The New York Hedge Fund owned by Randall Smith has obliterated an already struggling industry.

Democracy is not self-maintaining, and freedom isn’t free. For years, Americans have been bombarded with these phrases, but very few fully comprehend the value of those words or the more subtle meanings behind them. Local news is on the decline in this day and age, and with it, an informed public. While there is no singular cause for said fall, one name stands out as a key accomplice in the death of local news: Alden Global Capital.

The decline of local news is not just some old tradition in decline. Since 2004, 2,000 American newspapers have gone out of business, making local news a struggling industry despite its incredible importance to the modern media environment. With media trust at an all-time low, local news is of the utmost importance to maintaining an informed and well-rounded American public.

According to a study conducted by the Knight Foundation in 2019, 45 percent of Americans trust local news organizations “a great deal” compared to just 31 percent of Americans who say the same about national news outlets. 79 percent of Americans say that local news does a better job of reporting news they can use in their personal lives. The trust of the media, it seems, is tied to local, new companies.

Into this tragic reality comes Alden Global Capital. For those unfamiliar with this infamous New York Hedge Fund, AGC is one of the most ruthless investment companies in all of the news. They own 97 different newspapers as of 2018 and are notorious for squeezing companies dry of their journalistic value. All while leaving an already struggling industry in the dirt.

A Ruthless Strategy

In the Bay Area of California, this parasitical relationship was on full display. Through massive cuts and a lack of investment, AGC turned the robust regional news environment into a shell of its former self. What was once a strong but struggling community of sixteen regional papers and a thousand employees was soon turned into a ghost town of a hundred and fifty employees.

The Boston Herald, one of the oldest newspapers, went into bankruptcy in 2017 but was soon facing the ruthless ownership of Alden’s subsidiary, Digital First. The paper that was known for its exposés was soon being gutted like many papers before it. By 2018, the paper had gone from 225 employees fell to 110.

They’ve also bought the largest share of Tribune Publishing, which owned The Chicago Tribune and WGN America. They began to do what they’ve done to many companies before that, firing reporters as much as they could. Heidi Stevens, a former columnist with the Tribune, was soon scrapped despite her popularity. Others like the fierce and unrelenting Dahleen Glanton were also given the boot not long after Alden made its move.

Other newsrooms have tried to fight back. The Denver Post, which has been subject to some of these same cuts that have made Alden so infamous, has revolted through its opinion section, calling on Alden to sell the paper so that it could find a more suitable owner. A Colorado civic organization soon offered 10 million dollars to the company, hoping to protect the Post from Alden’s grip before the city lost its century-old newspaper.

Transparency? What’s that?

While some at Alden and other pro-business organizations may argue that the hedge fund must make these cuts, that might not be true.

In 2018, a minority of shareholders in Alden sued the company in the hopes of forcing another of Alden’s companies, Media News Group INC, to open its books to shareholders. These shareholders allege that the company was secretly funneling money while supporting failed investments, effectively violating their obligations to their stakeholders.

If true, then it would stand to reason that Alden’s real goals have little to do with necessity and more to do with unadulterated greed.

As it stands right now, Alden is taking advantage of an already horrible situation for its own benefit while undermining the very media institutions that could restore public trust and sanity. And if that isn’t a crime, I don’t know what is.

Ben Shapiro’s recent attacks on NPR’s coverage of the Daily Wire reveals his rhetorical victimhood and twisting of the truth

Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro is at again. This time fighting with NPR, accusing the outlet of supporting censorship against his company, The Daily Wire.

The article, titled Outrage As A Business Model: How Ben Shapiro Is Using Facebook To Build An Empire, written by NPR’s Miles Parks, did not say what Shapiro alleged. Instead, the article examined The Wire’s business model and how it interacted with the Facebook algorithm, specifically how the Wire’s reporting acts as a parasite on the body politic.

Describing the nature of Shapiro’s website, Miles writes that:

Daily Wire articles with headlines such as “BOOK REVIEW: Proof That Wokeness Is Projection By Nervous, Racist White Women Who Can’t Talk To Minorities Without Elaborate Codes” regularly garner tens of thousands of shares for the site, and Shapiro is turning that Facebook reach into a rapidly expanding, cost-efficient media empire — one that experts worry may be furthering polarization in the United States.

