Political Correction and Discontent
A tribute to Substack and the Alt-Media Landscape
Nancy and Ronald Reagan were the woke in the 80’s, Bush Sr and Clinton in the 90’s, W. Bush in the 2000’s, college kids in the 2010’s, and Ben Shapiro in the 2020’s. —J.L.Canter
Right Place, Right Time
The Voice Got the Exclusive Because They Were Already There…
Just finished the audiobook The Freaks Came out to Write, it is the definitive history of the Village Voice and as radical and liberal as it was, and as terribly corporate and oppressive as it is now, it was the Substack of its time. There’s a chapter in it about the Stonewall riots, they were the first paper reporting on it, and if you know about the Voice you might say, well sure, gay rights was exclusively covered by the Village Voice back then, but that wasn’t it. They were the first paper reporting on it because they were at the right place, at the right time.
The writers at the paper would go to the Lion’s Head to drink after they got off work, two doors down from the Stonewall Inn. They said there was peepholes drilled into the wall so they could keep a look out. See, homosexuality was a crime back then, and this was a gay bar. One of the bars had a red light and when the light would turn on, the men would separate, it meant the cops were there. The Stonewall was a gay bar with no liquor license, so it was handled by the mob. In Manhattan at the time, you had to pay off the mob, who would pay off the cops, so they wouldn’t raid your bar. The Stonewall missed a payment, and history was made.
The Only Place to Turn, is the Right Place to be
When all the censorious attacks on speech were being conducted during Covid, the only platform left was Substack. Quite honestly Substack was the place to be if you wanted the truth. There have been many movements to discredit this platform. To make us out as kooks. To make alternative media out as kooks, but we are at the right place, at the right time.
I see a thread here that runs through here. From the I.F. Stone Weekly to
, , , , and . Also, there’s many still holding out on YouTube, I’m a personal fan of Joe Rogan, and Dave Smith’s Part of the Problem, these places are the right place at the right time.An election just happened; they’re calling it “The Podcast Election”. I’m calling it the “right place, at the right time Election”.
Alternative Media IS the Right Place, and THIS is the Right Time
As the mainstream media becomes, no longer mainstream, the writers and journalists here at Substack, and the internet as a whole, are at the right place at the right time. We are the Alt-media, in the midst of its rise to mainstream, and thanks to
and and whoever else was involved in the rise of Substack, this is where the story is! And Substack holds an extremely precious position, because when the holdouts on YouTube and other places start to get censored, this platform will be here waiting for them. This is truly the only uncensored platform in the world! I know so many people love to call the new-Twitter that, and I’m so thankful for the Twitter Files, but it’s just not! New-Twitter is actively censoring every account that posts a Substack link, in any post, anywhere in their bio, or shares a Substack link with anyone! Even if you are not a Substack writer you get censored for posting a story with a Substack link in it. I've heard the argument, “Well, it’s just business.” I don’t give a fuck what you call it, it's censorship. It sure as fuck ain’t freedom!I got a permanent ban from Twitter, 3 months into Elon’s ownership for telling someone to kill themselves, but not so explicitly. I was defending
over the Twitter Files coverage. At that time there was a flurry of the same mindless repeat comments under everything Matt posted, and after seeing the way the government uses these bot accounts to attack adversaries, I assumed these were fake accounts. I posted under one, after seeing him repeat under five different posts by Matt, “Taibbi doing PR for billionaires”, so I commented under it “If you are a real person, you should kill yourself”. It was real quick, zero thought put into it. I logged out, came back later and was gone. So, now I have to operate as an anon account, on Twitter, and by the way, if I found out the person killed themselves, I’d be devastated but it was a troll, trolling, and I took the bait and got the boot. Also, I agree with a suspension but a permanent ban after the 1st offense?! Come on. You can follow me however at Right2BareWords on Twitter or X, just saying.If you want the unadulterated truth, the only place it exists is in this alt-media landscape, Substack, Rumble, Locals I do believe! It’s here, and here to stay. Noam Chomsky once said, “If you want to get information, sure, read the New York Times, but read it with your eyes open. With a critical mind. The Times is full of facts. You’re not going to find the information there on Facebook.” Chomsky has had a hard time with that last sentence. I’d say, read everything with open eyes, there’s fact to find everywhere, including Facebook.
