-accusations of conspiratorial tendencies would fall flat.
Indeed,
the only means the media might have of effectively rebutting those charges
would be to explore all the complex details of the issue (thereby helping to
bring various controversial facts themselves to much wider attention) and then
argue that there is only a negligible chance that the theory might be correct,
perhaps 10% or less. Thus, the usual presumptive burden is completely reversed.
And since most members of the media are unlikely to have ever paid
much serious attention to the subject, their ignorant presentation may be quite
weak and vulnerable to a knowledgeable deconstruction. Indeed, the most likely
scenario is that the media will just continue to totally ignore the entire
dispute, thereby reinforcing those plausible accusations of laziness and
incompetence.
Individuals
distressed by media failings on a controversial topic often accuse the media
and its individual representatives of being biased, corrupted, or quietly under
the control of powerful forces allied with the establishment position. These
charges may sometimes be correct and sometimes not, but they are usually quite
difficult to prove, except in the minds of existing true-believers, and they do
carry the taint of “paranoia.” On the other hand, claiming that media failings
are due to venial sins such as laziness and incompetence are just as likely to
be correct, and these charges are much less likely to risk a backlash.
Finally,
once the media itself has become the primary target of the criticism, it
automatically loses its status as a neutral outside arbitrator and no longer
has as much credibility in proclaiming the winning side of the debate.
The Advantage of Flooding Media
Defense Zones
Individuals
who challenge the prevailing media narrative with unorthodox claims are often
reluctant to raise too many such controversial claims simultaneously lest they
be ridiculed as “crazy,” with all their views summarily dismissed.
In
most cases, this may be the correct strategy to pursue, but if handled
properly, an exact opposite approach might sometimes be quite effective. So
long as the overall presentation is framed as media criticism and no inordinate
weight is attached to the validity of any of the particular claims being
presented, attacking along a very broad front, perhaps including dozens of
entirely independent items, may “flood the zone” of the media, saturating and
overwhelming existing defenses. Or as suggested in a quote widely misattributed
to Stalin, “Quantity has a quality all its own.”
Consider
the example of entertainer Bill Cosby. Over the years, one or two individual
women had come forward claiming that he had drugged and raped them, and the
charges had been largely ignored as unsubstantiated or implausible. However,
over the last year or two, the dam suddenly burst and a total of nearly sixty
separate women came forward, all making identical accusations, and although
there seems little hard evidence in any of the particular cases, virtually
every observer now concedes that the charges are likely to be true.
Suppose
it is established that there is a reasonable likelihood that the media
completely missed and ignored an important matter that should have been
investigated and reported. The impact is not necessarily substantial, and many
individuals stubbornly wedded to a belief in their establishment media
narratives might even resist admitting the possibility that the media had
seriously erred in that particular situation.
However,
suppose instead that several dozen such separate examples could be established,
each strongly suggesting a serious error or omission on the part of the media.
At that point, ideological defenses would crumble and nearly everyone would
quietly acknowledge that many, perhaps even most, of the accusations were
probably true, producing an enormous credibility gap for the mainstream media.
The credibility defenses of the media would have been saturated and overcome.
The key point is that all of the
particular items should be presented as reasonable-likelihood cases, and
indicative of media shortcomings rather than being proven or necessarily as
important issues in and of themselves. By remaining aloof and somewhat agnostic
regarding any individual item, there is little risk of being tagged as fanatic
or monomaniacal for raising a multitude of them.
My American Pravda Series
and Unz Review Webzine as Examples
The political/media strategy
outlined above was the central motivation behind my American Pravda articles and Unz Review webzine.
For example, in the original 2013 American Pravda article I
raised over half a dozen enormous media lapses, all of them now universally
acknowledged: Enron’s collapse, the Iraq War WMDs, the Madoff Swindle, the Cold
War spies, and various others. Having thereby set the stage by presenting this
admitted pattern of major failure, demonstrating that a considerable suspension
of disbelief was warranted, I then extended the discussion to three or four
important additional examples, none of them yet acknowledged, but all of them
perfectly plausible. Perhaps as a consequence, the article received reasonably good attention including by
elements of the mainstream media itself, who are often willing to acknowledge
the errors of their class so long as these are presented persuasively and in a
responsible manner.
Following that piece, I
intermittently produced additional elements in the series, some more
comprehensive than others, and am now embarking upon a
regular series.
The McCain/POW
examples in the series perfectly illustrate the strategy I have
suggested above. The Vietnam War ended over forty years ago, the POWs have
probably all been dead for decades, and even John McCain is in the very
twilight of his career. The practical significance of raising the scandal or
providing evidence establishing its likelihood is virtually nil. But if it were
to become widely recognized that our entire media successfully covered up such
a massive scandal for so many years, the credibility of the media would have
suffered a devastating blow. Several such blows and it would be in ruins.
Meanwhile, the powerful vested interests that once so vigorously maintained the
official narrative in that area are long gone, and the orthodox case has few
remaining defenders in the media, greatly increasing the likelihood of an
eventual breakthrough and victory.
A similar strategy in broader form is applied by my Unz Review alternative media webzine, which hosts
numerous different writers, columnists, and bloggers, all tending to sharply
challenge the establishment media narrative along a wide variety of different
axes and issues, some of them conflicting. By raising serious doubts about the
omissions and errors of our mainstream media in so many different areas, the
goal is to weaken the perceived credibility of the media, leading readers to
consider the possibility that large elements of the conventional narrative may
be entirely incorrect.
Reprinted with permission
from The Unz
Review.
Ron
Unz, publisher of The American Conservative, served as chairman of English for
the Children, the nationwide campaign to dismantle bilingual education. He is
also the founder of RonUnz.org
Copyright
© 2019 The Unz
Review
