Indie's Origin Story
Sharing my political and news journey and evolution over the past several years
*Note: If you’re reading this via email, the post is cut off - click the title to read it on the web or in the Substack app*
Last week, another creator I trust and like asked me to tell them more about myself so they could get a better understanding of my perspective and motivations, while respecting my need and desire to remain anonymous. My ranting response was comprehensive enough that I decided to copy/paste it and expand upon it here with links.
Addressing that first point, I initially chose to do this anonymously to keep the focus on the independent reporters, outlets and creators I amplify, but largely to protect my family from the crazies out there, as well as keep my career separate. I’ve seen too many people doxed and have people call their boss or company to try to get them fired. No thanks. I have had people threaten to dox me as well. Not fun.
To start, I am a 50 year old American dad of 3 who has been amplifying independent media for the past 4+ years. I was fiercely independent from the time I could vote right thru the Obama years, never registered to a party and, sadly, bought a bill of goods on Bernie Sanders. The policies he was advocating for were the ones I felt would help the country (universal healthcare, free college for all, universal childcare, taxing the wealthy, etc), and I was inspired by the massive group of people motivated to support and “fight for it.”
For 5 years, I was duped into blindly believing that the corporatocracy was ripe to be taken down without direct action or an alternate plan. I was also blind to the depth of corporate infiltration into the campaign as well as the “progressive” media space that was sold as free from corporate influence.
All of that led me to realize that corporate media brainwashing is one of the big problems. The propaganda apparatus needs to be countered somehow.
As an independent publisher and creator, I’ve been most focused on amplifying the journalists exposing corruption, fighting for people’s ability to speak & publish & produce without fear of government persecution, and showcasing the stories that corporate media tries to bury - like the workers’ perspective in labor fights, for example. Or corporate wrongdoing that have PR firms working overtime to glaze over, deflect and cover up, like when the UAW purged senior leaders in 2023 & the union accused the Federally appointed moderator of being motivated by the union’s call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
I wrote this article below almost two years ago to more clearly articulate just how much I see corporate media impacting all of our lives. We all should be actively working to identify their profit-driven narratives, question them, and eventually unplug from the propaganda machine entirely.
Our New Mission: Unplug From Corporate Media
Let me start by saying: I am FAR from the first person to recognize or write about this, but after a ton of analysis & talking it over with a TON of different people from different perspectives, I’ve identified what is probably our largest impediment to moving forward positively as a society in the USA right now:
Progressive News Daily Launches as a Result of Super Tuesday, 2020
In March 2020 (a week before COVID lockdowns, funny enough), I founded and launched Progressive News Daily, a news aggregator website on a platform that no longer exists (paper li) - which updated articles 2x daily from the sources I told it to pull from - articles, tweets & YouTube videos. The idea was to create a central hub to find all the “progressive” news, commentators and journalists I was following at the time, in one place.
I had been looking for something like it and found it did not exist. So I built it. Using a MacBook Air, sitting on my couch every night I curated news, sharing the links to Twitter and Facebook groups.
I had serious questions about the Democratic primary being potentially rigged, we were locked down during COVID and I had time. I was SHOCKED when none of the “progressive” shows even entertained the question or dove seriously into the vulnerability of the electoral process or the machines used to register & count votes. The people who were abandoned by Bernie and refused to get on board with the Democrats’ agenda were angry, ignored & marginalized.
This video by Richard Medhurst was one I can distinctly remember as helping me overcome my focus on the hoping the oligarchy-run Uniparty, masked as a duopoly, would ever deliver for the people.
Lots of the progressive outlets and channels didn’t see the shift back to the corporatist side of the Democratic party and Bernie’s selling out until it was too late - some never got off that train and still believe, against all evidence, that Bernie is advocating for the people in any substantial way.
In August, I started producing summary graphics and short, 10-second “videos” showcasing top headlines and videos from each edition, with links in the description, to promote the newsletter. Below is one of the first videos, from August 31, 2020.
REBRAND! Now Independent Left News
In September 2020, I found I had been moving in the opposite direction from the “progressives” that I was amplifying. The “progressives” were not interested in actually challenging duopoly power, extracting any concessions out of the Biden campaign in exchange for a vote over Trump after they had maneuvered to push Bernie Sanders out of the primary.
