Guerrilla History - Media Narratives & Hegemonic Discourses w/ Greg Shupak & Stuart Davis

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring back two outstanding guests, Stuart Davis (whom you will remember from our episode Sanctions As War (alongside Manny Ness)), and Greg Shupak (whom you will remember from our episode The History and Impact of Sanctions on Syria).  Here, we discuss a topic that each of them has done a lot of work on - media narratives and hegemonic discourses.  This is an incredibly important conversation, and a very interesting discussion as well.  As we say in the episode, this is one that is perfect for sharing with friends and family members who may not already be highly tuned in to political affairs, but who understand that the media may be manipulating them! Greg Shupak is a professor of English and Media Studies and is the author of the book, The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, and the Media.  You can follow him on twitter @GregShupak, and you should definitely check out the writing he does at Electronic Intifada. Stuart Davis is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Baruch College, the City University of New York he focuses on digital media advocacy, protest politics, and digital media and public health, particularly in the Latin American context. You can find more of Stuart's work on his faculty page, or on his Google Scholar page. Additionally, pick up Sanctions As War, the outstanding book he coedited alongside Manny Ness. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You don't remember Dinn-Bin-Bin-Bin-Bou? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to Gorilla History. History, the podcast that acts is a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims

to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki, joined as usual by my co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing well. It's great to be with you, Henry. Nice to see you as well, and I'm not surprised that you're doing well, because we had another recording that ended about two minutes before this one. So when I say, how are you doing today? I already knew that, but this is a new episode for the listeners.

So for their benefit, well, they'll know that you're doing well. I'm also doing well and looking forward to the conversation that we have today with two returning guests. But before I introduce these two excellent guests and the really interesting topic that we have planned for the conversation, today I'd like to remind you listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash gorilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And you can keep up to date with everything that Adnan and I are doing individually as well as collectively by following the show on social media or on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod.

Instagram, Gorilla underscore History. And you can subscribe to our free substack where you'll get updates directly to your email inbox by going to Gorilla. GorillaHistory.substack.com. Just remember Gorilla spelled with two R's. So, with that housekeeping out of the way, I can now introduce two returning guests. We have Stuart Davis, who is a professor of communication studies at the City University of New York. Hello, Stuart. How are you doing today? Hi. I'm doing good. Nice to see you guys again. It's been a while. Yeah, it has been a while. We're also rejoined by Gregory Shupak, who's a professor and a writer. He's a professor of media studies. Gregory, how are you doing today? I'm doing well and I'm glad to be with you all. Absolutely. And it's been a while since we've seen you as well. So listeners, you would have to go a fair ways back in the guerrilla history catalog to find the episodes that we did with Stuart and Greg.

Because they were both individuals who we have interviewed in our Sanctions as War series. So if you remember the sanctions, this war series that we did probably three years ago at this point, they were both in that series and a very important series. And I highly recommend you go back and listen to that series if you haven't already. So it's a pleasure to have you back on the show today. Today we have a very big topic, which fits very well within each of your fields of study. We're talking about media narratives, hegemonic discourses, and how these media, narratives prop up hegemony and how exactly those not only structures work but the ideological background behind this so I'm going to just kick off this conversation by opening it up and

introducing the topic so what are we talking about when we're talking about media narratives and hegemonic discourses I know each of you do research on this broad theme as well as specific components within it but if we say what what are the media narratives that are supporting hegemonic narratives, what are the kinds of things that we would be hearing about, and most likely we'll talk about many of them in this conversation. Maybe I can give it to you first, Greg, and then we'll have Stuart Adden as he sees Fett. Sure. Well, for me, media hajimani is about, you know, ruling class efforts to exert control to the greatest extent they can over popular understanding.

of political affairs, whether that's domestically in a particular country or internationally. And so we see this certainly manifest in coverage of wars or including anti-colonial struggles. And we also see it on sort of the internal affairs of countries if we want to make that perhaps questionable dichotomy. But, you know, to give the Palestine example, because that's something I've written a lot about, including certainly since October 7, 2023, I think that the hegemonic media narrative has been one that began as what you might call incitement to genocide, or what I would characterize as incitement to genocide, and then eventually had to shift to genocide. And I say had to because I think this is a matter of, you know, the ruling class seeking to adjust to changing conditions so as to manage public perception in ways that best fit their interests. The final thing I'll say for now is just that I do think it's worth pointing out that, you know, I'm talking about aggregate trends and I'm talking about subtle forms that this propaganda takes at times. So it's not to say that there aren't occasionally other points of view that seep through, but I'm talking about the bigger picture where we see, you know, just to give one example,

I wrote about genocide denial over the summer for electronic intifada, and I found that 86% of coverage of Gaza between February 28th and May 28th, which is when I was writing. Only, the 86% of that coverage declined to mention the word genocide, even as starting on the beginning of that time period, we had more and more credible international observers describing what is real. And they must add the U.S. and other allies, including Canada, we're doing as genocide. So Michael Fakhri, who works at the UN-influen,

in food security, described Israel as carrying out genocide just before that period on February 27th, to be precise. And over that period between end of February and end of May, we also had Israeli actions, U.S. Israeli actions characterized as genocidal by Francesca Albanese of the UN, by the University Network on Human Rights, reached the same conclusions. So we had more and more evidence piling up that it was clear what Israel and the U.S. were doing, a constituted genocide. And yet, 86% of the coverage did not even mention the word genocide, 80% of the Gaza coverage. So, I mean, that's a pretty stunning omission, genocide denial by omission, I call it. And so those are, you know, that's just one example of what I mean when I say that

these propagandistic hegemonic narratives are often as about. what's not said as they are about what is said. Well, that's before, you know, we co-de-stuart, just to follow up on this. I mean, you mentioned the sins of omission, you could say there, what is not said. I think also in this context, we could say that it's also part of a reversal of the sins of commission of the way in which a lot of discussion about whether it is a genocide or not, partly because of the fact that it's being ignored, failure to recognize and identify that under international law, it would fit this definition. And so it ended up, meaning that a lot of people spent time trying to argue against this, established that it is genocide, etc., while

meanwhile, the sin of commission was basically that narrative to characterize what happened on October 7th as the most devastating, you know, kind of slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust and to do an act of substitution in that kind of framing to then kind of characterize, well, not kind of, but actually assert that the Palestinians actually inhabit this role as persecutors of the Jews that are akin to, you know, the Nazis, World War II, and so on. And that narrative has been much more widely spread and accepted and uncontested, you know, in mainstream media narrative. So I think that's kind of an interesting thing is that there's a omission and there's a certain kind of co-mission that substitutes a different narrative. I wonder what you have to say about that great. Yeah, yeah. I did, you know, actually in the piece that I recited a moment ago, I did talk about that I think less eloquently than you. But yeah, I was talking, I do want to totally agree with you that the genocide denial, yes, is often about omission.

But certainly there is this, what the sociologist Joanna Paul calls genocide denial that takes place through, quote, strategies that confuse or cloud the events in their context and involve reversing victim and perpetrator roles. And so this is very much, and I shouldn't say that the person I quote to Hannah-Paul, she's not talking about Palestine. She's just theorizing genocide denial in other contexts. And so, yes, absolutely. You know, the genocide incitement that I say characterized and still does continue to characterize a lot of it as a discourse. I don't mean to posit that that vanished. It does that and genocide denial feed into each other. I should add because I neglected to initially that the coverage I was referring to was the 86% of the coverage.

I was specifically talking about the New York Times and the Washington Post. That was my sort of case studies. But yeah, absolutely. It's not only about omission. It's absolutely the case. The genocide denial involves sins of commission as well. we get another form of what's often categorized as genocide denial, which is the, you know, casting doubt on the casualty figures, right? You see this, of course, with Holocaust deniers going, well, yeah, bad things happen, but was it really, you know, six million Jews who died?

