In the early 1960s, DC Comics — home to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and other benevolent dictators-in-capes of the American cultural hegemony — introduced the Bizarro World to American comics, and therefore to the world. Also known as Htrae ("Earth" spelled backwards), the Bizarro World is a cube-shaped planet — fictional, I should probably emphasise in this time of rampant misinformation.
The character Bizarro himself debuted in issue #68 of Superboy, in 1958 if memory serves me (kidding: I looked it up on the internet). The opposite of Superman, with a B instead of an S on his chest, Bizarro has a strange way of talking: everything he says actually means the opposite. For example, when Bizarro says "bad", he means "good". Bizarro’s grammar is also weird, with confused pronouns. So instead of using the personal pronoun "I", Bizarro says: "Me don’t know difference between right and wrong — good and evil!"
The Bizarro World is ruled by the Bizarro Code, which reads as follows. "Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!"
Some examples of Bizarro World opposites, which will resonate later on in this essay: in one episode we are shown that, in movie theatres, "the Bizarro audience views a film negative; what is ordinarily black appears white … and vice versa."
An audience member cheers on the villain in a cowboy movie: "Hooray! Bad-guy am getting away from sheriff!" In another example, a salesman is selling Bizarro bonds: "Guaranteed to lose money for you!"
Yes, you’re not the only one thinking it: Bizarro is Iqbal Survé, and Bizarro World is Independent Media — and indeed Survé’s entire collection of absurd opposite-world companies. As Bizarro Iqbal told Bizarro Public Investment Corp: "Invest in Bizarro Ayo! Guaranteed to lose money for you!"
And thus it is that Independent Media specialises in Bizarro journalism, where the truth may be inverted, and editorial integrity morphs into propaganda. At this point, Independent Media and its online property IOL (Independent Online) have basically just given up any pretence at journalism and are firmly in bed with the purveyors of misinformation and propaganda. It’s Radical Editorial Trashformation at its best.
Recently, the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism published a story showing how fake accounts, sock puppets, "obscure nonprofits" and useful idiots (the last term is mine — and yes, you guessed it, Carl Niehaus features in this column) were being used to push radical economic transformation (RET) on social media.
This is how amaBhungane describes the RET faction: "A mix of true believers, manipulators and opportunists, these groups raise genuine grievances about SA’s racially skewed economy but also help to spread dangerous disinformation aimed at energising their base and targeting their perceived enemies."
AmaBhungane poses the question: "Is there a hidden gravitational force pulling their strings? Is there a common goal that unites the defenders of former president [Jacob] Zuma with those championing economic reform and the energy lobby that is pushing for a Russian nuclear deal while also fighting to protect coal? Are there puppet-masters pulling the strings?"
In the real world, amaBhungane is SA’s leading centre for award-winning, civil society-changing, investigative journalism. In Bizarro-IOL World, it’s "a law enforcement agency with privileges and peers to conduct security and military-style investigations and classified operations" and "part of [the] Deep State web of shadow operations".
These quotes are from a piece IOL ran, written by the head of Transform RSA, Adil Nchabeleng. If you were idly browsing the aisles of "Shills R Us", looking to buy a bargain package that both defends Zuma and lobbies for a Russian nuclear deal, you’d do worse than putting Transform RSA into your shopping cart.
I really can’t do better than quote the bio news website Daily Maverick has for the group’s leader: "Adil Nchabeleng first hit the headlines as leader of Transform RSA, when his organisation threatened the ANC’s [national executive committee] with court action if it decided to remove Jacob Zuma from the presidency. Then his organisation launched a court bid to stop then-energy minister Jeff Radebe from signing contracts with independent power producers. During the elections in 2019, Nchabeleng appeared to be working with Mzwanele ‘Jimmy’ Manyi, in trying to claim that the election results had been manipulated by the [Electoral Commission of SA]. Nchabeleng is currently involved in the ongoing debates around the future role of Eskom. He is not a fan of independent power producers. But he is a fan of Jacob Zuma."
