The biases that were indulged by many covering the brutal Israel-Hamas war discourage reporting on the atrocities committed in Iran.
Many who oppose US President Donald Trump routinely presume their moral superiority. Events in Iran haven’t repaired Trump’s tawdry reputation; rather, the reactions of his most influential critics have unveiled the dangers of their presumed high-mindedness.
In short, Trump appeals to Joe Rogan fans and their traditional values. Conversely, progressives’ views are shaped by intellectuals using institutions and identity politics to widely indoctrinate their biases while quieting those who challenge them.
The Joe Rogan Experience is the world’s most popular podcast; the perspective he personifies is not a short-term aberration.
Rogan realists versus progressive liberalism
Rogan’s supporters favour people speaking freely and being free to take responsibility for their lives. This includes voting for people who will support their values while protecting their interests. Their views align with the realist school of international relations which recognises nation states as the most legitimate actors on the global stage.
Left-leaning groups favour the liberal school of international relations. They trust supranational organisations to balance the interests of disparate nations and regions. This faith stems from and reinforces leftists’ beliefs in their intellectual and moral superiority.
Those far to the left disparage “Rogan bros” and label them populists. Most Rogan fans are populists. They see their interests as being mainstream and they don’t like categories such as white men, or working class to be politically or socially degraded. More to the point, they and Trump strongly oppose intellectuals milking grievance politics.
Captured supranationals
Leftist intellectuals label the current US president an authoritarian nationalist. Certainly, his Make America Great Again themes prioritise nationalist politics. However, much of what his opponents term authoritarianism is Trump’s pushback against reliance on progressive-captured supranationals, particularly the UN, the EU, and the WTO.
Various progressive voices would also have us believe that Trump is responsible for the decline of the rules-based liberal international order. An objective review would note that China’s increasingly aggressive undermining of the WTO’s core rules adversely impacts other nations. De-industrialisation is sweeping across much of the West and South Africa.
Supranational organisations flourished amid relatively calm relations among major powers during the post-Cold War period. Then presidents Xi and Putin declared their “no-limits” partnership followed promptly by Russia invading Ukraine in 2022. The bureaucrats, intellectuals, and political appointees who populate the UN, EU, and the WTO are easily outmanoeuvred by China’s and Russia’s ruthless leaders. Leftists’ version of deterrence, reliance on international law, does not deter tyrants.
Trump did not end the rules-based order. This is how the left-of-centre media misrepresent his actively opposing national governments outsourcing core responsibilities to global bodies. Whether decision-making has been usurped or outsourced, Rogan-realists believe key powers must reside with elected national leaders.
Long march through the institutions
A half-century-long march led to the left capturing the “epistemic institutions,” the universities and media houses that dominate the production, validation, and diffusion of knowledge. Hollywood executives, creatives, and those paid to read scripts joined forces with their progressive brethren to overwhelm objective journalism with infotainment.
Rogan’s ideology-light, long-format podcasts would no doubt be far less popular if objective journalism was thriving and entertainment was less subservient to progressive agendas. Today’s politics need candidates who rely less on manufactured soundbites and can withstand hours-long lightly-edited interviews.
The reluctance of high-budget news outlets to condemn the Iranian government’s slaughter of protesters has validated a cynicism Trump share with many. Contrasting coverage of the fully-avoidable brutality in Iran to that of the tens of thousands of civilians and combatants killed in Gaza after Hamas’ barbaric 7 October 2023 attack reveals more than antisemitism. It exposes a raw willingness to deceive by the media houses most capable of shaping public discourse.
Coverage of the high-volume killing and mutilating by Tehran’s security forces has been irresponsibly muted. In the US and beyond, news curators have instead helped to enthuse a redux of the Black Lives Matter outrage following immigration police unnecessarily killing two protesters. This reflects ideological activism eroding journalistic commitments to inform.
A key issue must now be separated from whether the US president is right or wrong about: Iran, his geopolitical strategy, and whether conforming with the realist school of international relations is justified. We should be confronting the abundant evidence strongly suggesting that progressive intellectuals have captured key institutions and that this has benefited, and probably encouraged, the predatory behaviour of China, Russia and Iran.
Obvious comparison
Media houses should be educating their audiences about the immense risks to civilians if the US were to pursue regime change in Tehran through military means. Close-combat urban warfare typically results in civilian deaths exceeding those of the defending combatants. This ratio frequently exceeds 3:1.
The obvious comparison is the recent conflict in Gaza. Iran’s revolutionary guard will no doubt follow Hamas’ example and strategically employ human shields. We should now be debating if the horrific collateral damage which would result from military attacks to weaken the regime can be justified. A well-informed international uproar over the savage repression of innocent Iranians should be central to such debates – that we aren’t having. Muffled coverage of the brutality has greatly stifled the international outcry.
This lack of a meaningful public debate prior to military action traces to news outlets prioritising judging at the expense of informing. If the public is poorly informed, the criticisms which will swiftly follow up-coming decisions will be more readily accepted. This reflects indoctrination contributing to and benefiting from rampant political polarisation. Many media outlets are culpable.
This largely reflects media heavyweights’ ongoing ability to frame narratives. Trump’s counter has been to “flood the zone” with news he provokes. This makes it harder for opposition media voices to promote their favoured but less scandalous, or simply less controversial, news. But Trump’s flooding the zone by constantly making headlines is ineffective against progressive outlets muting an important issue, like mass butchering of protesters. Nor does it suit Trump to prioritise the safety of Iranian protesters. He lacks options with acceptable risks for helping them.
Informing sacrificed to favour judging
As soon as Trump commits to a course of action with Tehran, such media voices will formulate narratives which lead to judging Trump guilty of something that validates their audience’s biases.
Such media outlets are currently impeded from constructively informing their audiences as they promoted the narrative that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. This discourages them from addressing the inevitably high civilian-to-combatant fatalities following Iran’s strategic employment of human shields.
Various criticisms of Trump are credible and that distracts from how poorly the hard left has managed many key institutions. Aside from his rambunctious negotiating tactics, Trump’s approach to geopolitics mostly mixes realism with commercial interests and an opportunistic operating style. This mix can make relations with predators more manageable. But Ayatollah Khamenei is 86 and last year was an extraordinary disaster for Iran. Trump might find a way to sideline the ayatollah or Trump might chicken out.
Where are the voices from the left saying Trump should do this or that? Their unbalanced coverage of the Israel-Hamas war now impedes their providing a balanced account of the situation and the difficult trade-offs in dealing with Tehran threatening the region and killing its citizens. Thus, they can’t take a position and defend it
This is a particularly low moment for the credibility of the progressives who run today’s supranational and epistemic institutions.
[Image: https://www.heute.at/i/joe-rogan-wollen-wir-wirklich-zur-gestapo-werden-120155642/doc-1jf0fqdv64]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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