While there are many political podcasts and online “independent media” shows commenting on current events, there is a dearth of podcasts on what should be, what ought to be. Many commentators speak with confidence and a sense of authority but are merely responding to the actions and statements of others. These are only surface level observations. To be transformative, media platforms should share a vision for a future beyond the current system. Successful organizing requires not only awareness of current events but for members to know what they’re fighting for. If that vision is only commenting on reporting from others and speculating about the current system, then there will be no organizing for a different future, only a defense of the status quo.
The US left, including many Greens, have put far too much energy into following podcasts and commentators, with little to show for it. “Independent media” on YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and other social media spaces have found a niche that makes us feel smarter for listening. These shows ultimately exist within a capitalist context, and so regardless of the hosts’ sincerity, a major goal of the show is to keep you listening, to keep making money. Social media incentivizes shows to appeal to users with a sense of urgency, fear, dread, and anxiety, leading to a fear of missing out if you stop listening. It also provides an ideological echo chamber that can feel “safe” from any questions, critique, or dissent. You’re now hooked, feeling like you’re doing something, while the reality is nothing has been organized and we’re simply stressing and traumatizing each other instead of building a new world. The constant stream of information leads to feeling overwhelmed and eventual burnout. You are unable to keep up with anything – except maybe try to “stay informed” by continuing to listen. Even with good intentions, this style of media replicates the corporate Republican and Democratic media; it is designed to keep viewers and listeners emotionally involved in the status quo system – where fear and anger drive attention.
How “Independent” Podcasts Spread Propaganda
Manufacturing Consent [1], by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, is a classic analysis of how “Big Media” functions in the United States. The authors explain that despite government not directly owning, controlling, or censoring media, US media closely follows corporate and government talking points. Structural incentives and disincentives indirectly keep media in-line with narratives. Exceptions occur, with some rare media dissenting to the common narrative, but the structural consequences of speaking out tend to discredit and filter out alternative views before they can linger in public consciousness. In fact, occasional, rapidly-suppressed dissent is a net positive for the system since claims of unfair media access and coverage can be dismissed while quietly pressing a thumb on the scale. It might be helpful to review the main points of Manufacturing Consent, and see how many of those points still apply to today’s “independent media”, despite how different it appears on the surface from traditional media.
Manufacturing Consent develops a “propaganda model” to explain media behavior and make predictions of how the media might act. The model identifies five “filters,” structural factors and informal rules that tend to pressure media toward “approved” government narratives without explicitly mandating it. The five filters include: 1) the private for-profit-orientation of media; 2) reliance on advertising for income; 3) reliance on information from business, government, or “expert” sources funded by business interests; 4) “flak” to discipline media; and 5) “anti-communism” as a national religion and control mechanism.
Today, social media is throttled by computer algorithms. These algorithms prioritize views, watch time, follows, shares, and other social media indicators. Consequently, aspiring new media must rapidly learn how those algorithms work to pull more views and get a leg up on competition. However, social media platforms are for-profit and driven by advertising. Topics covered by media are then chosen and prioritized by what will be least objectionable to advertisers and work well with the algorithm. Over time, “the market” of advertisers drives out dissenting media by making it unprofitable to continue; media that survives has to adapt to new audiences and narratives driven by that ad revenue. In the online era, this means “clickbait” tends to be favored by algorithms and therefore receive the most ad revenue. To maintain success, media is “filtered” to either promote neoliberalism and progressive “entryism” into the Democratic Party where dissent can be controlled, or succumb to baiting, misleading headlines and conspiracy that engages fear and anger — and therefore attention — to drive up the views.
