Episode 146: Bill Gates, Bono and the Limits of World Bank and IMF-Approved Celebrity 'Activism'

"Feed the world." "We are the world." "Be a light to the world." Every few years, it seems, a new celebrity benefit appears. Chock full of A-listers and inspirational tag lines, it promises to tackle any number of the world’s large-scale problems, whether poverty, climate change, or disease prevention and eradication. From Live Aid in the 1980s to Bono’s ONE Campaign of the early 2000s to the latest Global Citizen concerts, televised celebrity charity events, and their many associated NGOs, have enjoyed glowing media attention and a reputation as generally benign, even beloved, pieces of pop culture history. But behind the claims to end the world’s ills lies a cynical network of funding and influence from predatory financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, multinationals like Coca-Cola and Cargill, soft-power organs like USAID, and private “philanthropic” arms like the Gates Foundation. This arrangement reached its high point at the turn of the 21st century and continues today, largely in response to outrage from anti-Pharma and anti-poverty activists from the global south and anti-globalization protesters in the 1990s. This Bono-Bill Gates-World Bank model has gained virtually unchallenged media coverage as the new face of slick, NGO "activism," in opposition to the unwieldy, anarchist-y and genuinely grassroots nature of the opposition it faced on America’s television screens each time there was a G7 or WTO meeting. While this celebrity-NGO complex purports to reduce suffering in the Global South - almost always a monolithic and mysterious place called "Africa," to be more specific - suffering on a grand scale never meaningfully decreases. Rather, it adheres to a vague “We Must Do Something” form of liberal politics, identifying no perpetrators of or reasons for the world’s ills other than an abstract sense of corruption or "inaction." Meanwhile, powerful Western interests, intellectual property regimes and corporate money - the primary drivers of global poverty - are not only ignored, but held up as the solution to the very problems they perpetuate. On this episode, we study the advent of the celebrity benefit and the attendant Bono-Bill Gates-Global Citizen model of "activism," examining the dangers inherent in this approach and asking why the media aren't more skeptical of these high-profile PR events that loudly announce, with bleeding hearts the existence of billions of victims but are, mysteriously, unable to name a single victimizer. Our guests are economic anthropologist Jason Hickel and Health Action International's Jaume Vidal.

News Brief - Colin Powell: Stumbling Empire Personified

In this News Brief, we recap the recap of Powell's life, from the handwringing over his Iraq War UN speech to the erasure of his role in covering up My Lai massacre to training rightwing death squads in Central America and the central importance of "Good Intentions" when venerating our beloved, bipartisan war-makers.

Live Interview: How 'The Kaepernick Effect' Revealed Reactionary Forces in Youth Sports. with Dave Zirin

In this recording of a Live Interview for Patrons from 9/22, we speak with The Nation sports editor Dave Zirin about his new book, The Kaepernick Effect, and how a series of protests in youth sports, namely among black youth, set off firestorms and backlash in dozens of small towns throughout the country. And what the "leave politics out of sports" ethos says about the evergreen importance of racial disciplining in sports media. 

Episode 145: How Real Estate-Curated 'Mom & Pop Landlord' Sob Stories Are Used to Gut Tenant Protections

“The eviction moratorium is killing small landlords” CNBC cautions. "Some small landlords struggle under eviction moratoriums,” declares The Washington Post. “Economic Pressures Are Rising On Mom And Pop Rental Owners,” laments NPR. ”[Landlords] can’t hold on much longer,” cries an LA Times headline. Throughout the course of the pandemic, we’ve seen a spate of media coverage highlighting the plight of the small or so-called “mom-and-pop landlord” struggling to make ends meet. The story usually goes something like this: A modest, down-on-their-luck owner of two or three properties — say, a elderly grandmother or hardworking medical professional — hopes to keep them long enough to hand them down to their kids, but fears financial ruin in the face of radical tenant-protection laws. But this doesn’t reflect the reality of rental housing ownership in the United States. Over the last couple decades, corporate entities, from Wall Street firms to an opaque network of LLCs, have increasingly seized ownership of the rental housing stock, intensifying the asymmetry of landlord-tenant power relations and rendering housing ever more precarious for renters. In the meantime, the character of the “mom-and-pop landlord” has been evoked nonstop — much like that of the romantic “small business owner” — in order to sanitize the image of property ownership and gin up opposition to legislation that would protect tenants from eviction moratoria to rent control. On this episode, we explore the overrepresentation of the “mom-and-pop landlord” in media, contrasting it with the actual makeup of rental housing ownership. We’ll also examine how the media-burnished image of the beleaguered, barely-scraping-by landlord puts a human face on policies that further enrich a property-owning class while justifying the forceful removal of renters from their homes. Our guest is Alexander Ferrer of Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE).