Well, we've seen a lot of this, I mean, this was relentless for months in late 2023 and throughout 2024, this. casting doubt on the casualty figures coming out of Yaza by sort of insinuating all what's coming from Hamas and it can't be trusted, et cetera, despite copious evidence which I can go into about how trustworthy Gaza Ministry's, Gaza health ministry numbers are at work and how they are backed up by other sources as well. So yeah, that downplaying of the numbers is another sin of commission, another form. of genocide denial. And in fact, what we have seen even since this ceasefire, and I'm almost reluctant to use the word because Israel has continued to kill Palestinians and has really

retightened the siege in the last week in a bit. But during this, let's say instead of ceasefire alteration in the pace and shape of U.S. Zionist violence, what we've seen as a reporting on how many Palestinians died or were killed, I should say, by Israeli and U.S. forces in the period of October 7th through the January 19th, I believe it was ceasefire. And the numbers that are officially reported in mainstream news media, not even the ones that, you know, are doing really hideous, obvious genocide denial, casting doubt on Palestinians. you know, sort of swarthy, untrustworthy Orientals. I'm talking about just relatively bland, allegedly factual reporting that will just say X number of Palestinians died, you know, 45,000 or whichever figure they may give

at a given time. They're reporting the Gaza Health Ministry's total of, like, specific deaths that they can confirm what they're not including, usually a mainstream reporting of casualty figures. They're very rarely mentioning the 11,000 people who were presumed buried under the rubble and therefore dead. So that automatically adds 11,000. But you're getting very few references to the enormous number of people that are believed to have also died from not just bombs and bullets, but disease, lack of sanitation, you know, lack of access to food and water, freezing to death. We've seen us very credible estimates that put these into the hundreds of thousands. And so, yeah, that's a form of genocide denial as well to, you know, really, really drive down the casualty tolls.

Well, I want to make sure that we get Stuart in on this introduction part of the episode as well in terms of what are these media narratives that are propagating hegemonic discourses and hegemonic power. and what is the ideological bent behind them that it is trying to perpetuate? Yeah, thanks, Henry. And just to kind of speak a little bit to that great sort of diad that Anon made about sins of omission and sins of commission, I think that the reason why some narratives are valorized and some narratives are not valorized or, as Greg was saying, or factual data is just completely ignored. I think it has to do with a term that many of us have heard before,

which is the propaganda model of communication. I'm sure many of your listeners are familiar with the now, gosh, almost 40-year-old work by Tromsky and Herman, manufacturing consent. But I'm just maybe saying maybe two sentences about it or two minutes about it for those that aren't. So in that book, they basically take this idea of, they came from the early 20th century from Walter Whitman that the role of media is to manage irrational individuals in order to make society stable. So basically the role of mass media is to preserve social stability. It's to make sure that the citizenry is well informed and air quotes and to stop extremism, right, to make sure that everyone's

kind of part of the polity. But Shomsky and Herman basically take that idea and say, yes, media is important and in manufacturing consent, but that consent is not in the service of making society more stable. It's in the service of preserving corporate capitalism and American Empire. So in that book, what they really do is they look at ways that the New York Times and other news outlets kind of frame issues to benefit the narrative, both the foreign policy narrative of the U.S. and the economic interest of financial elites. And I'm going to say a little bit now about why media do this, Because to the 86%, we don't mean, let me put it this way, to the 14% that Greg mentioned of stories that did kind of seek through, I think that's the word you used, I would argue based on this theory that the reason why only 14% of stories kind of didn't engage in this dominant narrative has to do not necessarily with a kind of instrumental relationship between media outlet and, you know, economic elites or foreign policy elites, but all these different. forces that put pressure on, say, the New York Times to not acknowledge what's going on in Gaza.

And a couple of those that I would have to highlight, they're five, but I'm just going to focus on a couple that I think will really help our conversation. The first is corporate ownership, right? Most of these mainstream outlets are owned by, you know, major corporations or in the case of the Washington Post now, Jeff Bezos, advertiser. And speaking of Washington Post specifically, So, of course, you know, talking about media consolidation goes back to the Telecommunications Act, which I think is something that we might have brought up in our previous conversation with you. But, I mean, I'm trying to recollect three years ago, so forgive me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, if we didn't talk about the Telecommunications Act. But the Washington Post specifically is very interesting given the recent news that the opinions editors at the Washington Post are now being instructed that they must write from a pro-business, low-tax,

free market perspective. And if they don't write from that perspective, they are not permitted to write in the opinion section of the Washington Post. So I just wanted to add that in because that was just in the news within the last week of the time of recording, but it'll be a few weeks by the time this episode comes out. Absolutely. So again, this idea of corporate ownership influencing what the paper or the news outlet produces is absolutely still a big deal. Other things that I think are really important for thinking about the Gaza conflict, sources for corporate media, They don't want to damage their relationship with people in the White House, with, you know, economic elites, with political elites, people that are their sources in terms, well, not economic elites. The kind of insider sources they have within the government to give them information.

And then the last two, which I think are incredibly important for what's going on right now with various news discourses, particularly in the context of the genocide in Gaza, are a term that they kind of introduced for pretty much the first time. which is Flack. For Chomsky and Herman Flack refers to the ways that individuals outside of the news outlet put pressure on the news outlet. So what we're seeing these days, not just in the media, but also within the media, it's not letters to the editor, right? Which is kind of the most benign form of what they call flack. It's organized campaigns by outside groups to flood media outlets with all kinds of derogatory kind of. threats and things like that. If they put anything in their stories that is, you know, not supporting the dominant narrative around Israel, Palestine. And then the fifth element that they

talk about, they call it anti-communism. But basically, I think we could update that now and say it's sort of scare tactics, right? Creating a kind of red scare. So news outlets are, and this goes directly to what Greg was talking about, news outlets are afraid to publish anything. that might be construed as diverging from the kind of APAC, frankly, narrative of the conflict because there's so much of a stigma attached to being quote-unquote pro-Palestine, right? So these are all factors, whether it comes from outside pressure through this flack or through the sort of policing of behavior by constantly invoking, you know, someone's a Hamas supporter, right? And the New York Times is Hamas, Washington Post is the Moss, if they say anything at all critical of IDF, these are, I think, really relevant today when we think about kind of the reasons why mainstream media, particularly in the United States, covers things the way it does.

And again, it isn't instrumental in the sense that, I mean, in the example you gave Henry, it actually is instrumental, right? The owner tells the opinion writers what they have to do or what they need, how they should cover, how they should write things. and the ideologization promulgate, but it's often much less overt, right? It's often that the pressure exerted on these outlets through outside campaigns, through this larger kind of fear among all news outlets that they don't want to be the one news outlet that, you know, diverges from this APEC narrative. These are incredibly powerful, I think, in producing the kinds of results that Greg tracks in his work. Yeah, I think, I mean, I totally...

agree with Stewart as to the enduring value of the propaganda model from Herman and Chomsky. And yeah, just I think it's worth noting too that, you know, as much as certainly APAC and other Zionist lobby groups coordinate pressure campaigns, I mean, it is also the case that we see the pattern on Palestine, the propaganda pattern is not that different than it is for any number of other issues. So, you know, the lobby factor is not insignificant. And there's lobbies for all kinds of groups, or excuse me, issues.

But it is striking that what we have is a fealty to U.S. imperial power, regardless of whether the issue is Ukraine or China or Cuba or Venezuela. Venezuela or Iran or Palestine. So I do think that I just want to point out that kind of pattern that as much as lobbying and flack has a heart to play, I don't want to overstate that as compared to institutional relationships that are economic and political in nature. And one final thing I would add is that an interesting and somewhat more unique form of flack in the palace, in the case of the Gaza genocide, is that a lot of it, most of it, unfolded in the run-up to the U.S. election, where a lot of these outlets, including the ones I discussed, the Post and the Times, were stridently in favor of Biden's election and were terrified by the fact that students and other segments of American society were engaged in

widespread opposition and outright resistance to the U.S. Israeli campaign in Gaza. And so there was a real, I think, it seems to me, on their part, the U.S. media's part, perceive need to really discipline and crack down on those elements that they thought might kind of cost them the election. And so I think that these outlets being in the tank for Biden intensified already existing dynamics toward genocide and denial and genocide incitement, which were a little bit, a little bit kind of historically particular as compared to, but not without precedent, as compared to some other cases of imperial propaganda campaigns that we've seen. Well, one of the things that I want to say, and I know none will have more to add in on that. is that constructing narratives

that propagate hegemonic narratives is particularly easy when you dehistoricize and de-contextualize things that are happening and what I mean is that there's so little

discussion and understanding of historical precedence and historical lead-up to events that are happening that even when something is actually covered and it would go against the hegemonic narrative, it's so disconnected from any historical discussion of where that

comes from, that you then get this very easy backlash against this coverage. And I'm thinking in particular of, if we're thinking about Palestine and what is happening in Gaza, and particularly since October 7th, there is this disarticulation from any preceding history prior to October 7th. There is so little discussion within the hegemonic media of that history, especially from 1948 onwards, but even beginning prior to that, that when we have a major event which cannot be completely omitted from news coverage, like the events starting from October 7, 2023 and going onwards, even when that is then being discussed, And you have some people who are perhaps not as politically involved or historically as aware

