Just because Republicans choose unreality doesn’t mean the media should ignore the facts of January 6.
On January 6, 2021, I watched CNN as thousands of Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. As someone well-versed in watching tragedy on television, I was struck by just how indisputable the facts were at the time: violent, red-hat-clad MAGA rioters, followed by Republicans in Congress, tried to stop democracy in its tracks. Trump had told his followers that the protest in Washington, DC, “will be wild,” and in the assault that followed his speech, some rioters smeared feces on the walls of the Capitol. Hundreds of them have since been convicted on charges ranging from assault on federal officers to seditious conspiracy. These are stubborn facts, the kind that do not care about your feelings. These facts include the inalienable truth that Trump is the first president in American history to reject the peaceful transfer of power.
It never occurred to me that these facts could somehow be perverted by partisanship. But three years later, we are seeing just that, as Republicans cling to the lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” by Joe Biden and are poised to make Trump their 2024 nominee. And perhaps even more dangerous than the GOP ditching reality is the news media’s inability to cover Trumpism as the threat to democracy that it very much is.
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But the problem is, when all you have is conventional political framing, everything looks like politics as usual. One candidate makes a claim; the other disputes it. Two sides are divided, etc. This framing only works if both parties operate within the frameworks of a shared reality. But Trumpism doesn’t allow for the reality the rest of us inhabit. Trump’s supporters believe their leader’s reality and not, say, the reality the rest of us see with our eyes. As Trump once told a crowd: “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
Journalists may be well-intentioned in trying to be “objective,” or they’re simply afraid of being labeled partisan. Either way, coverage of January 6 that gives equal weight to both sides—one based in reality, one not—is helping pave the road for authoritarianism.
You misunderstood me. Saying that Hamas should get out of the kitchen means that Hamas should not build their military infrastructure in civilian areas, prevent the population from evacuating, and then cry when there are inevitable civilian losses when Israel attacks Hamas. I did not mean to imply that attacking civilians is ok, it is not. I meant that attacking Hamas is the only current option left for Israel, and that if civilians are there, there will be civilian deaths.
About the quotes, I meant that evacuating a war zone is not ethnic cleansing. This is also the current situation in southern Israel, because of Hamas rockets and because some places attacked by Hamas were not yet rebuilt. This is also the current situation in southern Lebanon and northern Israel. You don’t seem to be complaining about the ethnic cleansing of jews in the north of Israel, and rightly so, because evacuating a war zone is a very responsible thing to do. It only becomes ethnic cleansing in hindsight, when the war ends, if they are not allowed to return.
Also, why is ethnic cleansing part of genocide? These are two different crimes. They could come together, but can’t ethnic cleansing be committed without committing genocide?
