Naked Capitalism Goes Full On Ideological Disciplining
You Will Follow The Yves Line Or Be Disappeared And/Or Publicly Disciplined!
Roger Boyd
Feb 17, 2025
The site Naked Capitalism (NC) is a soft bourgeois progressive site run by Susan Webber (Yves Smith is a pen name) an ex McKinsey consultant and banker (Goldman Sachs and Sumitomo Bank) who founded her own finance company and the NC site. As with most such sites, it follows a Progressive Era “US capitalism isn’t bad it just needs to be fixed a bit” ideology, and steers away from more fundamental criticisms that may put it in hot water with hosting sites and state authorities; a self censorship. The site does provide a lot of useful links to other news stories, in a carefully curated fashion, and also carefully curates the comments section in what has been an increasingly aggressive fashion; reminding one of the collapse of the Guardian comments section.
I rarely comment there, as I have very regularly had comments deleted without trace. Sometimes I am driven to comment by the utterly slanted nature of an opinion piece or Yves comment. This occurred recently with the regurgitation of the US narrative of the past two decades plus that “China is in trouble” or “China will be collapsing” or “China must change its political-economic model to remain successful”. Yves had already announced that she was shutting down comments as the comments section was becoming unacceptable to her. She has now reopened comments, but decided to use myself as an example of what will happen to those that do not follow the sites ideology to closely. Here is her direct attack, published without warning or right of reply (my reply comment, the last one I will be making on the site was disappeared).
Below I have detailed the actual comment exchange that took place, including comments of mine that were deleted. In her attack she explicitly deleted comments without advising the reader, a classic manipulatory tactic. My first comment:
Roger BoydFebruary 10, 2025 at 11:32 am
Its the same with the “China failing growth” narrative. China’s population is to all intents stable, while its GDP is growing at 5% a year; so that’s a 5% increase in GDP per capita per year. At its current stage of development and the size of the economy, its natural that China’s GDP growth would slow down.
The Chinese state has very successfully redirected investment from housing to productive industry, increasing the pace of economic upgrading, without causing a financial crash. Western governments would love to have China’s “problems”
A completely innocuous comment I thought, but not to the site proprietor who had to intervene, with this response:
Yves SmithFebruary 10, 2025 at 12:26 pm
No, its GDP is NOT growing at 5% a year. I can tell you here from the sex capital of Southeast Asia that Chinese tourism is way down v. last year, and that was before the actor kidnapping scandal made thing even worse.
The reported China GDP figures have been widely recognized as unreliable forever. That is why analysts looks for proxies like electricity use…and then China started hiding that.
Michael Pettis has debunked that: https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-econ ... er-says-us
One specific and large source of difference from how everyone else calculates GDP is bad debt losses are debited from GDP totals. China does not do that
I responded with some facts, and some details on Michael Pettis history of soft anti-China propaganda:
Roger BoydFebruary 10, 2025 at 1:15 pm
So the China Electric Council is just lying then about 7% annual electricity usage growth and the huge expansion in Chinese renewables, while coal electricity generation remains stable, is just feeding nothing? Pettis pushes the “China over-production and under-consumption” narrative that has been used for years, while Chinese consumption actually keeps increasing as real incomes rise.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy ... s%20report.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-re ... the%20grid
At first, this comment was disappeared but then returned once the proprietor had come up with her answer:
Yves SmithFebruary 10, 2025 at 1:29 pm
I can tell you from direct and indirect reports I am here (where I am has lots of Chinese backing for projects plus an intermarried mafia) that China is not in very good shape right now. These reports are consistent. Yes, anecdata but the sources they tie back to are pretty varied (like princeling children, tour operators, Chinese entrepreneurs and entertainers).
From the Financial Times November 2024. Note it specifically questions consumption data:
China’s official statistics, particularly its annual GDP figures, have long been the subject of scrutiny. In 2007, Li Keqiang, later the premier, remarked that they were unreliable and that he relied on three alternative indicators to evaluate economic performance: railway cargo volume, electricity consumption and bank lending. These metrics came to be known as the “Keqiang Index”.
Many observers suspect that GDP figures in the past few years have been inflated. Local officials tend to view meeting regional targets as necessary not only to keep their jobs but also to secure promotions. This atmosphere of distrust intensified in August 2021 when China’s internet tsar prohibited any social media publications that could “distort” macroeconomic data. Such restrictions have silenced comments from leading economists in China, and several banks and research institutions have become reluctant to publish forecasts which fall below official figures. In some cases, economists have been told to refrain from critiquing official data.
The government’s attempts to suppress negative commentary may stem from concern over the long-term effect of stringent economic controls imposed during the Covid-19 years, which saw investor and consumer confidence decline to what was then an all-time low. This has had a perverse effect: in private conversations, jokes about GDP figures are more widespread than ever.
Publicly available, reliable, up-to-date data allows investors to monitor developments and manage their expectations. If fundamental statistics such as GDP, consumption index and unemployment rates lose their credibility, investors will be forced to prepare for the worst-case scenario. In 2023, China’s National Bureau of Statistics stopped publishing youth unemployment data after figures reached a record high for several consecutive months. The government later resumed the release but excluded students from the count, claiming that this offered a more accurate representation.
In December 2023, China’s Ministry of State Security warned key commentators on social media to stop criticising the economy and spreading what it alleges to be disinformation. Last month, Zhu Hengpeng, a leading economist at a top government think-tank, reportedly disappeared after making disparaging remarks about the economy in a private WeChat group.
These troubling developments have intensified scepticism about China’s economic reality, creating what could be described as a Tacitus Trap. Named after the Roman historian, this theory posits that when public trust in government erodes, citizens will assume that all information released by government — regardless of its truth — may be false. Some netizens even joke that China owes its recent economic success to the National Bureau of Statistics, the Central Propaganda Department and the Internet Information Office.
https://www.ft.com/content/de9af759-2b9 ... 698900efeb
As for the figures you cited, any GDP estimates or proxies need to cut to reflect debt writedowns.