Episode 144: How the Cold War Shaped First-Person Journalism and Literary Conventions

“Write from experience.” “Show, don’t tell.” Self-knowledge. Self-discipline. Well-known conventions like these, whether delivered in classrooms, writing seminars or simply from one writer to another, often anchor traditional writing advice for literary authors and journalists alike in the United States. While they may seem benign and often useful, they also have a history of political utility. Thanks to a network of underwritten cultural projects and front groups, state organs like the CIA and State Department collaborated with creative-writing programs like the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and publications like the Paris Review to cultivate and reinforce writing tenets like these. The aim: to focus literature and journalism on the individual, feelings, and details, rather than on community, political theory, and large-scale political concepts. This, of course, isn’t to say subversive literature cannot be first person and sensory, or that these modes of writing are per se conservative––but there is a long and well-documented history of conservative, anti-Left institutions pushing them because, on the whole, they veered (or at least were thought to have steered) writers away from the dot-connecting, the structural and the collective. On this episode, we discuss the ways in which first-person journalism, solipsism and creative nonfiction, as taught and prized in the US, reinforce existing power structures, exploring how a Cold War-era history of state- and state-adjacent funding of literary journals, educational programs, and other cultural projects taught writers to center themselves and inconsequential details at the expense of raising urgent political questions and notions of class solidarity. Our guest is author Eric Bennett.

Episode 143 - PR and Prop 22: How Silicon Valley Uses Hollow "Anti-Racist" Posturing to Sell Its Exploitative Business Model

In June 2020, founders of the ride-request app Lyft announced that they had launched “allyship dialogues“ and were committed to fighting “systemic racism” which they said is “deeply rooted in our society.” The same month, an Uber marketing campaign proudly recommended to “racists” that they should “delete Uber,” as they were unwelcome customers. At the same time, the food delivery service app DoorDash announced a series of initiatives to “support Black-owned restaurants.” Everywhere we turned, as popular uprisings against police violence and white supremacy filled the streets, Silicon Valley gig app companies that rely on and profit from the labor of predominantly Black and brown workers, insisted they too were committed to fighting racial injustice. But something curious was unfolding at the same time these multi-billion dollar companies paid lip service and made token donations to bail funds and civil rights groups: they were simultaneously pumping tens of millions more on pushing support for Proposition 22 –– a ballot initiative in California — that would exempt app-based transportation and delivery companies from a state law that required them to classify drivers as employees, permitting those companies to not provide essential benefits like healthcare, paid time off, and unemployment insurance. With 78% of ride-hail app drivers in San Francisco being people of color and 55% of Uber drivers in California identifying as such, the law would overwhelmingly impact nonwhite, disproportionately immigrant communities. Knowing this, and compelled by the broader corporate efforts to exploit the George Floyd uprisings as a branding opportunity, companies like DoorDash, Uber, Lyft and other app-based employers rushed to present the diminishment of worker protections not as manifestly anti-Black and anti-brown anti-labor laws, but actually empowering to drivers of colors. Spending millions on advertising, a patchwork of large donations to community groups planting op-eds in Black and Hispanic press, and focus-grouped language about employee “freedom,” “independence,” “being your own boss,” “flexibility” and general rise-and-grind framing, Super PACs alongside Bay Area and LA-based marketing firms aggressively targeted minority communities to back Prop 22, despite all independent analysis and labor organizations insisting it would be bad for workers of color. On this Season 5 Premiere of Citations Needed, we detail how this plan played out –– and ultimately won, how corporations buy off organizations and adapt nonprofit speak to harm communities of color, and how the idea of “third worker categories” –– like the ones pushed by Uber and Lyft are suspiciously similar to Jim Crow-era efforts to strip black and immigrant workers of the rights white workers were winning under the then-New Deal. Our guest is Veena Dubal, Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

Ep 142: The Summer of Anti-BLM Backlash and How Concepts of "Crime" Were Shaped By the Propertied Class

