"News reporting" as storytelling
The Truman Show is experiencing technical difficulties
Our current media sphere is so corrupt, subservient and broken. I wrote on here yesterday about the ways in which this “Truman Show”-apparatus controls what we are to think. Our media’s curating and storytelling is the most critical cog in that Machine. I’m sure this has been integral to the press since its invention, but our new era of 24hr IV-in-the-arm mass-media is a game-changer. It really has dragged us into a realm envisioned by minds like Orwell. The most glaring sign of this is how our press no longer serves the function of “reporting” at all. They no longer tell you what you need to know, they simply tell you what they want you to know/what you are to think. Here is a link to what I wrote yesterday…
I’ve been fascinated by the coverage surrounding Giorgia Meloni’s win in Italy. Not only internationally, but here domestically. Not only within the major players and alphabet networks, but at the individual discourse level and from blue checks I greatly respect. They all sung one-note; they all sung the same note. That note, of course, was that Meloni’s win meant the rise of fascism and authoritarianism. Wouldn’t you know it, the messaging was almost identical to that which gets blasted at the GOP and Trump here in our shores. Almost identical to the way Trudeau painted the truckers. Almost identical to how Australian government officials villainized those against aggressive COVID measures and quarantine camps. Almost identical to how the new Swedish leadership is being tainted by the same outlets. Jeez, it’s almost like anyone and everyone who pushes back against this homogenous machine blanketing the G7 gets labeled as a threat, an enemy, a terrorist, a bane to democracy itself. How bout that!
I came across this article on Yahoo and wanted to kind of break it down and show you how bad this mental and emotional manipulation is from our press. Mind you, this is from Yahoo!news, it is not presented as an opinion piece. Like the front-page headline I included in the link above with CNN telling their readers as ‘news’ not what’s happened on the Supreme Court, but that those events show an “underbelly of rage” from the conservative justices, this is designed to land as “news” to those poor saps who get their entire world understanding from this group of mainstreamed outlets that all now largely operate as one. I’m going to copy/paste some lines as I came across them in order. They’re all the same thing; same design and objective. Let’s take a look…
… in her first public address since taking office, decrying fascism, voicing support for the European Union and NATO, and vowing continued backing of Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Immediately out of the gates, they acknowledge that Meloni has explicitly denounced fascism and stated that Italy will continue supporting the EU and NATO and the efforts in Ukraine. Her own words won’t ultimately matter to the rabid, however, as their narrative requires you to believe she is a fascist bent on bringing down the entire western system. They get this out of the way because, well, it’s the reality, and then move onto their storytelling.
[Regardless of the fact she has specifically denounced that which we want to accuse her of] the ascension of Italy’s first hard-right leader since the end of World War II continues to have many in Europe on edge.
“The jury’s still out”, says the Brussels think-tank. They aren’t a fan at all of “her appointments of questionable people”. Of course they’re not. In their ideal world, they get to hand-pick them all right there in Brussels. So to drive the point home they lead with the emotional morality-binary, what else would they do?
Some in Brussels, he said, regard her as “a right-wing extremist, who we should not only watch out for, but confront.”
They pull a quote from French European Affairs Minister Laurence Boone to “underscore that concern” (see, the concern is obviously real and legitimate, just a matter of whether you’re intelligent enough to grasp it or if you’re ignorant from all that right-wing disinformation).
France will be keeping an eye on Meloni’s government. “We want to work with Rome but we will monitor respect for rights and freedoms” and “pay close attention to respect of values and the rule of law.”
French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne goes into The Boxed-Set for her play and drops a “[France] will pay heed to ‘human rights and the right to abortion’ in Italy”, as if Meloni and her evil force are about to swoop down the hill and terminate human rights themselves. It’s all just theatrical nonsense; but see, it gets echoed off mountaintops, circulated around every black-and-white printed paper and screen in the world, and blessed by The Righteous. I’m not afraid of Meloni or what Meloni wants. In fact, Meloni wants a lot of the same things I do. Meloni wants a lot of the same things millions of us in the US do: those of us tired of being under the grip of The Self-Righteous here in the states with their coercive federal and corporate apparatus. A lot like how Italians are tired of being under the grip of entities like EU and the cascading and increasingly detached social and climate policies that every functioning brain knows are serving pretextual goals. No, the masses turning against YOU is not “fascism” or the “end of democracy”. It’s literally the definition of democracy as the chickens come home to roost. Of course, our global powers-that-be don’t like that at all!
