US Corporate Media Complicit in Demonizing Pro-Palestinian Protesters
Mainstream outlets give the impression of circling the wagons with Israeli and American officialdom to prevent at all costs an open, honest, comprehensive and contextualized public discussion on Israel’s behavior.
A great, novel experiment in political physics is under way in the United States, as the unstoppable moral force of youth-led protests against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza runs into the immovable object of the American power elite’s support for it.
In this clash, two critical forces have been weaponized: the U.S. mainstream media that heavily disseminates Israeli propaganda and shapes many local, state and national policies, and the scourge of antisemitism that has been unfairly used to demonize and silence Palestinians and shift attention away from the U.S.-enabled Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Since Israel launched its assault on Gaza, President Joe Biden’s steadfast support for it has galvanized young Americans and pushed them to mobilize.
They have formed decisive coalitions with Muslim and Arab Americans, Jewish, Black, Hispanic and Native communities, labor unions, and churches. They have given notice that if the U.S. continues to support the war, they will abandon Democratic candidates in the November elections, which would likely be fatal for the party.
[The power elites] fear the growing coalition of Americans who are not afraid to challenge the falsehoods and distortions of staunch Israel supporters or ignore biased media offerings.
The American power elite largely ignored the initial criticisms of the young and the marginalized, until student encampments started springing up at universities across the country three weeks ago. The students demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, a halt to U.S. government financial and military aid to Israel, and the divestment of university investments from military industries that enable the Israeli genocide.
The mainstream media’s coverage of the campus encampments and the violence against them has exposed it as a central actor in the power elite that sustains Israel’s war and simultaneously tries to silence Palestinians and criminalize anyone who supports them.
As I closely followed U.S. media outlets in recent weeks, I was shocked to see reporters, commentators and hosts use the exact same words and phrases that Biden and US and Israeli officials have used to smear the protesters. The mainstream media gives the impression of circling the wagons with Israeli and American officialdom to prevent at all costs an open, honest, comprehensive and contextualized public discussion on Israel’s behavior while trying instead to focus public attention on spurious accusations.
The mainstream media has widely condemned students and accused them of using “hate speech and hate symbols” (in the words of the US president), endorsing terrorism, advocating for Israel’s destruction, resorting to antisemitic slurs and threatening and frightening Jewish students. Everywhere they look in the student protest encampments, the media oracles have seen “terrorists” in training, “anti-Semites” at work, “Jew-haters” being groomed, universities collapsing, and “Nazi mobs” in the making.
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/mainstream-media/us-corporate-media-complicit-in-demonizing-pro-palestinian-protesters