looking at what is happening with their eyes and coming to the conclusion that it is genocide. They are then laughed out of the room because they are being given this narrative in isolation. But also, even if those people are not being badgered about trying to contextualize what has been happening since October 7th as genocide, they also don't make that connection that the genocide didn't begin on October 7th. This is something that I've brought up on the show many times. The genocide has been going on in Palestine for 100 years. It is just simply that beginning on October 7, 2023, a new phase, a more blatant and bloody and destructive and brutal phase of the genocide has begun and can be analyzed as a separate

phase of the genocide, but nevertheless just a phase of an ongoing genocide that has roots far before. But that history is never discussed within the hegemonic media. And so what you have is you have all of this confusion about some event, which makes it very easy for hegemonic narratives to perpetuate themselves because you have people who are unaware of the history, makes those narratives that are being put forth by those hegemonic actors. Very easy to take hold if you just start pumping them into the media. And even when you have somebody who can objectively see something in the media that might be able to be analyzed, counter to the hegemonic narratives, that disconnection with any sort of prior analysis and history that took place leading up to that event,

a complete lack of any historical materialist analysis that they may come across, It makes it so that they cannot fully understand that event and it will make them more susceptible to be badgered and give up their position or to be convinced that their original gut take was wrong, which then allows for those hegemonic actors to change the minds of people. So think about people who, obviously not guerrilla history listeners, but people who were watching MSNBC or CNN, they saw the events that began after October 7th. They didn't know what came before that. They said, well, of course, I condemn Hamas, but look at what Israel is doing now. This is genocide. Okay, but when you start to bombard them with the hegemonic narratives for months after that, and they don't have that understanding of the history or of what has been happening in that immediate lead-up to October 7th.

I mean, 2023 was the most deadly year for Palestinians in Gaza, even before October 7th. in recent history, but that was never covered in the media, said decontextualization and dehistoricization makes it so that people cannot fully articulate their beliefs and are more easily persuaded. And that is a feature of hegemonic media. Adnan, I know you want to talk about alternative media. Well, let's, Stuart wanted to jump in. It's a really quick comment on that, very quick comment to that. Henry, if you watch mainstream media coverage say like CNN of the conflict whenever there's anyone Palestinian on the show they always have to start by a pot like I'm basically apologizing

right so they're only given credence if they you know talk about themselves like in a kind of apologetic self-derogatory fashion so they're not even able to articulate you know what might have led what happened on October 7th to happen at all I really don't want to monopolizer conversation. I've said a lot so far, but I just had to interject it. I totally agree with Henry's comments, and I think that that decontextualization is absolutely essential to propaganda on Palestine and Israel and other issues as well. But yeah, I mean, you had Israeli forces shooting Palestinians near the Gaza fence in the days leading up to the October 7th you had, As you mentioned, the deadliest year on the West Bank for Palestinians.

You had Israel bombing Gaza a couple of times in the months leading up to that. You had settler incursions into Iran to Alaks in the days leading up to October 7th. And I can't stress enough that Gaza was under, and is under, but on October 6th, so the moment it became October 7th on the clock, Gaza was subject to a siege. A siege is an act of warfare. Okay? So the Palestinian operation on October 7th is not a, you know, initiating the bloodshed that subsequently has occurred. It is a node in the chain of reaction that, of course, dates back throughout the history of Zionist colonization and imperialist colonization of Palestine.

But I just think we can't underscore enough that Gaza was underscerned. siege, October 7th. That means Israel is carrying out an act of war against Palestinians, and they are reacting to that. They are reacting in that context. And the final point I just had to add is that what I was saying 14% of the post in Times coverage in that May to late February to late May period mentioned the word genocide. That's only the word genocide appears. I'm not accounting for whether the person, you know, this is a thousand plus articles, I'm not accounting for which portion of them entail saying it is not genocide or simply pointing out things like South Africa's case against Israel for genocide or, you know, I don't want to, I want to be clear

that the 14% aren't all say, hey, it's bad that there's genocide and gasp. Great remarks and comments. A couple things to pick up on before I wanted to raise a bigger question in light of your earlier sort of analysis and remarks, which was just, you know, that point that Stewart raised about how, you know, even on the rare, very rare occasions that Palestinians were allowed onto mainstream media to represent. So in terms of sources, as you pointed out before, what are sources? Those are controlled and constrained and very seldom were Palestinians actually able to articulate their own position. And very often, and experience, very often, they had to frame it with this question about whether they condemned or didn't condemn Hamas.

And very often, the conversation couldn't even progress beyond that if they, you know, wanted to avoid just prefacing their remarks by adhering to the hegemonic construction of the narrative as only those who first recognize the, you know, transcendental, you know, moral, uh, outrage that has to be understood with no context just as, you know, an ontology of outrage, you know. So that's, I think, a really important kind of point about the control and how it reinforced the hegemonic narrative, because that's all you could talk about is that. And that's also where things start to that point that Henry made about beginning history. And it reminded me very much of great Palestinian academic Edward Saeed's book, uh, beginning.

beginnings, and he did a lot of work on media, but this was a literary work. But what he pointed out was where you start your narrative from, really patterns that, you know, what that narrative is going to be about and how it's going to be received. It structures everything. So beginning with October 7th, rather than talking about what's happened in Palestine, what people were suffering beforehand, is, of course, a choice. It's also one of these ones in the sensation. media kind of approach, or even if you go back to just thinking about when newspapers were the main way in which people understood what was happening in their world, they talk about events. They never talk about structures. How do you report on a structure? You report on event that happens discreetly in time. And that has a structuring element then for how we absorb and understand and interpret the information. So I think it's very endemic to a certain style of media that has developed ever since even newspapers to the contemporary is that you start with an event and that just ends up structuring the rest of the narrative rather than

a longer contextual or structural kind of framework. And so that's, I think, something that helps reinforce hegemonic narratives because it's so much easier to manipulate as a result without that corresponding analysis. But so that kind of leads to my question that I wanted given, you know, what Stewart had raised about the Herman Chomsky kind of theory, about media and propaganda, and others who have picked up on that and done analysis like that ever since, you know, Michael Parenti and others, you know, a lot of great kind of work from decades ago that was still so profoundly relevant and important. But it was also a little bit about this point that Greg, you talked about the corresponding genocide incitement. And the

narratives that were established early on, getting in first and patterning the narrative was so important because, you know, these narratives about babies being, you know, being beheaded, you know, there was the reassertion and elaboration of the mass rape, sexual assault narratives that were propounded in some ways as a response to the fact that the horrors that people could perceive and witness themselves, even though it was being blocked out. of the mainstream media because they were following TikTok on social media, seeing Instagram videos from Palestinians themselves in Gaza and circulating this in an entirely different network of viewership and so on,

that that had changed something of the political calculus and there was political pressure that was starting to mount and develop with massive street protests and cities like I was living in London during that time. And there were, you know, routinely in the first... three, four months, uh, every weekend, every other weekend, 500,000 to a million people in the streets, you know, so that was starting to require the, you know, a reinstallation of some kind of dominating hegemonic narrative about what happened on October 7th that could incite to genocide and justify the genocide that was taking place, you know, uh, and that was when it was

recirculated. Those were later stories. Like, they hadn't been. the initial ones that were emphasized. It was really about beheaded babies when those were debunked for some reason that there are many who, of course, never heard those being debunked. But it seemed like it lost a little currency in purchase. And so they had to come up with a new kind of sin of commission of putting in place a narrative that was persuasive, locked in, and then, you know, tended to drown out any other analysis of what. was happening, and also justify and incite, you know, to genocide. So, but in that story, and what we're thinking is that there were alternative media and

counter-hegemonic sorts of forces of circulating media, I'm wondering, did the disjunction between social media and mainstream media, that mainstream media itself had to start to kind of like reflect on, engage, respond to, and so on. And it couldn't just sort of take this imperial lofty sort of like grand narrative it actually was being undermined it was being seen as less authoritative or you know did that does that kind of put pressure on this kind of propaganda sort of theory you know you know or or not really you know do we have to update the model or did it really kind of prove that you know instead when we get all involved in social media there maybe some consequence in undermining narratives, but it also is a kind of outlet for the

activism. Like, you know, after it stretched on four, five, six months, you know, what we've been doing is circulating our stories to our own communities, but it hasn't led to the same kind of public engagement. So I'm just wondering how you see this whole kind of thorny problem. Can I jump in real fast? Thank you. Yeah, one of the things I wanted to mention today in relationship to this was, I don't know if you if you folks remember, when Mitt Romney, the congressman from Utah, was trying to push Congress, well, as part of the rationalization for banning TikTok in the United States, part of the reason why, you know, and Blinking kind of agree with them, Anthony Blinken, the secretary, then secretary of state was that so many young people

were posting about Palestine and showing support for Palestine on TikTok. And Romney's rationalization was that, you know, people were, it's very similar kind of to the sort of pejorative way that people in the 1920s kind of thought that radio was making people stupid or maybe radio would fool people. But the logic was young people, they're not that, you know, they're not that well educated yet. They don't have life experience. And they're seeing so many images of just sheer gore and brutality on TikTok in Gaza. And that's just, you know, that's going to automatically make them think that, you know, Israel is doing something. wrong. So that's why we need to ban TikTok because it doesn't have the kind of contextualizing elements that mainstream media has. So basically they're accusing this people that are putting

TikTok videos and TikTok memes and circulating things on TikTok about the genocide. They're basically saying that we should not give them that opportunity by letting them, letting young people in the United States consume that media. That creates a potential foreign policy risk. And that is bad, basically bad for our young people. So I think it was a really interesting way they tried to kind of paint TikTok as this sort of danger for young people because it doesn't have the same kind of, you know, framing mechanisms as, you know, print news or TV news or other kinds. Right. But also there's the China component as well, which we'll talk about that later with you, Stuart.

