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Unmasking John Oliver: The Hypocritical Liberal Lapdog And An Oxy’Moron’ Of Western Propaganda

October 18, 2024
The Commune

A Western propagandist who is nothing but a glorified (White) Dhruv Rathee – John Oliver is that liberal lapdog who barks when commanded against India and especially Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In this article, we will expose how true he is to his liberal masters in hating Modi and India.

In June 2024, following the Lok Sabha polls in India, he released a video on the Indian Elections, in which John Oliver directed a pointed critique at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, presenting what was a one-sided attack on his leadership. Oliver framed his commentary around allegations of voter suppression and electoral irregularities, suggesting that Modi is set to secure a third term through dubious means. He argued that Modi has been “strategically quiet about his pseudo-authoritarian, pro-Hindu vision of India,“ implying that the Prime Minister utilizes anti-Muslim rhetoric for political gain.

Oliver accused Modi of undermining democratic institutions and stifling political opposition, mocking the Prime Minister’s infrastructure and food distribution programs by likening them to “Lyndon Johnson rebranding food stamps.” He dismissed India’s economic growth, highlighting widening inequality and claiming that “1 million people now control about 80% of India’s wealth,” while criticizing the country’s poor performance on the Global Hunger Index.

The episode also spotlighted the alleged rising anti-Muslim sentiment and violence under Modi, citing instances of police brutality against Muslims and making a provocative statement that such violence “is not a bug of Modi’s leadership, it is a feature.” Oliver urged the international community to adopt a more critical view of Modi, stating, “It should be possible to acknowledge the good things that Modi has managed to do for India, while also acknowledging that many Indians live in active fear of what he seems more than happy to represent.”

Given this background, let us take a look at his hypocrisy when it comes to talking about the elections in the US or the policies or the Democrats.

Kamala Harris is such a clueless opportunist that she regurgitates the same tired political talking points John Oliver mocked seven years ago, presenting them as if they were groundbreaking ideas. Oliver once said, “Small startup businesses hold a special place in America’s heart. Politicians from across the political spectrum love to talk about how important they are,” while poking fun at the cliché, “Small businesses are the backbone of our economy.” Unfortunately for him, Kamala Harris recently echoed this sentiment, stating, “… Small businesses are the backbone of America’s economy.”

In a video on his channel titled “Election Subversion 2024: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)”, he accuses the opposition in USA of using mistakes in vote counting to push lies about the election process! So by his logic, if you question the mistakes in the vote count, you are bad. He says, “In August and September incredibly late in this election cycle the board passed a bunch of new rules that will make it much easier to so doubt in the certification process one of them requires a full hand count of ballots in each Precinct to take place either the night of the election or the next day and which must be done by just three individuals per Precinct which might sound reasonable to you but as experts have explained that has the potential to cause chaos.”

He then shared the video of Georgia State Director Kristin Nabers who says, “I’ve brought with me 1,872 pages of paper representing what a stack of ballots could look like on a busy counting day and busier larger precincts may have even more than this number. If I were to hand this stack of paper to three random people in this room, especially at the end of a long voting day, and ask them to arrive at the same total number, do we think that’s feasible? Counting large numbers of anything one by one is an incredibly tedious process and not one humans are well equipped for. People doing a hand count are going to make mistakes which can then be exploited to spread lies and so further distrust in our elections and our election officials.”

Oliver continues, “Yeah of course if you handed three exhausted people that stack of paper and told them to have the exact same number by morning you’re not guaranteed the same answer. At best, you get a scenario that would give most people a panic attack and the count an instant orgasm.”

In a previous episode, John Oliver mocked Prime Minister Modi for being asked rather whimsical questions during an interview about how he eats a mango, if he carries a wallet in his pocket, if he has a best friend, etc. Now, as the upcoming election looms in his adopted country, the USA, it raises the question: will Oliver turn his satire toward fellow comedian Stephen Colbert? In a recent episode of The Late Show, Colbert asked Vice President Kamala Harris light-hearted questions about her favorite beer and football team. The real test will be whether Oliver dares to mock Kamala Harris in the same vein. Or does he only reserve his critiques for Modi?