I then noticed that the Pettis article was from 2019! Then looked more deeply into Pettis, who has been doing the same kind of complaining as a “Western expert” on China for many years, wanting China to basically dismantle its development state financing and move to a Western consumption-focused model. Exactly what Japan did disastrously in the late 1980s / early 1990s. The FT has also very much lost its integrity in the past few years, and the proprietor seems to want to redefine GDP calculations and complain about things that the West has very regularly done. My response (this is updated, as earlier I had only noted the first paragraph by accident):
Roger BoydFebruary 10, 2025 at 3:31 pm
The Pettis article is from 6 years ago, how is that relevant to 2025? He has been going on about Chinese “issues” for a very long time, but China just keeps on growing and upgrading its economy. He wants China to mimic the consumption centric Western nations, while China focuses on investment raising real wages. GDP is a calculation of the output of goods and services, debt is not a part of that calculation – so what is the problem with Chinese GDP per capita? Chinese debt is also predominantly owned by Chinese, much of it the state, while Chinese nominal GDP grows and it has very large foreign exchange reserves.
China is rebalancing quite massively (and successfully) from the housing investment driven economy to one more focused on the development and upgrading of the productive forces. It is managing bad debts in a very controlled fashion, which a Party-state dominated society that owns and significantly controls most of the financial sector can do. The US has regularly played the same games in allowing banks to count actual bad debts as good ones on their balance sheet, so that they can “work off the bad debts”. The Fed also took on massive amounts of devalued debt securities and loans onto its books in the GFC at face value to socialize private losses. As European states and the ECB did in the early 2010s.
The rebalancing will most definitely be felt by the richer and younger Chinese who invested in now much depreciated Tier-1 and Tier-2 city properties, but much much less by the less wealthy and outside those cities. Also, much of the easy money in property and financial speculation has been stopped. So the group that travels abroad and ostentatiously consumes and speaks much better English will be affected. And the groups that you mention would certainly be feeling the pain. There is also a very strong official drive away from the exuberant display of wealth. While luxury goods suffered in 2024, new car sales reached a new record.
As for the FT, it sadly lost its journalistic integrity a few years ago. I say sadly, because before it was a very reliable source. Referring to 2007 when there most definitely were issues with Chinese GDP reporting is pretty irrelevant for 2025, especially after the government made strenuous efforts to clean up its act. Accurate statistics are central to accurate decision making by both the state and private actors, and they understood that. The rest of the story is hardly better than unsourced tittle tattle (well below previous FT standards). Excluding students from the youth unemployment count is actually the general standard, shame on the FT for not stating such. China does not include any meaningful amount for the fictitious “household implied rent” as the US does, so there are definitely swings and roundabouts.
The above comment from me was disappeared. Because China “must be struggling”, because otherwise the Western progressive elites would have to face up to the fact that the Chinese model is hugely more beneficial for the masses of society than the utterly failed Western one; even at higher levels of production and income. Then much later it was reappeared with another response from Yves eight and a half hours later which I never saw (its very hard to keep up with such moves as the NC site does not notify one of comment replies).
Yves SmithFebruary 11, 2025 at 12:10 am
I have contacts who own businesses in other parts of SE Asia and they also report that China has slowed, so this is a completely different set of data points. Chinese investment in projects here is also down, which is again not a function of tourism. I said the reports were coming from all sorts of sources, including princelings, and struck me as admissions against interest.
The underlying Pettis reports on how China’s GDP computation is not comparable to Western methods is here, which I was remiss in not posting. The structural issues on how GDP is computed remain the same: https://carnegieendowment.org/china-fin ... na?lang=en
See also:
Some economists say China’s GDP figures have become less reliable.
“Namely from 2014 to 2019, Chinese GDP growth barely moved at all, just a little over 1.5 percentage points for six years,” Wright said. “We can never find another major economy, particularly one of that size, where GDP had been that stable over time.”
In the meantime, he said, China’s interest rates were going up and down, commodity prices collapsed and credit conditions tightened, yet none of that volatility showed up in China’s GDP.
“In 2023 it’s an even more questionable story that China’s economy is growing at 5% or faster,” Wright said. “It’s hard to know what exactly is accounting for that growth.”
https://www.marketplace.org/2023/07/17/ ... s-economy/
More hearsay, and a Pettis article (the first one) which is replete with “analysts say” kind of statements, no actual details of what Pettis is putting forward. Also, some pretty deft attempts at manipulation. The second article has quotes such as “A lot of people say the economy is slowing down, but it doesn’t feel like it” and “On the streets, China’s economy certainly looks like it is recovering. In Chengdu’s Taikoo Li commercial area, crowds form in front of luxury retailers like Dior and Gucci. Household consumption is growing too — but not fast enough” - hardly supporting her argument. When the author of the second article tries to trash China’s GDP statistics he say “many economists believe” and “not everyone buys that argument”, which are utterly unsourced assertions. The quote from Wright is just another unsubstantiated assertion, by someone who works for a Washington D.C. based research group funded by the US private foundation complex. The article also relies much on the Harvard graduate and ex Hoover Institute research fellow David Li for opinions. His university seat is funded by donations from a rich American and he is a founding dean of a program funded by another rich American. And the article was published by a foundation and corporate sponsored US media non-profit. The second article is actually a fascinating example of how the ingredients of the US propaganda complex are put together to seem to be “independent”, when in fact each element has been funded by US corporations, US foundations and by donations from rich US people.
There seems to be no way that Yves herself could face up to the reality that China’s social market economy can keep growing and innovating better than Western capitalism. So she stoops to the use of Western propaganda outfits and individuals. Michael Pettis is a senior fellow at the US foundation funded Carnegie Endowment and shares Yves background on Wall Street. He is currently a professor at the Guanghua School of Management which is a neoliberal think tank and boats a chunk of Western faculty. So of course he would be against the Chinese development state, it is the opposite of his neoliberal ideology.
