Monthly Archives: May 2017

Kochtopus and getting to know some more players (4)

Before we look at how Steve Bannon met David Bossie and Andrew Breitbart, we need to go back to 1976, before the 1980 American elections. Billionaire brothers, David and Charles Koch were frustrated by legal limits prohibiting how much that they could spend on political campaigns. A candidate could spend as much as they liked running for office, and an individual could spend what they liked promoting candidates, but only if the spending wasn’t coordinated with them. Charles decided that David should run as the Libertarian party’s vice-presidential candidate too, so that they were free to donate as much as they liked.   

Their father Fred Koch, was a chemical engineer and built the family fortune out of oil refineries. Interestingly enough, he started out building refineries in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and believed that communism was evil and didn’t like any type of government intrusion, these views became his son’s views. David Koch explained in a 2012 interview that their father: ‘was extraordinarily fearful of our government becoming much more socialistic and domineering. And that: ‘from the time we were teenagers to the present, we’ve been very concerned and worried about our government evolving into a very controlling, socialist type of government.’ When the Koch brothers inherited their father’s business in 1967, they renamed it Koch Industries in honour of their father, and have turned it into the second largest privately held company in America. Koch Industries not only owns and operates a massive network of oil and gas pipelines but it also makes a wide range of products including Dixie cups, chemicals, jet fuel, fertilisers, electronics, toilet paper and more. Out of the Koch family, these two brothers are the most politically active.

Back to 1980 and the Koch brothers and the Libertarian party. What is the Libertarian party? It was founded in 1971 by David Nolan and it promotes free market economics, protection of private property, non-interventionism, laissez-faire capitalism and the abolition of the welfare state. Some of the Libertarian policy platform that David Koch ran on is below.

libertarian1980policies

The Libertarian ticket only received one-percent of the vote. All was not lost as the campaign gave them valuable political experience. The older brother Charles, told a reporter at the time that: ‘It tends to be a nasty, corrupting business,’ and that he was ‘interested in advancing libertarian ideas.’ They came to realise that in order to change the direction of America they had to have influence in the areas where policy ideas arise from. They had already founded America’s first libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, three years earlier in 1977. Today, they underwrite a huge network of foundations, think tanks and political front groups and their powerful, ideological network is known as Kochtopus, in political circles. They have also given millions to political campaigns, advocacy groups, and lobbyists since then.

In 1988, a Political Action Committee (PAC), called Citizens United (CU) was founded by Republican, Floyd Brown, with major funding from the Koch brothers. It promotes corporate interests, socially conservative causes and candidates that advance their goals, which are: ‘limited government, freedom of enterprise, strong families, and national sovereignty and security.’ During the 1992 American elections, Mr Brown hired fellow Republican, David Bossie to find dirt on Bill Clinton. Mr Bossie made a name for himself as being a bit of an attack dog, in particular with all things relating to the Clinton family. Four-years later when the House Republicans launched a probe into the 1996 Clinton campaign’s fundraising practices, he ended up being the chief investigator for the member in charge, Republican, Dan Burton. Eighteen months later he was forced to resign after distributing doctored transcripts of an investigator’s’ jailhouse conversations with Clinton associate, Webb Hubbell.      

In 2001, Mr Bossie took over from Mr Brown as president of CU, where he began to write negatively slanted books about Democratic politicians. He became interested in making films in July 2004 after seeing Michael Moore’s documentary, Farenheit 9/11. His documentary questioned the Bush administration’s motives for war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and amongst other things, it argued that the media was used to exploit the 9/11 attacks. A couple of months later, Mr Bossie, mindful that it was an election year, retaliated with his own documentary, Celsius 41.11 (the temperature when the brain begins to die). CU produced the film and said in a press statement that they issued at the time: ‘Celsius 41.11 was made to refute the propaganda in Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11.’  

At around the same time that Celsius 41.11 was released in October 2004, Steve Bannon was promoting “In the Face of Evil,” a Ronald Reagan documentary that he had worked on as a screenwriter. When Mr Bannon’s documentary was released, it was panned by mainstream critics, with Lou Lumenick from the New York Post, writing that it was ‘very much like Soviet propaganda.’ There was a small group of conservatives in Hollywood that did like it however, and Mr Bannon met Mr Bossie at one of these screenings. It wasn’t long before they started working together on a film called Border War, about the perceived threat of immigration, this led to a series of movies that they made for CU. Mr Bannon also met Andrew Breitbart at a screening in December at the Liberty Film Festival. Mr Breitbart was working for the Drudge Report at the time, with plans to start his own website. More on him, a little later.                

