What about your ethics?

Heh. Ann Althouse is impatient with the mainstream media's moral bankruptcy and duplicity. In "Antifa Broke My Camera." she goes all verbal antifa on a false-flag journalist.

The journalist is covering the antifa rioting at one of their protests. Antifa confront him and insist he quit filming. When he continues, they seize his camera, throw it away and destroy it. To which he responds.

I looked at him and shook my head. “Seriously, man!? Is that really necessary?” It was all a bit of a blur, but I think my next words were, “Dude, I’m on your side”—meaning the side that finds white supremacists repugnant....

Postmodernist critical theory journalists want to see a moral divide between good violent rioters (international socialists) and bad violent rioters (national socialists and white supremacists). All the rest of us unsophisticated and morally unrefined rubes just see violent rioters who need to be arrested and locked up. Sure they have slightly different sartorial preferences, but otherwise there is no real difference between them. It takes the refined vision of critical theory to recognize that one form of repressive violence is better than another. And the journalist, Mike Kessler of The New Republic, wants to be sure we know that he is on the morally righteous side of violence.

Ann Althouse is having none of that nonsense.

Hey, journalist — you call yourself a "journalist" — how about not being on any side? Have you completely forgotten that idea? Sad about your camera, but what about your ethics? Did somebody grab them too and smash them on the pavement? Or is it still possible to scrounge back somewhere in your head and find them?

I agree. But ethics have little play when the battlefield is that of emotional belief and regrettably the greater part of the tribe of journalists are True Believers in postmodernist critical theory and are not interested in simply reporting the news. They wish to seize the power of interpretation of facts from their readers and instead spin the interpretation according their own beliefs. Hence journalist's blindness to the fact that two violent factions of thugs are indeed just violent thugs.

Reminds me of that old union song Which Side Are You On.


Double click to enlarge.

A contemporary rendition of that old rousing song might be:

Come all you citizens
Good news to you I'll tell
How the liberty spirit
Has come in here to dwell

Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?

My daddy's American
He's now in the air and sun
He'll be with you freedom lovers
Until the battle's won

Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?

They say in the media
There are no neutrals there
You'll either be an American
or in the Social Justice lair

Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?

People can you stand it?
Oh, tell me how you can
Will you be a lousy thug
or will you be a man?

Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?

Don't read treach'rous papers
Don't listen to their lies
Free folks ain't got a chance
Unless they organize

Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?