Mainstream.

That's the word that those starting up Singanews are using to describe themselves; that's also the word that another Christian, Lui Tuck Yew - who helped craft the new Penal Code singling out gay men only for discrimination in the law together with his co-religionist Amy Khor - used to [self]-congratulate the 'mainstream media' (or MSM) for an imaginary competence.

Now, isn’t "mainstream" also what extremists who occupy the ultraconservative-to-fascist band on the political spectrum always like to claim they are? (I know this for a fact from being in N America from the early to mid-1990s at the height of gay activism, stemming from the AIDS crisis and the Reagan-Bush Sr years.)

This is actually not inconsistent with an aspect of ultraconservative ideologies (which include conservatism, ultraconservatism, and fascism but not right-of-centre conservatism, which would be considered liberal democratic) where its proponents tend to hold up one group – usually themselves – as the ones whose values the rest of society should aspire to.

By taking a nice-sounding word like “mainstream” for themselves, what they attempt to do in effect is to leave the rest of us with no nice names to call ourselves; mainstream people are well balanced, and even perfectly-centred individuals not given to extremes.

Or so the mythology goes.

There are four fact-based reasons for rejecting Singanews' claim of being ‘mainstream’, and I say "fact-based" because I will be making use of the objective criteria used in political science here:

1. The PAP does in fact subscribe to a political ideology despite pious protestations to the contrary. That ideology is anywhere between ultraconservatism-to-fascism exactly like the Thio Li-ann Christians – this is a strictly academic view.

2. Though he is hardly the first to do so, Lui Tuck Yew refers to the SPH and mediacorp stables as "mainstream". However, the 'MSM' has only ever reflected PAP thinking. The PAP pursues this policy because it has always wanted to shape the thinking of Singaporeans in its own image with the intended result of its thinking becoming the statistical norm in the Singapore population. That way, the PAP can then go on to claim that that statistical norm is also the “mainstream” view, which oh, just so happens to coincide with their political ideology, ultraconservatism-to-fascism on the political spectrum.

3. Singanews has so far drawn their writers only from the Christian community and the 'mainstream' media, the latter which can currently only be called the Hindu smokescreen. The people who are starting up Singanews have all of that same sense of arrogance about their moral superiority, “moral superiority” being the true subtext of “mainstream”. (This actually relates very neatly to my point of moral equality in an earlier post in this thread.)

4. However, ultraconservatism-to-fascism can by no stretch of the imagination be considered to be political centrism, which is the word we should actually be using instead of ‘mainstream’ when it comes to discussions of law, politics, political and socio-political news and commentary; centrism is the word that professional journalists use.

(One way to know if you are politically a centrist is to ask yourself if you are appealed to the practises of constitutionalism, the rule of law, and rationality in legislation and its enforcement. Does any of the above describe the PAP and its scions?)

We would all be doing ourselves and Singapore a favour by refusing to refer to the SPH and Mediacorp stables as the mainstream media (MSM). I’m going to start by referring to them as the UCM (or ultraconservative media when they are ultraconservative) or FM (or fascist media when they are being fascist); I hope others will join me.

We should not even be feeling bullied that we are ‘less than moral’ for not espousing any of the views of the ‘mainstream’ Singanews – the contempt that ‘mainstream’ people have for those not like them, and the punitive ill treatment that awaits the victims that they compulsively wish to estrange cannot be called moral.

I’m proud that I’m a political liberal with some social democratic leanings.

I'm proud to be a centrist.