In other words, Shapiro’s news site depends upon its ability to make outrageous articles that slant the perspectives of its readers, all while drawing eyes to itself. The result, of course, is a significant amount of readers. Parks’ story is not the fire pointing out that the Wire has seen significant engagements on Facebook. The Wrap’s Sean Burch has made the same point, pointing out that The Daily Wire dominates Facebook and has since 2020.

The Daily Wire was the top publisher on Facebook in July, the most recent month data is available, according to research shared by data firm NewsWhip. The outlet had 98.9 million engagements for the month, or about 8 million more engagements than CNN, the next closest outlet. (Engagement counts all likes, reactions, comments, and shares that a post receives.) Those figures easily blew past The New York Times, which had 61.5 million engagements, and The Washington Post’s 43.6 million engagements.

Additionally, NPR’s story on the Daily Wire mentions several examples of the Wire attempting to circumvent Facebook’s authenticity policy. Citing Judd Legum’s Popular Information, Parks notes that several pages on Facebook were dedicated to promoting content from the Daily Wire without acknowledging that it was in league with the site, effectively feigning genuine admiration for the platform.

Therefore, what matters to NPR and the Wrap is not that the Daily Wire’s existence on Facebook end, but more so, how it conducts itself online. However, that will likely go unnoticed by Shapiro’s audience or the Daily Wire’s, for that matter.

Already, pro-Wire pundits are parroting the talking points. Unsurprisingly, Shapiro has parroted his positions, but fellow commentator Michael Knowles has also maintained that point. All well selling his book, much like Shapiro.

So long as these commentators repeat the lie, their audience will believe it. It wouldn’t be too surprising if The Daily Wire and its pundits turn what originally amounted to a discussion about an outrage machine into a supposed example of establishment censorship.

This shifting of the truth is precisely what NPR is showing in its expose, so it is fitting that it too would become twisted into yet another symbol of right-wing propaganda.

Trump’s newest lawsuit is an attempt to regain his relevance in the public discourse

Seven months after he was banned from Twitter and Facebook, the former president is suing both social media companies. The suit, announced on Wednesday, alleges that social media companies amount to a state actor, meaning they are governments and are, therefore, subject to the 1st Amendment. Though the former president and his allies appear confident in their ability to win the suit, the chances of its success are slim and are more in line with a vain attempt to get attention.

Trump’s efforts to get back into the public eye have all been met with overwhelming failure. Since his ban from Twitter, Trump has struggled to reach his audience as he once did. Trump and his allies attempted to counteract this lost attention with a personal blog in early May, but it quickly shut down after less than a month due to a lack of interest by the public.

Other attempts by Trumpists have faced similar failures. In the case of Parler, an app established before the January 6th attack and partially responsible for the planned assault has faced significant pushback on its failure to regulate its platform. Amazon, frustrated by the site’s unwillingness to regulate its content, booted it from their servers, taking Parler offline for a time. Others have failed in almost laughable ways.

Gettr, another app established by former Trump advisor Jason Miller, has been a disaster from the moment it was established. After it was launched, the site was quickly hacked, had multiple users’ information stolen, and several emails were soon leaked. And it wasn’t long before Gettr found a new problem: pornography.

Trolls made multiple accounts on the platform and began spamming every hashtag they could find. Eventually, the site was overwhelmed with NSFW posts about the cartoon character, Sonic The Hedgehog. I am not kidding. The result was a large portion of the conspiracy-minded posts about Q-anon were flooded with cartoon-style smut. Needless to say, Gettr and Parler aren’t exactly the hits they wanted them to be.

