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and sure the statement is provocative. But there are no less statements made by a certain social and political left when elections are lost. They always end up blaming the right-wing press for poor results. Examples: in Chile, the media, in the hands of two business groups, it is said, have been responsible for manipulating the population to reject the constitutional draft. The campaign of fear and psychological warfare, they underline, created the right state of mind to bring the ember to their sardine. In Spain, Podemos attributes its debacle to media persecution. A premeditated campaign, they emphasize, of the right through its information media and the sewers of the regime. These toxic campaigns insult and ignore them.
What happens when the premise fails? Did the right-wing press in Colombia campaign for the left? Rather the opposite and even so they did not prevent the triumph of Gustavo Petro. And in Peru? A string of lies were launched against Pedro Castillo, but they failed. And Bolivian? Luis Arce was subjected to all kinds of disqualifications and they also failed miserably. The evidence doesn’t add up.
Have you ever in the history of capitalism its media behaved democratically? During the cold war, in the so-called free world, the editorial line of the mass media public and private acted under the same motto: anti-communism. BBC, RAI, Efe, Afp or NBC, CBS, CNN or FOX. Any news referring to the USSR, China and allies was classified as an event that occurred in communist countries. The images emitted were in black and white. Its purpose, to produce, in the eye of the beholder, a sensation of being, the communist countries, hells plunged into sadness. Color was deliberately substituted for crude, low-resolution photography to project a gray world with people whose souls had been stolen from them by evil communists. In Latin America, Africa or Asia, the national liberation movements were attached to dissolute ideologies that attacked the Catholic family and good customs. Marxists, communists, socialists, Maoists or Trotskyists received the nickname of terrorists. Today, any candidate who does not match his profile is disparagingly described as leftist
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I do not know of a media outlet, belonging to power groups, whose editorial policy consists of supporting leftist candidates. It’s not your job. Rather they act to protect their interests. Double standards when reporting is common. Let’s see. Israel’s war against the people of Palestine, with few exceptions, is made invisible. Their crimes are downplayed or turned into defensive actions against Hamas terrorism. On the contrary, in another war, events of the same magnitude, in Ukraine, are relevant to condemn the invading Russian army and request the action of the International Criminal Court.
As always, under capitalism, leftist parties, class unions and anti-capitalist social movements have been vilified. The mass media of power must comply: denigrate their leaders. No one escapes his defamatory action. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Bakunin, Rosa Luxemburg or Gramsci are cannon fodder. And in Latin America, Sandino, Lázaro Cárdenas, Jacobo Arbenz, Juan Bosch, Fidel Castro, Ernesto Che Guevara, Salvador Allende or Hugo Chávez. The right has not been shy about using its media to discredit the left. Their campaigns use lies and slander. They play dirty, seek to manipulate and control emotions. It’s in your DNA. Another example: the EZLN and the campaign against the Subcommander Galeano .
For the ruling classes and transnational corporations, democracy is a euphemism. The media, make no mistake, are weapons of mass destruction. They shoot at will and have a perfectly calibrated target. Be against a progressive tax reform, greater public investment in health, housing, education or a wage increase. Those and not others are their objectives. We live in a world at war and, within it, the right-wing media do not let up. She is joined today by the billionaires of digital capitalism. Bill Gates, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk.
In conclusion, does anyone think that the capitalists and their social media should make positive publicity to their enemies? Should the right wing sacrifice itself in the name of the left? Power will never give up campaigns of fear and disinformation. Playing with emotions and pain is part of the psychological war, to break wills and nullify critical conscience. Those who proclaim themselves victims of the media right would do better to design a strategy that breaks its paralyzing inertia. It is necessary to assume responsibilities. Paraphrasing Paulo Freire, do political pedagogy, or as Pablo González Casanova points out: think to win.