I know you do a lot of work on China, but I want to make sure that Greg can also respond to Adnan's question before we get to China, because that is going to be another very large conversation. Yeah, I couldn't agree more that social media has, for all of its many, many false and limitations, nevertheless enabled for effective pushback against tegemonic narratives. And that's often, despite the best efforts of those who own a lot of these outlets as well, whether that's Zuckerberg and the meta owners or the rather odious creature that owns X slash Twitter. Yeah, TikTok is, of course, it has a little, well, more than a little bit of a set of different interests and priorities that I think is intimately linked to, you know, why it's been a more open to anti-Zionist narratives. And so, yeah, I think that, I mean, it's easy enough to see it in my students and I'm sure some of you can share that experience that, I mean, students, I pick them because they're, you know, relatively representative of the kinds of young people that were thinking of and talking about involved in, you know, protest movements and so on.

Yeah, I mean, they, in my experience, consume little mainstream news. media or traditional news media and when they do they're accessing it via social media platforms but i i find that there that the views of just people i see in my classrooms and and ask this question of in my classroom overwhelmingly are shaped by what they consume on on tic talk in particular and to a lesser extent Instagram or X so yeah it's you know

these are again we can leave aside TikTok because it's its own distinct case in many ways but as much as meta and X are very clearly crucial links in the imperialist kind of chain of

domination it is possible even within those to carve out space for for pushback and for kind of discursive resistance. And so we do see that on even Instagram and X, whether that's following independent Palestinian journalists on the ground in Gaza or movement organizers and organizations. They're able to get their version of events out.

It is limited in some ways, though, because they don't have the kinds of capital, obviously, that the Washington Post or New York Times or NBC do. They can't take out a billboard to advertise or if they can that would be a one-off in the middle of some city or something. But yeah, as much as they kind of independent media faces an uphill battle, social media provides a vehicle for that independent media, whether we're talking about some, you know, kind of,

magazine that people have set up or just up one specific journalist citizen journalism, I guess is what I'm talking about. I think that that is why the mainstream news media is largely discredited and not taken seriously. I mean, it has an impact for sure, especially on kind of political and cultural, the political and cultural ruling class and what I think Chomsky called the cultural name. managers. But, you know, I think that it doesn't have a lot of purchase amongst the general public, at least not as much as it used to. It's certainly not amongst young people. And social

media's capacity, or I should say users of social media's capacity to demonstrate the falsehoods and misrepresentations that traditional bourgeois media puts forth, I think, has been indispensable in one of the bright spots. And again, I say that with many caveats and acknowledgments of the limitations. It's one of the bright and hopeful spots of our century thus far. You know, we've been talking in there's so much more that we could say on these specific topics, but we did bring up TikTok and you, Greg, mentioned that it was kind of a specific case. And part of that specificity in the TikTok case in terms of alternative forms of media or for ways in which media can be transmitted, one of the things that makes that case so

specific is the connection with China. But that also brings us back to hegemonic narratives and the ideological underpinnings of hegemonic narratives. Now, I'm going to pass it over to you, Stuart, because you've done a lot of work on China and are continuing to do a lot of work on China. So maybe we can talk about what it is about China that fuels these specific media narratives and what are the specific media narratives that are being utilized and weaponized against China. Yeah, I guess I'll start with the reasons why these narratives are kind of being mobilized on the right and the left. I mean, they're slightly different narratives. I think that, to put it simply, and I should say, I should calculate it and say that my research is kind of looking at how Chinese globalization is reflected in media, both in the United States and in the global South. I would say in a nutshell, China offers an alternative economic model, an alternative form of foreign policy to the United States. And it's also, and again, I'm not going to debate whether China isn't declined or whether China is still growing. I think I'm going to accept the narrative that most people support that.

China is a real threat to the United States. So I think that's really the simple reason why it's become such a target for not just U.S. media, but also foreign policy, also U.S. link, a foreign policy establishment, I'll say, as well as think tanks, as well as journalists. So, yeah, I think China really is kind of an existential threat to the United States as a global hegemon. And I guess the question would be, and this is maybe not a question answered today is is it a sort of a new kind of bipolar system with u.s and china on each side or is it as many i think many many people who listen to this podcast might kind of have an idea about or have an opinion on are we entering a multipolar world right where china the way china's

globalizing is kind of creating spheres of autonomy for other states um that's connected like the bricks as well so to the second part of the second part of your question henry which is what are the narratives? I would say the main ones, well, in terms of foreign policy, there's this real, well, real kind of prominent narrative, a very prominent narrative, that China is going into the global South and exploiting countries, right? That there's a really, I think, quite bad book called China's Second Continent, which was published by an individual name, I think it seems Howard French, who was a former, and I'm going to might get this wrong, reporter for, I think, the New Yorker.

And there's all these kind of decontextualized cases of how Chinese immigrants are exploiting, like in small businesses are exploiting the workforce kind of in the informal sectors in different parts of sub-Saharan Africa, but really this kind of book doesn't get into what is actually going on. And other things like the debt-trap diplomacy, which I'm sure you guys have heard of, the idea that China is getting, is. is investing in these countries in terms of infrastructure in order to exert political pressure or create ideal conditions for Chinese companies to kind of engage in exploitation of both natural

resources and labor. And then the second one, which is, I think, more domestic. Oh, yeah, just a quick note that for listeners that are interested in those specific narratives regarding China Second Continent and debt trap diplomacy and things along those lines, we have episodes that examine those narratives and also that reality from, believe it or not, both perspectives and from people from those global South countries looking at their specific national contexts as well. As a matter of fact, an episode which we recently recorded but hasn't been released yet, it'll be released probably a little bit before this one is. The guest from the Democratic Republic of Congo also takes a very critical examination of China's role in the DRC,

and specifically within the mining sector of the DRC. So just as a note for the listeners that we have a pretty interesting, in our catalog, we have an interesting array of perspectives and also particularly perspectives from the Global South examining that relationship between China and the Global South. So I don't think we have any episodes that are entirely devoted to that. But listeners, if you go back into our back catalog, you'll find those conversations taking place over the years. Right. Yeah. And again, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to kind of paint too rosy a picture of Chinese globalization. But I was just trying to make, I guess, make the point that for the U.S., there's a strategic interest, both in terms of foreign policy and in terms of American corporations to really demonize China's involvement. But yeah, that sounds like a great episode. And I know there have been books like I think Cartha was his name, Cobalt Red, the book that came out, I think last year, about mining in the DRC.

And just to kind of move out a little bit from the DRC, I know William Robinson, who's kind of a controversial figure, he's done, you know, some research on, I think, the Andean region and exploitation of national resources there. So, again, there's not one kind of unified narrative on whether Chinese globalization is, you know, good or bad for the world. But certainly for the U.S., it's in our interest as a country to be from the United States to vilify. And the second one, which is probably more prominent, is that China represents a security threat, right? So we shouldn't, in that, work with Chinese companies because, or the American company shouldn't work with Chinese companies because of security risk. And the TikTok thing is kind of really where this comes to the forefront, right? One of the main concerns about TikTok was that it would be used to surreptitiously gather data. The one was it would be used as surreptitiously gather data on American citizens, particularly.

people working within the kind of within the higher levels of the administration so that's why they made it so politicians and people that worked in in government and the kind of bureaucracy couldn't use tip talk and the other the other rationalization which i find very resonant with the um kind of russia gate moment from that 10 years ago was that chinese the basically the cc the chinese party communist party or the Communist Party, China to say, would use TikTok to basically blast messages to voters to influence voter behavior in the United States. And two things about that. Number one, like that hasn't happened. That didn't happen during the 2024 election. Number two, I would argue, and I think many people that were critical of Russiagate, this idea that Russia, you know, used disinformation campaigns from a GRU to influence the 2016 election.