It is from within this crazed context that Trump’s recent lawsuit emerges. His recent attempts to counteract his ban with alternative sites are humiliating failures, and his need to regain the power he once had remains perpetual within him. Trump went so far as to write a piece in the Wall Street Journal, saying that:

Our lawsuits argue that Big Tech companies are being used to impose illegal and unconstitutional government censorship. In 1996 Congress sought to promote the growth of the internet by extending liability protections to internet platforms, recognizing that they were exactly that—platforms, not publishers. Unlike publishers, companies such as Facebook and Twitter can’t be held legally liable for the content posted to their sites. Without this immunity, social media companies could not exist. Democrats in Congress are exploiting this leverage to coerce platforms into censoring their political opponents. In recent years, we have all watched Congress haul Big Tech CEOs before their committees and demand that they censor “false” stories and “disinformation”—labels determined by an army of partisan fact-checkers loyal to the Democrat Party.

The problem with this argument is that it is foolhardy in the extreme. Aside from the fact that private companies have never been recognized as state actors, as the Supreme Court ruled in Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, there are also issues with the right’s previous attempts to undermine social media’s terms of service.

In PragerU v. YouTube, PragerU, a right-wing YouTube channel, sued YouTube for age restricting its videos—something that every YouTuber has to endure. The case went before a panel and lost, resulting in appeal and yet another loss for the right’s suit. In the case, the appeals court ruled that:

… the Supreme Court held that “merely hosting speech by others is not a traditional, exclusive public function and does not alone transform private entities into state actors subject to First Amendment constraints.

The fact of the matter is that private corporations are not state actors in the eyes of the Supreme Court—a court that Trump himself helped organize through his appointments. And as I noted in my most recent video, Trump and his allies know this as well.

Prager, Trump, and every other right-winger who continues down this path of litigation are aware that their argument is built on a legal non-starter. Yet, they continue on this path because they can fundraise off of it, gain ad revenue on their videos and swindle their audience out of their time and money.

Though the House voted to remove Confederate idols, but Republican efforts to protect the monuments reveal a failure of historical comprehension.

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted 285 to 120 to remove statues of several confederates and white supremacist figures from Capitol grounds, including former Chief Justice and Confederate Vice-President Jefferson Davis.1 The vote, though still dependent upon approval from the Senate, is sure to invigorate the debate over the role of historical artifacts in the public square. But more than that, the partisan inclination of the vote reveals the changing perception and misconceptions surrounding the role of history.

While the vote is largely symbolic in nature, the significance of the decision can’t be understated. In this debate lies a distinct rhetorical divide between the two parties’ responses. Democrats unanimously voted for the bill, but most Republicans—120 of them—voted against it.2 And the rhetoric of the GOP matched their voting. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-C) denounced the bill with an obsequious speech, saying:

“All the statues being removed by this bill are of Democrats…Democrats are desperate to pretend their party has progressed from their days of supporting slavery, pushing Jim Crow laws, and supporting the KKK. But today, the Democrat Party has simply replaced the racism of the past with the racism of critical race theory.”3

Others echoed the charge within the GOP. Montana Rep. Matt Rosendale made a similar accusation:

Unfortunately, Democrats, animated by the Critical Race Theory concepts of structural racism, microaggressions, and a United States based solely on white supremacy, have chosen to remove statues that underscore the failures of our pre-1861 Constitution. Make no mistake, those who won the West and George Washington are next.4

The reaction reveals a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of historical reconsideration and the state’s role in promoting historical figures. It also fails to adequately consider the differences between figures like Washington, who helped create America, and Jefferson Davis, who readily accepted its disillusion. Moreover, there is little to no consideration about the role of white supremacist propaganda in how these statues got on capitol grounds in the first place.

Many of these statues, including the bust of Taney, are on Capitol grounds because of the Lost Cause movement.5 As I’ve previously written, the Lost Cause was a deliberate effort to obfuscate the truth about the South’s racism in the Civil War, but it was also an attempt to revamp white supremacist violence.6 Ignoring that history does a disservice to the public’s ability to acknowledge its past.

