One of the most damning things social media has done to our culture is to compartmentalise us into mutually hostile echo chambers. Even in the 1970s, Skyhooks could sing, “Everybody’s got their own views, but we’re all reading the same news”. Not any more.
Which is a pity, because if you bother to read what the “other side” are, then, sometimes you might find that there are still some things you might agree on.
For instance, suffice to say that Jacobin, “a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives”, is not a publication that might be considered a friendly space for yours truly. Much of the time, that might be broadly true. But I do try and take the time to glance at it at least now and then, because I never know when I’ll be pleasantly surprised by agreeing with them on something.
Such as the new “Pentagon Papers” leak of classified US military reports into the Ukraine war.
Because, as Jacobin points out, the US political establishment and its mainstream media lickspittles are “fixated on the leaker, his motives, his personal faults, and what the government is doing to make sure this doesn’t happen again”. Indeed, the media have fallen over themselves to be the government’s henchmen:
Before long, a host of journalists at outlets like NPR and Vice were volunteering their time to help the Department of Justice (DOJ) track down the person responsible, poring over photos for possible clues — acting as “heroes of the hunt,” as one commentator approvingly put it […]
In the process, as the Intercept’s Nikita Mazurov pointed out, reporters cavalierly made public potentially identifying details that could incriminate the leaker’s teenage associates.
In the din of the hunt for the leaker, the real story has gone almost unnoticed.
The Ukraine war documents leak is a very big deal. Among other things, the documents reveal that the Biden administration has been misleading the public about its upbeat assessment of the Ukrainian war effort. The leak lays bare the extent of US spying on friends and enemies alike, including the United Nations secretary general. It shows that friendly nations dependent on US largesse have quietly been undermining Washington’s geopolitical interests. It makes clear that the world came far closer to unimaginable catastrophe during last year’s September run-in between British and Russian pilots than we were told at the time. And it confirms that the United States and NATO allies do have boots on the ground in the war-torn country in the form of ninety-seven special forces personnel.
As Jacobin rightly says, thanks in large part to the hyper-partisan mindset created by social media algorithms, “much of the discussion has now devolved into a partisan food fight over whether or not the leaker is really a ‘whistleblower’ or even a ‘hero.’” Almost certainly, which assessment someone prefers will be dictated by their political allegiance.
Six years after much of the liberal and media establishment roundly condemned the Intercept for accidentally exposing a leaker and getting her railroaded by Donald Trump’s DOJ, these same voices are cheering on as a different president does the same — and have even been deliberately helping it to do so […]
This is not an accident. The more time you spend thinking and talking about the leaker and whether or not he’s a good person, the less you’re devoting to the substance of the leaks and the official deception and misbehavior they have shed light on.
The media are pretending that the leaks themselves are an affront to American democracy, not what they reveal.
But ask yourself: What’s more corrosive to US democracy? That the president secretly put US boots on the ground in an incredibly dangerous, constantly escalating war zone, explicitly breaking a promise in the process and acting against the wishes of the majority of the voting public? Or that the public was finally told about it? If we truly believe that “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” then it makes little sense to vehemently oppose turning on a light. (US officials, for the record, say that the special forces are merely working in the US embassy, but then US officials also told us a week ago Russia was responsible for this leak.)
Jacobin
US officials also told us that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation” — and the media seals chorused in honking agreement.
Ignore the self-serving din and ask yourself instead: do we really want to be throwing ourselves so recklessly and unquestioningly into yet another Establishment proxy war. Especially when it is on the knife-edge of blowing up into a very, very hot war indeed?