I answered with facts and Yves responded with subjective personal experiences, an FT article that was itself full of unsupported hearsay and tittle tattle (it is sad how far the FT has fallen in recent years) and a 6 year-old article from a Pettis who has been repeatedly proven wrong. Then with two other deeply flawed articles full of unsubstantiated assertions from Western-trained and funded economists. This is the state of “discussion” on a major US “alternative” site. It is indicative of how tight the Western censorship, and self-censorship, regime is becoming. And how fake the “left” / “right” discourse is within the West, when much of the underlying messages are the same.
I made the following comment in response to the use of me as a tool of pleb disciplining, but of course that got disappeared, as I assume will be any other comments that do not follow closely enough to the Yves line.
This is truly sad, I used to respect you a lot but this is way beyond the pale. Attacking a commenter without providing any warning or right to respond, and after repeatedly deleting my other comments (including my response to your last comment above). You are utterly disrespecting the people who comment and telling them that only your viewpoint is acceptable. It’s your site so you can do what you want, but you have belittled yourself with this.
Of course, you probably won’t allow this comment to stay up. I will desist from commenting further as you have shown that it is utterly pointless unless the party line is followed.
While this comment was not of course allowed, it seems that Yves then modified her post to include my and her last comments; without acknowledging making any changes.
Actual deep critics of the Empire are being increasingly harassed, de-platformed by web sites and financial institutions, arrested, jailed and even murdered (especially by the Zionist regime). The latest being Richard Medhurst who was harassed by the British police and has now had all his equipment seized by the Austrian police and been accused of being a member of Hamas. The European Union last year passed a law (the “Digital Services Act”) that allows them to force publications to self-censor or risk huge fines and being shut down.
Sites like NC are now the limit of “acceptable speech” in the West, and they themselves are self-censoring. Widespread censorship, combined with widespread spying on citizens (a reality in the US since the early 2000s) is a hallmark of fascism. As is the identification of official enemies that must be hated, an increasingly authoritarian police force, and an undermining and outright banning of oppositional forces such as free trades unions. We are being slow-walked into fascism, a neoliberal fascism.
I have added some of the text from the NC site notification of the reopening of comments. This first excerpt is a stunningly disingenuous attempt to legitimize an agency (USAID) that has been extensively proven to be predominantly a regime change and foreign politics and media manipulation entity, and those that carry out such foreign interference. The same discoursal structure could be used to defend the Mafia, because it probably does provide some good (financially supports widows of made men) and the people who work for it have no other option.
And as for USAID, as Clive pointed out long ago, it’s almost impossible to work in a stable middle class job that does not make one a participant in some sort of unethical or exploitative activity. Think of what has become of the health insurance industry, or most of finance, or the many vendors jacking up prices over what is justified by cost increases (new data suggests that eggs go on that list). And as with the financial crisis, does anyone seriously expect the perps, the policy-makers, or the leaders who designed and implemented the shifts in programs and priorities that took institutions away from their original missions to becoming tools to support the power structure, to be the ones who suffer? It’s the beneficiaries of the value-added services and the non-officer-level employees who will suffer.
And the below is nothing short of group level character assassination, “anyone who disagrees with us have become ‘rancid’”, “overly dogged”, “emotional” etc. Of course, with absolutely no evidence provided to back up these assertions, just “trust me”. The utterly patronizing use of language is also not subtle. The lack of self-knowledge and self-reflection is also very evident.
It has been troubling to see some of our particularly sound and well regarded commenters start to go rancid, as in start to regularly make comments that are much less informative, and also more emotionally charged or otherwise overly-dogged than their old high standard. The most common trigger is when a new topic becomes so important that we report on it regularly, and our take, or the emerging consensus of the readership, is contrary to strongly held beliefs of the commenter in question. As past examples, we’ve lost very valuable contributors over Brexit and the Ukraine conflict. The warning signs include failing to discriminate between solid and tendentious information sources, not recognizing the limits of their knowledge, making unduly emotional comments or rebuttals, and yet expecting the same level of deference as in their established area of expertise.
And the beatings will continue until you fully comply with the ideological blinders of the site. The last sentence below is very illuminating, pointing to the level of self-censorship in the current heavy-duty intellectual disciplining and censorship environment.
We are going to be in zero tolerance mode until readers understand that this site is not the place for mere personal opinion. There are plenty of places for memes, sheepdog-style talking point-driven commentary, singing in chorus, dogpiling, and other forms of thread-jacking: Kos and Reddit come to mind, along with social media generally. We’d rather have 50 thoughtful comments (such as links to articles or topics that weren’t included in Links) than 250 that consist largely of noise. Please keep in mind that we can also be held liable for comments. We have found that this is not merely theoretical.
https://rogerboyd.substack.com/p/naked- ... deological
I saw said 'China' piece and disagreed, did not re-post. I have been reposting from NC a bit of late but that had already fallen off with the departure of her more interesting pard. There had been some good criticism of capital but that has evaporated of late.
This is quite disappointing, I've developed considerable respect for Boyd. Just goes to show, the shallow left will always disappoint, when they don't betray you outright.
Censorship, fake news, perception management
Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management
The World’s Richest People Look Out for Each Other:
Jeff Bezos's WaPo won't run ad critical of Elon Musk
Pete Tucker
In addition to owning the Post, Bezos is the founder of Amazon and currently the world’s third-richest human. At best, the Post is a side-hustle for Bezos, while Amazon and his other business pursuits are what truly animate him. “With Jeff, it’s always only about business,” a former employee of Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, told the Post (10/30/24). “That’s how he built Amazon. That’s how he runs all of his enterprises.”
To sustain his sprawling empire, Bezos relies on government contracts worth billions of dollars, even as he stiff-arms regulators and irksome antitrust enforcers. This nifty maneuver is only possible if those in power play ball, but Trump didn’t during his first term (CNN, 12/9/19).
