Marcy Wheeler on the challenge that Breitbart poses to the American political system only because he intends on being competitive with Rupert Murdoch.
Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel: How the “Fake News” Panic Fed Breitbart
That’s the conclusion drawn by a report released by Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center last week. The report showed that the key dynamic behind Trump’s win came from the asymmetric polarization of our media sphere, embodied most dramatically in the way that Breitbart not only created a bubble for conservatives, but affected the overall agenda of the press, particularly with immigration (a conclusion that is all the more important given Steve Bannon’s return to Breitbart just as white supremacist protests gather in intensity). …
Fake news is a problem — as is the increasing collapse in confidence in US ideology generally. But it’s not a bigger problem than Breitbart. And as Bannon returns to his natural lair, the left needs to turn its attention to the far harder, but far more important, challenge of Breitbart.
The left has not created the asymmetric news bubble; it exists to demonize and delegitimize the left. There is no left-wing counterpart to the mass media-driven right-wing bubble. And those outlets that were thought to begin to provide that counterweight have turned to policing the opinions of their commenters so that the there will not be a reaction to the left. The right seems not to have that sort of policing function to its right, only to its left.
That dynamic is the challenge that zombie conservatism and the Breitbart attempt at revival poses.
No one is telling the truth that the conservative movement has failed to make lives better for its working class acolytes and middle class proselytizers.
Conservatives can no longer win the argument on freedom after bowing down to Trump’s authoritarianism.
That goes double for libertarians.
Will we have an opposition party or will they self-censor?