Doing real reporting and journalism takes a lot of work, and therefore funding, to pay full time journalists to investigate stories and research details. This might involve visiting sites, interviewing people, and even filing court requests to get government documents publicly released. Usually, this is cost prohibitive for small, independent outlets. As a result, they often rely on others to investigate, and instead prefer to simply comment on public events. Unfortunately, large organizations that have survived the advertising funding filter become avoidant of journalism that threatens their funding streams. We therefore see independent media simply relaying and commenting on information from others, typically the large organizations with corporate or government funding. Since “commentary” doesn’t do investigative journalism or deep analysis, it tends to become a reinforcing mechanism for very liberal, more “acceptable” political analysis — or knee-jerk “hot takes” that drive the algorithm and ad revenue. This commentary can provide, at best, surface level critiques, but at their worst they may be based on inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading information. Either a channel embraces liberal, status quo politics to remain mainstream, or risks being attacked as a “sell-out” by more conspiratorial channels for the clickbait. Both greatly narrow the range of political discourse. Channels become heavily focused on following the Democratic Party, highlighting upcoming “celebrity” politicians in the party, sometimes giving weak criticism of incumbents while eventually turning out the vote for them and dismissing independent political organizing that would upset the status quo. Or, channels build their following and revenue by focusing on “calling out” liberal channels in regular livestreams of hollow criticism and controversy. These vapid channels shy away from asking questions like, “What comes next and how do I help make that happen?” In other words, as Herman and Chomsky called it, independent media turns on each other with “flak” if the conversation ever drifts too far away from centering on the two-party system. Instead, shallow feuding becomes news and commentary; politics turns into celebrity gossip and team sports. Genuine political discourse disappears. In short, we see the public conversation narrow into two bubbles, one that follows the “mainstream” closely, and one that becomes almost contrarian, obsessed with disagreeing with anything “mainstream” to demonstrate supposed independent thinking. Neither bubble ever discusses new ways we might organize movements and society to truly break free of the cycle of capitalism.
The combined pressure from several “filters” pushes much independent media into “commentary” with mistrust and vitriol driving conspiracy narratives, instead of nuanced analysis and action. We see the impact of for-profit models, and of advertising and social media algorithms that reward the most views and interaction, not necessarily the best information or analysis. We see the impact of relying on official sources for reporting or “commentary” due to the expense of in-depth investigative reporting; and we see the impacts of self-inflicted “flak” pushes out dissent and reinforces echo chambers around status-quo politics and conspiracy thinking. This covers four of the five filters identified by Herman and Chomsky, showing independent media is just as susceptible as traditional media.
The last filter identified in Manufacturing Consent is perhaps the most complex because it relies on long-established cultural considerations going back to the Cold War and the Red Scares of the early 1900s. Media, and really most institutions, tend to assume that any questioning of the basic tenets of capitalism are heresy against the “Gospel of Wealth,” as Andrew Carnegie called it. Poverty is considered an irrevocable part of life, at best a “necessary evil” to maintain the “freedom” of private ownership of profits and investment. Questioning private control and suggesting there are alternatives earns dumbfounded stares at best, if not outright threats and accusations of being either uninformed or an outright traitor to the country. This has made socialism a “bad word”, even among decades-long activists. Thankfully, the negative association seems to be dissipating since the 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and the rebirth of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
While socialism is clearly suppressed by the capitalist system, another factor has become an almost unquestionable religious dogma in contemporary politics — the idea that independent politics “can’t win.” Some of this likely traces to the fact that one of the largest third parties in US history was the Socialist Party, which at its height in the early 1900s had thousands of elected officials in local, state, and even national office and provided a growing challenge and threat to the capitalist two-party system. The Red Scare was used to attack and dismantle the Socialist Party, including jailing that party’s presidential candidate, Eugene Debs, during the 1920 presidential election. While the Socialist Party did survive, it was nowhere near as large as before the Red Scare. It ultimately disappeared as many of its remaining members and supporting labor movements were absorbed into the Democratic Party, first via the New Deal coalition in the 1930s, and then later in the 1960s by encouragement from activists like Michael Harrington and organizations like what would become the DSA. Since then, the two-party system has used “spoiler” threats, coupled with attacks on ballot access, to suppress the idea that independent politics could rise again. This has effectively become a taboo subject in liberal and even many progressive and leftist circles. The end result is that even a mention of independent politics — and especially the Green Party — is a way to quickly receive “flak” from established independent media channels and threaten your own ad revenue. Therefore, channels have largely shied away from discussing the Green Party, at least in any positive light that might offend the status quo. Without more channels talking about independent politics and the Green Party, existing channels end up self-reinforcing their own circular-logic talking points (“The Greens can’t win because nobody supports the Greens, and no one supports the Greens because the Greens can’t win”), rather than engaging in serious analysis and debate about what can and should happen to build a movement that will end the cycle and change the system.
