Andrew Sage

just viciously and radically hate, and this is the ruling class, the people who run these outlets, viciously hate unions.

And this is something that's very important to understand in terms of media unions, because media unions were also a very powerful force for encouraging diversity.

Because, as it turns out, workers, and this is true, I could say this as someone who's part of a media union, are less racist than the bosses.

and in fact would like there to be more non-white people and don't like it when non-white people are discriminated against.

And this is one of the things that these media unions and the unions in general do.

is try to help you not get fucking discriminated against on racial grounds.

So of course, a part and parcel of this has been the targeting of the union, and that's what we've been seeing at Conde Nast, where they also fired workers who had nothing to do with Teen Vogue, and also one of whom was on the show and is trans, and you should go listen to that episode because it's very good.

But that's another aspect of this right-wing consolidation, is that media unions are able to push back against the untrammeled power of these fascist billionaires to turn news coverage into whatever the fuck they want.

And that's what's happened at CBS, where they're now doing giant specials with, like, Kirk's widow and all of these just absolutely deranged, unbelievably bizarre right-wing pieces.

That they're just sort of erring now.

And in order to, you know, stop that shit, you need powerful media unions.

And this is one of the things the ruling class is trying to crush.

Now, it's also worth mentioning that these right-wing billionaires are trying to consolidate their hold on social media as well as the traditional media.

And obviously, the largest example of this is Elon Musk, who's purchased Twitter and has, you know, effectively turned Twitter into another arm of Stormfront.

It is a just unhinged stew of racism and conspiracy that is now effectively unusable if you don't want, like, the most racist shit you've ever seen in your entire life, just in every single one of your replies.

And it's also become a major vector of targeting for the Trump administration, where what Twitter is used for now, instead of being a platform that at one time actually was able to play a role as a thing that does resistance, as a tool of protesters and as a tool of people who opposed Trump.

you know, the untrammeled rule of billionaires, it's now been converted into just racist slop and a way to track down anyone who's sort of vaguely center-left and just put them in the eyes of the administration so they can be targeted by the state.

And it's also worth noting that one of the people who helped bankroll the purchase of Twitter, because Elon Musk couldn't just purchase it directly, was one Larry Ellison.

Larry Ellison is also part of a massive attempt to buy TikTok.

Listeners to this show are probably familiar with the whole extremely weird story about how TikTok...