In a video from July 2024 titled, “Trump’s Second Term: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)”, Oliver shares a video where Trump takes a vow. He says “We will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like Vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible, they’ll do anything whether legally or illegally to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”

Oliver had to make a joke here so he asks if Trump was falling asleep when he clearly wasn’t.

He further says, “You think well okay Trump’s making big scary promises but he did that in 2016 too and he broke a lot of them that is true, although he did also go on to do a lot of damage – he blew up the Iran nuclear deal, withdrew us from the Paris climate agreement, slashed access to food stamps and gave a huge tax cut to corporations, he separated children from their families at the border, suggested they cure Covid with bleach or a bright light, summoned an Insurrection and put in three Supreme Court Justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade and seems to have no intentions of stopping there, but it is true that a lot of his other major policy goals from ending the Affordable Care Act to getting Mexico to pay for his border wall remained out of reach. Trump as president was sort of like a hamster in an attack helicopter.”

John Oliver claimed to be speaking “truth to power” regarding Prime Minister Modi during the Indian elections. However, as elections approach in his home country, the USA, he seems to be cozying up to the ruling Democrats while attacking Donald Trump, the opposition candidate. Doesn’t this make John Oliver the “godi media” of the USA?

How do US liberals truly “speak truth to power”? John Oliver has taken jabs at various world leaders, including India’s Modi, the UK’s Boris Johnson, Brazil’s Bolsonaro, and even the leader of Turkmenistan.

But do you know which world leader John Oliver has never dared to critique? Joe Biden.

What’s particularly striking is that Oliver’s segment against Modi is his most vicious yet, labeling him a “symbol of hate.” He hasn’t employed such strong language against even the dictators of China or Saudi Arabia.

The true viciousness of liberals seems to emerge only when targeting Hindus—a notably softer target.

A few years ago, “comedian” John Oliver challenged Trump with serious policy questions. But now that Biden is president, Oliver and his liberal counterparts are focused on trivial topics, like the cost of concert tickets. This is how American liberals claim to speak truth to power.

Speaking Truth To Power

All the liberals in India acting holier-than-thou about “speaking truth to power” are missing the mark. Just look at US liberals: no tough questions for Biden. Instead, they’re busy debunking Fox News and “exposing” Meghan McCain on The View. Meanwhile, Biden’s mouthpieces like John Oliver are discussing breakfast cereal!

Shows like those of John Oliver often seems well-researched until they tackle subjects where viewers have more firsthand experience than the media or academia. For instance, his episode on the power grid contained inaccuracies that were pointed out by experts in the field.

If you thought Dravidianists were known for buttressing the DMK the best, think again. John Oliver went on to even cancel standardized testing. He even began criticizing fundamental statistical concepts. Probability distributions, which can model various situations—including livestock populations—were dismissed by him. Why did he take this stance? It appears he is aligned with teachers’ unions that contribute to his ‘bosses‘ in the Democratic Party. This raises questions about his objectivity, and his criticisms of science are definitely influenced by political motives.

In the episode titled “Standardized Testing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)“ where he explains how standardized tests impact school funding, the achievement gap, and how often kids are expected to throw up, he says, “…that teacher lives in Florida which uses this formula to assess teachers, a formula which looks like the kind of thing that aliens carve into an anti-semite cornfield and many of these formulas on which teachers careers depend were partly inspired by research and this is true that modeled the reproductive trends of livestock. Basically, we judge the nuance of what happens in the complicated world of a child’s mind the same way that we judge that we judge this.”

Here’s another example. Propaganda looks like this – With Biden in office, everything is just too great in America. So great that his mouthpieces, like John Oliver, focus on why America needs a hilarious new breakfast cereal. These “comedians” once tackled “real issues” during the Trump era.

And did you know John Oliver sat in conversation with our very own Ravish Kumar and Vinay Shukla to discuss the “award-winning” documentary, While We Watched? This conversation was truly unsettling to witness John Oliver act as a staunch propagandist for America’s ruling Democrats. Yet, he comfortably sits down with Ravish Kumar to critique the Indian media for not questioning its government.

