Aug 4, 2024 6 min read

Big Media’s Fascism Normalization Problem, or, Why Our Institutions Are Stuck in the Past

I’m Umair Haque, and this is The Issue: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported publication. Our job is to give you the freshest, deepest, no-holds-barred insight about the issues that matter most.

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Hi. How’s everyone? I hope you’re all having a fun weekend. Welcome new readers, welcome back old friends, and a Big Thanks to all who’ve joined so far.

Today we’re going to discuss…

Why does media enable the fascists?

A firestorm erupted on social media this weekend, yet again. Trump agreed, finally, to debate Kamala, on Fox News, in an arena, the headlines said. Only no such thing had ever happened. Kamala hadn’t agreed, much less heard of such a thing. Meanwhile, for Trump, it was mission accomplished—yet another weekend of PR glory.

How ridiculous. Was the media duped? Come on now. That’s far too generous—even basic fact checking would’ve revealed that this story was “framed” completely erroneously, giving Trump all the agency, power, and headlines, while in fact, the whole thing was just a kind of stunt.

So why does media fall for this over and over?

Let me introduce you to what I’ve come to think of as Baldwin’s Razor. That’d be James Baldwin, the titan of intellect, and this would’ve been his centenary. He once said: "I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do."

I’ve come to think of that as Baldwin’s Razor, and it’s a “razor” in the philosophical sense, just like Occam’s Razor, which famously said “the simplest explanation shall suffice.”

What does Baldwin’s Razor reveal when it comes to media?

Well, over the last decade, American media’s done a spectacularly job of covering fascism. So poor, in fact, that you might wonder: is media on their side? You might recall way back when, many of us came to call what was stirring in America fascism. And instead of heeding our warnings, American media instead policed us. Policed…us.

We were told “you can’t call it fascism,” over and over again. So of course that normalized fascism, because that’s what normalization is, the most extreme example of it. Not being able to call a thing by its name. Imagine that, I don’t know, the devil himself was sitting right there, at the dinner table, and you said, guys, there’s the devil. But along came pundits who said: you can’t call him the devil! Welcome to the party, Lucifer, I guess, and that’s how normalization, at its outer limits, really works.

So the media spent the last decade doing something pretty startling: normalizing fascism. And alongside that, legitimizing it. They’d run all kinds of puff pieces about friendly neighborhood fascists, or towering intellectuals of fascism, and so forth, while portraying Trump as everything from a jokester to a Business Genius to a man of great depth. Doesn’t matter—the point is that these twin forces, normalization and legitimization, have been what the media’s putting in motion, for the last decade.

And that’s how we got here. Or at least a very big part of it. Yes, there are structural reasons fascism’s back—we’re in dire economic straits around the globe, etc. And yet we shouldn’t just be stupidly repeating the 1930s. We should’ve learned something. But we haven’t, because the media won’t let us.

So what does that say about them?

Let’s go back to Baldwin’s Razor. And apply it, this time.

There’s someone who says: I’m against fascism. I would never be for it. I support democracy, freedom, modernity. They’re my core values. They’re what I’m all about.

That’s what they say.

But then, curiously, they, do something very, very different. They frame fascism favorably. Not as an existential threat, or a malignancy of history, or a grave act of self-destruction, but as just another in an equivalent set of sociopolitical choices. No Big Deal.

When it comes to discussing the leaders of the movement, they seem to whitewash their sins, and sing their praises. There’s always an angle, and pure objectivity’s impossible—and yet, this person doesn’t even try. To raise obvious parallels, for example, with strongmen from history, from Caesar to Hitler and beyond. And when you try to raise those parallels, they shout you down, and tell you you’re the one doing something wrong.

Meanwhile, history itself is erased. Did this movement, this person, this faction, try to…overthrow democracy? Thwart the peaceful transfer of power? Does it not just inspire but seem to revel in real world violence? The very violence that it’s philosophy not just justifies, but advocates, in the name of purity? At every turn, that context is…dropped. Erased. As if it never existed. So today’s rally is “exciting” or “exhilarating” or “wild,” and there’s no pattern to history anymore, just disconnected dots.

And then this person takes a stance of willful ignorance. The warnings come quicker and quicker, more and more intense by the month, week, day. They come from learned figures, scholars, writers, intellectuals, figures of renown, historians, those steeped in the lessons of dust and ruin, who’ve dedicated their lifetimes to learning them. And what happens when they warn? This person shrugs them off, or worse, mocks and insults them, and instead, promotes those who defend and justify fascism with crackpot theories and absurd notions.

Lebensraum. Blood and soil. Purification. All moral goods to which a society should aspire, and all this is just a “debate,” of an intellectual kind, for which history provides no evidence, about which these learned minds have nothing to offer. All this is just a game, perhaps, or maybe just a business, profit, money, clicks.

If a person said what they said—I’d never abide fascism—but then did what they did, what would Baldwin’s Razor suggest? It’d suggest that they might be pretty OK with the fascists, despite their denials, protests, and remonstrations. It’d suggest that in fact, fascism wasn’t at all the problem they themselves claimed, but through their actions, something they might even think was pretty desirable.

We have a media-and-fascism problem my friends. And it’s become increasingly absurd. Every few days now, these firestorms erupt, because the media refuses to cover fascism with any degree of historical accuracy, intellectual strength, or factual rigor. It’s afraid of saying words like racism, violence, bigotry, hate, folly, self-destruction. It appears terrified of ever drawing for readers clear parallels with the Nazis, among numerous other fascist or extremist movements.

It simply won’t speak the words it should. Instead, it sort of slants everything it can Trump’s way, and that’s becoming, like I said, so increasingly absurd, that every week or so, the New York Times, for example, faces a tsunami-sized wave of criticism from its own readers. And they’re hardly social democrats, so you can see how bad the problem is.

What are we to do about this? Well, one thing you can do is support those of us who are trying to do better. There’s a new wave of indie media out here, and you can and should back it. This is exactly why I set up The Issue, because I was sick, as in nauseated, by all this, and how it enabled fascism to recur, among other big issues. But it’s not about me—there’s a new world of indie media to explore, and we need you to back us, if I can say that out loud and bluntly.

Because old media is failing now. It was one thing when it was sort of cute, how, I don’t know, old-school newspaper coverage was, and we’d make fun of it in harmless ways on Twitter or what have you. But this is different. This is an institutional failure that is placing all of us at risk.

Big Media isn’t going to fix this problem. For it, there is no problem. That’s the point of my little exercise with Baldwin’s Razor. Fascism isn’t a problem to Big Media anymore than say climate change is. There are plenty of good reporters who care, but by and large, editors and publishers and owners have made the choice to frame any remotely urgent or crucial issue as…a game. In which the side of ruin and malignancy, right down to hate and violence, is legitimate, justified, even righteous, and often, to be glorified and exalted.

Why they do that is pretty simple, money and ideology. But for democracy? Civilization? The future? It’s absolutely ruinous.

They are trapped in the past. And they are trapping us in the past, too. See how the world is going nowhere right now? Stuck? Thwarted? That’s because these institutions, too many of them, are imprisoned in the past, and they’re keeping us there, too, instead of building the better, brighter future we all deserve, and are capable of.

Your challenge? And James Baldwin knew this. It’s leaving them behind. Baldwin was disappointed, but never gave up hope. One day, change would come. This is the moment. Camus said: the last judgment is every day.

They’re stuck in the past. That’s understandable. To them, it’s awesome—a place where they had all the money, power, and respect. I get why they’re trapped in the past, and you should too.

But the problem is this. That’s where they want you to be, too. But. Do you really want to stay there with them?

❤️ Don't forget...