The Real ‘Threat to Our Democracy’
The news has been faked for much longer than most people realize. Concocted stories date all the way back to biblical times. Consider the way Joseph’s brothers contrived a fake narrative to tell their father after they sold his favorite son into slavery (Genesis 37:31-32), or how, after Jesus’s resurrection, the Roman soldiers guarding the tomb told the chief priests and elders that His disciples had stolen the body while they slept (Matthew 28:11-15).
Unfortunately, the “evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world” mentioned in Ephesians 6:12 are still hanging around today. And they still plant a variety of malicious motives in the hearts of men (and women) to hijack the truth and spread lies to the masses.
They do this primarily through propaganda and censorship. One works to cover up truths, while the other inserts untruths into the cultural mindset.
Propaganda
Merriam-Webster defines propaganda as “the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.”
The Nazis mastered this. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, they spread propaganda by (1) glorifying Adolf Hitler by using his image on postcards, posters, and in the press and (2) Spreading negative images and ideas about Jews in magazines, films, cartoons, and other media.
Hmm. That sounds eerily similar to what we’re seeing in our legacy media this campaign season. It’s the same playbook. Just insert Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in the place of “Hitler” and “the Jews.”
For example, just look at the way the media is treating their various policy positions.
No Taxes on Tips
Trump rolled out his “No Tax on Tips” plan on June 9. CBS News responded to this by saying:
Former President of the United States Donald Trump speaking with attendees at an Arizona for Trump rally at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona.
“Former President Donald Trump’s vow to stop taxing tips would cost the federal government up to $250 billion over 10 years, according to a nonpartisan watchdog group.”
Two months later, Harris announced the same plan as though she’d thought of it herself. This time, CBS News responded by saying:
“Vice President Kamala Harris is rolling out a new policy position, saying she’ll fight to end taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.”
Watch how MSNBC’s Ali Velshi covers the two announcements for the same plan.
Border Czar
Many of the same journalists who were hailing Harris as Joe Biden’s newly appointed “border czar” in March 2021 are now saying, “What are you talking about? She was never the border czar.”
Their gaslighting of the American people with this gargantuan lie is stunning. Here are a few examples of legacy media calling Harris the “border czar” and then later backtracking:
The sad thing is they are probably getting away with this lie among an uninformed faction of voters. Adolf Hitler once said, “The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.”
I think Hitler was right about that. Just days before Trump took office in January 2017, the Democrats released a “whopper” of a lie they had already paid for: the Steele Dossier, which allegedly confirmed that Trump had colluded with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election. It was a lie that was unequivocally debunked, yet the legacy media are still talking about it.
And just this past Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland dusted off that same fake narrative for our current election cycle. That’s probably to have it warming up in the bullpen”in case Trump wins again in November.
But Putin has made it clear that he supported Joe Biden and now supports Harris. Of course he does!
And then there was the letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials who said Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” That was a massive lie, and everyone who signed that letter knew it. But there was no accountability. The people making those claims weren’t under oath. They did it to swing an election … and they succeeded.
5/11/21
Trump’s allegedly describing our military service members and veterans as“suckers and losers” was also pure propaganda. Unlike the time Biden bragged on camera about threatening the Ukrainian government that he’d withhold $1 billion in aid if they didn’t fire the prosecutor who was investigating his son for corrupt business dealings, then saying, “Well son of a b****, he got fired” (footage that anyone can still see on YouTube), there is no evidence that Trump ever said that. Yet the media still parrot that comment today.
Censorship
It’s scary to think that when the Nazis rose to power in 1933, the German constitution still guaranteed both freedom of speech and freedom of the press, just like ours. But within a year, it had become illegal to criticize the Nazi government or even tell a joke about Hitler.
Far too many “news” outlets in our country are getting to be about that bad. They still repeat debunked and twisted quotes from Donald Trump, while censoring the context, such as, “If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath,” and “There were very fine people on both sides” [in Charlottesville]. But as FDR (a Democrat) said, “Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.”
The “bloodbath” comment was referred to the financial impact the American auto industry would suffer if Trump did not get elected. He cited the massive manufacturing plants China is building in Mexico and the electric vehicle mandates the Democrats are trying to push. But that part is always censored in the legacy media.
Please Support The Stream: Equipping Christians to Think Clearly About the Political, Economic, and Moral Issues of Our Day.
On Charlottesville, Trump went on to say, “I’m not talking about the Neo-nazis and white supremacists because they should be condemned totally.” But the legacy media loves to ignore those details in order to continue giving you the wrong impression and further someone else’s agenda.
They still ignore a telling detail from Trump’s January 6 speech in 2021: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” The House January 6 Committee — after 18 months and $4 million investigating the charges that Trump launched an insurrection that day — never once uttered those words.
At least 17% of Biden voters (some polls indicate more) say they would not have voted for him had they been aware of major stories the media censored. Biden won the 2020 presidential election by only a 4% margin.
In late August, Mark Zuckerberg openly admitted that the Biden administration pressured Facebook to censor information.
And Then Along Came Elon
But God always gets the last word. Enter Elon Musk.
When Musk bought Twitter — that former bastion of censorship that booted users who wanted to talk about COVID or Hunter Biden’s laptop or anything else that didn’t fit the popular narrative — it gave millions of people worldwide a new lease on free speech. In the U.S. alone, more than 50 million people regularly use X. That’s more than double the audiences of NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and Newsmax combined.
As The Stream reported a few weeks ago, the interview Musk had with Trump on X drew over a billion views. That means one in every eight humans on the planet saw it! It’s no wonder that the legacy media freaked out — and not just in the United States. Musk received threatening letters from both the European Union and Brazilabout what he could expect if he aired the broadcast.
In a special message to Congress in 1950, President Harry Truman said, “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”
Those words ring truer today in America than ever before.
Nolan Lewallen is a retired pilot of a major airline who lives near Stephenville, Texas. His two great passions are the Bible and politics. He is the author of The Integration of Church & State: How We Transform “In God We Trust” From Motto to Reality, and Yeshua Is Still the King of the Jews.