I would take the position on TikTok that I took vis-a-vis that, which is that all countries engage in influence operations. That's literally kind of part of real politic. And the United States did it in the Russian election in 2012. So again, really this idea that China is trying to either steal our data, our political information, or that is trying to influence voter behavior. I think both of theirs are pretty false. And again, it's not just in the media. the foreign policy establishment as well. I don't know if you guys have heard of the Clean Network.

Do you know this the Clean Network? It was under Trump's first administration. Mike Pompeo started this, would basically pledge that telecommunications companies had to make that they would not do business with any Chinese corporate entity, particularly Huawei. And this continued under Blinken. They actually tried,

they actually added more companies to the list. And funny enough, all of those companies were, and actually I'm almost sure, let's say this, the vast majority, if not all of those companies, were from Western Europe or like Australia. So really, we see that this attempt by the United States to kind of make the argument that China is a threat, there cracks in that, and it kind of, it really does reflect this competition that China provides to U.S. as a edge of on. Yeah.

Anyway. Taking a step back from China for just a second, but since you were talking about TikTok's role in supposedly influencing elections, and at risk of repeating myself, because I have talked about this in another relatively recent episode, we have a great case study of this narrative being used vis-a-vis Russia Gate part, you know, whatever, 20, or however many times they accuse Russia of foreign influence with the recent Romanian elections. So in Romania, just to reiterate this story for listeners who either have forgotten or perhaps didn't come across this because it wasn't widely reported within Western media, Romania recently had a first round of a presidential election, and the first, no candidate had enough votes to win outright in the first round, so that would have triggered a runoff second round. But the candidate who took first is this weird kind of right-wing conspiracy theorist,

but is an anti-NATO, anti-Western, right-wing conspiracy theorist, a Romania nationalist. Now, okay, we're not going to argue the merits of this specific candidate, but what happened is extremely interesting. So he was in the lead after the first round of the elections, which would have brought him to the second. round of elections, the runoff election with the person who finished second place. However, the courts annulled the results of the first round of elections. Why? Because they claimed that there was Russian interference within that election process and specifically utilizing TikTok to influence voters in Romania, particularly young Romanians, to turning out for this Romanian nationalist conspiracy theorist guy.

So they annulled the elections and they announced that, okay, we're going to redo the elections at some point in the future. What happened after that? Well, there was an investigation in terms of, was this a Russian interference operation on TikTok? And it turned out pretty conclusively, actually, from an investigation that took place by the Romanian authorities that, no it wasn't a Russian influence operation at all there was a lot of money that was coming into advertising for this guy but guess who it was from one of the two major centrist parties in Romania for what purpose they thought that if they boosted this guy and got him into the runoff election that their candidate would finish in either first or second place and the other centrist candidate that was running would not go to the runoff election they were worried that if it was two centrist candidates

candidates. They didn't know how it would go, but that they would have a better chance against this kind of right-wing nationalist conspiracy theorist guy. And so they tried to boost him in order to knock out the other centrist candidate from moving to the runoff election. And this is what got the election annulled. And that, they didn't overturn the annulment. They didn't annulment and say, okay, well, it wasn't foreign influence. It was actually just a political party doing some political calculus here, let's, you know, just stick with the results as they were. So they decided that they were going to re-host the first round of the elections. But as of the time of recording, the person who took first place in the last election, who is now even

doing better in the polls than he was at the time of that initial first round election, this nationalist conspiracy theorist guy, he's doing much better in the polls now. He's doing much better in the polls now than he was when he had his election annulled the first time, he has now been banned from running for president by the court. He submitted his candidacy to them and said, I am going to run for president again. And they said, no, you're not for, quote, undemocratic language and positioning. Now, no, this is a guy who is running for president in a democratic process and is being barred for anti-democratic positioning, despite the fact that, you know, he had the most votes in the first round of the election and that they overturned it because of

supposed foreign influence that wasn't there. It's a very complicated story, listeners, which I have been telling for far too long. I just tell it because it's such a fascinating case study of how the moment that you say Russia has influenced an election and they have utilized TikTok, you now merge these two great evils in the minds of people, and that allows you to do these remarkable things like unnulling elections which there was no foreign influence in and then utilizing it also is the pretext for banning the candidate who has the most support from the elections for undemocratic positioning you know preventing him from going into a democratic process all under false pretences because you utilize those words russia and tick talk together

ad nun i am sorry you've had your hand raised for a while that was a long story but i thought it might be interesting for the listeners. Yeah, no fun stuff, but I did want to come back on to China, but also connecting with this larger kind of question, a larger problem of how it works in a number of different, this kind of disinformation. Just getting back to the China. So I have been very surprised at how easy the anti-China narratives have been to sell.

You know, like for a period in the 2000s, you know, late 90s, 2000s, the relationship between U.S. and China was characterized as a wonderful case of globalization, making the world so much wealthier and better because it would be, you know, it's what's saving, you know, kind of neoliberal capitalism, bringing the world together and making American consumers happy. And they even held the Olympics. They were allowed to hold the Olympics. And, you know, that reversed pretty quickly. I think actually, you know, after the global downturn, that exposed some of the weaknesses of this new economic world order, and of course also with China emerging as a major power. That's something

that just seems threatening to the aggressive neocon vision. That's not even just narrowly a neocon vision. It's just the U.S. sort of vision, typically, that U.S. has to be hegemonic in the world. And for a period after the, you know, end of the Cold War, it really convinced itself that it could be, you know, the unipolar hegemon. And so what Stewart, you were mentioning about, you know, kind of the processes by which a multipolar world is emerging, China's role in that, China's role in creating a coalition of other economies and nations that might be able to help evade U.S. unilateral and illegal sanctions, the kinds of things that you wrote about in your pieces on Syria and, you know, other parts of the Middle East, you know, this is a real threat to U.S., you know, both hard power and soft power. its kind of role in this unipolar era. And I think there, you know, there's a lot of panic.

And I saw a really interesting report by a critical technologies tracker of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute that, you know, said basically China, you know, in one of their reports from 2023 was China has like a critical advantage in something like 38. eight out of 44 critical technology areas, you know, everything from eco to defense, to telecommunications, AI, et cetera. And this is even before last year and even before this year's deep seek, you know, revelations. So that advantage is just increasing dramatically. And I think that's clearly what's at stake from a more political economic perspective about why this anti-China a narrative is so easy to absorb and so easy to see China as a threat, even though there's nothing that they have done that you could say is a threat to the U.S. It is a threat to U.S. interests. That's how it's always framed, because they have to acknowledge China has not invaded

other countries, unlike, say, the United States. It has not done the kinds of things that would be, you know, credible in raising the issue of its geopolitical or military threat. So, That's kind of a kind of area that's worth kind of thinking more about and how these narratives about Chinese spying, Chinese, you know, kind of stealing of technology when, in fact, of course, that report that I just mentioned demonstrates that in fundamental research that China is doing, it is taking leaps and bounds. That's the basis for, you know, a lot of what, you know, maybe there was technology transfer happening in the 90s and 2000s to some extent. Of course there was. That was a condition of like

cooperation with China. But they are doing genuine creative, innovative, groundbreaking, pathbreaking, fundamental research now upon which the development of these technologies take place. And that is a serious, serious threat. But it's framed as it's Chinese spying. Well, Chinese schooling. And therefore, we need to put in place security paradigms to prevent actual interchange, collaboration, and so forth. It's just worth noting very briefly before Greg goes in with the actual answer to this question, which is that the ASPI, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, is an institute that exists almost solely for whipping up fear and anger against China.