"Concerns rising inside White House over surge in violent crime," CNN tells us. "America's Crime Surge: Why Violence Is Rising, And Solutions To Fix It," proclaims NPR. "Officials worry the rise in violent crime portends a bloody summer," reports The Washington Post.   Over and over this summer we have heard – and will no doubt continue to hear – the scourge of rising crime is the most urgent issue on voters' minds. Setting aside the way media coverage itself shape public opinion, the rising murder rates in urban areas is indeed very real and its victims disproportionately Black and Latino.   In response, like clockwork, Democrats and Democratic Party-aligned media have allied with conservatives and right-wing media are rehashing the same tired responses: more police, longer sentences, and tougher laws. But this time, they assure us it will be different: it won’t be racist and overly punitive. Instead, in addition to the return of 1990s Tough On Crime formula. we will get enough nebulous reforms and anti-bias training that it will somehow be enlightened and consistent with the demands of Black Lives Matter.   But everything we know about the past 50 years tells us this will not be true. Indeed, if more policing and prisons solved crime, the United States would be the safest country on Earth, but, of course, it is not. According to The American Journal of Medicine, compared to 22 other high-income nations, the United States' gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher despite imprisoning people at rates 5-10 times what other rich nations do.   So why do lawmakers and the media always reach for the same so-called "solutions" when it comes to crime? What are the assumptions that inform how we respond to an increase in homicides and other violent crime? How can the wealthiest nation in the world throw billions of dollars, more police, longer sentences, and tougher prosecutors at our high murder rates only to continue to wildly outpacing the rest of the so-called developed world on this, the most urgent of metrics?   On this episode, we explore the origins of "crime," what crimes we consider noteworthy and which are ignored, how property rights and white supremacy informed the crime we center in our media, how the crimes of poverty, environmental destruction, wage theft, and discrimination are relegated to the arena of tort, with its gentle fines and drawn out lawsuits – while petty theft and drug use results in long prison sentences. We’ll study how these bifurcations inform both media accounts of crime and how we respond with more police, and longer sentences the second we are faced with so-called crime waves.   Our guests are Civil Rights Corps' Alec Karakatsanis and sociologist Tamara K. Nopper.

Live Interview: How the ‘Pandemic Games’ Expose the Neoliberal Scam of Global Sporting Events

In this recording of a Live Interview for Patrons from 7/22, we discuss the scheduled shock doctrine of global sporting events like FIFA and the Olympics and how they use the PR spectacle of sports––and the emotional blackmail of "supporting athletes"–– to enhance security states, displaced the poor, loosen environmental and labor restrictions, and, above all, serve the interests of large corporate advertisers and real estate developers. with guests Shireen Ahmed and Jules Boykoff.

Episode 141: How "Most Livable Cities" Lists Center Upwardly Mobile White Professionals

"America's 50 best cities to live in," reveals USA Today. "These rising U.S. cities could become the top places to live and work from home," reports CNBC. "The best U.S. cities to raise a family," lists MarketWatch. Over and over again in American media we hear stories centered around ranking, judging and analyzing the rather vague concept of a city. But who is being discussed when we talk about "cities"? How are "cities" a meaningful unit to understand a given space, especially in a country marked by runaway inequality and segregation? When we’re told Johns Creek, Georgia, is the best city for "young people," or Carmel, Indiana, is the most "livable," whose lives and experiences are the media really talking about? Who is the audience for these reports about the best cities for families, for nightlife, for safety, for education, for happiness? The criteria most U.S. corporate media uses centers a very particular constituent: Your average homeowner or prospective homeowner, usually white, upwardly mobile, namely, those who marketers, investors and real estate agents most want to reach. Cities then, aren't deemed livable for their fair labor practices, but for their business-friendly policies. They're not worth moving to for their abundance of free public space in low-income neighborhoods, but for their charming boutiques and chic restaurants. They don't rank high for their strong rent-control laws, but for their ability to attract tech companies and they capture attention not for their excellent mental-health statistics, but for their "booming economies". On this episode, we parse the ways in which media coverage of cities and urban living — often crafted by white professional-class writers for white professional-class audiences, and funded by faceless parent companies and corporate advertisers — centers the most powerful while ignoring the needs of the working class, the homeless, people with disabilities, and the vast majority of Black and brown residents. Our guest is VOCAL-NY's Jawanza James Williams.