To ensure Trump II will be more amenable, Bezos has gone to lengths to grease the wheels, lavishing praise and millions of dollars on Trump and his family. He joined Musk and other tech billionaires in flanking Trump at his inauguration. (Bezos’s presence signaled “anything but independence for the Washington Post,” said Marty Baron, the paper’s former executive editor.)
Meanwhile, with Musk’s hand now on the public money spigot—thanks to Trump ceding much of the US government to him—Bezos is also busy doing favors for Musk (FAIR.org, 2/14/25), the richest person alive.
From a business perspective—the only perspective that really matters to Bezos—pissing the temperamental Musk off at a moment when he commands unprecedented power in the public and private spheres is a bad idea. So Bezos is being careful not to—as is his paper. Which brings us back to that rejected ad.
‘You can’t do the wrap’
The civic groups Common Cause and the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund were behind the ad wrap, which was to be accompanied by a full-page ad inside the paper.
But even though the groups had signed a $115,000 contract with the Post, the paper canceled the wrap at the 11th hour, even as it said it could run the inside ad, which hit on the same themes.
“They said, ‘You can have something inside the paper, but you can’t do the wrap,’” Common Cause president Virginia Kase Solomón told The Hill (2/16/25). “We said ‘Thanks, no thanks,’ because we had a lot of questions.”
Among them: Was the ad killed
because we’re critical of what’s happening with Elon Musk? Is it only OK to run things in the Post now that won’t anger the president, or won’t have him calling Jeff Bezos asking why this was allowed?
Kase Solomón asked the Post to explain its willingness to run the inside ad, but not the wrap. “They said they were not at liberty to give us a reason,” she told the New York Times (2/17/25).
Tellingly, in providing guidance to Common Cause on how to comply with the Post’s ad standards, Kase Solomón said the paper sent a sample ad paid for by a Big Oil group. “It was a ‘thank you Donald Trump’ piece of art,” Kase Solomón told The Hill.
The pulled ad directed readers to FireMusk.org, which states:
Musk, an unaccountable and unelected billionaire, is pushing to control public spending, dismantle the safety net and reshape our way of life to suit his interests. It’s clear what’s happening here: Musk and Trump aim to replace qualified civil servants with political allies whose loyalty lies solely with them.
‘Unacceptable business practices’
Meanwhile, Musk Watch noted, “Ads that were supportive of Musk and Trump were not impacted by similar errors.”
Still, one Ekō ad remains banished, with Meta citing “unacceptable business practices” as the reason.
That explanation makes a certain kind of sense. After all, alongside Bezos and Musk at Trump’s inauguration, was the world’s second richest person, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. And as Bezos’s Post has made clear, pissing off your fellow billionaires is indeed an unacceptable business practice.
https://fair.org/home/the-worlds-riches ... ach-other/
Jeff Bezos's WaPo won't run ad critical of Elon Musk
Pete Tucker
The Washington Post won’t say why it cancelled a six-figure ad buy calling for Elon Musk to be fired, but it’s likely the same reason the Post insisted Musk wasn’t Nazi-saluting on Inauguration Day, and why the paper killed its endorsement of Kamala Harris: because that’s what Jeff Bezos wants.
The wrap WaPo rejected.
In addition to owning the Post, Bezos is the founder of Amazon and currently the world’s third-richest human. At best, the Post is a side-hustle for Bezos, while Amazon and his other business pursuits are what truly animate him. “With Jeff, it’s always only about business,” a former employee of Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, told the Post (10/30/24). “That’s how he built Amazon. That’s how he runs all of his enterprises.”
To sustain his sprawling empire, Bezos relies on government contracts worth billions of dollars, even as he stiff-arms regulators and irksome antitrust enforcers. This nifty maneuver is only possible if those in power play ball, but Trump didn’t during his first term (CNN, 12/9/19).
To ensure Trump II will be more amenable, Bezos has gone to lengths to grease the wheels, lavishing praise and millions of dollars on Trump and his family. He joined Musk and other tech billionaires in flanking Trump at his inauguration. (Bezos’s presence signaled “anything but independence for the Washington Post,” said Marty Baron, the paper’s former executive editor.)
Meanwhile, with Musk’s hand now on the public money spigot—thanks to Trump ceding much of the US government to him—Bezos is also busy doing favors for Musk (FAIR.org, 2/14/25), the richest person alive.
From a business perspective—the only perspective that really matters to Bezos—pissing the temperamental Musk off at a moment when he commands unprecedented power in the public and private spheres is a bad idea. So Bezos is being careful not to—as is his paper. Which brings us back to that rejected ad.
‘You can’t do the wrap’
The bright red ad was to wrap around the front and back pages of some print editions of the Post, including those going to subscribers on Capitol Hill, the Pentagon and the White House, ensuring top officials would lay eyes on it. Featuring a laughing Musk hovering over the White House, the ad asks, “Who’s running this country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk?”
The flipside of the Common Cause/SPLCAF ad.
The civic groups Common Cause and the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund were behind the ad wrap, which was to be accompanied by a full-page ad inside the paper.
But even though the groups had signed a $115,000 contract with the Post, the paper canceled the wrap at the 11th hour, even as it said it could run the inside ad, which hit on the same themes.
“They said, ‘You can have something inside the paper, but you can’t do the wrap,’” Common Cause president Virginia Kase Solomón told The Hill (2/16/25). “We said ‘Thanks, no thanks,’ because we had a lot of questions.”
Among them: Was the ad killed
because we’re critical of what’s happening with Elon Musk? Is it only OK to run things in the Post now that won’t anger the president, or won’t have him calling Jeff Bezos asking why this was allowed?
Kase Solomón asked the Post to explain its willingness to run the inside ad, but not the wrap. “They said they were not at liberty to give us a reason,” she told the New York Times (2/17/25).
Tellingly, in providing guidance to Common Cause on how to comply with the Post’s ad standards, Kase Solomón said the paper sent a sample ad paid for by a Big Oil group. “It was a ‘thank you Donald Trump’ piece of art,” Kase Solomón told The Hill.
