Thursday on “Democracy Now,” Harvard professor Cornel West called Donald Trump’s presidency a “fascist Frankenstein,” and argued it was a “product” of superficial media designed as entertainment.
West said, “One of the reasons why what you all do is so crucial is because you refuse to simply be part of the dominant tendencies of the corporate media, that is obsessed with not just revenues and profits, but with a kind of glitz and blitz and titillation stimulation, as opposed to deep engagement with substantive dialogue. Now, as you all know, I’ve been very blessed to be on Brother Anderson Cooper and various Fox News folk, as well, just in order to always be contrary and counter in a way, but it’s very difficult to do that in corporate media.”
He continued, “And let us be very clear: The fascist Frankenstein Trump is very much a product of corporate media because they followed every minute, every tweet, every speech. If they had done the same thing to my dear Brother Bernie when we were traveling together—we had 15,000, 20,000, 10,000 people. They’d have a little two-minute slice. Trump got every second. Why? Because it was entertainment. They made big money. One of the CEOs of a leading corporate media entity said, “We know it’s bad for the country. It’s good for us.”
He added, “And so, what did we end up with? Narcissistic tweets on the one hand, and counter-narcissistic responses. “The president is racist.” Of course, he’s racist. But it’s more than just racism. There’s no such thing as racism in the modern world without predatory capitalism. The racism is integral but hiding and concealing the social misery linked to oligarchic power. They never get to oligarchic power. They never get to plutocratic power. It’s just “He’s racist. He’s racist.” And you end up with this loop, this corporate media loop, over and over and over and over again. And the liberals think they’re doing something militant. It’s just liberal self-righteousness. We know he’s xenophobic. We know he’s racist, homophobic and so forth. Let’s keep track of the rule of big money, big military, tax cuts, ways in which he’s undermining the working classes and not saying anything about the poor, thinking the market can take care of the poor with these “wonderful” statistics and so forth.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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