We'd have every movement that could possibly benefit people infiltrated by the FBI. They would pose as Nazis during protests or try to instigate people to break the law in order to illegitmize the movement. Then we'd have a government controlled media only focusing what the provocateurs initiated.
Source? I know many cops and informers are actual nazis, and i've witnessed first-hand (in France) active collaboration between nazi groups and cops to repress demonstrations, but i'm not aware of cops pretending to be nazis to infiltrate social movements (where they would probably be kicked out for being nazis?!).
> try to instigate people to break the law in order to illegitmize the movement
Sure that happens, but that's a tiny phenomenon, except for anti-terrorist investigations where the so-called criminal activities are either legit protests (eg. pipeline sabotage) or plots outright invented by secret services (see also Haymarket affair, Eric MacDavid, COINTELPRO).
Many people are legitimately angry and want to burn institutions down. To be honest, i find that your line of thinking is more delegitimizing, because it suggests attacking the source of our problems and misery (eg. banks, homelessness) is immoral, and we should have hope in the institutions (who created this suffering in the first place and directly benefit from it) to solve the situation in a rational manner.
The law is a flexible thing based in a social context (and balance of powers), and if it was not for countless heroic acts of braving unjust laws, there would certainly have been no abolition of slavery, no anti-nazi resistance, no birth control rights... Not just in the USA, but pretty much in every country these progresses took countless acts of sabotage and resistance which were criminalized at the time.
They're discussing the infiltration of pro-Nazi demonstrations, which definitely did happen. COINTELPRO for example devoted 15% of it's resources to targeting White hate groups, leading to things like an FBI agent bombing a Baptist church and murdering a civil rights activist.
I think most of their other lines are reasonable and can easily be expanded upon with some sources.
Whether or not your ability to travel or have a job being tied up in bureaucracy is an unethical thing is kinda dependent on your perspective. As someone who grew up undocumented and who's had to deal with massive bureaucratic headaches whenever I got a job (even though it was legal), I'm quite critical of that.
As for the state-run media point... I'll try to do this without quoting Chomsky's Five Filters, but I do want to point out that what we consider state-run media in other countries is often much more independent than we realize and what we consider corporate media in the US is often much more heavily influenced by the state than we realize (an easy example might be Fox News' direct ties to the GOP).
But if you really want to see how much of a propaganda powerhouse the US really is, you'd have the best luck looking outside of the US. Read up on the International Broadcasting Bureau or the US' numerous state-controlled foreign media outlets like Radio Free Asia, Radio Liberty, or just the CIA's massive worldwide propaganda network:
> We don’t have a state media, and I guarantee you that whatever corruption people know about, there is some media member talking about it.
You can't be that naive. You think every piece of corruption has been exposed? Usually when corruption is exposed it's about something that's been going on for years. Yet somehow you think all corruption as of right now has been exposed?
When the government calls for censorship of all media that oppresses their narrative and the media hires former CIA agents and parrots their talking points, you might as well have state run media.
> You can't be that naive. You think every piece of corruption has been exposed?
I don’t think that every bit of corruption has been exposed, and indeed I didn’t say that.
I do not believe “the media” is actively working to hide corruption. Whoever “they” employ, there are simply too many media outlets for one to reasonably believe it is remotely state controlled.
Further, I find it laughable to believe, in the age of information, that any calls to censorship that you claim exist are remotely effective.
> and the media hires former CIA agents and parrots their talking points
To be fair (And Balanced), they also hire people who applied to CIA and were "rejected". Being the son of a Voice Of America director probably helps too.
That's the difference between state funded media, and state run media.
State funded media are news orgs that 100% run themselves, but are funded by the government. This is great for achieving good journalism because they're not incentivised to write clickbait or take advantage of outrage and bias generating sales to people that agree with the bias.
State run media is a terrible idea, for obvious reasons.
Plenty of well functioning democracies have the former, and it's important to identify if there's ever an attempt by the government to turn it in to the latter.
That might be true, but I suspect in reality it works out because:
"Good" governance doesn't want to meddle with the state funded media, and the existence of the state funded media results in a better informed population who continue to vote for governance that doesn't meddle with the state funded media.
If a new government did start meddling with the state funded media word would get out pretty quickly because all the people it's staffed with are used to not being meddled with and someone would blow the whistle.
Or phrased in another way: state funded, but not state controlled media is a symptom of quality governance as much as it is a reinforcing factor of quality governance.
They're critical at the surface but when it comes to the government's cute agents they are in lock step. They're really pushing anti Russia propaganda right now for example.
How do you classify something as anti Russia propoganda vs just reporting on things that Russia is doing? Russia is not exactly a good actor in global politics (or towards their own citizens), so obviously reporting on their actions is going to be negative a lot of the time.