In 2008, Mr Bossie and CU produced a documentary called Hillary: The Movie, critical of then-Sen Hillary Clinton, for the election campaign season. It was to be aired on cable TV before the Democratic primaries, but the Federal Election Commission (FEC) blocked it. They reviewed it and found that it was “electioneering communication” and that they were subject to rules governing the production of political ads. In 2009, CU sued the FEC, this led to a Supreme court case called Citizens United v. Federal Electoral Commission. On January 21st 2010, a five-four majority of the high court, ruled against the FEC, and ruled that corporations such as CU can spend as much as they like for and against political candidates. This also meant that they could receive unlimited donations without any government oversight or ever having to publically disclose them. The ruling opened the donation floodgates and gave a small group of wealthy donors, even more influence on elections.

Liberal advocacy group, Common Cause, believe that two of the judges involved, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, should have recused themselves from the Citizens United v. Federal Electoral Commission case. Both of the judges have attended invitation-only retreats organised by the Koch brothers. The retreats are for Republican donors and in an invitation for their January 30-31,2011 meeting, it describes the retreat as a ‘twice a year’ gathering ‘to review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it.’     

Think Progress also managed to get a copy of a booklet [PDF] from the June 27-28, 2010, meeting and buried within it, is a list of former guests at previous meetings. Mr Scalia and Mr Thomas are on the list, and while the booklet can’t prove when they went, if it was before the CU case, or if their decision was influenced. The booklet does provide insight into the issues that worry the likes of the Koch brothers. On page five, one of the topics for the small group dinners on the eve of the meeting caught my eye.

Issue Micro-Targeting: What gaps do we face in thoroughly understanding the electorate? What has been learned from research so far? How can we take advantage of this advanced technology?

When Obama was elected a myriad of conservative nonprofit groups cropped up, and one of them was called Liberty Central. It was founded in 2009, by Virginia Thomas, the wife of Judge Thomas. A few weeks after the CU court ruling, Ms Thomas told the Los Angeles Times that Liberty Central would be soliciting donations from corporations and other entities freed by CU to step up their political activity. Common Cause, also see this as a conflict-of interest, more on Ms Thomas soon.

In the next series we will look at Breitbart’s role in all of this, and take a look at the rise of the Tea Party, Steve Bannon and the Mercer family.  

 

US propaganda 100 years ago and how the media was influenced (3)

usa-history-by-www-whatisusa-info_

Image is by whatisusa.info

In 1917, one-hundred-years ago this year, American president Wilson Woodrow, declared war on Germany. Mr Woodrow also pioneered the government propaganda system that exists to this day. He began by intimidating and suppressing any ethnic or socialist papers that opposed the US entering the first World war. At the time such meddling in press freedom was unheard of. A week after the war declaration he created a new federal agency called the Committee on Public Information (CPI). The government now controlled the narrative and press coverage. The CPI was dubbed ‘the nation’s first ministry of information’ by journalist, Stephen Ponder. Their first task was to convince millions of young men being drafted to go to war, as well as millions of Americans that supported neutrality. They had to convince them that war was the only option to ‘make the world safe for democracy.’ This was a time before radio became popular and before the weekly news magazine was invented. The chairman of CPI was journalist, George Creel and he organised it into several divisions.

The speaking division had 75,000 specialists who became known as the “Four Minute Men” for their skill in transcribing Mr Wilson’s war goals in short speeches.

The film divison produced the news reels needed to to garner support by showing graphic images in movie theatres. The images depicted the allies as the heroes and the Germans as barbaric.

The foreign language newspaper division kept an eye on US newspapers that were published in other languages than English.

The advertising division secured free advertising space in US publications to promote various war campaigns. Campaigns such as recruiting new soldiers, encouraging patriotism and feeding the narrative that the US was involved in a crusade against a barbaric, anti-democratic enemy.  

The division of pictorial publicity comprised of a group of volunteer artists and illustrators. They were behind the famous image of Uncle Sam below. Mr Creel denied that CPI’s work was akin to propaganda but he did admit that he was engaged in a battle of perceptions. ‘The war was not fought in France alone’ he wrote in 1920. And after the CPI was disbanded in 1919, he described it as ‘a plain publicity proposition, a vast enterprise in salesmanship, the world’s greatest adventure in advertising.’

file-20170426-2825-164y7yr

One of the techniques favoured by the news unit was to bury journalists in paper by producing numerous press-releases each day. The unit also restricted the media’s access to those involved in the war, creating a news vacuum. This was filled with government-written stories, masquerading as news. The CPI also issued a set of guidelines for US newspapers and if editors didn’t follow these patriotic guidelines, they were deemed as unpatriotic. In another first, they decided to create their own daily newspaper, published by the government.  

A nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward L Bernays, was a pioneer in human thoughts and emotion theories and was one of the CPI volunteers. ‘The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society,’ Mr Bernays wrote after the war. And that ‘Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.’ Many of those involved in the CPI went on to lucrative advertising careers after the committee was disbanded.  

In 1988 Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman published the book, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. They discovered that the propaganda model today, consists of five filters of editorial bias:

Media ownership: Media outlets have become large companies that cater to the interests of the owners or owner, and to make them profitable.  

Advertising: Media can’t survive without it so they must also cater to political leanings as well as the economic desires of their advertisers.

Complicity: Government’s, corporations and institutions know how to influence the media. They feed the media scoops and interviews with “experts” and make themselves part of the journalism process. If you push back against the establishment you will soon find yourself out of the game.

Flack: When a story comes out that the powers that be don’t like, they mobilise and attack. They do this by discrediting sources, trashing stories, creating distractions and by changing the narrative back to where they want it to be.

The common enemy: Whether it’s communism, terrorism or immigration fears, to manufacture consent, you need a common enemy.

In 1992, they produced a documentary about it if interested and below is a handy animation, from March this year. It’s under five minutes long and has some more information, Australia gets a mention near the start.       

I’m going to start introducing some of the players involved in today’s web of propaganda. In October 1996, Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News, it was the first of its kind. A 24-hour conservative-populist propaganda channel, filled with right-wing opinions and slanted news stories. All under the banner of “fair and balanced” and delivered as entertainment. He is most definitely a key player and one of the most powerful men in the media, more on him later.

In 1995, a year before Mr Murdoch launched Fox News, Matt Drudge launched the Drudge Report, and he ran it alone. It began with a weekly email for subscribers full of quirky conspiracy theories, right-wing politics, extreme weather and pop culture. Andrew Breitbart, wasn’t doing much at this stage besides being a news-junkie of sorts, and became a big fan of the report. He emailed Mr Drudge offering his help of which Mr Drudge accepted. Mr Drudge became his mentor and they created their own headlines with a blurb telling you the main point of the story, that linked to articles from all around the web. The Drudge Report was one of the earliest news aggregator web sites, a link from them could bring hundreds of thousands of readers to a  story. This gave reporters wanting exposure an incentive to contact Mr Drudge or Mr Breitbart as soon as their pieces were published (or even before publishing them). Tips from journalists gave the pair eyes and ears into nearly every newsroom in the world. In early 1998 they broke not only the Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton scandal, but also the fact that Newsweek had killed the story.

The Drudge Report, didn’t just have the ability to provide scoops for its readers but it also had a sense of urgency about it, and continuous news and stories sourced from the internet to entertain its readers. All of this was achieved with two people rather than a whole newsroom and without having to host content on its site, meaning extremely low overheads. It was also marketed as an alternative to mainstream-media that wasn’t controlled by corporate interests or politicians. It’s role in directing mass amounts internet traffic also made it lucrative for the news sites that received the traffic. He has even been called the ‘Rupert Murdoch of the digital age.’ More on it’s role in the Trump election campaign and how far that it’s come today, in another part of the series.  

Next, I will uncover how Steve Bannon meeting Andrew Breitbart and David Bossie in 2004, has led us to today. I will also explain how the political activities of the Koch brothers’ has influenced the chain of events and more.  

 

 

 

US propaganda 100 years ago and how the media was influenced (3)

usa-history-by-www-whatisusa-info_

Image is by whatisusa.info

In 1917, one-hundred-years ago this year, American president Wilson Woodrow, declared war on Germany. Mr Woodrow also pioneered the government propaganda system that exists to this day. He began by intimidating and suppressing any ethnic or socialist papers that opposed the US entering the first World war. At the time such meddling in press freedom was unheard of. A week after the war declaration he created a new federal agency called the Committee on Public Information (CPI). The government now controlled the narrative and press coverage. The CPI was dubbed ‘the nation’s first ministry of information’ by journalist, Stephen Ponder. Their first task was to convince millions of young men being drafted to go to war, as well as millions of Americans that supported neutrality. They had to convince them that war was the only option to ‘make the world safe for democracy.’ This was a time before radio became popular and before the weekly news magazine was invented. The chairman of CPI was journalist, George Creel and he organised it into several divisions.

The speaking division had 75,000 specialists who became known as the “Four Minute Men” for their skill in transcribing Mr Wilson’s war goals in short speeches.

