Socialism and its sister ideology, communism, are alive and well in America today. Younger generations are hanging Karl Marx posters on their basement walls, cultural Marxism is sweeping academia, and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is an arm-flail away from winning the 2020 nomination. Millions of Americans are partying like it is 1917, and you can thank one major cable news network for championing the cause like a useful idiot and showering the vile ideology’s foot-soldiers with praise for so many years. MSNBC is Dr. Viktor Frankenstein and socialism is its Monster. The cable network shouted, “It’s alive!” when the concept became the it-girl of the Democratic Party.
Now that there is a good chance a diehard socialist will take on President Donald Trump in November, MSNBC and its anchors and analysts are beholding the accomplishments of their Marxian toils. With an anxiety that has metastasized into agony, MSNBC will now use the instruments of the three Rs — racism, Russia, and recession — to batter the Sanders crusade. But will it abandon socialism in the process, too?
Down the Red Soviet Road
Longtime network personality Chris Matthews has been ranting and raving of late about the prospects of a Sanders victory in the primaries. Perhaps he has delved too much into hyperbole, warning of “executions in Central Park” and comparing the senator’s Nevada victory to a Nazi invasion. But his sudden consternation over far-left policies is both justified and laughable.
While he has rightly declared that “socialism doesn’t frickin’ work,” Matthews and his colleagues have been on a propaganda blitzkrieg espousing the virtues of classic and neoteric socialist policies for many years. From universal health care to taxing everything under the sun and the Green New Deal, the talking heads have highlighted the benefits of all the schemes in Sanders’ platform — and none of the drawbacks.
In February 2016, Lawrence O’Donnell, a self-proclaimed socialist, tried to present the case that Sanders’ views were “not radical” by inviting a socialist professor, Frances Fox Piven, to his show. According to the Media Research Center, Piven has yet to appear on the channel during the 2020 election cycle, likely due to MSNBC’s sudden pivot.
In August 2018, Stephanie Ruhle mocked people who feared a centrally planned economy:
“But you’re getting into details and you’re talking about a nuanced, powerful argument. But lots of people … just go, ‘Oh my gosh, socialist, I can’t have that. It’s gonna take all my money.’ … Even if those are winning policies, it’s such a difficult term.”
In April 2019, Chris Hayes essentially held an hour-long infomercial for the Green New Deal and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) re-election campaign. The Democrats’ $93 trillion landmark proposal offers a federal jobs guarantee, universal basic income, and a complete overhaul of the nation’s energy system.
Suffice it to say, MSNBC has been sympathetic to socialism while simultaneously lambasting the system that has made the top faces of the channel millions of dollars.
Pass the Borscht?
(Photo Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Before AOC’s headline-making victory, MSNBC ran a segment in August 2018 titled “Why Is the Right So Scared of a Democratic Socialist?” Oh, the irony nearly two years later. The Fox News Channel should produce a similar segment titled “Why Are Socialists So Scared of a Socialist?”
Media comrades have been up in arms about a potential Sanders victory. As Liberty Nation’s Leesa Donner reported, publications and personalities keep targeting Sanders, including Chuck Todd, who referred to the Bernie Bros as the “digital brownshirt brigade.” The reasons for their disapproval of voters picking the Vermont senator vary, but the primary concern is that he will be unable to defeat President Trump on Election Day. However, polls do show Sanders edging out Trump.
Will the socialist apologists and sympathizers tergiversate in the coming months? Will the mainstream media begin hosting hour-long programs that dissect leading socialist figures, including Mao Tse-Tung, Che Guevara, Daniel Ortega, and Fidel Castro, and the atrocities they committed? Will the punditry class home in on the destructive nature of various socialist hallmarks, such as price controls, production quotas, and the state takeover of industry?
The legacy press will concoct a strategy that takes out Sanders without abandoning the socialist cause. This will be a fun show for Trumplicans to view. So, pass the borscht, golubtsy, and vareniki.
A Tangled Web
MSNBC, like many of its media comrades, has been a modern-day Prometheus. The company injected life into a deceased philosophy that was better off buried among the ruins of Europe. Fearful that full-blown socialism might be instituted, TV personalities now are shrieking, “The form of the monster on whom I had bestowed existence was forever before my eyes…” The left needs to decide if defeating Trump is paramount to maintaining the survival of the American people — or vice versa. MSNBC is left choosing, with a satisfied conscience, to destroy its creature a la Frankenstein and the Monster.
O, what a tangled web we weave.
~
Read more from Andrew Moran.