There is also an underlying assumption to the right-wing defense of these idols—an assumption that these statues weren’t controversial until recently. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When the statue of Taney was first proposed in 1865, it created an uproar among the Senators. Senator Charles Sumner (R-Massachusetts) condemned the idea of having Taney displayed so prominently. Responding to the bust’s sponsor, Sen. Lyman Trumbull, Sumner rejected the idea, saying:

“Let me tell that Senator that the name of Taney is to be hooted down the page of history. Judgment is beginning now… And an emancipated country will fasten upon him the stigma which he deserves.”7

Sumner had reason to be outraged. Taney was and is one of the most infamous judges in the Court’s history. Taney served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during the case of Dredd Scott v. Sanford.8 The Court ruled that the constitution wasn’t written with Black citizenship in mind and effectively argued that Black Americans were not legally that: citizens.9 The decision by Taney and his colleagues was so controversial that Lincoln himself condemned the decision.10 In all effects, Taney’s name was heavily associated with opposition to equality and emancipation. The fact that the men of the 19th century understood that when modern representatives seem incapable of doing so is baffling.

It is one thing to worry about hiding the past, but to suggest that a man like Taney deserves such a prominent place on Capitol Hill without so much as a consideration as to the opposition’s perspective is nothing short of bad faith. And it is not just Taney who is under scrutiny.

Jefferson Davis, the former President of the Confederacy, has enjoyed similar treatment on Capitol Hill. His statue is portrayed prominently at the National Statuary Hall and has retained its glorified position at the Capitol despite his contributions to the paternalism of slave-owning confederates, of which he was one.

Describing his view on slavery in a message to the Confederate congress in 1861, Davis wrote that:

Under the supervision of a superior race their labor had been so directed as not only to allow a gradual and marked amelioration of their own condition, but to convert hundreds of thousands of square miles of wilderness into cultivated lands covered with a prosperous people; towns and cities had sprung into existence, and had rapidly increased in wealth and population under the social system of the South.11

Much like his Vice-President, Alexander Stephens, Davis believed that the South was dependent upon slavery and that it was the “natural and normal condition” for Black people.12 Again, the issue of why these figures are promoted on government property becomes more pertinent. What historical value are these glorified statues providing? From what I can see, there seems to be only one benefit—a benefit that is not universally gained by those who walk Capitol grounds.

It is perhaps convenient for some to imagine great men coming together to maintain their ‘chivalry in post-war reconciliation. It is perhaps even more convenient for these same persons to pretend that putting these images in positions of prominence is equal to acknowledging past prejudices, but the truth is far different. Though not unique from other similar monuments, these statues don’t preserve history in their proper context. There is no mention of how Taney sent a Dredd Scott back into chains or how Jefferson Davis put his ‘business’ ahead of his country to maintain his paternalistic delusions about Black Americans and profit from their servitude. Those delusions, mind you, caused over half a million people to die in open warfare.

This deception is by design. Statues are meant to glorify figures, not to understand them. They instill visions of what we ought to be and the values we seek to uphold. What values are instilled by celebrating confederates? Putting a statue of Taney or Davis at the very seat of American legislative power sends a message that reflects horribly on our country and our government. The best thing to do is to remove these statues as swiftly as humanly possible.

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Lost Cause mythology remains strong, but it needs to be stomped out like the propaganda it is.

The debate over Confederate statutes was once again ignited last Monday after Charlottesville’s city council decided to remove two statues dedicated to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The decision was partially motivated by the violent arrival of white supremacists at the infamous ‘Unite the Right” rally of 2017, which resulted in the murder of Heather Heyer, a counterprotester. But with this decision, a clear disconnect has emerged with some right-wing pundits. 

Reacting to the city’s decision, The Daily Wire‘s Cabot Phillips wrote, “Good. I prefer monuments of people who fought for America, not against it.” Though many agreed with this perspective, others were not so enthused. 

Elijah Schaffer, a reporter for Glenn Beck’s Blaze Media, responded to Phillips, mocking him, but it was the conservative commentator and YouTuber Sydney Watson who revealed the right’s fundamental misunderstanding of what is at stake with confederate monuments, saying: “Let’s retroactively judge history and make changes to our society based on those judgments and then act like we’re virtuous.”

In most cases, this argument would make sense. Hindsight bias is not an acceptable or valid way to interpret history. However, when there is clear evidence that the artifacts under examination were part of a greater propaganda effort, this argument falls flat on its face. Despite what Watson may want to believe, most confederate statues were not built to commemorate the Civil War. They were made to sell an insidious myth: The Lost Cause.

What is the Lost Cause?