I mean, for, you know, listeners, it sounds like a very, the name of it is not very scary sounding, but the ASPI, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, is an incredibly bellicose think tank that exists almost specifically and almost solely for whipping up fear and anger against China, not just within Australia, but those same reports are utilized by various other think tanks and governmental officials in the United States and Canada and Britain, basically the imperial corps that is allied against China in this. you know, battle for polarity. But Greg, I just wanted to make that brief note about the ASPI. Yeah, well, I think that ties in because to add then's excellent insights, I think I would add that, and stewards, of course, that the manufacturing of a so-called China threat surrounding election interference or, you know, TikTok alleged, you know, manipulation of U.S. or Western public opinion, I think that that's all inextricable from the other forms of China demonization that we've seen on the Uyghur issue, going back further and re-emerging recently, the Tibet question,

the Taiwan issue. A lot of the early COVID coverage was used to kind of gin up xenophobia. And so I think that while these are all part of the sort of. you know, cocktail of a drumming up anti-China sentiment so that if they seem, you know, to be uniquely oppressive towards either internal minorities or threatening to, I mean, Taiwan, which is a province of the country, but in the popular consciousness, in the West, often seen as its own country, you know, all of this may create. the notion that China is this malfactor that thus you, you know, have a sort of good reason

to want to keep out of the U.S. or Western kind of public sphere. And thus, it seems like the rational or logical thing to do to many casual observers to, oh, well, we don't want to give these devious, this devious state capacity to kind of influence our culture. so-called, to our culture and scare worlds, of course. Can I just jump in? Thanks. Just to add a really simple point, and this is to the last thing Greg said, and again, I agree with everything you said, that it's also just, I think, frankly, racism and a lack of any kind of attempt on the part of people in the United States and I would say in the West more generally to actually familiarize themselves with anything heavy to do with China. And it goes back to a point you made a while ago, Henry, about taking things out of context, right? The idea is, I think the reason why it's so easy for people in the United States, even like my family numbers, to vilify China, is because they literally know nothing about it, right, except for maybe like the Tianan Square incident or maybe, maybe Tibet, you know.

So I think I just wanted to add that's a really kind of, I think, a very sort of clear, simple but really powerful kind of element of how these narratives about. China as, you know, threatening us, as untrustworthy, spying on us, as dirty in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, like the whole bat soup discourse. I think, yeah, racism's inextricable for the ways that these narratives, to your point, are under your provocation, the reason why these narratives, you know, pick up so quickly and easily in the United States. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's the return of the yellow peril. know, like it's back in a really big way. And what's interesting, this is kind of the second component that I wanted to ask.

And it's kind of like my earlier one about counter-hegemonic kind of media and its place in this is, you know, most of the global South with, of course, people who, you know, there are some voices. And Henry mentioned, you know, we've even had guests on our episodes talking about, you know, Chinese. these investment and development projects and the Belt and Road Initiative and so forth in the global South in Africa and the allegations about the debt trap policy to try and present these development projects as part of a more nefarious attempt at domination or, you know, that's one way of manufacturing the narrative. I mean, or it's just locally seen as well, it's exploitative and we'd rather have more control over it. So there are different ways in which the same experience can then be hijacked and yoked to some of these media narratives to manufacture a way of interpreting them,

not as, you know, the tensions and contradictions of any kind of attempt at development in, you know, a capitalist global order. I mean, they're going to be these kinds of problems. Chinese companies will feel they still have to make a profit if it's still, you know, capitalism, even if they might do so in a different way or under different bases. and so on. And usually, as I've heard from many in the global south, who work in development areas, that at least, you know,

it may be just as exploitative, perhaps, on some level, because it's capitalism. But at least they don't lecture you about corruption and need for political reform and blah, blah, blah, the way the EU and the United States always do when they want to, you know, like, you know, put in a, you know, any kind of like a little power plant somewhere. Immediately you still have to.

to do all of this kind of political reform and change your laws and enhance property rights. And, you know, good. So it comes with a lot more baggage that way. But my question is, is how have these countries, well, China, for example, started that CGM, China, global news or global network or something. And I used to watch that occasionally as the only place where you could get some information in video on a kind of seeming news show. type format that about the Russia-Ukraine war that wasn't completely hyperventilating and demonizing, you know, Russia. But, you know, those haven't been that successful. Like, you know,

there seems to be a kind of unique advantage that Western media, U.S. media has in the game of disinformation in promoting hegemonic narratives that are very hard to overturn to the extent that many people still in the global south will trust a BBC over some, you know, the Chinese networks sometimes. You know, there's just, there's been an investment and a capability in propounding kind of media disinformation. And so I'm just wondering, are these efforts the, the right way, they're always branded and demonized. And the videos are labeled as this is state sponsored, you know, so that's supposed to completely discredit it. If it's, you know, press TV, you know, from Iran or, you know, CGM, or what used to be Russia today, RT, right?

Like, these kind of efforts have foundered. Maybe the ones from Latin America have been a little bit better. I don't know. But and then the other component is coming back to that social media and, you know, other kinds of platforms. the few that exist that aren't U.S. controlled and therefore subject to various algorithms and other kind of deep state manipulation are, is really just from China.

And there's no other really kind of set of platforms. Europe doesn't produce them, you know. They don't really have anything like Facebook, etc. It's really just China. And that's, of course, also part of the reason why it's a threat is it's the only one, as some would say, that invested in kind of cloud capital, as Yanis Barifakis would say.

So I'm wondering what you think about this kind of like, can there be these counter-hegemonys? What do they, you know, what role have they been playing? They seem not to have broken through in quite the way that one would want or hope, except for people like us who actually, you know, have already been looking for that, or hearing and read different kinds of sources.

So wondering any reactions on, on global south countering of the media hegemony of the, of the West. Actually, this gives me an opportunity to mention something I wanted to mention before. I would say that there, again, my experience is more in Latin America, right? My research has historically been in Brazil. And I do think, to give one example, there are some digital spaces, actually digital spaces, particularly on YouTube, where alternative media, has there are alternative media platforms that have you know achieved i wouldn't i don't know like

how to really quantify this but like they're quite popular they get millions of views or not tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands sometimes a million views and i think they are showing us that there are some there are some ways that alternative media can kind of i mean again these are youtube networks i'm thinking of but can achieve a foothold. I wanted to mention this because the story, I wanted to kind of link up to a story that came on in the New York Times last year. It was a story about Rui Singham, the entrepreneur who, I think we all know, and listeners probably know, basically moved to China. But at the same time, he moved to China. He also donated tons of money to community organizations, leftist

social movements, and media outlets that were doing kind of. of left-wing progressive Marxist work, right? Because, you know, he considers himself a Marxist. So one of these, just to link this altogether, one of the platforms, so the New York Times article basically says that this is an influence operation by China to subvert the United States, right? And the big example in the U.S. is breakthrough news, right, that some of this might know. The Brazilian outlet discussed in the piece that Singham donated money to was a organization

called Brazil de Fatu, which is a quite large YouTube network, and the evidence given in the New York Times article, and I don't know how they found it. They must have been digging pretty deep, was a video that I think it had maybe a few thousand views that this organization had published about the, basically, the Chinese Revolution, right, and how people were raised out of poverty, how it kind of undid the sort of feudal conditions and really made. people's lives better. So there's one video they picked out. And one of the videos that was like one of the least popular videos on the site. So the point I'm trying to make is I do think there are, again, in the context of this context of Brazil, there are some really powerful like Huffington Post level, you know, Huffington Post circa 20 years ago or level or 18 years ago, level outlets. But again, the United States is really taking any opportunity to find a way to make China culpable for a kind of conspiracy.

So I think Breakthrough News in the United States is a pretty, I mean, this is asking about the world itself, but I think it's pretty, I mean, it's pretty heavily consumed. And anyway, the point I'm making is that it is in the U.S. interest to really kind of try to, like, de-legitimize these outfelleds that are doing good work. Yeah, sorry. Just anecdotally on Breakthrough News specifically,

you know, you do mention that Breakthrough News is pretty, widely consumed, but prior to the publication of that expose on Roy Singham and the connections with China and how all of these media outlets that Roy Singham has donated money to our Chinese front operations and things along those lines. Prior to that expose by, of course, the imperialist hegemonic media, I was being, so I'm not on YouTube very often. I don't have time for anything, listeners. I have too many things going on. But. pretty much every time that I would just go into YouTube to see what was on my homepage I was seeing breakthrough news videos like fairly high up they were you could see

the number of subscribers rapidly growing you could see the videos that they had you know they're well video they're they're well edited videos the hosts of the the shows are well spoken they have excellent guests all of that so you know it was no real surprise to see the numbers going up quite a bit But the moment that that expose came out on how Breakthrough News and PSL and all of these other organizations that Roy Singham had donated money to were essentially Chinese front operations for Chinese influence within the United States and beyond, I cannot tell you the last time. And so again, I don't actually like watch anything on YouTube because I don't have time. But I still periodically just log into YouTube and see what's on my homepage to see what the algorithm is recommending these days for more than anything. And I can't remember the last time that I had a breakthrough news video on my homepage.

