VDARE.com reader “Virginia Paleoconservative” writes:

In today [January 29]’s Washington Post, the Sunday hard copy edition, the main “A” Section is almost totally devoted to critical or even semi-hysterical articles about President Trump’s immigration executive order. Therefore, per the emphasis in WaPo, this topic is more important than virtually every other area of news that is occurring in the world today! This is another indication of a total journalistic breakdown at WaPo whose unofficial motto should be “Get Trump”.

And American Thinker Editor Thomas Lifson confirms: Stunning media malpractice on Trump suspension of entry [January 29, 2017]

This orchestrated refugee ranting is the latest proof of something I’ve been saying for over two years: the Main Stream Media is the enemy. As key Trump strategist and former Breitbart head Steve Bannon, never one to back away from a scrap, said last week, journalists are the “opposition party” [Steve Bannon torches New York Times: “You Have No Power,” Breitbart, January 26, 2017]. He’s right.

Or, perhaps, only half-right. Though Trump is President of the United States, when it comes to who hold real power in the United States, he and other patriots are still the underdogs.

Needless to say, the MSM immediately started screaming about Bannon and Trump trying to shut down the press. They proclaimed they were going to continue confronting the President. Some outlets championed Jake Tapper’s “no” to Bannon as some kind of drop-the-mic moment for the First Amendment. [CNN’s Jake Tapper gave a one-word response to a top Trump adviser’s attack on journalists, by Bryan Logan, Business Insider, January 26, 2017]

But this is just another example of CNN’s Fake News operational model. Bannon wasn’t saying the press should not cover Trump. He was saying the MSM proved itself incapable of truthfully reporting facts during the campaign and that it needs to engage in some soul searching to do its job competently instead of doubling down on propaganda.

As Bannon put it:

The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile… The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States… The elite media got it dead wrong, 100 percent dead wrong.

Bannon noted none of the supposed political experts who proved themselves incompetent nor any of the reporters who served as “outright activists of the Clinton campaign” were fired.

In fact, though Bannon didn’t say it, it’s impossible to ignore how the very people who got Trump wrong and did their best to oppose him are receiving bigger MSM post rather than being ignored.

For example, “Republican strategist” Ana Navarro, despite being shown to have no idea what she was talking about during the primaries, was proclaimed a “star” by the MSM and received adoring coverage [Ana Navarro’s One-Woman Revolt Against Donald Trump, by Jonathan Blitzer, The New Yorker, October 19, 2016]. Not surprisingly, seeing as how her own constituency is actually other journalists, she continues to be promoted as she defends the MSM and “Saint” Anderson Cooper against Trump and the Republican Party. [Ana Navarro: Anderson Cooper spat with Kellyanne Conway ‘painful,’ by Mark Hensch, The Hill, January 12, 2017]

After watching this painful-as-hell exchange, I'm gonna right Pope Francis and suggest he canonize @andersoncooper. https://t.co/AXqVd3jq4y — Ana Navarro (@ananavarro) January 12, 2017

Evan McMullin, whose career is a kind of parody of a Deep State operative dedicated to destroying the historic American nation, is still given worshipful coverage by the MSM despite failing miserably in his sabotage campaign against President Trump. Like Navarro, McMullin evidently sees his role as defending the liberal press. Like Tapper, he deliberately misinterpreted Bannon’s remarks [McMullin: Trump team’s media attack authoritarian-like, by Christina Manduley, Corvallis Gazette-Times, January 26, 2017].

And, of course, Glenn Beck is getting plenty of Strange New Respect from the networks and the New York Times as he works to help the MSM delegitimize Trump supporters. [Glenn Beck, by Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, December 30, 2016]

Trump’s victory has led to no real shift in MSM coverage nor the elevation of figures who predicted or could explain what propelled his victory. Indeed, the only such figures were banned years ago.

For example, Pat Buchanan was famously purged by MSNBC because network execs decided discussion of the effects of mass immigration “aren’t really appropriate for national dialogue,” in the words of MSNBC president Phil Griffin. [Email him] VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow isn’t going to get a call anytime soon to explain how his 1995 book Alien Nation has been vindicated by history. (Check out his marathon debate on PBS’ Firing Line—22 years ago!). And even Ann Coulter, despite being the most hilariously successful pundit of the past two years, has far less television access than she enjoyed during the Bush Era.

https://youtu.be/_3P8wI7OpWs

Perhaps the one positive change which can be identified on network television: the rise of Tucker Carlson at Fox News. Not surprisingly, he is far outpacing the ratings of Trump foe Megyn Kelly’s former show. [Fox’s Tucker Carlson nearly doubling Kelly’s prime-time ratings, by Joe Concha, The Hill, January 24, 2017]

If corporate executives really were interested in money, one would think they would take a lesson.

But they are not. In fact, the emerging result of Trump’s victory: an increased MSM crackdown on nationalist and populist views.

The attempt to use “fake news” as an excuse to shut down alternative media outlets was only the beginning. Thus, since the election, reporters around the world have busied themselves trying to dox (= publish personal information) and get fired any figure right of the Huffington Post. For example, YouTube personality “Millennial Woes,” noted for his extremely soft-spoken, rational delivery, was attacked in the most outrageous terms by the Daily Record and forced to flee Scotland. [Archive.Is link, Vile YouTube racist flees to US and puts out the begging bowl after Record exposes him, January 11, 2017]

The MSM has been remarkably uninhibited about gloating over the assault on Richard Spencer on Inauguration Day. [Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Got Punched—You Can Thank the Black Bloc, by Natasha Lennard, The Nation, January 22, 2017]

Mainstream conservative reporters who so much as “follow” i.e. monitor the wrong account on Twitter (such as VDARE.com) have well-funded campaigns launched against them. [Archive link – Virginia Hale, the “Alt-Right” and Breitbart, by David Lawrence, Hope Not Hate, January 24, 2017]

And of course, California’s Tenaya Lodge just cancelled a VDARE.com conference which was to be addressed by a f ormer Congressman and presidential candidate, even after it was fully informed about it.

Journalism is not a profession—it is a tactic. As Bannon pointed out, many journalists are simply activists.

This is not completely unprecedented. The use of media as a weapon for partisan agitation was a staple of the American political process since the days of the Philadelphia Aurora.

What is unusual, and perhaps merely a passing phase, is the more recent pretense that these people are “professionals” with some sort of status or authority.

Why should we take seriously someone whose job it is to essentially republish press releases from the Southern Poverty Law Center? Why should we regard someone who works for the Washington Post or New York Times as anything different than the masked thugs burning cars in the streets and attacking conservatives? Their goals are the same after all.

If Donald Trump were the actual tyrant that his hysterical opponents claim, and actually shuttered the Establishment media, Americans would not lose free speech. On the contrary, the result would be a boon for actual freedom of speech for ordinary Americans.

The MSM tried to destroy Trump financially during the election campaign. Having failed, they will do their best to destroy anyone who they think supports him.

Journalists like to pretend they are defending Americans for Trump. But what we should hope for is that Trump will defend Americans from them.

James Kirkpatrick [Email him] is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc.