Dreaming of a Socialist Media

ObamaCare has made the health insurance industry dependent on government bailouts, which constitutes a major step toward socialized medicine. But even after healthcare has been completely nationalized, it will only whet the appetite of incremental communists. What’s next on the nationalization front? Some liberals would like it to be the news media.

This might sound redundant, considering that the only mainstream news source that does not exist primarily to advance statist objectives is Fox News, which provides liberal oligarchs with a valuable service by allowing an escape valve for public anger while establishing the boundaries of acceptable dissent. Besides, those who want media directly controlled through financing by federal bureaucrats can turn to the soporific droning of the milquetoast Marxists on PBS and NPR.

But the current state of affairs will not suffice for true progressives, who must always progress toward ever more government control and political homogeneity. Liberal Salon shares Fred Jerome’s dream of socializing the media by publishing an excerpt from the book, Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA:

In a socialist society run by and for the working people it represents, the mega-monopolies like Walmart, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the corporations that run the tightly controlled “mainstream media” will be a thing of the past.

This will make for better news, because advertisers allegedly bias the news, unlike statist authoritarians.

While big advertisers don’t directly select what news is published, publishers, editors, and news directors know what they like and will rarely risk their disapproval.

In socialist utopias of the past, you would never see this insidious indirect influence. A bullet to the back of the head for those who aren’t on the same page as party leadership is much more direct — and more “democratic” in the sense that totalitarians justify their tyranny by believing or pretending to believe that government authorities represent the Will of the People. As Jerome puts it, the authorities will be “working people elected by and for working people.”

Only after the Revolution has “erased corporate control” (i.e., economic freedom) can we have a media 100% suited to ultra-left objectives. But who is going to pick up the tab?

Most of us could probably manage to struggle through life without Coca-Cola and Colgate, but who, then, will pay for the news? …

In most cases, the media would be owned and operated by working-class organizations–labor unions, neighborhood associations, and cultural centers.

Yeah, yeah. Labor unions would be sure to never have a political bias, unlike soda and toothpaste manufacturers. But who pays? Jerome declares that in addition to official government media, a non-government media could be financed by “add-ons to union dues.” But in case this doesn’t totally finance the free flow of information,

In a socialist society, where money is allocated based on assessed social need and not on projected profits, government will subsidize many salaries in social, economic, political, and educational areas. … So salaries at the media operations of smaller unions will most likely be covered by government subsidies.

But don’t worry about bias. In contrast to Colgate, the government doesn’t have anything to do with politics.

Jerome is obviously an adolescent clown, foolishly indulging in an early 20th century collectivist daydream from before communists had killed over 100 million of their own people. What is scary is that establishment publications like Salon will provide a platform for cartoonish Marxist propaganda.

Again we are reminded that the Cold War never ended. It became a cold civil war. The same ideology that created the horrors and misery of the Soviet Union and Maoist China is alive and well among our ruling class.

Communist USA
The objective.

On a tip from Wilberforce. Hat tip: Twitchy. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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