Many people claim that fake news is just something that Trump made up. They fail to realize that fake news has been a major political tool for thousands of years. The New York Times celebrated Joeseph Stalin as the future and cure for the Great Depression. Their top journalist Duranty even convinced Roosevelt to recognize Russia.
The press has always been a major tool to create revolutions. They were used by the Communists to pull off both the Russian and Chinese Revolutions. The Obama administration appears to have begun this decline in American journalism by not only selling Utopian Economics (Marxism) to the media, but they actively targeted journalists who they viewed as anti-Democratic. There is a pair of 2015 memos from the former Attorney General Eric Holder that reveal how the government used court orders under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to monitor the communications of journalists and news organizations.
These memos have surfaced (the documents) but most of the press never made it a major story. Holder’s memos laid out the circumstances for processing FISA applications that target “known media entities” or “known members of the media.” You would think even the New York Times would be screaming – but as long as it applied to the non-liberal press, they were perfectly OK with that.
The New York Times journalist Walter Duranty on March 31, 1933, denounced reports of a famine. They were so pro-Communism for they saw Marxism as the way to a new future. It was Duranty who met with Roosevelt to convince him that Communism was working and to encourage his New Deal. The mainstream press in the 1930s were very much touting the Communists. They wanted to hear of Utopia and so reported only what they wanted to believe as they are doing once again.
Perhaps the greatest of all fake news reporters was none other than Cicero (104-43 BC). He was an Optimat and thus was against Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) who was a member of the Populares — the people rather than the Oligarchs. The leader of the Optimates was none other than Cato. It was Plutarch who reported that when a friend of Cicero remarked that the constellation of Lybra was due to rise next day, Cicero snapped – “Yes, by edict.” This is merely an example that the Optimates were constantly complaining about every reform Caesar would make. Because of the fake news of Cicero, even Shakespeare bought into it and painted Julius Caesar as a ruthless dictator. However, when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the cities all cheered and opened their gates. The Optimates had no support of the people for they were exploiting the Republic since they were the Oligarchs. It was Cato who instigated the Civil War.
Cicero paid not just with his life, but they cut off his hands and nailed his head on the Rostra in the Forum Romanum according to the tradition. According to Cassius Dio, Marc Antony’s wife Fulvia took Cicero’s head, pulled out his tongue, and jabbed it repeatedly with her hairpin in an act of final revenge against Cicero’s power of speech.