The film divison produced the news reels needed to to garner support by showing graphic images in movie theatres. The images depicted the allies as the heroes and the Germans as barbaric.

The foreign language newspaper division kept an eye on US newspapers that were published in other languages than English.

The advertising division secured free advertising space in US publications to promote various war campaigns. Campaigns such as recruiting new soldiers, encouraging patriotism and feeding the narrative that the US was involved in a crusade against a barbaric, anti-democratic enemy.  

The division of pictorial publicity comprised of a group of volunteer artists and illustrators. They were behind the famous image of Uncle Sam below. Mr Creel denied that CPI’s work was akin to propaganda but he did admit that he was engaged in a battle of perceptions. ‘The war was not fought in France alone’ he wrote in 1920. And after the CPI was disbanded in 1919, he described it as ‘a plain publicity proposition, a vast enterprise in salesmanship, the world’s greatest adventure in advertising.’

file-20170426-2825-164y7yr

One of the techniques favoured by the news unit was to bury journalists in paper by producing numerous press-releases each day. The unit also restricted the media’s access to those involved in the war, creating a news vacuum. This was filled with government-written stories, masquerading as news. The CPI also issued a set of guidelines for US newspapers and if editors didn’t follow these patriotic guidelines, they were deemed as unpatriotic. In another first, they decided to create their own daily newspaper, published by the government.  

A nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward L Bernays, was a pioneer in human thoughts and emotion theories and was one of the CPI volunteers. ‘The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society,’ Mr Bernays wrote after the war. And that ‘Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.’ Many of those involved in the CPI went on to lucrative advertising careers after the committee was disbanded.  

In 1988 Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman published the book, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. They discovered that the propaganda model today, consists of five filters of editorial bias:

Media ownership: Media outlets have become large companies that cater to the interests of the owners or owner, and to make them profitable.  

Advertising: Media can’t survive without it so they must also cater to political leanings as well as the economic desires of their advertisers.

Complicity: Government’s, corporations and institutions know how to influence the media. They feed the media scoops and interviews with “experts” and make themselves part of the journalism process. If you push back against the establishment you will soon find yourself out of the game.

Flack: When a story comes out that the powers that be don’t like, they mobilise and attack. They do this by discrediting sources, trashing stories, creating distractions and by changing the narrative back to where they want it to be.

The common enemy: Whether it’s communism, terrorism or immigration fears, to manufacture consent, you need a common enemy.

In 1992, they produced a documentary about it if interested and below is a handy animation, from March this year. It’s under five minutes long and has some more information, Australia gets a mention near the start.       

I’m going to start introducing some of the players involved in today’s web of propaganda. In October 1996, Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News, it was the first of its kind. A 24-hour conservative-populist propaganda channel, filled with right-wing opinions and slanted news stories. All under the banner of “fair and balanced” and delivered as entertainment. He is most definitely a key player and one of the most powerful men in the media, more on him later.

In 1995, a year before Mr Murdoch launched Fox News, Matt Drudge launched the Drudge Report, and he ran it alone. It began with a weekly email for subscribers full of quirky conspiracy theories, right-wing politics, extreme weather and pop culture. Andrew Breitbart, wasn’t doing much at this stage besides being a news-junkie of sorts, and became a big fan of the report. He emailed Mr Drudge offering his help of which Mr Drudge accepted. Mr Drudge became his mentor and they created their own headlines with a blurb telling you the main point of the story, that linked to articles from all around the web. The Drudge Report was one of the earliest news aggregator web sites, a link from them could bring hundreds of thousands of readers to a  story. This gave reporters wanting exposure an incentive to contact Mr Drudge or Mr Breitbart as soon as their pieces were published (or even before publishing them). Tips from journalists gave the pair eyes and ears into nearly every newsroom in the world. In early 1998 they broke not only the Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton scandal, but also the fact that Newsweek had killed the story.

The Drudge Report, didn’t just have the ability to provide scoops for its readers but it also had a sense of urgency about it, and continuous news and stories sourced from the internet to entertain its readers. All of this was achieved with two people rather than a whole newsroom and without having to host content on its site, meaning extremely low overheads. It was also marketed as an alternative to mainstream-media that wasn’t controlled by corporate interests or politicians. It’s role in directing mass amounts internet traffic also made it lucrative for the news sites that received the traffic. He has even been called the ‘Rupert Murdoch of the digital age.’ More on it’s role in the Trump election campaign and how far that it’s come today, in another part of the series.  

Next, I will uncover how Steve Bannon meeting Andrew Breitbart and David Bossie in 2004, has led us to today. I will also explain how the political activities of the Koch brothers’ has influenced the chain of events and more.