The pulled ad directed readers to FireMusk.org, which states:
Musk, an unaccountable and unelected billionaire, is pushing to control public spending, dismantle the safety net and reshape our way of life to suit his interests. It’s clear what’s happening here: Musk and Trump aim to replace qualified civil servants with political allies whose loyalty lies solely with them.
‘Unacceptable business practices’
The Post’s ad cancellation comes on the heels of Meta pulling an ad critical of Musk earlier this month. The yanked Facebook ad was purchased by the watchdog group Ekō, which had two other anti-Musk ads taken down by Meta—at least until the outlet Musk Watch made inquiries. The two other ads “were removed in error and have now been restored,” Meta told Musk Watch (2/18/25).
An ad from Ekō rejected by Facebook for “unacceptable business practices.”
Meanwhile, Musk Watch noted, “Ads that were supportive of Musk and Trump were not impacted by similar errors.”
Still, one Ekō ad remains banished, with Meta citing “unacceptable business practices” as the reason.
That explanation makes a certain kind of sense. After all, alongside Bezos and Musk at Trump’s inauguration, was the world’s second richest person, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. And as Bezos’s Post has made clear, pissing off your fellow billionaires is indeed an unacceptable business practice.
https://fair.org/home/the-worlds-riches ... ach-other/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management
The World’s Richest People Look Out for Each Other:
Jeff Bezos's WaPo won't run ad critical of Elon Musk
Pete Tucker
In addition to owning the Post, Bezos is the founder of Amazon and currently the world’s third-richest human. At best, the Post is a side-hustle for Bezos, while Amazon and his other business pursuits are what truly animate him. “With Jeff, it’s always only about business,” a former employee of Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, told the Post (10/30/24). “That’s how he built Amazon. That’s how he runs all of his enterprises.”
To sustain his sprawling empire, Bezos relies on government contracts worth billions of dollars, even as he stiff-arms regulators and irksome antitrust enforcers. This nifty maneuver is only possible if those in power play ball, but Trump didn’t during his first term (CNN, 12/9/19).
To ensure Trump II will be more amenable, Bezos has gone to lengths to grease the wheels, lavishing praise and millions of dollars on Trump and his family. He joined Musk and other tech billionaires in flanking Trump at his inauguration. (Bezos’s presence signaled “anything but independence for the Washington Post,” said Marty Baron, the paper’s former executive editor.)
Meanwhile, with Musk’s hand now on the public money spigot—thanks to Trump ceding much of the US government to him—Bezos is also busy doing favors for Musk (FAIR.org, 2/14/25), the richest person alive.
From a business perspective—the only perspective that really matters to Bezos—pissing the temperamental Musk off at a moment when he commands unprecedented power in the public and private spheres is a bad idea. So Bezos is being careful not to—as is his paper. Which brings us back to that rejected ad.
‘You can’t do the wrap’
The civic groups Common Cause and the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund were behind the ad wrap, which was to be accompanied by a full-page ad inside the paper.
But even though the groups had signed a $115,000 contract with the Post, the paper canceled the wrap at the 11th hour, even as it said it could run the inside ad, which hit on the same themes.
“They said, ‘You can have something inside the paper, but you can’t do the wrap,’” Common Cause president Virginia Kase Solomón told The Hill (2/16/25). “We said ‘Thanks, no thanks,’ because we had a lot of questions.”
Among them: Was the ad killed
because we’re critical of what’s happening with Elon Musk? Is it only OK to run things in the Post now that won’t anger the president, or won’t have him calling Jeff Bezos asking why this was allowed?
Kase Solomón asked the Post to explain its willingness to run the inside ad, but not the wrap. “They said they were not at liberty to give us a reason,” she told the New York Times (2/17/25).
Tellingly, in providing guidance to Common Cause on how to comply with the Post’s ad standards, Kase Solomón said the paper sent a sample ad paid for by a Big Oil group. “It was a ‘thank you Donald Trump’ piece of art,” Kase Solomón told The Hill.
The pulled ad directed readers to FireMusk.org, which states:
Musk, an unaccountable and unelected billionaire, is pushing to control public spending, dismantle the safety net and reshape our way of life to suit his interests. It’s clear what’s happening here: Musk and Trump aim to replace qualified civil servants with political allies whose loyalty lies solely with them.
‘Unacceptable business practices’
Meanwhile, Musk Watch noted, “Ads that were supportive of Musk and Trump were not impacted by similar errors.”
Still, one Ekō ad remains banished, with Meta citing “unacceptable business practices” as the reason.
That explanation makes a certain kind of sense. After all, alongside Bezos and Musk at Trump’s inauguration, was the world’s second richest person, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. And as Bezos’s Post has made clear, pissing off your fellow billionaires is indeed an unacceptable business practice.
https://fair.org/home/the-worlds-riches ... ach-other/
Jeff Bezos's WaPo won't run ad critical of Elon Musk
Pete Tucker
The Washington Post won’t say why it cancelled a six-figure ad buy calling for Elon Musk to be fired, but it’s likely the same reason the Post insisted Musk wasn’t Nazi-saluting on Inauguration Day, and why the paper killed its endorsement of Kamala Harris: because that’s what Jeff Bezos wants.
The wrap WaPo rejected.
In addition to owning the Post, Bezos is the founder of Amazon and currently the world’s third-richest human. At best, the Post is a side-hustle for Bezos, while Amazon and his other business pursuits are what truly animate him. “With Jeff, it’s always only about business,” a former employee of Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, told the Post (10/30/24). “That’s how he built Amazon. That’s how he runs all of his enterprises.”
To sustain his sprawling empire, Bezos relies on government contracts worth billions of dollars, even as he stiff-arms regulators and irksome antitrust enforcers. This nifty maneuver is only possible if those in power play ball, but Trump didn’t during his first term (CNN, 12/9/19).