“There’s a lot of concern, especially outside Italy,” Arturo Varvelli, director of the Rome office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Yahoo News. He’s been besieged with calls from political analysts across Europe asking, “Wow, so now you have a new fascist government?” — an assessment he disputes. “Meloni is not a fascist,” he added.
Of course there is a lot of concern OUTSIDE of Italy. Lol There’s a shit ton of it in places like Brussels, DC and Davos. It’s all pouring-out laced with sensationalism about the end of the world, but it’s actually just utter panic from an entity that knows its power-grip is shattering and the next stage is its own sinking.
While Meloni, the 45-year-old single mother from working-class origins, ran on a “God, Homeland, Family” platform, has vowed to clamp down on African migrants and has taken aim at gay rights, Varvelli believes she is far less worrisome than two other Italian politicians, Matteo Salvini of La Lega and Silvio Berlusconi of Forza Italia
What a revealing passage. We’ll get into Salvini and Berlusconi in a second, but look at that phrasing above: “vowed to clamp down on African migrants and has taken aim at gay rights”. These are actually two of Meloni’s most popular positions in Italy: stopping the tide of illegal immigration and reversing the maniacal western push of gender theory and LGBTQIA+ cult-like insanity. This is largely why she was elected! But the readers of this piece aren’t to know that. No no, we’ll use framing that implies her platform is that of The Monsters. It can’t possibly be batshit crazy leftist dogma, right? Nope, it’s “gay rights”. It shouldn’t surprise you at all that the outbound Italian government used their last session to try and embed a whole bunch of LGBTQ+ nonsense into their government books. Of course they did. That goes to the heart of why the people of Italy had them pack their bags.
The article spends a lot of time on Berlusconi and Salvini, trying to tie that all back to Meloni even though an included quote states “Berlusconi went on to personally attack Meloni, writing to party members that she’s “self-important, bossy, arrogant and ridiculous”. So it’s not like his past and present is that of Meloni’s. But the way they want to make Meloni evil just doesn’t hold much water, it’s all Truman Show-nonsense. So they need to drag up the skeletons of people like Berlusconi and get them to stick on her.
Although Meloni has underscored that she’s an Atlanticist — allied with the U.S. and NATO — some in Russia apparently don’t believe her.
“Meloni's Atlanticist convictions should not be overestimated,” Yelena Panina, a pro-Kremlin foreign policy analyst told Russian newspaper Izvestia. “They could change at any time if the geopolitical situation changes.” It is, Panina added, “quite reasonable to assume that after some time and under certain circumstances she could become an adequate partner for Russia in Europe.”
That is just utterly bizarre. It could be rewritten as “We want Meloni to be painted as a Putin stooge, even though she has explicitly stated the opposite, we’re going to hypothetically assume she still could become a Putin stooge anyhow”. This is the state of western “news”. You’ll find this exact same kind of deranged bent in everything you read, from the BBC to The Atlantic.
Meloni’s foreign policy isn’t the only thing being scrutinized. She has previously called for using the Italian navy to block African refugees from heading to the country, but that has yet to solidify into an actual policy announcement. “We must stop illegal departures and human trafficking,” she said in her speech on Tuesday, and her newly appointed Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi is already taking provisional steps to block two NGO ships under distress carrying 326 rescued refugees from entering Italian territory, saying they’re not following proper procedures.
Again, her primary platform being presented as if it is inherently abhorrent. But unlike most journos, the citizens of Italy and America are largely against the insane tide of illegal immigrants pouring into both countries. You keep writing pieces that make wanting to enforce immigration law as a bad thing, and we’ll keep electing leaders that do the exact opposite. I’m good with this arrangement.
Another appointment that Broder is following closely is that of Guido Crosetto, a former defense industry lobbyist who Meloni tapped as defense minister. Even though Crosetto gave up his lobbying position, Broder finds it “problematic to have these kinds of revolving doors between the private and public sectors.”
Beware those conflicts of interest between defense departments and defense contractors! An evil we can never allow to return to this Earth! Lol I can’t… I just can’t. Is there an issue with private/public cooperation on the military front? Of course, but it surely isn’t some novel issue of Meloni’s. When you have to invent boogeymen over and over and over, eventually you just make yourself look like a dumbass. If we really wanted to have that kind of conservation, I know a few American companies you might want to start with.
Meloni’s also being carefully watched regarding her policy initiatives on abortion, which has been legal in Italy since 1978. “It’s a thorny topic,” Gianfranco Pasquino, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Bologna, told Yahoo News. “She said that she’s not going to change the existing law,” which allows abortion up to 90 days. However, “she’s also said that she will try to provide advice to the women looking for an abortion. So she will try to limit and prevent abortions, but in legal ways.”
