Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic,
The alternative media is the media.
Donald Trump would not have won three elections without the alternative media (AM). The mainstream media (MSM) were almost uniformly opposed to his campaigns. He has made adroit use of social media site Twitter (now X) to bypass the MSM. However, not everyone is on X and in all three campaigns he received a crucial boost from the AM. They allowed his message to be conveyed to an ever-expanding audience and in many cases explicitly supported him.
Plenty of AM commentary has hailed the MSM’s dwindling patronage and its impending demise. The numbers are even worse than they look because the MSM’s viewers and readers skew towards the senior citizen set. It is losing people not just because of its manifest deficiencies; its audience is dying off. Younger generations don’t watch TV news or read The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or Washington Post. The Post’s owner Jeff Bezos recently noted his paper’s dwindling readership, credibility, and revenue. Put a toe tag on the MSM and slide its drawer closed.
I come not to bury the MSM, but to praise the AM, remind readers of its vital role, and encourage them to support it.
People have turned to the AM because from its roiling cauldron of chaos, clashing opinions, tireless researchers, incisive analysts, idiosyncratic styles, competitive jockeying, backbiting, obnoxious self-promotion, and unwavering irreverence, truth tends to emerge. The AM can be likened to the ferment of true science (science didn’t used to have to have a true in front of it): assertions proposed, tested, rejected, accepted, refined, but never deemed ultimate truth.
Robert Gore, SLL, “Ants at the Picnic, Part One,” May 25, 2023
I said in Ants that:
Bullets and blogs are the ants at the globalist picnic, and they may prove just as hard to eradicate. It’s not overstating the case to say that the AM has been the reason we haven’t had to resort to bullets . . . so far.
Consider the truths that have emerged from the AM.
Trump’s massive support in 2016. The campaign by a criminal camarilla to destroy him, which began before the election and lasted through two impeachments, the second one as he was leaving office. The Hunter Biden laptop and Biden family criminality stories, which, with the exception of the New York Post, were suppressed by the MSM. The rigged 2020 election. The iniquitous persecution and punishment of January 6 protestors. COVID hysteria, COVID tyranny, and unsafe and ineffective COVID vaccines, in many cases involuntarily administered. The Biden/Harris administration’s failed immigration, energy, economic, regulatory, and crime polices. Its botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, disastrous proxy war in Ukraine, and support for Israel’s odious war in the Middle East. Its censorship partnerships with big tech and social media. Biden’s senility and dementia. Harris’s political ineptitude and lack of intellectual firepower, excused away by her DEI bona fides. Philosophically repugnant and psychologically devastating woke, transgenderism, LGBTQ promotion, and other such nonsense, which served as cover for an attempted Maoist-style Cultural Revolution.
Countless articles, videos, podcasts, and X posts expose depredations, but special mention is due the memes that mercilessly mock their pompous, pretentious perpetrators. Recently, Haitian immigrant culinary practices and the tragic fate of Peanut and Fred evoked rage and a multitude of memes, putting additional wind in the the Trump campaign’s sails.
Trump and Vance won’t get a free pass from the AM. The true believers and the skeptics will continue the battle that has raged since Trump’s first neocon appointments in 2016, through Operation Warp Speed, and continues to this day. Controversy has been rekindled with Trump’s selection of chief of staff Susie Wiles, who’s being criticized for her drug industry ties. Such is the nature of nonstop intellectual ferment. Trump will make mistakes and perceived mistakes, and the AM won’t be shy about pointing them out.
The ruling caste will continue to stifle, censor, deplatform, and debank the AM. It would like to subject everything down to one-person blogs to the censorship regime masquerading as “fighting disinformation and misinformation” it’s already applying to social media. Europe is leading the way, but had Harris been elected, the U.S. would have been right behind. Trump has pledged to end the censorship already in place. We’ll see—don’t trust power no matter who holds it.
The AM has come into its own. Due to time constraints, I limit the number of articles and memes I put up every night to 15; many nights the worthwhile material I consider is double that. The AM is the media—the ruling caste and its minions will have to deal with it. Like everything that’s been worthwhile for the last few centuries, it’s a bottom-up phenomenon. Just as MAGA is much bigger than Trump, the AM is much bigger than Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, and Elon Musk.
The AM is a dynamic ecosystem ranging from huge to tiny constituent elements. This overall system has become a bulwark against tyranny. People ask what they, as “mere” individuals, can do to fight tyranny. One thing most everyone can do is bolster this bulwark with financial support.
Rogan, Carlson, and Musk don’t need it, but there are many worthy AM sites that operate on a shoestring that undoubtedly do. This is not special pleading for SLL or any other site; it’s special pleading for the entire AM. Many sites have DONATE or CONTRIBUTE buttons, both of which are misnomers. The AM is not a charitable enterprise and fighting tyranny is not a charitable endeavor. The proper word is COMPENSATE for the hard work, dedication, and courage that go into so many sites; their proprietors deserve it. If you want to compensate SLL (the link is in the right-hand column here), I’ll welcome the money and thank you for it. If SLL isn’t your cup of tea, please hit the button at the sites that are.
If you decided not to get a potentially deadly COVID vaccine because of something you read in the AM, what’s that worth? If you’ve cheered because someone in the AM exposed the crimes of the people you despise, what’s that worth? If you’ve laughed to tears at spot-on memes, what’s that worth? If, after an inspiring article, video, or podcast, you found yourself believing that the march towards totalitarianism can be stopped, what’s that worth? Monthly compensation to the site(s) you value, even amounting to the cost of a coffee-house concoction, vitally reinforces a crucial front engaged in this desperate battle that must be won.
What’s your freedom worth? Without the AM, all you’ve got left are bullets.