Episode 140 - Kicking the Hollywood Habit: Addiction Morality Tales in Film and TV [Virtual Live Show]

Episode 139 - Of Meat and Men: How Beef Became Synonymous with Settler-Colonial Domination

"Beef. It’s what’s for dinner," the baritone voices of actors Robert Mitchum and Sam Elliott told us in the 1990s. "We’re not gonna let Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cut America’s meat!" cried Mike Pence during a speech in Iowa last year. "To meet the Biden Green New Deal targets, America has to, get this, America has to stop eating meat," lamented Donald Trump adviser Larry Kudlow on Fox Business. Repeatedly, we’re reminded that red meat is the lifeblood of American culture, a hallmark of masculine power.   This association has lingered for well over a century. Starting in the late 1800s, as white settlers expropriated Indigenous land killing Native people and wildlife in pursuit of westward expansion across North America, the development and promotion of cattle ranching — and its product: meat — was purposefully imbued with the symbolism of dominance, aggression, and of course, manliness.   There’s an associated animating force behind this messaging as well: the perception of waning masculinity in our settler-colonial society. Whether a reaction to the closure of the American West as a tameable frontier in the late 19th century or to the contemporary Right's imagined threats of "soy boys" and a U.S. military that has supposedly gone soft under liberal command, the need to affirm a cowboy sense of manliness, defined and expressed through violence and domination, continues to take the form of consuming meat.   On this episode, we study the origins of the cultural link between meat eating and masculinity in settler-colonial North America; how this has persisted into the present day via right-wing charlatans like Jordan Peterson, Josh Hawley and Tucker Carlson who panic over the decline of masculinity; and the social and political costs of the maintenance and preservation of Western notions of manliness.   Our guest is history professor and author Kristin Hoganson.

News Brief: CNN Helps Biden Kick Off 'War On Crime 2.0: This Time It's Not Racist, Trust Us'

In this public News Brief, we examine 24 hours of CNN's mindless police stenography undermining modest bail reform in New York.

News Brief: The Casual Soft Eugenics of Self-Help "Friendscaping" Content

In this public News Brief, we discuss a recent advice column in the New York Times advocating upwardly mobile professionals dump their fat and depressed friends and how it's part of a much broader trend of pop sociology repackaging cruelty and soft eugenics as "science-driven" self improvement.

Episode 138: Thought-Terminating Enemy Epithets (Part II)

"Oligarch". "Hardliner". "Regime". All common terms seen in Anglo-American media when describing politicians and power structures in official villain states; yet - mysteriously absent when talking about ourselves or our allies. This Part II of our Citations Needed countdown of the Top 10 "Enemy Epithets," derisive descriptors that are deployed to smear enemies without any symmetrical usage for U.S. officials, policy or imperial partners. Designed to conjure up nasty images of despotism and oppression, often pandering to Orientalized prejudice, these epithets demand people shut off their brains and have the label do the thinking for them. We are joined again by FAIR's Janine Jackson and Jim Naureckas.

Episode 137: Thought-Terminating Enemy Epithets (Part I)

"Hand-picked successor", "firebrand", "proxy" — In Anglo-American media, there are certain Enemy Epithets that are reserved only for Official Enemy States of United States and their leaders, which are rarely, if ever, used to refer to the United States itself or its allies, despite these countries featuring many of the same qualities being described. Over two years ago, in a two-part episode entitled "Laundering Imperial Violence Through Anodyne Foreign Policy-Speak" (Episodes 70 and 71), we explored the euphemistic way American media discusses manifestly violent or coercive US policy and military action. Words like “engagement”, “surgical strikes”, “muscular foreign policy”, “crippling sanctions” obscure the damage being unleashed by our military and economic extortion regime. Just as pleasant sounding, sanitized foreign policy speak masks the violence of US empire, highly loaded pejorative labels are used to describe otherwise banal doings of government or are employed selectively to make enemies seem uniquely sinister, while American allies who exhibit similar features are given a far more pleasant descriptor. This and next week, we're going to lay out the Top 10 Enemies Epithets — derisive descriptors that are inconsistently applied to smear enemies without any symmetrical usage stateside, designed to conjure up nasty images of despotism and oppression, often pandering to racialized and Oriental prejudice and, above all, asking people to shut off our brains and have the label do the thinking for them.