Do you know there is a chapter of Black Lives Matter (BLM) in Italy? Do you know that French leaders are resisting the invasion of “woke” culture? How are these social upheavals spreading across continents and oceans? Short answer: the Media.
One episode of the sitcom Seinfeld has Jerry’s neighbor, Newman the mailman, inflating the importance of his job saying, “Control the mail and you control information!” Today, the postman delivers mostly junk mail. Mainstream media delivers about the same
The vast majority of Americans only know what they see on television or on social media. And if it were up to Angelo Carusone, founder of Media Matters for America, FOX News would be cancelled from cable. Mind you, Carusone is a leftist freedom-of-speech gay and Dump Trump founder who just abhors “disinformation”. He wants to save Americans, from the rightwing polemics of FOX pundits and all those embarrassing videos of Democrats that they would see on FOX but never on corporate media.
I suspect that all the video montages of Democratic hypocrisy used in Donald Trump’s defense during the latest failed impeachment came from the FOX film library. Chances are, if you didn’t watch the defense side of the impeachment, you will never know that those videos exist. Omission is not a form of “disinformation” in Carusone’s world, but it is in mine. Carusone’s MMA has received thousands of dollars in grants, including $100,000 each year from the National Education Association which has voted to replace Columbus Day. I wonder where Carusone stands on that issue?
Carusone’s incitement to cancel FOX News was endorsed by a Nicholas Kristof (another “free-speecher”) op-ed in the NYTimes last week, titled “Can We Put Fox News on Trial with Trump?”. This is the same NYTimes that fired its editor after some “woke” reporters objected to him allowing an op-ed by Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Cotton had the gall to suggest that the military be mobilized as back-up for police during BLM rampages in American cities. Those anti-law ‘n order “woke” reporters, no doubt, support 5,000 soldiers now guarding our Capitol.
Many on the “moderate” Left subscribe to the new narrative that Euro-centric history, culture, and values are no longer coin of the realm. The massive illegal transfers of population from Asia, Central America, and Africa to Europe and North America require that the old must give way to the new. Americans who object need re-education and deprogramming. It’s like the old Soviet Union when dissidents were sent to asylums to destroy their reputations. Here, we freely label them “cult members,” no need for asylums.
Italy, France, and most of Europe do not want the American Left’s new agenda of Critical Race Theory, cancel culture, White Guilt, and dismantling of Euro-centrism. BLM is demanding Italian citizenship for all Black immigrants and their Italian-born children, even when Italian law does not grant birthright citizenship as in the U.S. Few Italians want a diversified nation. How many Italian Americans would like to see Italy become like us, at the risk of replicating the violence and cultural cancellation we endure here?
President Macron of France considers the current social science theories being exported by the United States to be an existential threat to his nation. France doesn’t differentiate races in its census counts, but has been overwhelmed by African and Islamic populations demanding an overhaul to French culture and values, and perpetrating a number of radical Islamic atrocities.
The conglomerate media’s power to foment new narratives and export them across the pan-Euro world is all too familiar to Italian Americans. Our decades-long struggle to counter the Mafia movie industry has been a bust. How many times have I and my colleagues written about the collusion among Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the news media in bombarding Americans, and the world, with fictional Mafia movies, TV series, and commercials, as well as actual, but overblown, Mob news. The truth is: political correctness stops at the vowel.
Mafia expert Francesco Calderoni of Milan recently lambasted the fictional TV crime series Gomorrah, an Italian television version of The Sopranos, set in Naples. Much of the storylines are taken from court records, but they misrepresent reality: “mobsters are usually jailed not murdered,” says Calderoni. The Mayor of Naples Luigi de Magistris considers the series an insult to his city, portrayed as a lawless wasteland.
Degradation is just another form of cancellation. -JLM
Calderoni’s words are indeed supported by data.
Based on data available on the website of ISTAT (The Italian National Institute of Statistics), the number of homicides committed in Italy in 2019 is 315 (not a typo). Organized crime is responsible for only 9.2%.
In the U.S., based on F.B.I. statistics, the estimated number of homicides in 2019 is 16,425.