Rukshan Fernando, Australian political commentator discusses his foray into journalist and his on-the-ground street reporting during the pandemic restrictions in Melbourne and the turn that legacy media has taken over the past two decades in curating the news. Noting how left-of-centre media outlets have buttressed narratives around race and gender, Fernando criticises this brand of racism, sexism and homophobia largely being embraced as “progressive” by the left and promulgated by the left-of-centre media. Fernando analyses how mainstream media in the west has created a double standard in its coverage of war whereby media often buttresses government messaging such that we are not allowed to criticise both sides in a war, but where we must see one side as good and the other as evil. Discussing what he views as a “disconnect” in the west, Fernando notes how today it is no longer an option to hold anti-war views regarding the current war in Ukraine since the default critical position framed by legacy media obliges the subject to take an “anti-Russia” position. Fernando remarks of the anti-war position, “It used to be something that was celebrated…Today if you are at all anti-war you might be a far-right Putin supporter.” Historicising recent cultural and political shifts in the west, Fernando covers the current media emphasis upon gender and race which ultimately ends up creating quite real forms of racism whereby the white, woke subject uses dark-skinned bodies as surrogates for their purification rituals which come in the form of public confessions, all the while nothing on the ground, in reality, ever changes for those who face inequalities resulting from poverty and war.

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