The underlying message seems to be that the Indian government should face scrutiny, while the U.S. government should be exempt from such questioning. What’s alarming is the boldness of liberals in this double standard.

In India, liberals advocate for challenging the ruling party. Conversely, in America, they expect unquestioning loyalty to the ruling party, urging everyone to sing its praises without dissent.

He says, “You talk about the general state of the Indian media and you ask what’s the point of distracting people with these imaginary problems, it’s pretty clear you know like, what the point is especially because you later answer your own question when you say, the sweet smell of nationalism has masked the stench of our reality. What has been more disappointing to you – the fact that Indian media has been so complicit in spreading that sweet smell or that it’s worked?”

Ravish replies, “This media is out to kill opposition in any form – be it a political party, be an author Arundhati Roy, or any students leader.”

John Oliver loudly criticizes Modi, and back home in America, he serves as a lowly propagandist for the Democrats. He wants you to believe that his favored liberal politician, Democratic Congresswoman Katie Porter, is too poor to afford an ambulance. The reality? She has a net worth of $1.5 million!

In the video on Medicare for All, he says, “As a practical matter most of us don’t choose our health insurance, we get what we get through our employer and because of that choices like changing jobs can become significantly harder and not just that. Oftentimes your choice of doctors and hospitals is severely limited by which ones your insurance will cover. Going out of your insurance network can be prohibitively expensive. That is why people bend over backwards to stay in-network and even when they do that it can still all go horribly wrong.”

The scene then cuts to show his favorite politician. The narrator says, “While campaigning in 2018 Democratic congresswoman Katie Porter’s appendix burst. Her first thought – how much would it cost? “I didn’t call an ambulance cuz I knew it could cost a lot if you call an ambulance specifically had my manager drive me not to the closest hospital but to the in-network hospital,” says Katie Porter.

The narrator continues, “Even though the hospital was in her network, the surgeon who helped save Porter’s life was not and she got a bill for nearly three thousand dollars,”

It is noteworthy that John Oliver’s episode mocking the UK’s ruling party during the UK elections was not aired on TV in the UK. The UK did not tolerate interference from outside, not even from a British comedian living in the US. This episode was not available on regular TV due to impartiality rules set by Ofcom but was streamed in the UK through Sky Comedy.

It is also important to note that the YouTube link was inaccessible in the UK due to the elections. Unlike Sky, YouTube wasn’t licensed to stream it there. Interestingly, John Oliver didn’t even make the episode available on YouTube in the UK.

Yet, Indian liberals were upset when his video on PM Modi faced delays in India. The West seems to only aim to interfere in India’s elections while never daring to try the same in the UK.

Liberals in the US, like John Oliver, often unleash their disdain for Modi. Meanwhile, liberals like Bernie Sanders have praised Stalin’s USSR and Fidel Castro’s Cuba without any criticism. It’s telling that they reserve their harshest criticism for a democratically elected leader like Modi, despite his commitment to democratic processes.

Liberal privilege looks like this – While around 2,000 people are dying from COVID every day in the U.S., John Oliver chooses to criticize how the President of Belarus handled the pandemic. With Biden in office, American liberals seem more focused on “speaking truth to power” in Belarus than addressing pressing issues at home!

Media bootlicking looks like this – Joe Biden’s spokespersons, like John Oliver, focus on the issue that opposition-led states like Texas lack air-conditioned prisons. Meanwhile, they ignore the real issues that Americans are facing!

In his video on “Trade: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)” about 6 years ago, he says, “The overwhelming consensus among economists is that trade between countries, generally speaking, can create jobs, lower costs and be a net benefit to both nations.”

Who would have thought we’d see the day when liberals are actually praising free trade? What a twist!

John Oliver only gets to rub shoulders with the likes of Ravish Kumar who have been reduced to creating poems on Monu and whining on their individual YouTube channels. Sucking up to his liberal masters seems to be the only way out for him to earn his daily dinner and thus he remains the most loyal lapdog of the Western liberals.

This article is based on various X posts and video snippets by Abhishek Banerji.

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