Remember above when they paraded around G7 leaders pleading about “abortion and human rights”? Here they specifically acknowledge Meloni has said she isn’t changing abortion law… but then bizarrely find a way to pump-up the ubiquitous Abortion Boogeyman anyhow. Have to fire-up those emotions when nothing else you’re saying makes sense. This was like Macron lamenting the overturn of Roe v. Wade as if it was the end of humanity itself, when his own country has stricter abortion law than the confines of Roe. People like this are just so incredibly fake. And they are propped-up and sold by our Truman Show-media.
In her speech before the Parliament on Tuesday, Meloni announced that Italy needs an economic and cultural plan “to rediscover the beauty of parenthood and put the family back at the center of society,” adding that municipalities should provide free day care centers.
Meloni fears that, due to having one of the lowest birthrates in Europe, Italy faces the prospect of extinction, Broder said, adding that she has previously expressed wariness about same-sex parenting. But ECFR’s Varvelli doesn’t expect that she’ll strip away existing LGBTQ rights. “I don’t think they want to start that kind of battle,” he said, though he does expect pro-family incentives to try to boost the population.
What the hell does this passage even mean? Again, they HAVE to paint a boogeyman that simply is not there. This is the exact same tension we see in Florida where DeSantis getting leftist indoctrination and sexual filth out of our schools is painted as Republicans being against “LGBTQ+ rights” and even gay marriage. It’s complete and utter nonsense. I reject this “queer+” shit entirely. It’s nothing but deranged leftist dogma. Most people in Italy do too and they’re tired of having Brussels-style brats dictate to them all how they are all to live. Joe Biden is over on these shores passing “LGBTQI+” law. What the hell does that even mean? I guarantee you Joe has no idea what “QI+” means in application. It’s just pandering to leftist activism and part of a leftist cultural takeover. Italy has now said no; America says no next week.
While some analysts have predicted that due to friction within her coalition, Meloni’s government could crumble within months, Harnwell believes her top challenge will be keeping the alliance together and that “she’ll definitely last longer than a head of lettuce” — a reference to Liz Truss’s short reign as prime minister of the U.K.
He does worry, however, that her support for sanctions on Russia, and her Atlanticist views, do leave “her right flank wide open,” since many conservatives question those positions. He believes that “Silvio Berlusconi is maneuvering Forza Italia to swoop in from the populist right” and is already preparing an exodus from the coalition that would cause the government to collapse.
In a fitting final page to this performative book, here they present Burlusconi not as tied to Meloni like they did above, but as a threat separate from Meloni who will use her same dangerous presence to ride in from the shadows and sweep Italy back into a Mussolini-esque hell. If you haven’t picked up on the theme yet, it is always the same: “If you don’t do what we want, <enter horrific-sounding existential threat here>.” We end this manipulation and coercion, of course, by simply saying “no”. And that’s what they’ve done in places like Italy and Sweden. The US is on deck.
Pasquino, however, believes that Meloni will keep the alliance intact and serve her entire five-year term. “In all likelihood,” he said, “if the left does not reorganize itself, she could win again in the elections five years from now.”
“Do not underestimate Meloni,” he added. “She’s really ambitious and determined. And she wants to leave her mark on Italian history.”
Oh, I agree that Meloni is not a flash in the pan. But that’s not because her ambition and determination and desire to leave a mark on Italian history. It’s because the people are turning against this coercive high-level force across the globe. You see a leftist Constitution rejected in Chile; the people of Sri Lanka pouring into presidential palaces to say no more; Truckers lined for miles in Canada; thousands of farmers and tractors uniting in the Netherlands, in Spain and in Northern Italy; the largest protests in Panama’s history; people pouring into the streets of Argentina; Bangladesh in an citizen uproar; large-scale protests in Brussels.
What is happening is global, and here in the states the same tension is simply called “MAGA”. This is what all this bizarre “Fascism!” and “End of democracy!” rhetoric is about here in the US. It’s the same cultural struggle taking place across the west. It’s why you see the same manipulative rhetoric pouring out from every mainstream outlet we have. Yes, the all operate in concert. Don’t take my word for it, just go look around. If you pull back and look at the composite, you’ll realize it’s all the same struggle. And it’s all collapsing across the west now too. America is about to fire its shot next week. It was never “MAGA”, it was America.
So glad to see you writing on Substack.
Exactly. These opinion pieces masquerading as real news reporting has gotten old.
However, more and more of our fellow citizens are noticing they are being fed regime narratives instead of free press journalism. The rise of more independent sources point to this which makes me hopeful for the future of our country. Although, it is certain that things will get much worse before it gets better.