The New Alternative Media: Webster Tarpley

Albert Lanier

11 December, 2009

Webster Tarpley is a serious interviewer's dream come true. A historian and activist that can wade through the often dense growth of American and international history and economics, Tarpley has been a major intellectual force within the 9-11 Truth Movement since its inception.

Armed with a Bachelor's degree from Princeton, a Master's from Skidmore College and a PhD from Catholic University, Tarpley expounds on current events and their historical contexts during frequent guest appearances on programs like The Alex Jones Show and Russia Today. Tarpley also provides a "world briefing" on his weekly radio show, World Crisis Radio, heard Saturdays from 1-3 p.m. Central on the Genesis Communications Network.

I spoke to Tarpley earlier this year about what I term "the new alternative media"-namely the constellation of radio talk shows, podcasts and websites with the internet serving as the hub for this media which takes a decidedly non-corporate and independent spin on reportage of major national and world news.

Doing full justice to an interview with Webster Tarpley would require a long transcript. Readers will just have to settle for these snippets from what was a fascinating conversation I had with Tarpley.

Asked what he thought about the new alternative media as opposed to traditional corporate media, Tarpley stated "Obviously, it's a great advantage to have these things.

"The whole growth of the 9-11 Truth Movement was extremely dependent on the Internet and to some extent, these radio programs" said Tarpley.

For example, Tarpley noted that after the 7-7 bombings occurred, he was able to write an essay analyzing the attack and have it posted within a day. "That's obviously a big advantage" he observed.

However, Dr. Tarpley notes that 9-11 Truth movement members and other anti-NWO activists should not give up on the mainstream media. "I have been on Hannity and Colmes on the Fox News Channel, I have been on CNN a couple of times, " observed Tarpley. "I have been on Charlie Rose. "

Tarpley urges activists to aim to appear on "big talk radio. In some respects, it's horrible, " he admits but emphasizes "you have to go in and brave the blood and sand of the arena because you can reach a lot of people and you can have a very important effect."

Calling in to local or national radio shows is also a tactic Tarpley encourages in order to influence audiences consisting of millions of potential listeners to one's point of view.

>Contrasting his own World Crisis Radio show with other major radio talk programs, Tarpley observed that "the problem with talk radio is that it is controlled mainly by reactionaries, right-wing ideologues."

Rush Limbaugh, for example, is seen by Tarpley as a "tentacle" of the Mont Pelerin Society, a conclave of economists and political figures such as Milton Friedman and William Buckley who came together starting in the late 1940's in an effort to prepare a method of spreading right-wing economics practices—such as what later became the monetarist or University of Chicago brand of neoliberal economic theory—into the financial and intellectual bloodstream of American society.

Limbaugh's criticism of the 8 points—right to a home, to a job, medical care etc articulated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the "Freedom from Want" provisions of the Atlantic Charter—underlines his fealty to monetarist values. "Limbaugh gets (on the air) and says 'This is communism. Americans have no economic rights.'"

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Tarpley says on his World Crisis Radio show that he advocates for the FDR New Deal method of investment in the social and economic infrastructure of the nation and which supplants the destructive strategies of both right and the left. World Crisis Radio also provides a weekly briefing on the major news events of the week as well as in-depth analysis of a topic or subject featuring the expertise of guests.

As for President Barack Obama, Tarpley feels he should be attacked by the left side of the political continuum. "You've got to show he's a fraud" he notes. "He's not a friend of labor-he's a union buster. He's not a socialist-he's an agent of finance capital. In economic terms, it's fascism he's pushing."

Tarpley feels "Obama is eager to get Limbaugh and Hannity up there as the people he's against."

"The Obama White House is eager to present you with an alternative between Obama and Limbaugh because in a depression a lot of people will say 'Limbaugh wants to strip me of everything.' If you get unemployment insurance. Limbaugh wants to take it away" observed Tarpley.

"That's simply a way of propping up Obama<' stated Tarpley.

Webster Tarpley is the host of World Crisis Radio heard Saturdays 1-3 PM Central on the Genesis Communications Network. He is also the author of several books including the landmark tome "George Bush ? The Unathorized Biography" as well as the more recent "Barack Hussein Obama ? The Unauthorized Biography." His 1999 internet book Surviving the Cataclysm" was made available in print for the first time this year.

Albert Lanier is an independent writer and journalist who has written for numerous newspapers and magazines for more than a decade. Lanier has been interviewed by The Corbett Report and Media Monarchy on topics dealing with the crisis of mainstream American journalism, the public education system in the U.S. and the portrayal of conspiracies in major film and TV shows. He can be reached either on Facebook or at ajlanier01@msn.com.