All of these filters mean most of the independent media that exists today isn’t designed to help change the world for the better — even if it might have been the original intention. Most media won’t provide a deep analysis of capitalism, a critical history of the Democratic Party, or advance independent politics, community self-determination, or the Green Party. To satisfy advertisers and subscribers, channels will try to convince you in every episode that listening, supporting status quo electoralism, and maintaining personal anger at politicians while still getting out the vote for them is “doing something”. But it isn’t doing anything except making you anxious and overwhelmed. It spreads nihilism, implying that real systemic change isn’t really possible because the system is too strong for an independent people’s movement to ever win. You just have to settle for the “best” liberal the system will allow us to vote for. Keep listening to find out who that is! What a pessimistic worldview! No wonder we’re anxious and overwhelmed.
So if independent media isn’t enriching our knowledge and helping organize for an ecosocialist future, why do we put so much into it?
A Green Vision For Political Media
Author Dr. Devon Price writes in their book Laziness Does Not Exist [2] about the origins of the concept of “laziness” in US culture. A combination of the Protestant work ethic with industrial capitalism in the early 1900s resulted in a culture that abhors “laziness.” Labor is necessary, in this view, to earn a living as well as stay too busy to fall into vice and sin. One form this takes in modern society is a drive to “stay informed” and learn about as many topics as possible, lest one feel “lazy” and uneducated. Constant information flow, especially around political topics that are often negative and alarming, can have effects on health such as anxiety, depression, and even poor memory. Access to more information, ironically, can be overwhelming to the point of inaction and even a nihilistic acceptance of the present as “just the way it is.” Murray Bookchin, an early proponent of the Green movement and creator of social ecology philosophy, warned against becoming stuck in our thinking: “The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.” [3]
Greens and the US left need fulfilling ways to stay informed, confront propaganda, and avoid burnout and inaction. Political education is important, which is why we need our media to challenge ideas and expand our political imagination, not merely reinforce bias and status quo. Political media should inform us to empower and uplift our movements. Creativity often comes in those moments where we let ourselves rest and wander, which don’t happen when we are always busy and only consuming content. The media propaganda filters have stolen from us a leftist utopian vision of a future worth fighting for.
What does it mean to be utopian? Today the term is often associated with being unrealistic or idealistically naive, but historically the term didn’t imply expectation of a perfect society. As Dan Chodorkoff writes in The Utopian Impulse [4], utopia should be thought of as a dialectical approach to social reconstruction toward a “good place” (“eu-topia”) of participatory democratic structures. Utopia isn’t an end goal but rather a commitment to grapple with challenges and contradictions, learn from our experience, and refine our reconstruction plans for a green society along the way, while we actively build it. Crucially, utopia is a commitment to hope and empowering each other, resisting despair and the slide into apathy and nihilism.
Think of how many hours a day, or a week, you might spend listening to a political podcast or show. Then multiply that by millions across the country who share our leftist Green values. Suddenly, that’s a lot of time being passively wasted, fretting over liberal-centric or conspiracy-minded gossip rather than doing the organizing that brings safety and a better world. Even converting a fraction of that time into organizing an alternative would be a boost from what exists today.
Referring back to Laziness Does Not Exist, Price emphasizes you do not have to be an expert in everything. Trying to do so and follow all news equally is unreasonable. Price instead advises a different approach: focus on a few topics most important to you, to consume less information, but consume more thoughtfully. Avoid “comment section culture” by not merely arguing anonymously in comment forums meant to steal your attention and time. Discuss and debate in a more engaged and also more compassionate way to build community, especially in “real-time”, whether that is chat, voice, video calls, or in-person. Real-time communications help us quickly resolve misunderstandings and remind us that the person on the other end is a person with their own thoughts, emotions and experiences. Essays and deeper analysis are a far better way to discuss and argue a point to a wider audience without personal attacks.
As Greens, we need to lead the way, and that means rather than passively following and sharing commentary, we become the story no channel can afford to ignore. Adapting Price’s advice, we need more media focused on independent Green organizing, and forums to communicate, discuss, and debate with other Greens to build community. The more we do this, the more we get attention and start pulling the public discourse toward Green views. This doesn’t happen overnight, of course, but it must be our goal.
