Episode 212: Gaza and the Political Utility of Selective Empathy

"White House frustrated by Israel's onslaught but sees few options," reports the Washington Post. "White House cancels meeting, scolds Netanyahu in protest over video," announces Axios. "Biden Works Against the Clock as Violence Escalates in the Middle East," asserts The New York Times. Since Oct. 7, 2023, we've heard seemingly endlessly that the Biden White House disagrees with the violence in Gaza, but can't do anything to stop it. A number of hindrances frustrate the administration, we're told. There are limits to the United States’ influence and power. President Biden is furious and anguished at Israeli leadership. The administration is working around the clock toward a ceasefire, which — we are repeatedly told — will come any day now.  But, as everyone from the Brookings Institution to the Financial Times to Israeli officials and generals themselves make clear: Biden has been able to, and still can, end Israel's genocidal onslaught whenever he wants. The US has dispositive leverage over Israel, leverage Biden has repeatedly––and openly––ruled out using.  The stark reality is that Biden simply doesn't want to stop Israel and, while he may have complaints about the excesses and PR around the margins, he largely agrees with the outlines of Israel’s destruction of Gaza. To obscure this central fact, US media has now spent over a year pushing out three White House and Israeli-curated media genres of hand-wringing deflection: (1) Helpless Biden, (2) Fuming/Deeply Concerned Biden, and (3) Third Partying.  On this episode, as Biden is set to step down next month, we will go over the media's legacy of covering for the President for 15 months, examine these fictitious reporting genres designed to distance him from the carnage in Gaza, and look at how they worked tirelessly to minimize responsibility and absolve US officials from their involvement in a genocide being live-streamed for over a year. Our guest is journalist Dalia Hatuqa.

"The Bad Guys Are Winning," wrote Anne Applebaum for The Atlantic in 2021. "The War on History Is a War on Democracy," warned Timothy Snyder in The New York Times, also in 2021. "The GOP has found a Putin-lite to fawn over. That's bad news for democracy," argued Ruth Ben-Ghiat on MSNBC the following year, 2022. Within the last 10 years or so, and especially since the 2016 election of Trump, these authors — Anne Applebaum, Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, in addition to several others — have become liberal-friendly experts on authoritarianism. On a regular basis, they make appearances on cable news and in the pages of legacy newspapers and magazines–in some cases, as staff members–in order to warn of how individual, one-off “strongmen” like Trump, Putin, Orban, and Xi, made up a vague “authoritarian” axis hellbent on destroying Democracy for its own sake. But what good does this framing do and who does it absolve? Instead of meaningfully contending with US's sprawling imperial power and internal systems of oppression — namely being the largest carceral state in the world — these MSNBC historians reheat decades-old Axis of Evil or Cold War good vs evil rhetoric, pinning the horrors of centuries of political violence on individual "mad men." Meanwhile, they selectively invoke the "authoritarian" label, fretting about the need to save some abstract notion of democracy from geopolitical Bad Guys while remaining silent as the US funds, arms and backs the most authoritarian process imaginable — the immiseration and destruction of an entire people — specifically in Gaza. On this episode, we look at the advent and influence of MSNBC-approved historians, dissecting their selective anti-authoritarian posture and discussing how their work does little more than polish their careers and provide cover for US and US-allied militarism. Our guest is historian and author Greg Grandin.

