Gaza and the Death of “Information Is Power”

Journalism is dead. Journalism is nothing but another genre of entertainment. Some people watch cooking shows, others people watch horror films, others are into sports or the History Channel, and others follow the news — to cure their boredom, to pass the time, to feel smart, to feel emotion, to be titillated, to feel like they’re connected, like they are a part of something bigger than them.

But the fact is that journalism is dead. The stupid adage that has underpinned our information age — that Information Is Power — should be taken behind the woodshed and put out of its misery. Information isn’t power. It never was. Unless you have power, information is just information. And in our consumerist-entertainment society, information is just that: entertainment.

How else can you look at the terabytes of genocide videos coming out of Gaza daily…just the most horrific things you can imagine posted by real people going through it live…things that only used to be witnessed by survivors of wars and then mostly suppressed and kept inside because of how traumatizing these experiences were to them…are now beamed into our feeds like they’re NFL highlights or something, interspersed with ads and selfies and Marvel movie trailers…with running commentary and outrage reaction clips on podcasts and newsletters and TikToks and quote tweets. All of it in the end gets ground down into spectacle — genocide as spectacle. Genocide drives engagement! It’s gnarly and depressing. And it’s clearly changing nothing in Gaza, no matter how much more evidence is uploaded into our streams of children being ripped to shreds by American bombs that Israel launched. This isn’t deep or particularly insightful. I’ve seen people in Gaza describing this feeling, clearly aware that they’ve been made into entertainment as they struggle to survive and watching people around them killed everyday.

Don’t tell me while you’re sitting on your couch, "Stay safe, fight for your life, take care of yourself," and then turn the page and watch a nice movie. We are not content; we are souls, souls that are taken every day.

Not sure what to do about it. Even this thing that I’m writing is part of this entertainment complex, I guess. We’re all trapped in PKD’s Black Iron Prison. There is no escape. It’s one of the reasons I’ve had trouble writing or commenting on what’s happening in Gaza…and have tried to channel my energies into writing a novel that deals with some of these issues. Fiction feels less exploitative somehow…more honest.

And this whole issue that I’m talking about goes beyond Israel’s slaughter in Gaza and Palestine. It’s everywhere. I think about the live interactive maps that all the major newspapers put up every time there’s a wildfire raging in California. They allow us to watch things burn in real time, to zoom in and see a fire’s progress from thousands of miles away. We have this God-like access to information and yet…it’s useless. It doesn’t do a thing to stop the political power of the industrial machine that’s cooking our planet and killing everything in its path. But it does help pass the time…it’s entertaining for the minute people use it and then move on to consume something else. Pick your favorite sub-genre of journalism and you’ll see it’s all the same.

Anyway…take care. Happy Labor Day.

—Yasha

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