Showing posts with label astroturfing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label astroturfing. Show all posts

Saturday, April 23, 2022

The Dark Consequences of Fake Dissent

(archived from May 17, 2010)

 by Scott Creighton 

I was pleased to read about massive groups of people descending on the homes of bankers in D.C. to make their demands…  then, unfortunately, I read a little more about it. 

You see, that’s my problem. I should just look at the staged pictures, read the carefully worded headlines, and then consider myself “informed” as I move on to something else like Tiger Woods or something like that.  But, alas… I read the articles. 

And then, depression sets in. 

There is no real dissent movement in America anymore; it has been co-opted by well-financed, flashy, astro-turfed neoliberal policy support machines.  Sunday’s “grassroots” demonstration just proves that point. 

The Huffington Post (never one to let a reasonably “populist-looking” event go unnoticed that could support the Clinton/Obama agenda) reported on Sunday’s exercise in fake dissent this way: 

the HEADLINE: Class Warfare: Hundreds Protest Outside Bankers’ Houses In DC  

the IMAGE: 

 

  

the 'FACTS': “Huge raucous crowds converged outside bank employees’ houses on Sunday afternoon to demand banks stop lobbying against Wall Street reform.”