Immortal Technique - The 4th Branch

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28384562

Immortal Technique suggests that the 4th branch of the American Government is the Corporate media and it has been used to corrupt people’s ideology.^[[1] https://genius.com/Immortal-technique-the-4th-branch-lyrics]

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I was scrolling and saw the art for Revolutionary Vol 2 and had to come by. Love this shit.
- Revolutionary Vol 2
  Nice!
  Interesting information I was able to find on the album:
  Revolutionary Vol. 2 is Immortal Technique’s sophomore album, and is a follow-up to his debut album, Revolutionary Vol. 1.
  Issues discussed throughout the album include poverty, drug trade, slave labor, censorship, corporate control over the media (including hip hop), the September 11th World Trade Center attacks, racism, the prison industrial complex and class struggle.
  The album features political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who introduces the album and also provides a speech about hip hop’s relationship to Homeland security.
  Immortal Technique claimed in an interview to have sold more than 85,000 copies of the album.
  The following images are the album’s liner notes, where Tech candidly contextualises the stories and details of each track.^[[1] https://genius.com/albums/Immortal-technique/Revolutionary-vol-2
  [ImagetoText:]
  The 4th Branch - Written & Arranged by Immortal Technique. Music Produced by Danja (BeatBandits)
  The government has 3 branches, Judicial (Supreme Court), Legislative (Congress), and Executive (White House). Operating on a system of checks and balances (that would idealistically force each one to answer to another) supposedly prevents our so called democracy from becoming a totalitarian state in which only one group's interests are reflected. But if the interests of one group, is slowly becoming the political agenda of the majority of these branches as it is now unbalancing the system, there is a fallback. The news media has the potential to be the voice of the people and provide the public with useful information and a historical reality of the actions of our nation in order to better our democracy. Instead, they have become the rubber stamp of the military and the government. They are now the most useful propaganda machine that the system has, they provide straw-man argument perspectives and very filtered information. Gone are the days of the Watergate exposing press, the integrity of the popular media has been damaged by the reality that leaks through their recycled fear driven reports. They are no longer the voice of the people; they are corporate controlled entities who put profit margins before truth, they are people who write puff pieces on government and business interests instead of vocalizing the criticisms of millions. They are the 4th branch of the government.