There was an article posted on Politico today: Trump’s Culture Warriors Go Home. It’s the same article we’ve all read a million times before: a seemingly-even toned  piece of writing that simply describes a phenomenon, and never ever ever tries to influence you not even a little bit of how to feel about it.

Factually, it’s mostly true:

Loosely lumped together as the celebrities of the “alt-right”—a label most of them have since disavowed—they hailed from different corners of the web and professed different views, but they were united by a shared disdain for progressives and establishment Republicans, and a shared faith that the disruptive outsider named Donald Trump could usher in the change they believed America needed.

Sure. If you’re going to lump Milo and Mike Cernovich together with Richard Spencer, this is how you would describe the group. It’s clear later in the article that the author understands the animosity between the two factions, but doesn’t care. They’re all equally bad, equally alt-right.

There’s been a lot of kerfuffle lately about how words matter. But you know what else matters? Word choice. Words and phrases that color how you experience the story in your mind.

Words like these:

  • Cernovich was there to vent
  • Cernovich complained
  • Cernovich griped
  • Fringe web firebrands
  • Fake news and conspiracy theories
  • Plotting a move to an undisclosed location
  • He tweeted glumly
  • Riding the president’s coattails into a hostile capital with dreams of revolution
  • Culture warriors
  • Motley band of online fans
  • A livestream rant
  • Grandiose vision of cultural revolution

There’s more, but I’m bored. Another disingenuous media piece that is entirely wrong even though it is mostly factually correct. It’s designed to paint its subject in the worst possible light without actually saying anything untrue.

For instance, take this choice paragraph, dropped after a passage that is clearly designed to make Milo look desperate.

In response to questions from Politico Magazine for this story, Yiannopoulos responded only, “Go fuck yourself,” via text message.

I’d wager to guess that Milo’s response has more to do with DON’T TALK TO THE MEDIA than anything (it’s a common occurrence on his Instagram), and yet it’s used as evidence for the narrative that “Milo is out of control.”

This is most evidence in the illustrations that were commissioned to accompany the article. What’s the best way to portray patriotism, yet make it weird and threatening? Go with a red, white, and blue color palette but change the white to yellow. That gives both the in-your-face punch of a the primary triad while also subverting a familiar trope into something that makes human beings look like sick, IRL versions of The Simpsons.

The opening illustration basically portrays an apocalypse. Perhaps this is what leftists envision when they think back to election day? If they were even aware of any of these people back then. I feel like they’ve been “elevated” by the media to the status of post-hoc boogeymen more than anything. If they were serious about talking about people who were active during the campaign, the would also mention people like Baked Alaska and Pax Dickinson.

Anyway, the illustration. Richard Spencer has been given a briefcase with a cross on it, despite him being about the farthest thing from Christian as I can think of. Milo is given a Napoleon complex. Chuck C Johnson is…having a heart attack? And Mike, of course, has been given pizza in reference to #pizzagate—the media’s favorite conspiracy to debunk because their version of it was designed to be ridiculous and completely debunkable. I also note the inclusion of a “Trump that Bitch” campaign sign, which was never a thing.

Even if you don’t read the article, this illustration shows you what you’re supposed to see, the WASTELAND of TRUMP SUPPORTERS in a SEA OF TRASH. This is not the type of illustration you give to a balanced, nuanced piece of writing.

The portraits don’t get any better. Here’s the one of Mike Cernovich.

This illustration kinda makes you sick when you look at it, and that is the whole point. The blue/yellow gradient is an inspired touch, as are the tattered campaign flags. And there’s more pizza. Stacks of MAGA hats crossed out tryin to make him look like some kind of obsessive who hates MAGA with a passion. For the record, Mike Cernovich has responded to this article with love.

These kinds of articles (hitpieces, really) are tiring. They’re really not worth it to respond to the way that I have with this post, but sometimes the bald, mean-spirited rhetoric of the media just gets to me. I feel compelled to point out all of the ways that they color the facts, literally and figuratively.

There is no possible way to read the original article and give any one of the subjects in it the benefit of the doubt. All the room that a good journalist might have left in for the reader’s objective consideration of the facts has been squeezed out by rhetorical tricks and malice.

 

I can see exactly what they’re doing, and I hope that this post will help you to see it, too.