Tabloidisation.

 

Tabloidisation.

The mainstream media has become sensational to get shares/retweets and the like. By becoming dramatic they get attention, people watch ads or subscribe, they stay in funds. While sensible journalism is no longer very profitable. The tabloidisation of the news media has made it so the hack writer is the norm, and yellow all journalism has become. Even the best news sources, or those known for their excellence, have sold out much of their enterprise to court retweets. They use provocative titles to get shares and get their articles posted to fringe political groups and forums. And, far from many are willing to admit, this is not anywhere near to just right-wing problem.

Mussolini From Socialist Roots to Nationalist Dictatorship.

[Some historical notes on the roots of Italian National-Socialism which would become Fascism.]

Firstly, this is not an attack piece on Socialism as Italian fascism changed a great deal from socialist ideas that Mussolini originally accepted into a revolutionary nationalist reform party. It had roots in Socialism in some key ways but differed greatly. This series of notes is not complete and was written a couple of months ago when I was looking into the subject matter.

Mussolini avoided the draft in Italy in the early 1900s by working in Switzerland. He actually met Lenin in exile during this period. And the Italy socialist movement operated in-part in exile in Switzerland. He supported a general strike, was arrested then sent home to Italy. Upon his return he drafted. Later, he got deeply into working with the socialist party again in what is now Italy but was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Working as a journalist he wrote various pieces on the role of the class struggle, the importance of unions, and other work as a mainstream left-socialist. He was considered an intellectual and well-read. He studied the great philosophers and seemed to value Marx and Engels very highly.

By 1911, after much hard work, he was one of the best-known socialists in Italy. Although, Italy back then was a very old fashioned and backward nation in some ways, not an industrial powerhouse like France, Germany or Great Britain, yet with a historical past that gave it much pride. In fact, Mussolini was in riots against the government at that time, due to the war in Libya, which was labelled as an 'Imperialist War', we was imprisoned for five months. Italy was late to empire, and Mussolini helped expel the socialists in the party who supported the war. He then edited socialist papers and was a great propagandist for the hard-left in Italy. Yet, by this period he had concluded that social equality was not the right direction. Nietzschean ideas added to socialism was considered to be a way to reinvigorate socialism. The early roots of fascism in the socialist party.

In WW1, Mussolini was against the war that the liberal party was pushing for and the socialists caused a general strike. Yet, while using the issues of war and the influence of Italian solidarity and the popular nationalism that was promoted by the other parties, he ended up supporting the war to free the Italians under Austrian imperial rule. He condemned the Central Powers as Imperialist aggressors as they engaged in a war over Belgium, Serbia, etc. And the occupied Italians were just another oppressed people group. His flip from Socialist Party darling to a practical politician soon get him expelled from the party. Even though he had expelled others who thought as he had only a few years earlier.

With the war that was to spread to every power of the world, Mussolini switched from socialism with a new philosophy to the more comparable ideas within nationalism. As a new thinker on these matters, adding socialist ideas to nationalist cries gave him support from both nationalists and dissident socialists. Mussolini decried orthodox socialism for their ideological limitations, mostly over the war and their inability to appeal to the nationalistic feelings of many Italians who swayed far more by other parties as the Socialist Party was impotent in such matters.

Mussolini's inner group he imagined running a brave new Italy were no longer the workers and their socialist guides, but rather people of any class. At this time he termed himself a national socialist. One who was respective of the history and people, the legacy of Italy.

Within a few years he became seen as a man of revival and strength, he claimed socialism had failed and his was a key organiser in anti-socialist activities. Breaking up protests, producing propaganda, etc. Italian-Fascio squads were used to crack the skulls of those who risked revolution and other failures in Italian society and production. The ideological basis of the fascist movement came from Mussolini's personal beliefs, inspired by Plato's republic, Nietzsche, the legend of ancient Rome, and a variety of selected ideas weaved together. Including Social-Darwinian concepts of how a society should be run, imperialism is justified to allow space for the Italian people, inferior people, including slavs, deserve to be treated as lesser people. Although, racism in this sense was less extreme than German National Socialism which was in the process of being an ideology at the same time, such as with the German Workers Party(1919-1920).

Economically, they were modern and for radical reform of what was a stagnating post-war economy with a lack of modernisation.

In 1922, the fascists had a vast following, the elites and the workers, and marched upon Rome, given few choices the prime minister resigned and the King handed power to Mussolini. Soon he was prime minister of Italy and form a coalition to rule and reform Italy. A task founded on false claims then on vast debts to built up the nation and its economy. And the first few years if Italian Fascism were troubled by unrest. Over this period a slow movement to remove restraint of governmental power was removed and local authority was abolished, leaving the corporate structured state in its place. A system in which Mussolini was practically dictator, in principle, he was only answerable to the King. Clearing lands and draining swamps by executive planning, modernising the rail services and the navy. There was much to be admired in the modernisation of Italy under this tyrant, much under various reformers given the power to offer radical reform throughout history.

