[Peace-discuss] "Tulsi Gabbard has done the unpardonable: criticized US global hegemony" (MONDOWEISS)

Tue Aug 6 21:16:47 UTC 2019

I find it a shame that we cannot support Tulsi Gabard more, so that she could participate in the coming debates. Her antiwar remarks hit so many right notes.

I didn’t know, but should have, that The New Yorker was a "sister publication" of the NYT, and plays the same games politically—à la the DNC.

Thanks for forwarding…

—mkb

On Aug 6, 2019, at 1:16 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net<mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: John V. Whitbeck <jvwhitbeck at gmail.com<mailto:jvwhitbeck at gmail.com>>
Date: Mon, Aug 5, 2019 at 4:29 PM
Subject: "Tulsi Gabbard has done the unpardonable: criticized US global hegemony" (MONDOWEISS)
To: <whitbeck-blog at googlegroups.com<mailto:whitbeck-blog at googlegroups.com>>

TO: Distinguished Recipients
FM: John Whitbeck

Transmitted below is a brief MONDOWEISS posting regarding a "full spread hit piece" against Tulsi Gabbard published by the New York Times.

That the Times would go to the trouble of trying to discredit a "minor" candidate flirting with a meager 2% support in the polls is an effective if back-handed compliment to Tulsi and her message and campaign consciously focused on opposition to the mad pursuit of full-spectrum global domination and the hugely expensive, destructive and seemingly never-ending wars of choice which it has produced.

It suggests that perpetual war advocates are seriously worried that even 2% support might be enough to qualify Tulsi for the next round of Democratic Party presidential debates and permit her eloquent voice for sanity, while highly unlikely to win her the nomination, to receive greater exposure and traction.

Words matter -- and have always been used and abused to shape public opinion. The word "isolationist" has had a profoundly negative resonance in the United States since World War II. Accordingly, those who are financially and/or professionally invested in perpetual war and are petrified at the slim threat of a world at peace, who might be appropriately labeled the "Industrial Fear and Hate Promoting and Profiting Complex", tend to label any American opposed to the pursuit of full-spectrum global dominance by military means an "isolationist", as if there were no non-violent and non-kinetic way to interact with the world and as the Times has chosen to characterize Tulsi and her message.

NOTE: While, disappointingly, Tulsi voted in favor of the recent House of Representatives resolution condemning the BDS movement for justice in Palestine, she has now become the 15th House member to co-sponsor H. Res. 496, the resolution introduced by Ilhan Omar affirming that Americans have the right to boycott foreign countries to advance the cause of human rights (https://mondoweiss.net/2019/08/gabbard-condemn-cosponsor/).

MONDOWEISS

https://mondoweiss.net/2019/08/unpardonable-criticized-hegemony/<https://mondoweiss.net/2019/08/unpardonable-criticized-hegemony/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=unpardonable-criticized-hegemony&utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=dbc46176a6-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-dbc46176a6->

Tulsi Gabbard has done the unpardonable: criticized US global hegemony

David Bromwich

August 3, 2019

[X]
The Times full spread hit piece on Tulsi Gabbard is a new low, even for the Times. It is yellow journalism half disguised as human interest, with a few random points of political information.

Headline: “Unorthodox Campaign Shows Isolationism May Have a Hold.”

Opening sentence: “Tulsi Gabbard is running for president of a country that she believes has wrought horror on the world.”

Their initial strategy was simply to starve her out – no coverage, no candidacy. Now, because she’s still in and lately told a truth that weakened the Times' choice Kamala Harris, they are giving her the Bernie 2016 treatment: i.e. this candidate is outlandish, absurd, unaccountably heartless (her sister fell off a horse while the story was being written and her reaction was lacking in warmth), mystical (she spoke at a solar panel dedication event), a tool of the wicked (she points out that Syria never went to war against the US) – and possibly a Russian agent.

Among Times readers, fewer than one in 50 is likely to be a supporter of Gabbard, but turning off voters is the secondary purpose of such an article. The primary purpose is to shape attitudes at CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, the Washington Post, and the Times sister publication The New Yorker. Legitimize flat-out condescension and contempt in the influential outlets and you keep her numbers down, since people won’t hear her voice at all.

A war veteran, an experienced and respected lawmaker, and a woman of color, but she commits the unpardonable error of criticizing worldwide US hegemony and so they follow the corporate reflex: make her a laughingstock.

Postscript. Gabbard stands up to an MSNBC hack who tries to overwhelm her with pro-war talking points. MSNBC is part of the perpetual war machine, as is the Times; they backed the Iraq war, and they’ll do the same for the next war, whether it’s in North Africa, east Asia, or Ukraine.

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