Political Irony

Think Progress points out that the mainstream media, including the Washington Post, Fox News, and others, are calling the protestors who are occupying Wall Street “anti-capitalist”. Even some progressives, like Alan Colmes and Gawker are referring to the protests as “anti-capitalist”.

But this is clearly wrong. In fact, calling the protests “anti-capitalist” seems like it is mainly designed to discredit the protests by painting them as anti-free enterprise and anti-free markets. But if we actually had free markets, would we have felt the need to bail out banks and huge multi-national corporations? Or would CEO have received huge bonuses even though their companies lost money and laid off employees?

As Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz pointed out at a teach-in at the site of the occupation, it is not capitalism when you socialize losses and privatize gains. Nor is it capitalism when corporations have more political power than real people.

Notice in the video how the crowd deals with the fact that bullhorns or amplifiers are not allowed by having people repeating what the speaker says.

UPDATE: Fox News shows that it is the news network of the richest 1% by launching an all out attack to discredit the Wall Street protestors. Are they that scared?

UPDATE 2: The Occupy Wall Street protestors are more popular than the Tea Party.

UPDATE 3: If you don’t get it, Douglas Rushkoff explains what is important about the Occupy Wall Street protests and why the mainstream media is clueless.