Kevin Gosztola, author of Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange, discusses the Julian Assange case in light of his recent guilty plea and subsequent release from custody. Noting how this directly impacts press freedom and government secrecy, Gosztola argues that the plea deal struck with Assange is not the primary problem threatening journalism. Instead, he postulates that the threat posed by the Assange case is that he should never have been prosecuted in the first place. Gosztola covers how Assange “pled guilty to journalism” in large part because of the Espionage Act (1917) which has been contemporarily used as a “firm hand of stern repression” (Woodrow Wilson) to go after whistleblowers. At one point in the discussion, Julian Vigo speculates as to whether Assange, had he been free this past decade, might have been able to break the stories on the “gender industry” and the “sterilisation of children” far earlier, given the many journalists and whistleblowers who have been sidelined from their own publications and institutions (eg. Suzanne Moore, David Bell, Sonia Appleby) over this very subject. From there [record scratch], the discussion shifts radically in focus and tenor. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Joti Brar, the Vice Chair of the Communist Party in Great Britain (CPGB-ML), discusses many of the mediatised and popular misconceptions regarding communism and the shifting political valences of the left and the right through neoliberalist discourse in recent years. Historicising how the term “communist” was used as an insult in the mid-19th century, even before the publication of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848), Brar elaborates how the ruling class feared the working class, recognising communism as the leading militant edge of the working class and a threat to capitalist exploitation. The slur of “communist” then, as it is also being reinvigorated by the right today, attempts to demonise Marxism among the working class whereby people will shy away from the idea of communism before ever understanding what it actually is. Brar delves into the history of capitalism and its many violent confrontations within the labour landscape and the misery capitalism effected upon workers’ lives for the majority of its existence. Expounding upon the Keynesian consensus in the post-war era where the ruling classes agreed to make reforms to stave off communist revolution by implementing certain social measures such as nationalising certain services and creating the welfare state, Brar notes how capitalism exists in a constant state of crisis, harbouring a persistant fear of Marxism while projecting the ruling class’ degeneration and crimes onto its opponents. Noting how capitalist ideology served to destabilise communism since the 1950s, Brar elucidates the current era where the struggle for women’s rights and racism quickly became institutionalised within bourgeois academic disciplines thusly neutering all class criticism. As a result, feminism was not framed as a struggle between workers and capitalists for which the solution to the oppression of women was never the end of the exploitation societies, but rather women’s oppression was postured in terms of various enemies such as men and underwear. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, a pulpit rabbi, author of The Empty Wagon: Zionism's Journey From Identity Crisis to Identity Theft (2020), and host of the Committing High Reason podcast, discusses Zionism and its relationship to current conflicts the state of Israel. Covering the birth of Zionism that responded to European’s stereotype of the “the Jew as bad,” “disgusting” and “retrogade,” Zionism offered up “the opposite of a Jew…in personality and character” where this stereotype, attempting to remodel Jewish identity that was based, created quite paradoxically, an anti-Semitic Jewish identity. Noting the anti-Jewish notes of Zionism, Shapiro highlights how religious Jews—orthodox and non-orthodox Jews alike—early on disassociated entirely from Zionists. Shapiro elaborates Theodor Herzl’s work in fomenting an ideology that politicised Jewish identity, while observing how Zionism was never a movement of self-determination of the Jewish people, but was a movement that critically attempted to nationalise the religion. Noting how Herzl effectively “gaslit the Jews” by politicising the “Holy Land” while conflating it with Judaism, Shapiro analyses how Zionism has created the current political crisis in Gaza today where horrors are effected in the name of an ideology that has absolutely nothing to do with Judaism whatsoever. Depsite the media and political machinery that attempts to push the fiction of Zionism in buttressing the creation of Israel as “the Jewish state” while conterminously demanding that all Jews be loyal to Israel, lest they be guilty of anti-Semitism as well, Shapiro criticises how Zionism has been curated in a way that falsely assumes that there is only one way to be Jewish or worse, that if you are against Zionism, you are necessarily an anti-Semite. Shapiro vituperates this position and inverts the polemic: “Instead of [asking] when does anti-Zionism cross the line into anti-Semitism, we need to start asking the queiston the other way: When does Zionism cross the line into anti-Semitism?” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Anna Loutfi, an equality and human rights barrister, discusses her support of parents in bringing the group litigation against the Department for Education for failure to protect pupils against political ideology, including the promotion and encouragement of “gender transition.” Covering the subtle processes of indoctrination within British classrooms today where education functions to “protect” children from reality while concurrently telling them that health is a myth, Loutfi analyses how gender ideology has been brought into RSE (Relationships and Sex Education) teaching whereby puberty has been presented as embarrassing, dirty, and as something that can be completely avoided. Tracing the roots of this “unlearning” of the healthy body, Loutfi notes that health is quickly being marginalised as the state has become the site where the masses will go to “correct” their “sick” bodies. Loutfi also covers how law has been incorrectly rewritten into public policies by the diversity and inclusion industry whereby the mere process of identifying as something other, relies upon the “protected characteristic” of "gender reassignment" from the Gender Recognition Act (2004), even though this law, written specifically for adults, has been misapplied to children by virtue of any child “identifying as” the opposite sex. Loutfi underscores the importance of having public conversations as to why some men are castrating themselves and why so many public and private institutions have capitulated to a movement that has been given carte blanche to do nothing other than attack and disturb women and girls. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Remi Adekoya, a politics lecturer at the University of York and former journalist, discusses his latest book, It's Not About Whiteness, It's About Wealth (2023), wherein he argues that the socioeconomic realities are sustaining racial hierarchies and not, as the left fashions, a moral, reactive evil. Discussing what financial power means in the Global South as well as within the west, for instance, Adekoya touches upon how what what matters in his childhood homeland of Nigeria is the need to address the material realities and not any racial narratives emanating from the west, noting how what the people want are neither pronouns nor EDI training, but want visas to go to the US or the UK to improve their lives. Demonstrating how money enables influence over society and culture, Adekoya explores the connections immigration, technology, media, group stereotypes, and status perceptions. He also demonstrates how wealth determines the key domains of modern life, elucidating its effects on racial dynamics across the globe. Noting how humans are hierarchal creatures, collectively orienteted around hierarchical thinking in all levels of society, he notes the paradox in conscious ellision of any discussions of economic hierarchies by government and media alike. Adekoya underscores how brown-skinned people are still the ones doing the menial jobs no matter how much we discuss racism, cultural differences, or how to “diversify curriculum,” pointing out how is “so much talk about the narratives around Africa and less and less and less about the realities of Africa.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Jeff Gibbs, producer and co-producer some of the most important documentaries in recent decades, discusses his film covering the “fake green movement,” Planet of the Humans, produced by Michael Moore that was tarred by media and the green industry. Exploring the billions-dollar green industry which banks sells to us the narrative that technology is freeing us from carbon emissions and the fallacy of this sentiment, Gibbs confers the disappearance of animal species, questioning how global warming has shifted the focus to single idea (carbon emissions) without worrying about what is driving species to extinction. Studying the increase in natural disasters, from forest fires to floods, Gibbs focusses on the collapse of human civilisation and the comcommitant disintegrtation of nature and the need to focus on consumption and population. Investigating the political spectrum from left to right, Gibbs criticises the left in is missing some of the most important factors of climate change by hyper-focussing on carbon. Covering how his film became a wider target of a censorship campaign being condemned by climate scientists and activists, Gibbs deliberates the power of green industry which he describes as “trying to destroy” him and “shut down” all debate on this issue. Gibbs historicises the marriage between capitalism and the green movement while explaining why his film is considered a “full-frontal assault” on the environmental movement. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Brandon Showalter, journalist and podcaster who has covered the “gender identity” movement and transgender ideology, discusses his latest co-authored book, Exposing the Gender Lie: How to Protect Children and Teens from the Transgender Industry's False Ideology. Showalter discusses the how media standards and institutions of the corporate press like the Associated Press (AP) and their recommendations to use “preferred pronouns” and its latest topical guidance on the use of terms like “transgenderism” which make verboten the questioning of this movement as ideologically-based. Pointing to how legacy media uses highly-discredited references, Showalter discusses how the AP’s power over newsrooms and journalists flies in the face of basic journalistic ethis to reporting facts and questioning the information presented which thusly results is one-sided, ideologically-driven reporting. Showalter notes how mainstream media has never questioned the “scientific” pretenses of the gender lobby which has only empty language and zero scientific evidence for its claims. Discussing the importance of thinkers like Julia Long and other feminists, Showalter expounds upon the “gender lie” which in turn has been quickly institutionalised—all without any scientific basis— only later to become a legal reference, even being written into law. Showalter elaborates the necessity to resist this toxic ideology while exposing the lie driving it, citing Long’s words: “The word ‘trans’ has one function, and that is to falsify reality...as soon as you have a word that can institute the lie that a man is a woman, everything is reversed.