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Media’s dehumanization can lead to political violence Media influence has the ability to shape public opinion and discourse. It also has the power to foster violence and dehumanization — especially when it comes to the portrayal of individuals and groups in the political arena. Since he ran for president in 2015, America’s corporate media has promoted rhetoric that transformed Donald Trump from the country’s best-known billionaire and pop culture figure into a nefarious demon. Press labeling Trump “an existential threat to democracy” and deeming him “literally Hitler” enabled actors such as Don Cheadle to rally celebrities against “a racist abusive coward who could permanently damage the fabric of our society.” In 2016, BuzzFeed News gave their reporters the green light to label Trump “a mendacious racist” in their coverage. And it’s not just Trump — characterization of Trump’s supporters in the press paints a picture of crazed, uneducated rednecks. Including the Hills op-ed titled, “The difference between Republicans and MAGA Republicans is violence.” The New York Times produced a video exclusively highlighting inflammatory remarks from Trump rally attendees. Not depicted: people like retired schoolteacher Sharon Anderson, a regular at Trump rallies who says she goes because, “We’ve got to have hope.” Or nine-year-old Ava Lovley of New Hampshire who said she likes Trump because she “loved his hair and that he speaks his mind.” For proof of the dangers of dehumanization, one need look no further than the reaction on social media to the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13. On social media, people longed for the days of John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, angrily wondered how the would-be assassin could “shoot and miss,” and lamented that it was “close to being the best day ever.” Police have also found themselves targets of violence following intense cultural dehumanization. A Washington Post article from September 2020 raised concerns that escalating rhetoric from the left could potentially incite “network-enabled mobs.” In metropolitan centers, the acronym ACAB (“All Cops Are Bastards”) can be seen in graffiti on buildings, on signs at protests, and during riots. It’s all part of a greater trend of dehumanizing individuals who don’t hold a leftist worldview. In the media, the term “far-right” has been applied equally to white nationalists like Nick Fuentes and African-Americans like Dr. Ben Carson. Intense adjectives such as “extremists,” “Nazis,” and “evil” are casually lobbed by the left to describe (and dehumanize) their political opponents. This rhetoric has serious consequences. Take, for example, Moms for Liberty — the group, founded to assert parental rights in their children’s education, also found itself on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s so-called “Hate Map,” lumped together with the Ku Klux Klan and domestic terrorists for being an “extremist” “anti-government group”. As a result, Moms for Liberty members faced death threats. As consumers of media, we must hold our information sources accountable. Firstly, we must demand elevated ethical standards from journalists and media organizations to ensure that their reporting remains rooted in facts. Social media has given Americans the power to be their own fact-checkers; we should take it upon ourselves to seek proof and ask questions rather than blindly agreeing with the media’s framing of narratives. On a personal level, we can reject the mob mentality and refuse to engage in personal attacks. The climate of political violence exacerbated by media dehumanization underscores the need for vigilance and responsibility in how we consume and interpret information. The stakes have never been higher.       [Photo credit: in transition, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr (cropped)]

Has Amnesty International forgotten its mission? Since its founding in the 1960s, Amnesty International (AI) has been a recognized force for human rights revered for shining a light on the unjustly imprisoned and aggressively oppressed — at least, they used to be. On April 8, the global nonprofit published a tweet lamenting the passing of Walid Daqqa, whom they described as a “62-year-old Palestinian writer” whose “heart-wrenching” death in prison demonstrated “Israel’s disregard for Palestinians’ right to life.” AI presented Daqqa as a martyr, but their obituary was so lacking in context that its omission can only be seen as intentional. First, Daqqa’s death had nothing to do with Israeli cruelty as Amnesty’s initial tweet suggests; he perished due to bone marrow cancer at an old age. More pointedly, Daqqa was incarcerated because of his role in the brutal abduction, torture, and murder of 19-year-old Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984. According to reports, Moshe’s killers “gouged out his eyes, mutilated his body and castrated him before taking him to an olive grove and shooting him dead.” Such biased framing has lamentably become the norm for Amnesty International. In recent decades, mission creep has seen the organization take official stances supporting the decriminalization of sex work, declaring abortion “a human right,” and advocating for “climate justice.” It’s a far cry from Amnesty’s origins and the work of its founder Pete Benenson, who launched AI in 1961 in a campaign battling for the release of two Portuguese students who had been imprisoned for raising their glasses in a toast to liberty. In 1963, Amnesty’s efforts led to the release of Ukrainian Archbishop Josyf Slipyi in Siberia who was imprisoned by the Soviet communist regime. The group’s continuous efforts rallying grassroots action in support of “prisoners of conscience” earned Amnesty International a Nobel Peace Prize in 1977. Today, 47 years later, the once-revered Amnesty International is making headlines for sanitizing the legacy of a terrorist murderer. It’s yet another instance of a broken — yet powerful — institution: an organization that was founded to uphold human rights is now exalting human rights abusers.

Is this the beginning of the end for ESG?  Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles were once the rallying call of woke capitalism: a catchall in which corporations gave license to themselves to engage in social issues whether or not they are related to their bottom line. Now it seems ESG is on the decline, and it can only blame itself.  In the past week, financial behemoths State Street and JP Morgan cut all ties and commitments with “Climate Action 100+” (CA100) a global investor coalition demanding members drastically dial back emissions, prioritizing so-called “green” policies over fiduciary duties. While not going as far as State Street and JP Morgan, investment giant Blackrock disengaged from most of its CA100 obligations.  In theory, the primary function of ESG is to guide the investment decisions of major corporations in accordance with specific ideological aims. Some have described ESG as an example of “stakeholder capitalism,” a term coined by Klaus Schwab of the WEF that gives stakeholders (those who merely care passionately about a particular social issue) the same relevance and standing as “stockholders” (those with a monetary investment) in a company.  This shift from stockholder-to-stakeholder supercharged social issues in board rooms around the world. For example: according to data from Stand.earth, a climate action organization, over 1,591 organizations have committed to divest from fossil fuels to meet ESG standards.  But it appears ESG efforts are beginning to falter. A report by the Daily Mail, global ESG assets shrunk by $5 trillion over two years. The picture is even bleaker for ESG in the United States. Over the same time frame, ESG investments within America dropped from $17 trillion to $8.4 trillion. Consumers’ Research executive director Will Hild attributes the drop in ESG assets in the U.S. in large part due to “state leaders across the country” fighting back against the injection of “woke politics into the bond market” by asserting their control over state pension funds, ending ESG-related investments and taking a chunk out of ESG funding in the process.  The decline of ESG is occurring within the broader context of woke capitalism failing. The fact is that if market forces demanded environmental, so-called “social justice,” and diversity initiatives, there would be no need for groups such as CA100 to mandate them. Much as consumers have shunned “woke” entertainment and marketing, so, too, are consumers and investors alike pushing back against ESG and the institutions that promote it. And as ESG continues its tumble, the power of the American consumer will continue to rise.