To ensure Trump II will be more amenable, Bezos has gone to lengths to grease the wheels, lavishing praise and millions of dollars on Trump and his family. He joined Musk and other tech billionaires in flanking Trump at his inauguration. (Bezos’s presence signaled “anything but independence for the Washington Post,” said Marty Baron, the paper’s former executive editor.)
Meanwhile, with Musk’s hand now on the public money spigot—thanks to Trump ceding much of the US government to him—Bezos is also busy doing favors for Musk (FAIR.org, 2/14/25), the richest person alive.
From a business perspective—the only perspective that really matters to Bezos—pissing the temperamental Musk off at a moment when he commands unprecedented power in the public and private spheres is a bad idea. So Bezos is being careful not to—as is his paper. Which brings us back to that rejected ad.
‘You can’t do the wrap’
The bright red ad was to wrap around the front and back pages of some print editions of the Post, including those going to subscribers on Capitol Hill, the Pentagon and the White House, ensuring top officials would lay eyes on it. Featuring a laughing Musk hovering over the White House, the ad asks, “Who’s running this country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk?”
The flipside of the Common Cause/SPLCAF ad.
The civic groups Common Cause and the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund were behind the ad wrap, which was to be accompanied by a full-page ad inside the paper.
But even though the groups had signed a $115,000 contract with the Post, the paper canceled the wrap at the 11th hour, even as it said it could run the inside ad, which hit on the same themes.
“They said, ‘You can have something inside the paper, but you can’t do the wrap,’” Common Cause president Virginia Kase Solomón told The Hill (2/16/25). “We said ‘Thanks, no thanks,’ because we had a lot of questions.”
Among them: Was the ad killed
because we’re critical of what’s happening with Elon Musk? Is it only OK to run things in the Post now that won’t anger the president, or won’t have him calling Jeff Bezos asking why this was allowed?
Kase Solomón asked the Post to explain its willingness to run the inside ad, but not the wrap. “They said they were not at liberty to give us a reason,” she told the New York Times (2/17/25).
Tellingly, in providing guidance to Common Cause on how to comply with the Post’s ad standards, Kase Solomón said the paper sent a sample ad paid for by a Big Oil group. “It was a ‘thank you Donald Trump’ piece of art,” Kase Solomón told The Hill.
The pulled ad directed readers to FireMusk.org, which states:
Musk, an unaccountable and unelected billionaire, is pushing to control public spending, dismantle the safety net and reshape our way of life to suit his interests. It’s clear what’s happening here: Musk and Trump aim to replace qualified civil servants with political allies whose loyalty lies solely with them.
‘Unacceptable business practices’
The Post’s ad cancellation comes on the heels of Meta pulling an ad critical of Musk earlier this month. The yanked Facebook ad was purchased by the watchdog group Ekō, which had two other anti-Musk ads taken down by Meta—at least until the outlet Musk Watch made inquiries. The two other ads “were removed in error and have now been restored,” Meta told Musk Watch (2/18/25).
An ad from Ekō rejected by Facebook for “unacceptable business practices.”
Meanwhile, Musk Watch noted, “Ads that were supportive of Musk and Trump were not impacted by similar errors.”
Still, one Ekō ad remains banished, with Meta citing “unacceptable business practices” as the reason.
That explanation makes a certain kind of sense. After all, alongside Bezos and Musk at Trump’s inauguration, was the world’s second richest person, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. And as Bezos’s Post has made clear, pissing off your fellow billionaires is indeed an unacceptable business practice.
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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management
To Cozy Up to Trump, Bezos Banishes Dissent From WaPo
Pete Tucker
Elon Musk: Bravo, @JeffBezos!
That was the congratulatory message Elon Musk posted on X, the platform he bought for $44 billion in 2022 and subsequently turned into a pro-Trump bullhorn. Musk’s “bravo” was in response to Bezos’ shocking announcement that he was taking his media outlet, the Washington Post, in a Trumpian direction as well.
The Post’s opinion section will now advance Bezos’ “two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” Anyone not on board with this “significant shift” can take a hike, Bezos seemed to tell Post employees, in a note he also shared on X (2/26/25).
That was Wednesday morning. By evening, Bezos was dining with President Trump.
‘Those who think as he does’
“When billionaires talk about ‘personal liberties,’” media critic Parker Molloy (Present Age, 2/26/25) noted, “they’re usually thinking about their personal liberty to avoid taxation and regulation.”
Meanwhile, as Bezos professes his love of personal liberties, “his news organization now will forbid views other than his own in its opinion section,” said former Post executive editor Marty Baron (American Crisis, 2/27/25):
It was only weeks ago that the Post described itself as providing coverage for “all of America.” Now its opinion pages will be open to only some of America, those who think exactly as he does.
Such limitations may not be limited to the opinion pages. Post media critic Erik Wemple penned a column about Bezos’ directive—and, according to former Post editor Gene Weingarten (Gene Pool, 2/27/25), “It was spiked. Killed, in newspeak.”
‘A wingman in the fight’
And somehow Bezos, the world’s third richest person, believes his so-called free market “viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion.” But as Politico columnist Michael Schaffer (2/26/25) noted:
Between the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg and the Economist, there’s no shortage of outlets that are organized around a generally pro-market editorial line. For that matter, there’s the Washington Post. Do you recall the publication editorializing against the free market? Me neither.
Yet Bezos is now committed to turning his paper into a second Wall Street Journal—a project already under way, as Bezos’ handpicked Post publisher and CEO, Will Lewis, comes from the Journal, as does executive editor Matt Murray.
Naturally, the Journal’s editorial page (2/26/25) welcomed Bezos’ “free markets” pivot, writing, “It will be good to have a wingman in the fight.”
Despite Bezos’ claim that his views are underserved, it’s actually the lefty end of the spectrum for which that’s the case (FAIR.org, 10/9/20). But those wanting anything left of authoritarian capitalism will have to look elsewhere. “Viewpoints opposing [my] pillars will be left to be published by others,” Bezos wrote, adding, “the internet does that job.”