Now, that's without me like clicking on things and, you know, altering my algorithm too much besides, you know, the random song that I'll listen to when I, when I have something stuck in my head. But it's quite interesting how these media platforms like YouTube, you know, mysteriously, you have these counter hegemonic narratives start disappearing the moment that they start to become popular and the hegemonic media has something out for them. Sorry, that anecdote was not as short as I intended on it being, but if you have anything to add on that. Yeah, I guess it's just, I mean, it's clear that there's a thumb on the scale, right? particularly. And it's, it's interesting to hear, to hear, like, how the algorithm works where you

were living, Henry, too, because you're not in the United States, right? So it's like, there's, well, I have, I have to use a VPN to use YouTube because there's, there's massive throttling of the YouTube speed from the side of YouTube. They don't allow us users in Russia to watch videos, because, you know, that would be a subversive thing. But yeah, so my VPN that I have set right now, I think is a US VPN. So it should be, yeah, it should be about the same as what you're getting. Yeah, okay, that makes more sense. But yeah, no, I think you're, you're totally right. And this is part of the whole trajectory going back years, right? When RT had to register his state media, you know, when the U.S. government, sorry, not in the U.S. government,

the U.S. sort of foreign policy slash elite media establishment would go after journalists like Abby Martin, right, you know, basically try to paint her entire career. It's just like 9-11 truthorism. So, yeah, no, I think the United, I think the U.S. is very invested in trying to find ways to, you know, not going beyond China, going to Russia and other perceived enemy states to make the argument that any news outlet that's willing to entertain a serious critique of the U.S., whether it's U.S. foreign or domestic policy, is an influence operation. I was just going to add that there was also a period of admittedly short, but of a few days where the electronic intifada live stream was suspended from YouTube. And so I know that since then they've kind of diversified the platforms that they use, but another instance of a what I would call highly effective independent media outlet being disciplined for.

are pretty obviously political reasons. So I want to get us towards the end of this conversation, but there's one other big topic that I want to raise. And I know that each of you has a lot to say on it. And I'll open with you on this one, Greg. We've been talking quite a bit about news and, you know, so-called informational media, but we haven't been talking so much about entertainment media.

Now, Greg, I know that you've discussed entertainment media and how that perpetuates hegemonic narratives quite a bit. Stuart, I know when I emailed you, I brought up the fact that I really wanted to talk about your Netflix imperialism paper, which also fits perfectly within this theme. So I'm going to leave the floor pretty much open. You don't really need a preamble from me. Let's just bring in this discussion of the entertainment media and how entertainment media perpetuates hegemonic narratives as well. And like I said, I'll open with you, Greg. And then when we pass it over to Stewart, I definitely want to hear, I mean, I read the Netflix imperialism article. but I want the listeners to hear about the Netflix imperialism article.

What is Netflix imperialism, is the title of it? Yeah, I'll start by being brief because I want to hear what Stewart has to say. But just initially, I mean, I think you could subject, and people have done a bit of this, but I think there's a lot of room for more to subject, you know, Hollywood and other kinds of forms of mass popular. entertainment to a lot of the same or let's say parallel analysis that Chomsky and Herman's subject news media to like there is a lot of sort of powerful pressures on say film to not stray too far from acceptable lines on ruling class lines I should say on questions of well all kinds of questions, but certainly imperialism. And I think that the long history of direct

Pentagon investment in Hollywood projects like Top Gun, for example, go a long way to explaining why so much kind of blockbuster media centers around essentially valorizing and whitewashing the U.S. role in the world, as certainly happens with the Marvel and DC universes, which I do my vest to totally ignore unless I absolutely have to, which is basically if I want to or feel I should do a critical reflection of it, it's not the kind of thing I consume for pleasure. But, you know, the Wonder Woman movie, for example, which I gather was not even a huge, you know, box-offic success, but was still nevertheless a big budget movie starring none other than former invader of Lebanon, Galgado, was a pretty clear allegory. I mean, it was so superficial. I don't know if it wouldn't even deserve that term.

but for basically imperial benevolence interventions against, you know, sort of rogue regimes and actors so as to kind of ultimately serve the, you know, greater good of, you know, human freedom and flourishing. So I think that often what we get from Hollywood, by which I mean TV and film, is more nakedly propagandistic, or at least as nakedly propagandistic, as you see on a Wall Street Journal editorial page. And I think there's very straightforward political economy explanations for the... Yeah, just to add to that. Well, I would say as a caveat, I don't know, Brett Stevens might be worse than it, but besides Brett Stevens for the New York Times, there's the term for what

Greg's describing, that's the military entertainment complex, and that kind of links the ways. that films get funded and get access to things like, oh, you want to have an aircraft carrier in your film? Like the top gun example, you have to coordinate with the military. So there is a long history in American film going back at least to, I think, for around World War II, where, or maybe probably earlier, where the preferential access is given to films that, and television shows as well, that collaborate with the military, right? And there's this whole, like, if you want to make a war movie, you're going to have to work with the military. But as Greg playing out, it goes far beyond that with all the Marvel movies, for example. So to answer the Netflix imperialism question kind of briefly, I think it relates to arguments historically around what is media imperialism. Media imperialism's determination came out about in the late 1960s, arguably first used by Herbert Schiller in his book, Mass Media and American Imperialism. I think that's a title. And there's kind of a debate within people that researched media between the kind of content and the political economic dimension. So the content side would be that media coming from the United States is trying to promote U.S. economic interests, promote U.S. military interests, and also to condition people, particularly in the global South, or the developing world, as it was called at the time, to kind of the American way of life.

Right. So that's that's one one side, the content. And then there's other side that focuses more on the political economic kind of underpinnings of that. So things like American, how U.S. companies basically try to move into other, into other parts of the world, right? So kind of media imperialism would be both kind of content that promotes U.S. interests or American culture in square coats. but also the ways that American companies try to move into other markets. So, and that's been a debate that kind of continues. So the reason why Netflix is interesting is that Netflix on the surface, at least historically, when it moves into other markets, it's really kind of pride at itself, I'll say, on allowing a lot of content from national industries. Well, a lot of content from national industries and from the countries that it's moving in to stream. But while it's done that historically in the past few decades, sorry, that's a decade or so, it's really put a ton of money and a ton of energy.

And specifically after the pandemic to create integrated production and distribution networks for Netflix series that are owned by Netflix, which is to say start Netflix students. studios in different countries, kind of have an infrastructure or Netflix will own the servers through which to kind of distribute its content. So what I call it in the article is the kind of attempt to own the pipelines, right? So Netflix is trying to create this sort of closed circuit where it might be making content in, say, India that's for Indian audiences and also often streamed in other contexts. but at the same time, it's really creating political economic conditions for media producers in those countries where they, particularly like public broadcasting, if that still exists anywhere. And actually, what gave me the idea to do this article was a piece about the CBC in Canada, where some of us are. And the director of the CBC accused Netflix of

cultural imperialism because it was basically moving into Canada and kind of, there was a worry that was going to push out national producers. And the real issue with Netflix, and like a lot of other platforms, is that on the surface, it might seem like, oh, it's doing a good thing by, you know, paying for TV production or film production in country X. But the issue is that there's no kind of regulatory framework, right?

So if Netflix kind of pushes out national producers, particularly in countries that don't have very robust industries for television or cinema, then what if what happens recently happens, which Netflix experiences a contraction, right? It got all this money during the pandemic because of this bump in viewership, right?

bump in subscriptions. And like a lot of platforms, Netflix, it isn't profitable. It's money basically comes on investment based on future projections right so um yeah so the concern is that it might seem like a good thing that these american platforms are pretty similar to facebook um what is it facebook zero i think it's called in india where facebook would provide free internet access on smartphones but you had to go through facebook so the idea with that just like with netflix is that really there's no regulation

and it could and it could and has potentially damaged local or excuse me national product industries. So, yeah, that's kind of the paradox of Netflix. That it, you know, on the surface, it seems like it's exposing us to all kinds of different things, but it really raises questions about ownership and regulation that traditionally have been addressed by regulatory bodies and wouldn't be in this case. I just want to mention Tanner Murleys, who Stewart and I both know. Perhaps you've had him on the show, I can't recall. But just for listeners, somebody, somebody who's done really excellent work on the military and entertainment imperialism. So I would just check out his work.

