The nationwide media make use of a long-held double customary on political protests. They enhance left-wing protests no matter crowd measurement and faux they’re not leftist. When conservatives protest, it’s both ignored or it’s handled as menacing.
Final Saturday’s nationally organized leftist “No Kings” protests in opposition to President Donald Trump had been boosted as “huge.” “Morning Joe” co-host Jon Lemire gushed, “The huge, overwhelming majority of those ‘No Kings’ protests had been very peaceable and the crowds had been big!”
Leftist Garry Kasparov — the Russian chess grand grasp — bragged about that “big” turnout on Substack: “5 million folks protested throughout the US over the weekend — for liberal democracy and the rule of regulation and in opposition to a wannabe strongman. That’s 1.5% of all People collaborating in a coordinated motion.”
Even in the event you settle for this exaggerated crowd measurement, how does 1.5% of America characterize public opinion?
Protests could possibly be analyzed as “pseudo-events,” as outlined by Daniel Boorstin — occasions staged to attract media consideration. Protests by the president’s opposition are morale boosters for the individuals who misplaced the election. You could possibly have mentioned that about conservative protests in opposition to President Barack Obama in 2009.
It’s instructive to evaluate what occurred again then. On Aug. 7, 2009, then-MSNBC host David Shuster was spreading worry about protesters at Obamacare city corridor conferences. “We all know that threats to President Obama are up by, like, 400% in comparison with the Bush administration. Is that this placing our president in some type of hazard? Due to some wacko that can see these things and say, ‘oh, sure, it’s fascism and the way in which we handled Adolf Hitler was to attempt to kill him, so due to this fact, let’s do that with our president.’”
Within the Trump years, MSNBC hosts and visitors have routinely smeared Trump as a dictator, a fascist and Hitler, and nobody worries about their unfastened speak endangering him.
CNN displayed a whole distinction in 2009. First got here an enormous Tea Celebration rally with an estimated 75,000 protesters on Sept. 12. CNN’s Jim Spellman couldn’t find a scary nut in D.C., so he aired canned footage of a person holding an AK-47 and speaking of a potential civil conflict. Then he warned of that “darkish undercurrent” poisoning the suitable: “It’s a little bit of a darkish undercurrent… there actually is a component that’s received these sort of outlandish conspiracy theories about loss of life camps and concerning the, you understand, this takeover, folks evaluating President Obama to Hitler.”
Simply 12 days later in Pittsburgh, the novel Left held a protest in opposition to a G-20 summit. CNN reporter Brian Todd cited the same old speaking factors for leftist rallies: “We’re informed that is the most important march in Pittsburgh for the reason that Seventies, estimated a minimum of a number of thousand folks. However it’s way more peaceable, much less confrontational.”
This “way more peaceable” protest ended with 200 arrests.
The Left clearly thinks protests are Their Factor, and at any time when conservatives protest, it should be a dastardly conspiracy that endangers democracy. Of their minds, democracy solely flowers when their stilted narratives dominate.
Tim Graham is director of media evaluation on the Media Analysis Heart and government editor of the weblog NewsBusters.org.