The Lost Cause’s success was not immediate. Instead, it developed gradually, with several decades of work by Southern activists and former Confederate soldiers to re-frame the war. Southerners, humiliated by the war and suffering from the destruction of their communities, struggled to explain why they had fought for an institution that no longer existed. Rather than deal with the truth that they fought a war over slavery and led to the destruction of their homes, Confederate veterans and Southern women’s groups developed a myth to explain away their pain. If they failed to promote this myth, it would destroy their legacies. As one former Confederate put it: 

“If we cannot justify the South in the act of Secession, we will go down in History [sic] solely as a brave, impulsive but rash people who attempted in an illegal manner to overthrow the Union for our country.”

Lost Causers emphasized the Southern perspective of the war, many times downplaying the role of slavery in its eruption. Instead, they emphasized the bravery of the confederate soldiers, the supposed happiness of slaves, and the infamous states’ rights argument. Edward Pollard, a former general of the Confederacy, contributed to this lie with his 1866 memoir, The Lost Cause: a new southern history of the Confederates’. Much like his later counterparts, Pollard downplayed slavery, arguing that it was a convenient talking point for the North’s sectional animosity. This myth would later find a promotion with the many memorial organizations that popped up over the following decades. 

By the 1880s, numerous memorial organizations developed, peddling numerous ceremonies to commemorate the South and its supposed valor. Finally, in 1894, one of the most infamous Lost Causer organizations was founded: The United Daughters of the Confederacy. Though not compromised of soldiers from the war, this organization had an advantage that Confederate vets didn’t: Their sex. Because women’s organizing was not considered political, these women, mostly Southern socialites, could lobby local and state governments to erect monuments to the once reviled Confederacy. All while not appearing political. 

The UDC held rallies, memorials, and conventions to promote their propaganda, with local officials endorsing and assisting their efforts. Looking back, it is painfully obvious successful they were. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which maintains a long-term database of Confederate statues across the country, shows a clear pattern. In the early 20th century, the number of Confederate monuments skyrockets, especially during the rise of the KKK. 

The UDC also promoted the KKK as the supposed saviors of the South, writing not one but two books dedicated to the Klan. One of which was specifically designed for children. In her book, The KKK or Invisible Empire, author Laura Martin Rose wrote that the racial violence was the result of Northerners stirring up trouble among the Black populace, saying: “These men hated everything that bore the name “Southern,” and at once began to inflame their negroes against their former masters.” It is perhaps unsurprising to learn that Rose hoped this book would inspire young Southerners to attack African Americans. 

The UDC’s perversion of history

From the very beginning, the UDC sought to glorify the South. The UDC’s constitution, which they revised in 1895, stated that the purpose of the organization was to “honor the memory of those who served and those who fell in the service of the Confederate States and record the part taken by Southern women…” It was a duty with which the UDC fought tooth and nail to fulfill. 

The UDC and its allies worked tirelessly to suppress outside perspectives that challenged their narratives, establishing the office of the historian-general in 1905 to suppress textbooks it deemed “unjust to the South.” Far from an impartial history of the Civil War, the UDC created a neo-Confederate propaganda machine to hide the truth. In this context, the statues exist, and in this context, they are scrutinized. 

Despite claims to the contrary, these statues are not impartial artifacts that help people learn from their past. Rather, they seek to obfuscate the truth and lie to generations of young children, all the while ignoring the suffering of African Americans subjected to this racist mythology. Charlottesville’s statue to Lee is no different. It was erected in 1924 and was marked with an inscription that argues Lee fought for “the ideals of Democracy,” ignoring how his contribution to the Southern aristocrats’ power kept Black men, women, and children in chains. It, too, promotes the state’s rights lie. 

Why does it matter?

Despite the pundits’ arguments to the contrary, these statues have never been about teaching history. They were, and remain, a symbol of the South’s racist and violent past. The fact that white nationalists like Richard Spencer defend them is proof to that effect. Men like Spencer will shout about being replaced by non-whites while ‘defending’ statues of white heritage because that is what these monuments were intended to inspire. These monuments have always been symbols of the white supremacist domination that made the Confederacy what it was. No amount of historical revision can change that.