It’s unclear if Bezos was wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat as he wrote these words, but it’s unmistakable that he’s aligning his paper with Trump’s so-called “America First” agenda. “I am of America and for America, and proud to be so,” Bezos wrote.
The answer wasn’t ‘hell yes’
Bezos and Amazon have thrown millions of dollars at the billionaire duo running our country. At the same time, the Post has been kind to both men, most noticeably when Bezos killed the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris ahead of the election (FAIR.org, 10/30/24). For Musk, the Post not only spiked an ad critical of him, but also dismissed his Nazi salute on Inauguration Day as merely an “awkward gesture” (FAIR.org, 2/19/25, 1/23/25).
With Bezos’ new directive, the Post is all but formalizing its lapdog arrangement with Trump and Musk. How this will impact the Post, which Bezos purchased from the Graham family for $250 million in 2013, remains to be seen. But the fallout has been swift, and it comes on the heels of a mass exodus of both readers and top talent since the election.
Now joining the exodus is Post opinions editor David Shipley. Bezos wanted Shipley to lead the Post’s rightward turn, but only if he was all in. “If the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes,’ then it had to be ‘no,’” Bezos told him. But Bezos’ directive was too much even for Shipley, who had previously proven his loyalty by spiking a cartoon depicting Bezos and other tech executives groveling before Trump (FAIR.org, 1/7/25).
‘More like a death knell’
Bezos’ “massive encroachment” into the opinion section “makes clear dissenting views will not be published,” wrote the Post’s Jeff Stein, who only days earlier had been promoted to chief economics correspondent:
I still have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side, but if Bezos tries interfering with the news side, I will be quitting immediately and letting you know.
Former Posties were also quick to weigh in. “Bezos’ move is more than a gut punch; it’s more like a death knell for the once-great news organization,” wrote former Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan (Guardian, 2/26/25):
Bezos no longer wants to own a credible news organization. He wants a megaphone and a political tool that will benefit his own commercial interests.
Those commercial interests extend from earth into space.
“Amazon has a big cloud computing business. [Bezos’ space company] Blue Origin is wholly dependent on the US government,” Marty Baron told Zeteo (2/26/25). “Trump can just decide that they’re not going to get any contracts. Is [Bezos] going to put that at risk? Obviously, he’s not going to put that at risk.”
“It’s craven,” said Baron, who led the Post for eight years, nearly all of them under Bezos:
He’s basically fearful of Trump. He has decided that, as timid and tepid as the editorials have been, they’ve been too tough on Trump. He’s saying they’re going to have an opinion page with one point of view.
‘Contrary to the conspiracy theory’
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a hair’s breadth away from securing the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, questioned whether his critiques of billionaires (like Bezos) and low-wage behemoths (like Amazon) might be contributing to the Post’s blistering coverage of him (FAIR.org, 8/15/19).
“Contrary to the conspiracy theory the senator seems to favor,” Baron said in response, “Jeff Bezos allows our newsroom to operate with full independence, as our reporters and editors can attest.”
Fast-forward six years, and the mask is off, so much so that Baron now sounds like Sanders (to whom Baron owes a belated apology).
That the Post’s hard-right turn comes at a time when other corporate and billionaire-owned outlets are also cozying up to Trump, only makes this moment all the more fraught.
This alarming state of affairs highlights the importance of independent media watchdogs. “We launched FAIR nearly 40 years ago with warnings about the influence of media owners on news content,” FAIR founder Jeff Cohen said in an email:
The first issue of our publication featured a cover story on the corporate takeover of news written by legendary journalist and Media Monopoly author Ben Bagdikian. The recent antics of Bezos show that the need to scrutinize and expose corporate media owners is even greater today.
https://fair.org/home/to-cozy-up-to-tru ... from-wapo/
Pete Tucker
Elon Musk: Bravo, @JeffBezos!
“Bravo, Jeff Bezos!”
Elon Musk (X, 2/26/25) gives his seal of approval to the new univocal Washington Post.
That was the congratulatory message Elon Musk posted on X, the platform he bought for $44 billion in 2022 and subsequently turned into a pro-Trump bullhorn. Musk’s “bravo” was in response to Bezos’ shocking announcement that he was taking his media outlet, the Washington Post, in a Trumpian direction as well.
The Post’s opinion section will now advance Bezos’ “two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” Anyone not on board with this “significant shift” can take a hike, Bezos seemed to tell Post employees, in a note he also shared on X (2/26/25).
That was Wednesday morning. By evening, Bezos was dining with President Trump.
‘Those who think as he does’
Bezos doesn’t give any detail on what he means by “personal liberties,” but in the context of the billionaire appearing behind Trump at the inauguration, and Amazon contributing $1 million to the inaugural festivities—on top of paying Melania Trump $40 million for her biopic—it’s doubtful that his paper will be talking much about the myriad liberties under attack by the Trump administration.
Parker Molloy (Present Age, 2/26/25): “The audacity of claiming that free market ideas are ‘underserved’ in American media is staggering. Has Bezos somehow missed the existence of the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Bloomberg, Fox Business, CNBC and countless other outlets that have spent decades championing free-market capitalism?”
“When billionaires talk about ‘personal liberties,’” media critic Parker Molloy (Present Age, 2/26/25) noted, “they’re usually thinking about their personal liberty to avoid taxation and regulation.”
Meanwhile, as Bezos professes his love of personal liberties, “his news organization now will forbid views other than his own in its opinion section,” said former Post executive editor Marty Baron (American Crisis, 2/27/25):
It was only weeks ago that the Post described itself as providing coverage for “all of America.” Now its opinion pages will be open to only some of America, those who think exactly as he does.
Such limitations may not be limited to the opinion pages. Post media critic Erik Wemple penned a column about Bezos’ directive—and, according to former Post editor Gene Weingarten (Gene Pool, 2/27/25), “It was spiked. Killed, in newspeak.”