Over the years leading up to the second world war, Italian fascism would make some great leaps moving Italy out of the victorian era, but at the cost of turning it into a police-state with ambitions of empire. They would extend Italian imperialism beyond Libya and other pre-fascist imperial grabs, including Eritrea and Somaliland(Somalia), Abyssinia(Ethiopia) would be conquered in 1935, in 1939 they would conquer Albania. Italy would have its fair share of genocides, concentration camps in Libya in the 1920s and 30s, even chemical weapons used to clear the "inferior" people. Methods were not dissimilar to what most colonial empires used at one point or another in occupied lands. And much like other nations and empires of the time, the Italian Empire had a very low-view of "half-cast" people, making inter-racial relations a criminal offence. And Italy adopted antisemitism in the late-1930s. Italian fascism tolerated Jewish people, as they did various groups, as useful tools, once the Germans under Mr Hitler were seen as a far more useful tool for Italian gains, they were turned upon. Later handing over many Italian Jews to the Germans in WW2.

During the Second World War showing its deep failings and poor modernisation when facing various militaries. Losing their imperial possessions and Allied forces taking most of Sicily, until only until Mussolini was removed from office by his own grand council and some power was handed back to King Vittorio.

Don't Panic, It's Not Quite The News. [a random post]

Don't Panic, It's Not Quite The News.

Minor outbreaks of new viruses have been common in recent years. Almost all have been off the mainstream news, almost utterly unworthy of note. Recent new viruses in places like China, or new outbreaks of old viruses, seem to be nothing of a vast amount of note. The Coronavirus issue is the only important outbreak at this time. The news are covering minor numbers of 17 new COVID cases, a small number of plague cases, a pig virus, etc. In China. Largely, this isn't very newsworthy. Just as a few other minor virus news stories in America have been filler and fear that sells. Note that the areas involved are often vast and the human cost is minor and because viruses are viral(trending) news every news website tries to capitalise on a new angle or the latest scoop.

The Coronavirus is obviously the news worth subject. That said, young Jewish baby boys injured from traditional circumcision method related infections, herpes causing brain injury for example, in cities like New York, is a continuous cost in human suffering. Yet, that isn't a COVID related subject matter. Honour killing in Pakistan kill thousands of young women and girls every year, but that isn't worth stating right now?? Equally, concentration camps in China aren't as important as a few more coronavirus cases in the same nation?? Methinks that many of our great news providers are busy being whores for attention, which at least makes the BBC cover a story just because everyone else has published an article on the subject. Such as Trump-related news, it is often a matter of a slight blunder, a dumb point or question, then the reaction causes the news to linger and even flourish. Thus, the news story derived from the old causes the need for the mainstream to march over old ground.

News is news-worthy because news sources have stated a thing as the news, the New Story. A great amount of the olds seems to be sold as news, or a new angle on an old story. Meanwhile, we see next to nothing on many other stories. And those stories rarely trend on twitter or are seen on the news search headlines on google or bing. I do sometimes feel that the art of news reporting is past its prime and the common news method is steeped in mediocracy and repetition between news services. Leaving often very little room for intellectualism, as something very close to copy-and-paste in lieu of journalist ability. Yet, at least regarding the present crisis of Corona, we can understand com0pletely why we might see a great amount of repetition.

Fundamentalism in Pakistan, Government Censorship, and Murder.

Pakistani government is blacking out the trouble with its blasphemy laws again, news stories pulled, etc. a story about the way the law is being used to oppress the Hindus and Christians, surprise surprise the Pakistani government it at it again, censoring the stories, not least that of attacks by angry mobs against those who say simple things like 'Islam isn't correct' or 'Muhammad isn't a prophet'.  Needless to say, Pakistani Freethinkers are as endangered if not more so than other opinions on god and religion.

 This image shows the kind of anti-Christian hatred that the government effectively enforces with the blasphemy law, but the average citizen is willing to take up arms himself to kill the infidel.
Murder cases may not be solved, angry mobs that can number hundreds or event thousands of people have attacked average Pakistanis and destroyed livelihoods and places of worship.


We have seen over the years a large number of attacks in the press, although, much of the media doesn't care or fears offending people. indeed, a Shiite Muslim protest a few years ago was turned into a blood bath by young Sunni Muslim Pakistanis who followed the orders of the religious leader, since much of Muslim violence is internalised, between types of Islam. I could add to this concerning censorship the troubles with honour killings, in which, young women are killed for the crime of caring for the wrong person or fleeing arranged marriages. 

This image is of Pakistanis burning flags after the Charlie Hebdo
attacks, and I could literally find thousands of such cases, and often violence is expressed to local Christians for the crime of having the most populous western religion.  The ignorant masses that are controlled by religious leaders who refuse to let Pakistan develop beyond it's dangerous devotion to fundamental views of Islam.  
  
Sadly, this trend of Pakistani violence isn't a question of the odd attack, it's a matter of a nation that is torn between extremism and civilisation, and sadly the homeland of the Taliban has more than it's fair share of dangerous extremists.