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Namakula, a multimedia artist and producer, discusses her experiences as an actor who was disenfranchised from her profession during the COVID-19 pandemic due to her refusal to comply with vaccine mandates. Noting pervasive violations of medical privacy within theatre, film and television—from casting lists to auditions which often revealed private health information or for which vaccine status was required—Namakula notes how personal choices about medical health and bodily autonomy were entirely abandoned. Despite Big Pharma having noted that the “vaccines” would not stop transmission or infection, Namakula recalls how legacy media was effective propaganda machine in advertising just the opposite while amassing public support for a lie about experimental “vaccines” while also attempting to foment racial and class division. Noting the hypnotic effect of the television, a medium where the public is more apt to believe anyone propped up before the camera wearing a white lab coat over the anecdotal stories of friends and family, Namakula postulates that the lockdown was designed to keep people from hearing the stories of others as they were not only locked up in their homes and kept far away from human connections, but where they were also locked into the televisionscape of daily misinformation about the pandemic branded as “news.” As a SAG (Screen Actors Guild) member, Namakula took issue with her union not having protected the rights of its members to informed consent among a long list of problems that have been plaguing SAG for years, among which embezzlement of union funds. As a result of her experience during lockdown noting how SAG did not protect her rights or respond to SAG members’ request for peer-reviewed studies to explain the union’s support for vaccine mandates, Namakula felt compelled to run for the seat of New York Local President of SAG-AFTRA 2023 candidate running for the office of New York Local President. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Rukshan Fernando, Australian political commentator discusses his foray into journalist and his on-the-ground street reporting during the pandemic restrictions in Melbourne and the turn that legacy media has taken over the past two decades in curating the news. Noting how left-of-centre media outlets have buttressed narratives around race and gender, Fernando criticises this brand of racism, sexism and homophobia largely being embraced as “progressive” by the left and promulgated by the left-of-centre media. Fernando analyses how mainstream media in the west has created a double standard in its coverage of war whereby media often buttresses government messaging such that we are not allowed to criticise both sides in a war, but where we must see one side as good and the other as evil. Discussing what he views as a “disconnect” in the west, Fernando notes how today it is no longer an option to hold anti-war views regarding the current war in Ukraine since the default critical position framed by legacy media obliges the subject to take an “anti-Russia” position. Fernando remarks of the anti-war position, “It used to be something that was celebrated…Today if you are at all anti-war you might be a far-right Putin supporter.” Historicising recent cultural and political shifts in the west, Fernando covers the current media emphasis upon gender and race which ultimately ends up creating quite real forms of racism whereby the white, woke subject uses dark-skinned bodies as surrogates for their purification rituals which come in the form of public confessions, all the while nothing on the ground, in reality, ever changes for those who face inequalities resulting from poverty and war. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Bev Jackson, a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front (1970), discusses how she and Kate Harris, concerned by the implications of Stonewall’s decision to alter its definition of sexual orientation in 2015 from “same-sex attracted” to “same-gender attracted,” co-founded LGB Alliance in 2019. Jackson details how by 2021, LGB Alliance had its status as a registered charity challenged by another British charity, Mermaids, accusing LGB Alliance of having “gone beyond the boundaries of civilised debate.” Historicising how much time, engery, and money this legal challenge cost LGB Alliance over the past two years, Jackson describes in detail how the witnesses from the opposing side in court seemed “entirely unprepared, as if they’d been grabbed off the street and sort of stuck there, adding, “They didn’t seem to have any notion at all of what they were there for.” Describing the problems current within gender ideology and its current social, political and medical manifestations today—from its anti-science narrative to its homophobia to the sterilisation of gay youth—Jackson argues against the medicalisation model that is being presented as foreward-thinking, adding, “The greatest trick that is being played upon the world is that this is progressive, that this is kind, and that this is good. It is outrageous and it is homophobic rubbish!” