Episode 220: The Power of Thought-Terminating Bad Guy Labels
Release Date: 04/30/2025
News Brief - NYT, BBC, Guardian: Starvation in Gaza Doesn't Really Count if Victim Has Preexisting Condition
Citations Needed
In this News Brief, we detail recent "updates," "clarifications" and "added context" pro-Israel crybullies have pressured Western media outlets to make (some more willingly than others) that give readers the distinct impression emaciated children in Gaza aren't really an urgent humanitarian crisis if they have rickets, cancer, or cerebral palsy. With guest Beatrice Adler-Bolton.
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Ep 227: The Importance of 'Seriousness,' or Why Palestinians Can't Be Witness to Their Own Genocide (Part II)
Citations Needed
"Exclusive Look at Life in War-Ravaged Gaza," reads the title for a CNN interview with correspondent Clarissa Ward. "'It's a Killing Field': IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid," report Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg for Ha'aretz. "I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It," argues Omer Bartov in The New York Times. These stories have something in common: they’re vital pieces of journalism about Gaza, or Palestine more broadly, published in Western and Western-aligned outlets. This is, obviously, important. Reporting like this keeps...
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Ep 226: The Importance of 'Seriousness,' or Why Palestinians Can't Be Witness to Their Own Genocide (Part I)
Citations Needed
“12 UN Relief Works Agency staff members are accused of involvement in Hamas' attack against Israel,” reports NPR. “Details Emerge on U.N. Workers Accused of Aiding Hamas Raid,” announces The New York Times. “Hamas Military Compound Found Beneath U.N. Agency Headquarters in Gaza,” claims The Wall Street Journal. In January 2024—literally on the same day the International Court of Justice deemed Israel was committing “plausible genocide”—a number of sensationalistic headlines broke across U.S. media, namely The Wall Street Journal and New York Times, telling us in 40-point...
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Ep 225: How US Media Frames Democracy that Actually Helps People as 'Buying Votes'
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"Student loan forgiveness is a bribe for young voters," shouted Newsweek in 2022. "Harris's call for price controls on groceries is more pandering than policy," declared The Hill in 2024. "Free for all: Democratic socialist’s policy pitches face tough fiscal reality in New York," warned Politico this year. Every time an elected official or political candidate proposes a policy with even the slightest hint of actual populism, U.S. pundits, analysts and alleged experts line up to tell us that it’s just a scheme to "buy votes." Offering student-debt relief is just cheating. Lowering grocery...
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Episode 224: Corporate Self-Regulation and the Fine Art of 'Preempting" Public Outrage
Citations Needed
In this episode, we detail the classic PR gambit of corporations anticipating regulation, offering to "self-police," implementing token or superficial reforms, waiting for the outrage to blow over, then going back to business a usual. With guest Timi Iwayemi of Revolving Door Project.
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News Brief: ADL, Corporate Media, Dem Elites Manufature "Antisemitism" Scandal to Discipline Mamdani
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In this News Brief, we break down recent bad faith attacks on Zohran Mamdani, the ADL's DO YOU CONDEMN extortion racket, and the broader "antisemitism scandal" playbook to derail moderate social democratic policies and any meaningful criticism of Israel.
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News Brief: Natural Disaster-izing the Deliberate US-Israeli Starvation Campaign in Gaza
Citations Needed
In this News Brief, we are joined by Ashley Bohrer and Ben Teller of Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago to discuss media indifference to the US and Israel-imposed starvation of Palestinians, how sectarianism is central to the ADL's strategy, and why six JVP activists have decided to hunger strike to draw more attention to the Israeli and US-made famine in Gaza.
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News Brief: Pundits Speed-Run 15 Months of Iraq War Propaganda for Iran in Five Days
Citations Needed
In this News Brief, we break down the insta-talking points to sell war with Iran––from Ticking Time Bomb '24' plots to cherry-picked, dubious anecdotes of Iranians supposedly begging for Israeli bombs.
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News Brief: US Media, Top Dems Assist Trump and Israel's Unprovoked Attack on Iran
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In this public News Brief, we detail how the NYT, Washington Post, and CNN reinforce every faulty premise of Israel's attack and how top Democrats in Congress and former Harris aides either ignore Trump and Israel's massive escalation or openly support it, showing once again the scope of debate in our politics and media ranges all the way from A to B.
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Ep. 223: The Empire Strikes First, Part II — ‘Abundance’ Pablum as Counter to Left Populism
Citations Needed
“Can Democrats Learn to Dream Big Again?,” wonders Samuel Moyn in the New York Times. “The Democrats Are Finally Landing on a New Buzzword. It’s Actually Compelling,” argues Slate staff writer Henry Grabar. “Do Democrats Need to Learn How to Build?,” asks Benjamin Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker. For the past few months, news and editorial rooms have been abuzz with talk about a new, grand vision for the Democratic Party: abundance. Abundance, according to its media promoters—chiefly NYT’s Ezra Klein and The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson—is a political agenda that...
info_outline"American Extremists Aiding Radicals Across Border," trumpeted the Detroit Free Press in 1919. "707 Illegal Aliens Arrested in Checkpoint Crackdown," reported the Los Angeles Times in 1987. "87 Bronx gang members responsible for nine years of murders and drug-dealing charged in largest takedown in NYC history," announced the New York Daily News in 2016. "'Top secret' Hamas documents show that terrorists intentionally targeted elementary schools and a youth center," claimed NBC News in 2023.
Each of these headlines includes a label for a certain type of Bad Guy. Whether it’s the "Extremist," the "Illegal Alien," the "Gang Member," or the "Terrorist," these terms—and their cousins—seek to exceptionalize the alleged transgressions of their targets, separate them from both the law and history and dehumanize them, all while priming media audiences for crueler laws, harsher policing, longer incarceration and sometimes even extrajudicial punishment. The terms, of course, don’t have clear, universally accepted definitions—nor are they supposed to—their use is often heavily racialized and, by their very nature, subject to the whims and ideologies of the Security State and the media doing its bidding.
What effects, then, do these Bad Guy Labels have on public perceptions? How do they serve to foreclose critical thinking about who is deemed inside the bounds of due process and humanization and who is categorically an other in urgent need of disappearing and punishment?
On this episode, we examine four thought-terminating Bad Guy labels, analyze their origins, why they rose to prominence and explain how they are selectively evoked in order to turn off people’s brains and open up space for quick and cruel state violence.
Our guest is attorney and author Alec Karakatsanis.