Politically Correct is Woke; Henry Kissinger is Politically Correct
One more time and I swear I won’t say it again; we are at the right place at the right time. Political correction, or wokeness, shows up during every moment of discontent, and moments of discontent are always right around the corner, the solution to both is an uncensored, unadulterated, free alternative-press, and that’s who we are here at Substack. Sounds like I’m doing an ad for
. I assure you I am not; I’m doing an ad for myself. For this medium, in 2025, the biggest year in new-media.Alternative Media, Then and Now
My point is the Alternative press got the story because they were there when it happened. Think about Covid, Russiagate, all the stories that couldn’t be reported on, only seen the light of day because of the alternative press here at Substack. It was the only place you could find the truth, because it was the only place not censoring the truth. We got the story because we were where the light could shine through.
Imagine if the New Yorker, when they opposed the woke police, wouldn’t have run the My Lai story for
, who is now here with us by the way, what if no one would? That was a period of discontent, and Nixon and Kissinger were the woke. A decade earlier or later, they wouldn’t run that story if their lives depended on it.***For sake of argument I’ll leave it with Nixon, but I truly believe there was other forces in intelligence asserting power on Nixon to push him out of office, but it is an unimpeachable truth that Nixon and Kissinger acted as villains towards the media and antiwar activists. It is true that Nixon wanted the Great Daniel Ellsberg “Taken care of”, but it starts to get fishy when you see what was done. The “White House Plumber’s” who were all employees of the CIA except one who was in the FBI, months before the break-in at the “Watergate Hotel”, which went down in history, they broke into Daniel Ellsberg’s Psychiatrists office, to find proof that he was some kind of “subversive character”, they totally flubbed the break-in and did not find his file, but there was no reason to think this about Dan, and no proof that Nixon ordered them to do it, but it sure looked that way. It was the first step in destroying Richard Nixon, and bringing down a President, whether he ordered it or not.***
The mainstream press was politically correct in the 60’s and there was a thriving alt-media covering the stories that the mainstream wouldn’t touch, or would get way wrong, sound familiar? After seeing the Alt-Press getting the stories people wanted to read all through the 60’s, places like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times started covering real stories in the 70’s, and hired Alt-Press Journalists like
and Neil Sheehan, who covered the Pentagon Papers. This never lasts long; these big publications don’t handle government scrutiny well. They need corporate ad revenue to carry on, and they falter when pressed too hard. They won the greatest case in history for the free press, New York Times Co. v. United States, The Pentagon Papers case. Nixon filed an injunction to stop the NYT paper from going to press over the publishing of the Pentagon Papers. This was the first time a newspaper had ever been stopped from publishing a story and went to the high court quickly.Nixon argued that prior restraint of the free press was necessary to protect national security, the Supreme Court did not. It was ruled that the government cannot restrain the press from publishing ever again after this case, they proceeded to publish the Pentagon Papers with zero holds barred, it was the greatest win for free speech in history, a time for celebration, but the NYT still advanced into a corporate shell of its former self.
The "Greater" Substack Region of the Alt-Media
Outside of Substack there is also alternative-media who exist solely on the internet getting these stories right, or at least taken an honest wack at them, from covid to Russiagate to the 2024 election. We must include places like The Grayzone-who’s continuously breaking stories the corporate media won’t touch, Consortium News—who’s broken more stores the Mockingbird media wouldn’t touch than any other publication known to man, that’s thanks to the late Robert Parry! Scheer Post runs all of Chris Hedges stories since he was censored by the New York Times! The Dark Horse Podcast w/
and who are actual Biologists with PHD’s in Evolutionary Biology. They do some stuff on Substack, but they mostly exist on YouTube, Rumble, and Locals. They were completely demonetized and slammed by the censorship-industrial complex during Covid, also. Anti-War.com-The name says it all, it’s the best source in the world for geopolitics and the opposition to war, and the lies they are telling us. All these places are. The YouTube channels still holding on, work around the oppressive algorithm by using nicknames and such to trick it, shout out to Part of the Problem w/ Dave Smith & Rob Bernstein, The Jimmy Dore Show, Breaking Points, and , who’s joined us here on Substack. Oh, I must mention Rumble, who’s literally charged “The free speech alternative to YouTube”, where the great Glenn Greenwald has migrated to with his System Update, and Stay Free w/ Russell Brand, Dan Bongino, and lots of others. These are the free press, the Alternative Press, our allies in the fight for truth.