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Ann Menasche, a civil rights attorney, discusses the legal complaint she lodged against Disability Rights California earlier this year in response to her being fired from her job of twenty years. Her employer, Disability Rights California, issued a statement in May 2022 that opposed the reversal of Roe vs. Wade while also erasing females completely from the picture by replacing the word “women” in the context of pregnancy and abortion, with “people.” Menasche responded to this listserv statement writing: “So glad DRC came up with a statement in defense of Roe! Thank you! Access to safe, legal abortion is a life and death necessity for women as a biological sex across the board, regardless of race, economic class, gender identity, sexual orientation (even lesbians can be raped) or anything else, and an absolute prerequisite for equal female participation in our society. Of course, the most vulnerable females, especially poor women, women of color, women with disabilities, young girls, unhoused women and girls, women and girls in prison, etc. will suffer the most under draconian anti-abortion laws. Wealthy white women have often managed to get abortions, even before Roe. As a veteran of the feminist struggle for abortion rights that preceded Roe, I never thought it would come to this. Yet, it is good to remember that women won this right primarily through grassroots organizing and peaceful mass protests in the streets, and that is the way we are going to protect it. Thanks again, DRC, for taking a stand!” Menasche lost her employment for this statement and details the entire political wave of wokery within her sector and the fear driving the neoliberal managerial class that makes women participants in the erasure of their own sex class. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Kit Klarenberg, investigative journalist and editor-in-chief of The Grayzone UK, discusses his detainment by UK counter-terrorism police on 17 May at Luton Airport when he arrived from Belgrade, Serbia. With the threat of arrest held over him if he didn’t comply, Klarenberg was interrogated, had his bank cards, electronic devices and SD cards seized, his fingerprints and photo taken, his shoes removed, his DNA taken and he was subjected to a five-hour interrogation. While all this was ostensibly conducted under Schedule 3 to the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, Klarenberg observes how this law gives British law enforcement wide latitude to detain and harass individuals deemed to be taking part in a “hostile activity” whereby according to this Act an individual “can pose a state threat on behalf of a hostile foreign power without them intending to or the foreign power whose interest they are serving knowing.” Klarenberg contextualises what happened to him in May, elaborating on the bizarre interrogation through which he was subject, placing his experience within the context of recent draconian EU sanctions against state-owned Russian media outlets (RT and Sputnik) and the crackdown on legitimate speech under the aegis of "Russian disinformation." Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Simon Ateba, Chief White House Correspondent for Today News Africa in Washington, discusses the challenges he has faced at the White House under former Press Secretary Jen Psaki after challenging her over the ban on eight African nations over the Omicron variant of COVID-19 and then more recently with Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House Press Secretary, having ignored Ateba’s quesitons for seven months. Ateba also covers the remarkable story of how on 20 March when at the White House for a press briefing, instead of being allowed to ask questions, Ateba and other members of the press found themselves thrown into a political theatre where the cast of Ted Lasso was brought in to derail the White House press briefing (to discuss mental health). Ateba, ready to do his job to ask questions about the news of the day, attempted to ask questions as Jean-Pierre scolded him for engaging in his job as a journalist. Ateba addresses how the role of the White House press secretary has become politicised whereby this role has become a position of curating the news emanating from the White House by answering light-weight questions from legacy media representatives while ignoring the harder questions posed by journalists representing smaller, independent and/or non-western media. These practices, Ateba notes, have become so entrenched within institutions and power centres today that they represent the ethos of what is now known as the “Censorship Industrial Complex.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Paul Kingsnorth discusses the current debate within western culture where the postmodern and classical views of the world are at odds—those who believe in objective truth are pit against those who believe reality is a social construction. Discussing the west’s embrace of gender ideology, Kingsnorth notes the resistance to material reality conterminous to the embrace of technology while criticising the crisis of modernity where many believe humans can “remake” themselves while contending that any critique of this pretence over nature is itself a form of oppression. Examining the transgender movement on a wider spectrum where transhumanism and artificial intelligence also coexist, Kingsnorth observes how all these movements challenge biology, nature, and objective truth while positioning modern humanity in a “godlike way” that pretends we are can all be genderless, posthuman, and permeant, seizing the postmodern claim that “we can effectively become gods.” Kingsnorth criticises how the discourses around technology today attempt to view embodiment as a form of oppression, while noting that those who defend nature or objective truth are viewed as oppressors. Analysing the scale of institutional capture, Kingsnorth discerns how in addition to gender ideology, the language of race and white supremacy, all transplants from the United States, are being weaponised today across Europe to divide people into racial groups, setting people against each other while creating a war against the human body, human relationships, and the family. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Nick Cruse, citizen journalist and cofounder of Revolutionary Blackout Network, discusses the political terrain in the United States today and how legacy media participated in the political framing and exaggeration of the events of the 6 January 2021 protests at the Capitol in Washington, DC. Vituperating the “frauds that cosplay as Socialists and leftists” like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cruse elaborates how this neoliberal class has made a mockery of itself pretending that the unarmed protestors at the Capitol formed an insurgency, while in reality these same actors supported US government-back insurgencies in other countries such as the 2018 assassination attempt on the life of Nicolas Maduro whom they labelled a “tyrant and a thug.” Noting how Bernie Sanders shifted the left radically to the right by siphoning leftists to the Democratic Party, Cruse criticises how legacy media has abetted politics through disinformation to include the attempt to bury the Hunter Biden laptop story as “Russian disinformation” asking: “What are the chances that our media always had the same exact narrative?” Cruse demonstrates how journalism is failing the public remarking how media today collaborates with the state by creating fake news to divert the public from current events as journalists are censorsed or killed. Analysing the Biden administration’s collaboration with the Israeli government in covering up the murder of veteran Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, Cruse scrutinises how White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refuses to take media questions regarding her murder or the torture and imprisonment of journalist and publisher, Julian Assange. Cruse observes that even if Assange were to be freed today, the lesson of terrorising journalists into compliance, into silence, has already been learned. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Exulansic discusses her series, I am Jazz’s Waking Nightmare, wherein she offers social and political commentary on Jazz Jennings’ reality TV show, I am Jazz. Analysing gender ideology’s infiltration in mainstream media, Exulansic delves into the postmodern condition of the Jennings family’s pathological grooming of Jazz Jennings. Analysing the production of I am Jazz, Exulansic examines the reality show and how all reality has been edited out or caught accidentally on camera while Jazz’s persona, crafted for television audiences as he is coached to demonstrate the happy “transgender” subject, morphs between the scripted lines and unscripted moments that allow for the reality and horror of his life to materialise. Historicising how the audience witnesses Jazz being coached for the show’s production and by his own family, Exulansic ironises how despite his ad-libbed performances we still get glimpses of Jazz’s real self through accidental admissions that are not edited out. Demystifying the rhetoric throughout this show’s history—how sic “transgender” people will always be oppressed, Exulansic studies how this show has become a marketing platform for ideological dissemination while locating the mother, Jeanette Jennings, as the primary perpetrator of her son whom she sexually abuses and shatters his psychological development through the pseudo-medical hokum and dangerous medical experimentation, all executed in the name of transgender ideology. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Dr David Bell, a former staff governor at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust, discusses the fallout from the circumstances of his 2018 report, highly critical of the Tavistock Gender Development Service (GIDS), along with the criticisms by his colleagues from the Tavistock, that led to the growing public concern about GIDS, the Judicial Review, and the decision by NHS England, following the Cass Review, to close the service. Bell explores the complex terrain where the pro-medicalisation push within this demographic is at odds with the anti-pathology proponents, describing the paradox of a peculiar “double narrative” around gender dysphoria: those who claim they have a psychiatric disorder in order to covered by the NHS or by private insurance to be treated quickly and then the second group that claims they don’t have an illness, so they don’t need treatment. Bell also queries the politicisation of the treatments around gender dysphoria, stating, “Gender disorder…is a kind of ticket” where its adherents claim “that they know what the treatment is that they need.” Analysing the changes in the cultural context of gender dysphoria such as the co-morbidities associated with girls who identify as having “gender dysphoria” (eg. autism), Bell observes how current data on the decline of anorexia and bulemia cases suggests that girls who identify as transgender have much in common with the previous generations of anorexia and bulemia. Highlighting the complex and difficult relationship these girls have with their sexual body, Bell maps out the various ways these sorts of manifestations have changed according to cultural shifts: in Freud’s day it was “hysteria” to anorexia and bulemia in the twentieth century to this century’s manifestation of gender dysphoria. Noting how among young people in the UK presenting with gender dysphoria that 80% are girls, Bell ascribes this condition’s undercurrent as stemming from neoliberalism and misogyny. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Kevin Gosztola, journalist and editor of Shadowproof, discusses his latest book, Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange (2023) detailing the profound injustice of the case against Julian Assange. Historicising the political background to the case against Assange, Gosztola covers the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the Espionage Act (1918) which works against free speech principles and freedom of the press while this act also protects entrenched corruption. Gosztola elaborates the abuses the US government has enacted upon journalists and whistleblowers who have told the truth while public officials have gotten away, unpunished, for their criminal acts and policies such that Assange has been held accountable as a publisher of war crimes while those who have enacted these war crimes have not faced justice. Gosztola analyses how both Democratic and Republican administrations, mainstream news outlets, the CIA, the FBI, the Justice Department, and other powerful forces have all conspired to condemn Assange in retaliation for exposing the extent of US torture, rendition, and war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan while evidencing how Assange was intentially made to “look like a bum” by major media as Assange was marched in front of the cameras in a dishevelled state in order to posture him as looking like he belongs in prison. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Lexi Ellingsworth, co-founder of Stop Surrogacy Now UK, discusses the state of surrogacy within Britain in the run-up to this week’s report jointly published by the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission that outlines recommendations for law reform around surrogacy. Ellingsworth outlines the finer points of commercial surrogacy, currently illegal in the UK that are being subtly eroded through “altruistic surrogacy,” demonstrating how this system is a fudge on the commercial model because there are hidden aspects of remuneration in addition to powerful social returns. Ellingsworth vituperates how altruistic surrogacy, in some ways similar to the “sex work” model, is largely based on neoliberal notions of “choice” where pregnancy is a service and a baby the product all under the auspices of helping others create a family. Discussing how the ethical lines that are quickly creating a breeder class of woman to service the elite—be they infertile couples of the professional class or gay men—Ellingsworth outlines how the pro-surrogacy lobby is astroturfed to influence democratic debate while pushing the commercial model even to the exclusion of women’s voices up until the public consultation. Ellingsworth frames all forms of surrogacy within the larger legal spectrum of human trafficking noting that while we accept that women can do what they like with their bodies, “Do we also say that she can do what she likes with her children and if she wants to sell them, she can?” noting that laws which currently prohibit the sale of children who are two-years old, paradoxically in many countries uphold the sale of “brand new” children. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Toby Green and Thomas Fazi discuss their recent book, The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (2023) and the wider landscape of the regressive effects of lockdown policies. Historicising the pandemic response to the anti-democratic push of neoliberalism, Fazi observes how during the financial crisis, a new class of economists was ushered forth to justify devastating economic policies, falsely claiming the inevitability of austerity in order to save the planet from another financial collapse. Fazi notes how this same model of “econocracy” was brought in and used during the pandemic as hand-picked scientists played a similar role of the economists during the financial crisis in order to side-step democratic debate. Elaborating how the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), formed in 2019, brought together the most powerful media organisations in the world to include the BBC, Reuters, The Hindu, and The Guardian, among many other media outlets, Green analyses how by 2020 the TNI became a type of clearinghouse for received opinion on COVID-19 as it curated the media landscape around the pandemic creating long-lasting implications for democracy as accuracy was sacrificed for misinformation. Green and Fazi characterise the political and biomedical response to COVID-19 lockdowns as criminal, as they map out the negative effects on education, mental health, child protection, suicides, obesity, alcohol consumption, gun violence, and an increase in the marriages of adolescent girls by families desperate for economice relief in India. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe
Dewaine McBride
good interview! thank you!
F G
hi, the file doesn't seem to be uploaded or something? looking forward to listening once it gets fixed!