"Salvadoran Ties Bloodshed To a 'Culture of Violence'", reported The New York Times in 1981. "The violence in Lebanon is casual, random, and probably addicting," stated the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in 1985. "Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims," wrote long-time New Republic publisher and editor-in-chief Marty Peretz in 2010. There’s a recurring theme within media coverage of subjugated people in the US and around the world: they’re mindlessly, inherently savage. Whether the subject is immigrants from Central and South America, Black populations in major American cities, or people in Lebanon or Palestine, we’re repeatedly told that any violence they may be subjected to or carry out themselves is inevitable, purposeless, and baked into their "culture." The pathologizing of violence in certain racialized communities is one side of the coin. The other side of the coin, which reinforces this notion, is the equally sinister concept of selective empathy. It’s a conditional sense of compassion, reserved for victims who media deem deserving—say, Ukrainian victims of Russia’s invasion—and not for those who media deem undeserving, like Palestinians under siege by Israel in Gaza. What motivates this asymmetry, and how does it shape public understandings of suffering throughout the world? How is empathy as a form of media currency central to getting the public to care about victims of certain violence, while a lack of empathy––and even worse, pathologizing violence in certain communities––conditions the public to not care about those whose deaths those in power would rather not talk about, much less humanize. In this episode, we look at the concept of selective empathy in media coverage, examining how it continues centuries-old campaigns of dehumanization – particularly against Arab, Black, and Latino people – bifurcates victims of global violence into the deserving and the undeserving, and influences contemporary opinion on everything from pain tolerance to criminal-legal policy. Our guest is Dr. Muhannad Ayyash.

In this pubic News Brief, we detail the usual scapegoats for party, pundit, and press failure to stem the tide of ascendant fascism.

The PC Police Outlaw Make-Believe." "Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web." "The Roots of Campus Hatred." "End DEI." These articles all have something in common: they were written by Bari Weiss. Weiss, the New York Times opinion editor and columnist turned horseshoe theorist media proprietor, has made a name for herself as a victim, and enemy, of that perennial right-wing bogeyman: so-called wokeness. For over a decade now, Weiss has taken to the pages of major news media to complain, vilified — and sometimes target — college kids and protesters who won’t let her and the fascistic company she keeps, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and the like, speak their minds as loudly and publicly as possible. There is, of course, a comical level of irony here. Amid her claims of being silenced and repressed by a hostile left, Weiss has been paid to voice her opinions in legacy paper after legacy paper and been given millions by venture capital firms to start her own media company, The Free Press, and her so-called "university," the University of Austin. And despite her insistence that mainstream institutions are too intolerant of heterodox views like hers, she's warmly embraced on CNN broadcasts, in the pages of her former employer, The New York Times, and has been given glowing profiles in Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Magazine, Ha'aretz, The Information, and the Financial Times. On this episode, we discuss the rise of Bari Weiss Silicon Valley-funded media empire, the trope of the Iconoclast rebel, truth-telling media lightening rod with banal conservative political positions, and the broader, seemingly uniquely American psychological need, and branding convention, for people with 95% boilerplate rightwing positions to see themselves as persecuted outsiders who don’t fit into any labels. Our guest is Discourse Blog's Katherine Krueger.

"An inflation conspiracy theory is infecting the Democratic Party," The Washington Post frets. "'Greedflation' is a nonsense idea," The Economist insists. "Harris' plan to stop price gouging could create more problems than it solves," CNN warns. Over the last few years, as the prices of groceries, cars, and other necessities have risen, often dramatically, leading news outlets and influential pundits have claimed that these rising prices are simply a matter of supply and demand. Corporations aren't taking advantage of inflation, we’re told; they're simply responding to it. If materials are in short supply, or if there’s a surge in demand, retailers have no choice but to raise prices to control production flows and costs. Likewise, if prices of goods are significantly higher, then the people who want those goods enough to pay higher prices can still have them. But these pat arguments don't hold up to scrutiny. Since the most recent round of inflation began, multiple studies have shown that corporations are indeed taking advantage of inflation, using tactics like price gouging to boost profits while creating barriers to quality food, medication, and other essentials. So what explains this discrepancy? On this episode, we examine the tendency of media to defend corporate price-gouging and other inflationary maneuvers, how high status pundits and Serious Economists critique the White House from the right on this issue and condescend to anyone who might be even slightly suspicious that corporations are animated by something other than just the Invisible Hand, painting them as wacko conspiracy theorist who simply need to take the vaulted "Econ 101." Our guest is the Revolving Door Project's Dylan Gyauch-Lewis.

In this News Brief, we discuss the Democratic nominee's overt embrace of conservative policy and politicians and the widespread, unchecked assumption that tracking right has zero electoral trade-offs.

"Calls for Transforming Police Run Into Realities of Governing in Minnesota," cautioned The New York Times in 2020. "Democrats Face Pressure on Crime From a New Front: Their Base," claimed the paper of record again, in 2022. "How Biden’s recent actions on immigration could address a major issue voters have with him," announced PBS NewsHour, republishing the Associated Press, in 2024. There’s a common ethos in Democratic politics: Do what’s popular. In recent years, a certain class of political pundits and consultants have been championing so-called “popularism,” the principle that political candidates should emphasize the issues that poll well, in everything from healthcare to labor, policing to foreign policy––and deemphasize, or sometimes outright ignore, the ones that don’t. It seems reasonable and democratic for elected officials to pay close attention to the will of the public–and, in many cases, it is. But it’s not always this simple. Far too often, the leading proponents of popularism, chief among them Matt Yglesias and David Shor, only apply the concept when it suits a conservative agenda, ignoring, for example, that 74% of American voters suppor​t “increasing funding for child care,” 72% of Americans want to expand Social Security 71% of Americans support government funded universal pre-K. 69% of Americans support Medicare for All and so on and so on. More often than not, leftwing agenda items that poll very well are never mentioned meanwhile that which polls well AND aligns with the interests of Wall Street and other monied interests, we are told is of utmost urgent priority. It’s a phenomenon we’re calling on this show Selective Popularism, the selective use of polling and generic notions of popularity to push already existing rightwing and centrist agendas without needing to do the messy work of ideologically defending them. On this episode, we look at the development and implementation of Selective Popularism, exploring how this convenient political pseudo-analysis launders the advocacy and enactment of reactionary policy as a mere reflection of what the "people" demand. Our guest is journalist, writer and host of Jacobin's The Dig podcast, Daniel Denvir.

“Citizens to Aid Police in New Program,” reported the Los Angeles Times in 1975. “Community Policing: Law Enforcement Returns to Its Roots,” declared the Chicago Tribune in 1994. “Obama Calls for Changes in Policing After Task Force Report,” announced The New York Times in 2015. Periodically, US officials propose some type of police “reform,” usually after a period of widespread protest against ongoing racist police violence. Police, we’re told, will improve their own performance and relationships with the public with a few tweaks: better training on use-of-force and equipment, upgraded technology like body cameras and shooting simulators, and deeper integration into the “community.” But, every time a new “reform” is introduced, it almost always serves as justification for bigger police-department budgets and fawning media coverage over police, painting the image of a scrappy force for public safety that just doesn’t have the right training and resources. Meanwhile, levels of police harassment and police violence remain the same, and, in many cases, even increase. Indeed, 2023 was the worst year for fatal police shootings in decades despite – or perhaps because of – all the post-Ferguson “reforms." On this episode, the Season 8 Premiere of Citations Needed, we’ll discuss the media-enabled phenomenon of how pro-police narratives, programs and budget bloating busy work are spun as “reform,” how they are used to stem public anger and placate squishy politicians and nonprofits, and look at the decades-old practice of turning public opposition to, and victimization from, US policing into an opportunity to expand and enrich the security state. Our guest is civil rights attorney Alec Karakatsanis. ** Alec Karakatsanis (@equalityAlec) is a civil rights attorney and the founder of Civil Rights Corps. He is the author of Alec’s Copaganda Newsletter, the book Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System (The New Press, 2019), the Yale Journal of Law & Liberation study “The Body Camera: The Language of our Dreams,” and the forthcoming book, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News, which will be published early next year by The New Press.

In this public News Brief, we examine rightwing media's shameful incitement campaign against Haitian migrants and J.D. Vance's smarmy, grating rhetorical tactic of blaming nameless "constituents" for his stoking of a hate mob.