While many were celebrating the July 4th holiday or obsessing on where NBA free-agent superstar Kawhi Leonard would land (literally or figuratively), Make Cernovich made his crowed-sourced documentary film Hoaxed currently available for free via online streaming.
Hoaxed is a exposition about the funhouse mirror that is the American mostly liberal, corporate media. This is an industry that pushes fake news while denouncing (or trying to censor) legitimate stories from independent or alternative journalists as…fake news.
The slick editing and production values in Hoaxed, which includes contemporary as well as archival footage, are excellent. As an aside, anyone who has worked on documentary filmmaking also knows that old-timey clips can be golden if used in the proper context.
As self-described liberal and Hillary Clinton voter, Anton Fletcher writes in Medium, “The videography, carried out by directors Scooter Downey and Jon Du Toit, is cutting edge and visually stunning.”
Among those appearing in the film to weigh in include Red Pill director Cassie Jaye, Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, Trump confidant Anthony Scaramucci, controversial and de-platformed Infowars impresario Alex Jones, journalist Tim Pool, James O’Keefe of Project Veritas, Black Lives Matter activist Hawk Newsome, and many others.
Hoaxed covers a lot of territory in its compelling two hours.
Chum for Click Bait
Contemporary media is about a money-driven quest for clicks and ratings, regardless of how much societal disunity creates, Hoaxed maintains.
Cernovich, who mainstream journalists have caricatured as a conspiracy theorist and an alt-right member, explains that the responsibility-deflecting media endlessly repeats and amplifies messages that they like but take no responsibility when the narrative turns out to be false. Countless examples exist of that kind of media malpractice.
The media also targets and tries to destroy individuals who are non-compliant with the generally progressive agenda.
The film also underscores how the Wikileaks revelations in 2016 exposed the collusion between the anti-Bernie, anti-Trump media and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Cernovich also discusses how the media in the summer of 2016 exaggerated the demonstrations at the Republican National Convention, while downplaying or ignoring the massive, grassroots protests at the Democratic National Convention.
He also accurately recalls how the media echo chamber ruled any questions about Hillary Clinton’s health out of bounds while speculating wildly about John McCain’s or President Trump’s health.
Adds Fletcher:
“[Cernovich] clarified that he wanted to make something entirely non-partisan, and valuable to viewers on either the right or the left….The central thesis of the film (from the author’s perspective) is that the mainstream media lies repeatedly, deliberately, and willfully to impose a narrative that is beneficial only to them, their profits, and the corporations and industries that they are in a symbiotic relationship with — such as the arms industry. These media corporations do not care that many of their stories are false, or that they serve to divide an already fractured and hurting nation. “
Hoaxed asserts how the media is skeptical of virtually everything that Trump, i.e. the “Trump monster,” says or does, including twisting his words out of context to make him look like a racist, sexist, homophobe, and whatever else is on the identity politics menu.
The Media Wants War
The same media abandoned any skepticism when it cheerleaded for two wars in Iraq under both Bush presidencies while currently saber-rattling about going to war in Syria and perhaps Iran. Plus, Democrats and neo-Cons were seemingly clamoring for war with Russia during the 2016 election season.
Moreover, there was virtually no skepticism in play during the entire eight years of the Obama administration despite numerous scandals and lawbreaking.
While reporting from Hungary, Cernovich notes in Hoaxed how the open-borders media distorted the mass migration into Europe. Parenthetically, you might remember that media never challenged Obama when he falsely claimed that the Middle Eastern refugees were mostly “widows and orphans.” The media is similarly misrepresenting what’s happening at our southern border.
While condemning Trump for supposedly encouraging divisiveness and even violence, the media is the entity that is actually creating a climate for both. The observation by Hoaxed that the media is covering up alt-left violence becomes even more poignant given the recent attack on journalist Andy Ngo in Portland.
In an important history lesson, Hoaxed reminds viewers how the New York Times, the so-called newspaper of record, covered up Stalin’s mass murder.
Debunking the “Fine People” Hoax
When he’s riffing, President Trump doesn’t always use precise language or communicate in a linear fashion. He enjoys trolling his opponents, but he’s also not a detail guy.
His critics have had an ongoing field day over his remark that some “very fine people” attended the Charlottesville protest that turned deadly.
On the subject of hoaxes, in a lengthy blog post earlier this year, Scott Adams tried to put that one to rest:
“I’ve been publicly debunking the ‘fine people’ hoax since 2017. The press created the hoax by consistently and intentionally omitting the second half of President Trump’s comments about Charlottesville. If you only see or hear the first half of what the president said, it looks exactly like the president is calling neo-Nazis “fine people.” But in the second part of Trump’s comments, he clarified, ‘You had people in that group who were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of the park from Robert E. Lee to another name.’
“In other words, the president believed there were non-racists in attendance who support keeping historical monuments. To remove all doubt, the President continued with ‘I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally – but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?’
“Keep in mind that it doesn’t matter if the President’s assumption about the attendees was accurate or not. He clearly stated his assumption that some people were there for the monument protest, which he contrasted to the racists who were there to march and chant racist stuff…
“My point is that Trump could have been right or wrong about who attended, but it doesn’t change the fact that his words clearly and unambiguously condemned the marching racists while excluding them from his ‘fine people’ category…”