‘A wingman in the fight’
Bezos’ fidelity to his other pillar, “free markets,” is no less questionable, considering his companies hoover up billions of dollars in government contracts, are massively subsidized, and Amazon, which Bezos founded, is an egregious antitrust violator.
Michael Schaffer (Politico, 2/26/25): Bezos’ “latest edict effectively rebrands the publication away from the interests of Washington and toward the politics of Silicon Valley—and looks likely to cost it a chunk of the remaining audience.”
And somehow Bezos, the world’s third richest person, believes his so-called free market “viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion.” But as Politico columnist Michael Schaffer (2/26/25) noted:
Between the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg and the Economist, there’s no shortage of outlets that are organized around a generally pro-market editorial line. For that matter, there’s the Washington Post. Do you recall the publication editorializing against the free market? Me neither.
Yet Bezos is now committed to turning his paper into a second Wall Street Journal—a project already under way, as Bezos’ handpicked Post publisher and CEO, Will Lewis, comes from the Journal, as does executive editor Matt Murray.
Naturally, the Journal’s editorial page (2/26/25) welcomed Bezos’ “free markets” pivot, writing, “It will be good to have a wingman in the fight.”
Despite Bezos’ claim that his views are underserved, it’s actually the lefty end of the spectrum for which that’s the case (FAIR.org, 10/9/20). But those wanting anything left of authoritarian capitalism will have to look elsewhere. “Viewpoints opposing [my] pillars will be left to be published by others,” Bezos wrote, adding, “the internet does that job.”
It’s unclear if Bezos was wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat as he wrote these words, but it’s unmistakable that he’s aligning his paper with Trump’s so-called “America First” agenda. “I am of America and for America, and proud to be so,” Bezos wrote.
The answer wasn’t ‘hell yes’
As shocking as Bezos’ groveling is, it’s just the latest in a string of extraordinary favors he’s done for Trump and the man Trump has turned much of the US government over to, Elon Musk.
Sara Fischer (Axios, 2/26/25): ” Efforts by the Trump administration to scrutinize media have forced media, entertainment and tech companies to make difficult decisions about how far they will go to defend their editorial values.”
Bezos and Amazon have thrown millions of dollars at the billionaire duo running our country. At the same time, the Post has been kind to both men, most noticeably when Bezos killed the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris ahead of the election (FAIR.org, 10/30/24). For Musk, the Post not only spiked an ad critical of him, but also dismissed his Nazi salute on Inauguration Day as merely an “awkward gesture” (FAIR.org, 2/19/25, 1/23/25).
With Bezos’ new directive, the Post is all but formalizing its lapdog arrangement with Trump and Musk. How this will impact the Post, which Bezos purchased from the Graham family for $250 million in 2013, remains to be seen. But the fallout has been swift, and it comes on the heels of a mass exodus of both readers and top talent since the election.
Now joining the exodus is Post opinions editor David Shipley. Bezos wanted Shipley to lead the Post’s rightward turn, but only if he was all in. “If the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes,’ then it had to be ‘no,’” Bezos told him. But Bezos’ directive was too much even for Shipley, who had previously proven his loyalty by spiking a cartoon depicting Bezos and other tech executives groveling before Trump (FAIR.org, 1/7/25).
‘More like a death knell’
For those who remain at the Post, they do so warily.
Margaret Sullivan (Guardian, 2/26/25): “I foresee a mass subscriber defection from an outlet already deep in red ink; that must be something businessman Bezos is willing to live with.”
Bezos’ “massive encroachment” into the opinion section “makes clear dissenting views will not be published,” wrote the Post’s Jeff Stein, who only days earlier had been promoted to chief economics correspondent:
I still have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side, but if Bezos tries interfering with the news side, I will be quitting immediately and letting you know.
Former Posties were also quick to weigh in. “Bezos’ move is more than a gut punch; it’s more like a death knell for the once-great news organization,” wrote former Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan (Guardian, 2/26/25):
Bezos no longer wants to own a credible news organization. He wants a megaphone and a political tool that will benefit his own commercial interests.
Those commercial interests extend from earth into space.
“Amazon has a big cloud computing business. [Bezos’ space company] Blue Origin is wholly dependent on the US government,” Marty Baron told Zeteo (2/26/25). “Trump can just decide that they’re not going to get any contracts. Is [Bezos] going to put that at risk? Obviously, he’s not going to put that at risk.”
“It’s craven,” said Baron, who led the Post for eight years, nearly all of them under Bezos:
He’s basically fearful of Trump. He has decided that, as timid and tepid as the editorials have been, they’ve been too tough on Trump. He’s saying they’re going to have an opinion page with one point of view.
‘Contrary to the conspiracy theory’
There’s an irony in Baron calling out his former boss, when he spent years attacking others for doing so.
Back when the Washington Post had “full independence” from Bezos, it was running twisted columns denying that the billionaire had a lot of money (FAIR.org, 10/3/17).
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a hair’s breadth away from securing the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, questioned whether his critiques of billionaires (like Bezos) and low-wage behemoths (like Amazon) might be contributing to the Post’s blistering coverage of him (FAIR.org, 8/15/19).
“Contrary to the conspiracy theory the senator seems to favor,” Baron said in response, “Jeff Bezos allows our newsroom to operate with full independence, as our reporters and editors can attest.”
Fast-forward six years, and the mask is off, so much so that Baron now sounds like Sanders (to whom Baron owes a belated apology).
That the Post’s hard-right turn comes at a time when other corporate and billionaire-owned outlets are also cozying up to Trump, only makes this moment all the more fraught.
This alarming state of affairs highlights the importance of independent media watchdogs. “We launched FAIR nearly 40 years ago with warnings about the influence of media owners on news content,” FAIR founder Jeff Cohen said in an email:
The first issue of our publication featured a cover story on the corporate takeover of news written by legendary journalist and Media Monopoly author Ben Bagdikian. The recent antics of Bezos show that the need to scrutinize and expose corporate media owners is even greater today.
https://fair.org/home/to-cozy-up-to-tru ... from-wapo/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."