Discontent and the Alternative Media
***I should probably point out that every time I use the term alt, alternative, or any combination of such, this word can be swapped out with Independent. I realize the word “Alt-” has been bastardized by the recent events and demonizing, whether deserved or not, of the “Alt-Right”.***
***It’s just a word, there are more.***
There has always been an alternative media, in times of discontent, opposing political correction, or wokeness, throughout the years.
During and surrounding Stonewall they were fighting for gay rights, avoiding the draft, and opposing the war. Today we would call them the woke, but the woke are always the ones calling for suppression of civil rights in the name of their thing. Or actively suppressing the individualistic nature of human thoughts and expression. The woke back then supported the war, and hated draft dodgers, they prosecuted draft dodgers, and conscientious objectors, because that was not politically correct. The politically correct, or wokesters suppressed the exposure of their war crimes, and people like I.F. Stone, and
were trying to expose them. Here’s an excerpt from an article, The Rise of the Underground Press:As youth culture and 1960’s social movements emerged, the mainstream media missed, ignored, and/or confused the story. As a result, anyone seeking to learn what was really happening in Vietnam, or in United States politics generally, or who wanted to learn about marches, protests and rallies, or who wanted to read about rock and underground music and get the youth perspective on movies and other pop culture – had to go to the alternative press.
These were the days before corporations’ co-opted “alternative” culture like hip-hop music seemingly overnight. As much as it is argued that corporate media organizations go where the money is, in the 1960’s these institutions sought to suppress rather than co-opt the counter-culture, causing an underground press to emerge and thrive.
The counter-culture, that’s what it is, but whoever is counter to the politically correct, or the corporate-interested, or state-affiliated, or woke—these terms mean the same thing—is on the right side of history.
Nancy and Ronald Reagan were the woke in the 80’s, Bush Sr and Clinton in the 90’s, W. Bush in the 2000’s, college kids in the 2010’s, and Ben Shapiro in the 2020’s.
Ronald at the time, was using the Contra’s to overthrow the leftist Democratically-Elected Sandinistas in Nicaragua—as I can’t seem to stop talking about—and in order to avoid Congressional Oversight were going along with tons—literally tons—of cocaine going to Los Angeles, and straight to South Central, for the money to provide to the Contras, at the same time that the crack epidemic was exploding Nancy Reagan was running her famous “Just Say No” Campaign and began the long-running, civil rights suppressing, life ruining, “War on Drugs”, and guess who was covering this? It wasn’t the NYT! It was the Alternative Media! A bunch of these stories were broken by Consortium News’ Founder, the late Robert Parry.
Think about the rampant idiocrasy of Russiagate, where was the NYT on that, they were wrong, and they were wrong on purpose! Alt-Media won; How about the Covid years, boy the Covid years were fucked up for mainstream press and pundits, they worked in lockstep to keep us locked in our homes and distribute a shot that was dangerous and had very little positive effects, if any! While actual scientists who tried to expose this and real journalists who tried to report on this were censored out of existence, but here at Substack there was thousands of articles every day, screaming at the top of their lungs that something ain’t right here! By the way, thank you for that! We now have all the good ones.
Today they’re actively suppressing stories of the current wars, like they always have.
And the newest one, the cognitive decline of our, still, current president Joe Biden, wasn’t spoken of in the corporate press until they had no choice. We all knew it, alt-media was constantly reporting on it, and the corporate media were screaming, “It’s okay! Nothing to see here….” all the way until that doomed final debate, when they just couldn’t hide it anymore.
Each time they set up a false narrative and get exposed as corporate-funded liars they get less and less relevant, and now, nobody believes them.
In times of discontent and political correction, the alt-media are the only ones with the ability to tell the truth, and today the discontent has reached its peak, and the mainstream press are at an all-time low. Degraded on so many levels, that the Alternative Media, the ones telling the unadulterated truth have reached the mainstream. And being the least censored platform in existence we are at the head of this alt-media movement, right here at Substack, this is the right place, at the right time!
Thank you for reading!
Editor-in-Chief