Niehaus’s scathing — and I’m using that in the Bizarro World sense, so "not remotely scathing" — description of amaBhungane on IOL is pretty funny. Clearly, the questions from its journalists touched a nerve. "Ironically they claim that they dig dung and ‘fertilise’ democracy, but in reality they are gnawing away at the roots of our democracy and produce stinking dung. I would have liked to use a different synonym which would have been more appropriate but is not acceptable for publication."
Seriously, Carl, a newspaper that’ll publish the shit you write isn’t going to cavil at a curse word.
Where the Bizarro World logic really kicks in is when you read the litany of complaints Nchabeleng and Niehaus level against amaBhungane.
The very ordinary journalistic act of sending questions to people becomes "a series of calls and messages which various people have reported receiving from amaBhungane journalists who have been fielding neo-Hitlerism type of so-called investigative journalism", part of "spying and PsyOp (psychological operation) projects aimed at terrorising people who have active views on WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram".
In Bizarro World, the required ethical practice of informing people that their comments will be on the record becomes a suspicious activity. Apparently that’s not the way journalism works. "There were points within the interview process where even when I repeatedly made it clear that what I was saying was off the record, I was clearly told that whatever I said is on the record. I felt highly uneasy with the style deployed in this matter," writes Nchabeleng.
It’s even funnier when the simple act of being asked to provide answers rather than obfuscation is spun as torture. "The agent journalist, in particular, kept on demanding explicit declaratory answers as if conducting an interrogation in a closed room with me handcuffed to a steel table.
I can imagine the
members of Twitter
Storm in those Mr
Price camo outfits
Niehaus sports when
h e’s out at rallies
taking advantage of
the free buffet
"And when you don’t answer satisfactorily, just like in an interrogation the agent journalist would exert undue force and keep on insisting that you give them their version of a confession to the story that they are developing. It was an interrogation more than anything."
While the idea of amaBhungane’s Susan Comrie klapping her interview subjects is strangely appealing, this is pure fiction.
Apparently — and I have to admit, this is something the lamestream media hasn’t told me — the apartheid police were ethically compelled to inform torture victims that their comments were on the record, and send them a list of questions in advance.
"It is clear for all to see that amaBhungane’s agency project uses similar tactics and strategies employed and copied from an apartheid military and security police handbook used during apartheid to rein in, traumatise, silence, arrest and secretly detain all those people who were fierce activists fighting for liberation against the apartheid state regime."
Those last quotes are from Nchabeleng, but Niehaus also embraces the Bizarro World. "The past few days myself and other members of a small WhatsApp group called ‘Twitter Storm’ were targeted with similar ‘detailed questions’ by Susan Comrie about what we have posted there. The temerity of Ms Comrie, who calls herself an ‘AmaB Investigator’, to think that she can subject us to security police-style interrogation is actually astounding."
Leaving aside the sad, puffed-up importance of calling your WhatsApp group "Twitter Storm" (I imagine them all in those Mr Price camo outfits Niehaus sports whenever he’s out at rallies taking advantage of the free buffet, lamenting the fact that social distancing means they can’t use their secret handshakes any more), why are you putting the name in inverted commas? And you do know that being sent "detailed questions" isn’t a synonym for "security police-style interrogation"?
These inane absurdities would be funnier if they were on Twitter where they belong. They’re less funny when a news organisation elects to place them as opinion pieces on its platform.
We’ve become used to the propaganda and misinformation that Iqbal "Call Me Doc" Survé’s editorial staff run, disguised (badly) as journalism, but this drivel doesn’t just show an utter disregard for editorial standards, it’s actually a Bizarro World acting out of the exact opposite of reputable journalism. And it doesn’t help that Independent has withdrawn from SA’s press council, membership of which would inconveniently make its stories open to oversight from the press ombudsman.
Why does Independent Media run content containing lies and propaganda about amaBhungane?
One reason is that the real world is intruding in the Bizarro World of Bizarro Iqbal. He has to give his clumsy allies the crude weapons they’ll need if they have any hope of sustaining his smokescreen of misinformation and spin.
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