How To Read The News In Totalitarianism — According To Hoyt

One of the first memories I have of news and people discussing news is of my parents trying to figure out whether the president was dead.

This is because in Portugal in the early sixties, the news of course couldn’t publish anything that the regime disapproved of. When they announced Salazar was dead, and who his successor was, mom’s answer was “he’s been dead for x months” (aka since he’d disappeared form in public/or they’d noticed a shift in governance) “they just finished the behind the scenes power struggle and can announce it now.” Also much was made of the way he was said to have died, which was to fall backwards in his chair and hit his head. Well, I’d also have my doubts, right?

I guess this set me up for the way I read news. Particularly because after the regime changed from national to international socialism, I was at several news worthy events which were completely misreported in the press.

Much like the participants in the rally in DC probably are rather puzzled at the idea that they “really” wanted to kill black people, particularly those marchers who were black, or that their goal in life was to kill Pelosi, or whatever the crazy ass thing the occupiers of our capital say.

At one point, for instance, I became an entire band of armed reactionary conterrevolutionaries, though the most lethal thing in my possession at the time was The Oxford Dictionary For Foreign Learners, which frankly wasn’t even that big. And no, I didn’t do anything even vaguely violent. I just showed I wasn’t afraid to walk away from a compelled demonstration of support, and when a petite teen in school uniform walks away with an expression of disgust and something like “this is boring” the grown *ss adults find they’re brave enough to do the same.

So I learned to read all newspapers with a jaundiced eye, and was completely puzzled Americans didn’t do that, and that my host parents often thought I was off my rocker when I said “what really happened was.” Well, what really happened was indeed what I suspected, though often you don’t figure it out till years and years later.

Now that our newspapers are mostly just making up bullshit, it is very important to know how to read the newspaper.

read the rest here: How To Read The News In Totalitarianism — According To Hoyt