Millennial Socialist Moment Mostly Media Hype

Are millennials increasingly anti-capitalist? That’s the question Chicago public radio station WBEZ posed recently to me and The Nation‘s Sarah Leonard. (You can listen to the whole thing here.)

“The explosive popularity of Bernie Sanders in the U.S. and Jeremy Corbyn in the U.K. among younger voters revealed millennials’ desire for a new economic system,” states the promo for the segment on WBEZ program Worldview. “It’s no wonder, as millennials are likely to be economically worse off than their parents or grandparents, especially those who became job-seeking adults after the Great Recession of 2008.”

That all makes for a tidy narrative, but it’s one built on the flimsiest of evidence. The main data offered during the Worldview segment was a 2016 Harvard poll, in which 51 percent of 18- to 29-year-old respondents had an unfavorable view of capitalism. But as I pointed out at the time (and on the show), the same poll showed that an even greater number of young people—59 percent—had an unfavorable view of socialism.

And while 42 percent of the millennials that Harvard surveyed had a positive view of capitalism, just 33 percent had a positive view of socialism.

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Fusion GPS And How The News Gets Made

Lee Smith has an extensive hardhitting piece at the Tablet on Fusion GPS and what the media has become. I’m going to excerpt a few relevant sections. Not necessarily in order.

On Wednesday, three major news organization published variations of the same story—about the line of succession to the Saudi throne. It seems that in June the son of King Salman, Mohammed Bin Salman, muscled his cousin Mohammed Bin Nayef out of the way to become the Crown Prince and next in line.

It’s a juicy narrative with lots of insider-y details about Saudi power politics, drug addiction, and the ambitions of a large and very wealthy family, but the most salient fact is that the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Reuters published what was essentially the same story, with minor variations, on the same day—not a breaking news story, but an investigative feature.

In other words, these media organizations were used as part of an information campaign targeting Riyadh, for as yet unknown reasons. Who’s behind it? Maybe an opposition research shop like Fusion GPS, or a less formal gathering of interests, like Saudi opponents foreign and domestic, as well as American intelligence officials.

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Senior Obama Official: The Media Colluded With Russian Intelligence Officials

Edward Price is a former CIA employee and senior director for Obama’s NatSec Council. He accused the media of colluding with Russian intelligence officials during the 2016 presidential election.

The panel was titled The Kremlin Plan to Beat the West Without Firing a Shot and the discussion revolved around the ‘Russian meddling’ of the 2016 presidential election.

Price discussed the media’s collusion with Russian intelligence officials; he believes Guccifer 2.0 is a Russian cyber persona who was giving scoops to reporters.

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White House Calls Idea Of ‘Second Meeting’ Between Trump And Putin ‘False, Malicious And Absurd’

Several mainstream news media outlets reported Tuesday evening that President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a second, undisclosed “meeting” at the G-20 summit earlier this month in Hamburg, Germany, attended only by Putin’s translator.

The “meeting” — occurring during a dinner for heads of states and their spouses, supposedly “raised the eyebrows” of other foreign leaders at the dinner, for breaking national security protocol by not also having a U.S. translator present, according to Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer, who first reported the meeting in a note sent to clients, according to Reuters.

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Trump Was Hammering CNN In 1990 For Fake News: “When People Say Something False I Attack Those People”

Before hashtags, Russian hackers or fake news were ever a thing, businessman Donald Trump had already had enough of the inaccurate reporting from mainstream media entities like CNN.

In 1990, the future President joined the network for an interview in which he hammered the interviewer about the news channel’s inaccurate and biased reporting.

Even then, just as 24-hour cable news networks were in their infancy, it was a shock to reporters, whose credibility had never really been question, especially in front of their own audiences.

As you’ll see below, Trump not only accuses CNN of getting away with murder in their reporting, but abruptly walks out on the interview after concluding it was yet another witch hunt.

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GOP Guest Hits MSNBC Host With Stat Of Journalists Donating 96% To Clinton

On Friday’s MSNBC Live, host Craig Melvin denied that the dominant news media have a liberal bias after Republican Congressman Dave Brat started hitting him with reports that over 96 percent of journalists who made political donations chose Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. A bit later, Melvin denied biased reporting as he declared, “Even if that bias did exist — which, I mean, Dave, it doesn’t — even if it did –” Brat zinged him: “If it exists? Now, you got to come clean with me on that one.”

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FLASHBACK: TIME Magazine In 1996 Bragged About How U.S. Interfered In Russian Election

The mainstream media has suffered a serious bout of amnesia — a Russian concussion, if you will.

Of course, the MSM is ignoring the clear evidence that Hillary Clinton is guilty (very guilty) of altering the course of the Democratic primary to defeat Sen. Bernie Sanders (just skim through those Democratic National Committee emails and you’ll see). But the media is also pretending (or is simply unaware, not sure which is worse) that nations don’t try to alter the outcome of elections in other nations.

Take 1996. Boris Yeltsin, the president of Russia, was up for re-election in the summer and the United States felt that he was easier to deal with than his opposition, Communist rival Gennadi Zyuganov. But Yeltsin, the hard-partying and affable leader, had health problems and his approval rating was dismal — single digits. His chances did not look good.

Enter the United States, which, in a clandestine operation successfully helped Yeltsin pulled out a win.

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