In the short term, a simple forward step is to support Green perspectives in the media. To avoid the filters of capitalism that restrict conversation, we need member-driven media and lots of volunteering and grassroots referrals. Unfortunately, little exists right now, in part because so many Greens and leftists spend their time following other podcasts that aren’t committed to independent politics. By no means am I saying to drop all other media. We should avoid creating our own isolated echo chamber, so branching out and listening to other views and critiquing them is important. But our energy shouldn’t be focused on sharing and building other media platforms at the expense of building up a Green movement.
There are not many explicitly Green media sources yet, but there are a few you can start supporting now.
- Howie Hawkins hosts Green Socialist Notes, a weekly podcast covering current events from a Green ecosocialist view and promoting the Green New Deal and the Green platform. Hawkins takes viewer questions, so consider subscribing, listening, and sending in questions.
- New Green Horizons is a non-profit volunteer-run webzine devoted to encouraging analysis, discussion, and debate within the Green Party to inform strategy on building the movement going forward. An explicit goal of New Green Horizons is to provide a forum for Greens to discuss strategy and philosophy in a comradely way. Follow, share, and contribute to the discussion by replying to existing articles or sending in your own op-ed on a new topic.
- The Green Party of the United States has its official newspaper, Green Pages, which is a great place to report on actions and campaigns your local party supports.
Take a moment away from other media each week to engage with one or more Green media outlets, and share those sources with other Greens. Your participation helps build more content and give us greater reach. More participation encourages others to join in, contributing to existing media platforms or even starting a new Green media publication or channel. The more, the merrier, to build the Green movement!
Of course, as Price also noted, real-time or face-to-face communications really help build community. Critical thinking and organizing skills are built by engaging directly with other members. So in addition to podcasts and forums, Greens should consider other spaces to connect. Local reading groups, where members can engage in real-time discussion and debate, are critical to learning the history of the Green and socialist movements in the US, and learning how to engage in critique and dialogue in a constructive, non-aggressive way. The Green Socialist Organizing Project for example has created some recommended reading lists, and even a guide to starting a reading group.
Learning through action is a critical part of political education too. Nothing substitutes for being hands-on. Have your local Green Party chapter organize an event or an issue campaign. Maybe it’s a small rally. Maybe a community town hall. A petition drive with canvassing, that can lead to deep canvassing. A social event just to get to know your neighbors. If getting together in-person is difficult, hold an online webinar, town hall, or reading discussion group. Whatever it is, do it. Do it together — you’ll be more effective, and safe, as a team. You’ll make an impact. Even if it doesn’t go as expected, you are learning from the experience. Get all the members together afterward and talk through a “postmortem” — what would you do differently next time, based on what you learned this time? Write it down, and contribute it to New Green Horizons or elsewhere, so others can also learn from your experience and build on it. Even if it’s a silly, embarrassing mistake. Especially if it’s a silly, embarrassing mistake — that makes great stories for Green media, to show others what it’s really like organizing, to teach them to not be afraid to get involved and make mistakes, and encourage them to join in creating a new world together.
Social media, including independent media, is about staying on the sidelines, yet being “informed”. Green media needs to be about dipping the toe in the water and getting involved, writing and recording to and for each other instead of an advertising algorithm. I suspect we’ll all feel much better engaging a truly social, community-oriented media focused on building an independent Green movement.
- Herman, Edward S. & Chomsky, Noam. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon Books.
- Price, Devon, Ph.D. (2021). Laziness Does Not Exist. Atria Paperback. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Laziness-Does-Not-Exist/Devon-Price/9781982140113.
- This quote is used in several sources but perhaps most relevant here is an article challenging Greens to rethink how democracy can be structured: Bookchin, Murray. (1990). “The Meaning of Confederalism.” Green Perspectives, No. 20, November 1990. https://social-ecology.org/wp/1990/11/the-meaning-of-confederalism/.
- Dan Chodorkoff. “The Utopian Impulse,” The Anthropology of Utopia, (New Compass: 2014) pp. 121-144. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/dan-chodorkoff-the-utopian-impulse.
