Recent article from our friends at Propaganda In Focus, taking Guy Debord’s Society Of The Spectacle as a starting point for deconstructing the role of the expert and, in particular, the Fact Checker…
…and the growing phenomenon of so-called disinformation reporters and researchers are a kind of “expert” that act to guard the spectacle’s version of truth. Lay readers and television viewers, likely tired by the demands of their own lives, may look to such professionals to best understand reality and current events; in practice, such fact-checking operations silence emerging news narratives that go against the grain…
The author of the piece, Stavroula Pabst, points out (as did Udo Ulfkotte) that the increasing precarity of journalism creates ideal conditions for ensuring compliance. Any deviation from mainstream narratives is likely to prompt the younger, hungrier colleagues to spearhead a cancel campaign against the old guard who might cling to the notion of investigative reporting or speaking truth to power.
Where The Spectacle is concerned, what better exemplar is there than the world of entertainment/celebrity? Approved icons such as Sean Penn, Bono, and Neil Young front campaigns for Ukraine, vaccines, and whatever else is required of them.
Those who have been ostracized, if not banished, continue to serve as handy scapegoats. A good example, long since consigned to the trash by the UK music press (now largely defunct), is dear Steven Patrick Morrisey. He wrapped himself in a union jack proving he was a fascist twenty or more years ago. Ill-advised off-the-cuff tirades (always his weakest point) and songs that are a little too subtle such as National Front Disco merely reinforced this status.
The singer Miley Cyrus, reputedly a MKUltra poppet, but certainly firmly steered by those controlling her career, recorded a ‘feature’ on a song for Morrissey’s next album. This was two years ago. She has recently asked for it to be withdrawn, in case this could be seen as propping up this hideous old reactionary (allegedly). The resulting mobbing has provoked Moz to respond thus: