The ultraliberal New Republic has launched a desperate donation drive using scare tactics–by comparing Donald Trump to George Orwell’s world of 1984.
Hamilton Fish, publisher of the New Republic, has sent out an email to prospective donors proposing the New Republic as an icon of independent journalism, “the last line of defense against Trump.”
With true apocalyptic flourish, the New Republic proclaims itself to be a voice crying in the wilderness.
“For more than 100 years, one voice has cried out against the abuses of bullies, oligarchs, and charlatans like Trump: the New Republic. The home of thoughtful, independent, progressive journalism,” the email reads.
Counting on their readers’ animosity toward the President-elect, the directors of the journal suggest turning their pent-up hostility and anger into a donation to a magazine that apparently cannot drum up enough subscribers to pay its bills.
“Now you can do something to help us fight Trump,” the email announces. “You can make an end of the year donation to the Fund for the New Republic to support our rigorous, uncompromising work at the New Republic magazine and newrepubic.com [sic].”
But Mr. Fish doesn’t leave his sales pitch there. He first lays out what a difficult struggle it will be to defeat Donald Trump.
“The truth is, we’re fighting an uphill battle,” he writes. “Trump has big oil, the big banks, and even his buddy Putin in his corner. But we have – the truth. And even in these degraded times, that’s a mighty force to be reckoned with.”
Unfortunately for the New Republic, their claim to be impartial truth-bearers does not seem to hold up to any objective standard, since the journal virtually invented “fake news.”
Along with the strong leftist bias that colors every article, the magazine was home to discredited journalist Stephen Glass, who notoriously fabricated a series of stories for the journal. The story of Stephen Glass was later told in the film Shattered Glass.
The New Republic also doggedly defended a series of “diaries” it published by Scott Thomas Beauchamp alleging misconduct by soldiers in post-invasion Iraq, until it became obvious that the stories were riddled with falsehoods.
Historically, the New Republic experienced tremendous growth under its most infamous director, Michael Straight, the former KGB operative responsible for informing MI5 that Anthony Blunt, his former lover, was a Soviet mole.
But yes, by all means, read the New Republic if you are interested in “truth.”
In 2014, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes sold the magazine to Win McCormack after “the greatest staff exodus in the magazine’s 100-year history.” Since the magazine lost nearly 50 percent of its circulation in the ten-year period from 2000 to 2010, it has given up reporting its falling circulation numbers to media auditor BPA Worldwide.
Now the flagging flagship of liberal journalism promises to turn “our full attention to Trump and his cronies.”
“Yet we won’t prevail if we depend on just the support we receive from subscriptions and our modest advertising revenues,” Mr. Fish confesses in what can only be called a gross understatement.
“We’re asking for your support—at whatever level you can afford—to prevent Trump and his gang from steamrolling our democracy,” he says.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome
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