Definitely. And he's also Canadian. And also a contributor to the book Sanctions as both of you were. So one final question for each of you in way of conclusion. How do we protect ourselves from adopting these imperialist narratives that are propagated by the media and entertainment industries? So I know, I mean, the listeners who are listening to guerrilla history, of course, are listening to guerrilla history and are aware of the fact that there are imperialist and hegemonic narratives pervasive throughout mass media. But, you know, perhaps this is still a useful conversation for them, but then also will be fruitful for them to think about in terms of explaining this to friends and family as they have these sorts of conversations about why these narratives exist.

and how to protect themselves against adopting these imperialist hegemonic narratives. Okay, I can go first time. Yeah, I would say, you know, I don't have a terribly original or creative response. So my main thought is just that encourage people to consume other sources of intonation and analysis. Because, you know, setting aside the sort of outlets that are linked to sort of non-US or non-Western states, which do often produce good content, we do also have quite a lot of really good, you know, organic or relatively organic content coming from outlets within the imperial core, whether that's, I mean, you know, I'm just totally biased because these are places that I write for. but fair fairness and accuracy in reporting. It's an excellent source of debunking the propaganda that one sees on a daily basis. Likewise, there's electronic and defada and Mondoese for Palestine and often elsewhere in the region.

There's, you know, a lot of really good just critics with substacks, you know, like Adam Johnson and Senna Saeed, like a lot of good really, really, really, really high quality podcasts and some stacks that once you kind of get into following a couple of them, you sort of get introduced to the kind of family of sources with a similar bent. So, of course, we have you, you guys here for podcasts and there are many other high quality ones, you know. Well, not many. Did they, not many, a several or a few? Honor, the East is a podcast, comes to mind as another one that I would encourage

audiences to seek out, not that I wish for it to interfere with your guerrilla history. Oh, Sina's been on the show and is a friend. So, I mean, we can also highly recommend the East is a podcast. We've been on that show. He's been on this show. Listen to, listen to both. listeners. Don't limit yourself to just guerrilla history. No, we've all got time because we commute too long and we are cleaning our homes or laying on the couch because we're too tired

to do any of those things. So there's lots of time for the relatively passive consumption of podcast listening. Well, I was going to say read Greg's work, which is really fantastic, on Syria, on Ukraine, on Palestine, a lot on Palestine lately. Yeah, I guess I would, I would again, the podcast ecosystem that you described, I think, is really productive. So I would add on top of that, just thinking about, like, again, not to be too kind of colloquial, but like, how would I convince, like, family members or students? I don't know anything about TikTok, but I feel like that's probably pretty, pretty, it seems to, and in the context of the Gaza conflict, been really productive.

Honestly, and I know there's been a debate about this documentary, and I haven't seen it, So I feel weird commenting on it, but like the film, no other land, which I knew a lot of people were critical of within BDS circles through what seemed like that would reasons. But like compelling narratives and films that kind of paint a counter hegemonic picture of some sort that are both kind of documenting an atrocity or, you know, presenting a perspective that isn't kind of from the American mainstream, but also compelling to watch. I think that's another really important way to kind of make do that bridgework, I guess. between people that I already be bought in and people who aren't. Yeah. So I think that might be actually a really kind of powerful tool.

And again, I'm blanking on other films that kind of fit that, that do that. And that one's just fresh in my mind because I haven't seen yet. I'm plain on seeing it because of the controversy. Yeah, but really powerful, powerful document. Advocacy type films. Well, I would hardly endorse that. And I think actually there is something important

about kind of fiction, narrative, series, TV, drama, that sort of thing. Partly because of what you mentioned earlier on, Stewart, about how seldom we get an unmediated Palestinian voice that isn't framed and constrained in major mainstream media. But what that contributes to is the radical dehumanization of Palestinians as not worthy victims, you know, they don't count. They don't matter. What was so powerful is how many social media users came to know and connect with people as human beings, as individuals,

with their stories, telling their stories. That's what really transformed that sense of empathy and politics, you know, to have a politics of solidarity came, you know, partly in having, and having those, those connections. And that can also take place in movies and and TV series and novels and so on where Palestinians and their experience or other people around the world, the global south, but that's just the example that I'm using, you know, to point out. And no other land is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, a documentary. But, you know, these these sort of stories that humanize Palestinians as real people so important because that's what, that's the kind of condition cognitively

that prepares people to accept genocide against them. Yeah, I mean, I completely agree as well that, I mean, I, you know, my actual academic background is literary studies. I write fiction as well as you know political and media analysis i teach a lot of literature and writing i so i i mean you know i can't under i can't agree more with ad then and stewart's comments there and i so i would add also just yeah you know novels to to that mixture as well and uh i mean we've seen how rafad alire's work has resonated across the world right to have people doing graffiti uh or graffiying you know lines from if I must die and and his book becoming a posthumous bestseller you know that's literary works fictional works in film that kind of narrative really can resonate with people emotionally right

as well as as as well as intellectually and and I don't know that I think that can fill a gap that news media leaves. And I think that often good art can be a form of counter-propaganda that quite consciously pushes back against hedgingonic narratives. And so I can't agree enough with those takes. And I would also add that we're talking about ways to get around or expose people who may be not yet convinced to get them access to alternative viewpoints that debunk imperial narratives. I mean, you know, people should read books.

And I don't expect people who aren't professional academics to read 700 page, like super dense theory every books. They can, and many do, and that's great if they do. But there's tons of relatively concise books that are a joy to read put out by, again, I'll do the biased thing and cite the publisher who I have my book out with, which is Or books. They've done, there's too many to mention, but there's been a lot on Palestine in the post-October 7th world that they've put out.

There was, I guess, Mohamed El-Kurd's book recently came out, which I have not read yet, which I guess was with Haymarket. And so, you know, don't overlook returning to the tried and true method of sitting down and reading books and seeing if you can go more than three pages without checking your phone. As a way to maybe wrap it up on my book, I know you have maybe dinner, do things. I guess I would say that this last part of the conversation actually makes me kind of hopeful because there are, as we talk, there are some clear ways that you can kind of. of not necessarily deprogram, but reprogram the narrative, right? And I'm just thinking when Greg was, especially when Auden was speaking, and then with Greg speaking about like Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is obviously, you know, a very old book, but it played a, had its own

problematic, his own issues, right? But it did play a pretty central advocacy role. So I think really looking at literature and film that, as Greg put it, made a kind of persuasive kind of counterpropagand did its stick argument, that's one way, you know, to potentially turn things around. And then the other is just, again, the work that you guys are doing, Adon and Henry and other podcasters, which I do think that is a really kind of podcasting remains, at least to me, a growing place for that people are still kind of coming to newly as a resource. So, yeah, I mean, this conversation, I feel kind of hopeful now. Well, I'm glad that we can feel hopeful.

So on that note, then, I think that's a great note to end on. I'm going to have each of you tell the listeners where they can find more of your work, rather, if they want to check that out. Greg, I'll start with you. If you want to direct the listeners to anything, where can they find your work? Sure. Well, my book that I mentioned is the wrong story, Palestine, Israel, and the media, published by OR books. You can get, that's OR books. You can get it on their website.

I write articles frequently for fare, electronic and defada, Canadian dimension, and quite a few other outlets as well. But those are some of the places I'm at most commonly. Stuart? I guess I mostly, to be honest, I mostly do union work these days. So I don't my public presence is pretty low. But my faculty website, again, not to support a corporation, but at my Google Scholar page has all my, you know, They've kind of done that. We've done me that favor.

Do you have the book that I co-edded with Manny Nests, who that Greg and others who you so kindly had on your show contributed to? That's out on, that came out, gosh, two years ago now. And paperback from Haymarket, yeah, that's really about it. I'm not big on the socials. Yeah. So listeners again, our guests were Greg Shupak and Stuart Davis. Adnan, it's time for you to tell the listeners where they can find you on Twitter

and your other show. Sure, you can follow me on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain, H-U-S-A-I-N. And do check out a new spinoff show that is also on YouTube, so you can watch or listen to just Adnan Hussein show. You can find it, YouTube at Adnan Hussein show. Hopefully you'll find a lot of compatible and corollary sorts of episodes about things that you're interested in. and some new topics too.

So check it out. Adnan, we have to get the Adnan Hussein show on Roo-Tube. If you're not familiar, Russia has an analog of YouTube. Oh, I'd love to be on... Called Roo-tube. And, you know, if guerrilla history ever branches off into video, because of how difficult YouTube makes things for us here,

you know, it would probably end up on Routube before it ended up on YouTube. But I am not in any rush to get us in. a video. I have a face for radio. In any case, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995, H-U-C-K-1-995, and it's much better to follow the show's account, which is much more active than I am these days. I try to stay off of social media as much as possible, but you can follow Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla underscore pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A-U-S-Cod on Instagram, The substack is gorilla history.

com and a reminder that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, Gorilla, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. So on that note, and until next time, listeners, solidarity. You know, I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.