Finally, the trial of Julian Assange in September 2020 did a lot to radicalize me and expose who was actually advocating for a free press.
It turned out that the term “progressive” really just meant “a Democrat under 50 who’s embarrassed to admit that they’re Democrats.” The Progressive News Daily website and social media presence were rebranded as Independent Left News to better align with where I was politically, and I launched a new Discord server as an adjunct to the website, creating bots to feed articles and videos into separate channels, dedicated to each creator.
Below is one of the first rebranded summary videos, from October 10, 2020.
Force the Vote: A Clarifying Moment
Another important experience post-2020 election was participating in one of my first grassroots online organizing groups.
It was a campaign to convince the Progressive Democrats in the House (the “Squad”) to hold out voting for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker after Democrats won the House in the 2020 election. We planned “hashtag blitzes,” made memes, images & short videos to explain the idea and the rationale behind holding out to get a House floor vote for Medicare for All, to put every representative on the public record whether or not they supported universal healthcare.
Part of the group wanted to convince them not to vote for Pelosi, no matter what - forcing the Democrats to choose a new Speaker, because they had the leverage of 8 votes to force it.
Efforts were made to reach out to the staffs of the newly elected progressives some members of the group had contacts with, but the idea was rejected outright, as the Squad did not want to risk being perceived as pariahs & risk committee assignments from their own party.
When the Squad was unwilling to play that kind of hardball against their own party leadership that loathed them, I knew they would never support the grassroots - I had already voted against the duopoly in 2020 and vowed to never vote for another Democrat or Republican again.
Emerging from this push was a group of “progressive” media figures - led by some of the commentators I was following, amplifying & supporting at the time - that were vehemently against pushing for anything to force a vote, or to upset Nancy Pelosi in any way.
They revealed themselves to not be truly anti-duopoly, and were going to support the Democrats, no matter what. You know this group: The Majority Report, TYT, Kyle Kulinski, David Doel (The Rational National), Mike Figueredo (The Humanist Report), Hasan Piker, Farron Cousins and many others showed that they were never going to push their audiences & the lawmakers they had influence with to fight the Democratic Party leadership in any substantive way, especially when it mattered and they had the leverage to do so.
That helped shape which outlets and journalists I chose to amplify (and to no longer amplify) as representing the view of independents moving forward into 2021.
Wading Into the Podcast Waters
That December, I recorded my first livestream & podcast, going through the top headlines on my website. In just my 3rd or 4th livestream, I reacted to the January 6 riot in 2021, and am proud to have that initial take, the footage and perspective preserved as it was happening.
Directing The US Solutions Summit
In early 2021, I was contacted by a guy who had a YouTube channel that asked me to join his “advisory board” (for free - this was volunteer) - that’s where I ended up meeting
, who I was already acquainted with but did not know well, as he had founded the Jimmy Dore unofficial Discord server, which I was a member of.During one of the board meetings, an idea for a series of panel discussions was suggested to talk about solutions for independents post-election. A series of panels focusing on education, government and media were arranged, a timeframe was set and I volunteered to direct it. I also helped book a lot of the guests from independent media.
It was the first time I had ever produced or directed anything like that, and had no idea what I was getting myself into. Reef and I were the primary drivers and team behind the scenes of producing the US Solutions Summit - a 5-hour, 6-panel livestream on May 20, 2021 - which happened after many late nights, more than 100 hours testing, coordinating with panelists/moderators and marketing the event. There were, of course, a number of people who contributed that the event would never have happened without as well.
Throughout the summer of 2021, I became a moderator for several of the channels I amplified to help them with chat. I did a couple of interviews that summer about independent media, supported and co-streamed the 2021 March for Medicare for All, participated in panel discussions with people who recently had started livestreaming.
Corporate media was already nowhere to be found on my radar any more, including Netflix, Amazon Prime & all pro sports. It all serves the agenda of profit over people.
How Did We Miss That? A Show Without a Name Starts
At the end of August, Reef and I started a midnight Saturday weekly show, just reading through and commenting on some of the articles on my website that people may have missed. It didn’t even have a name at first, but in our 3rd week, I finally named the show “How Did We Miss That,” which is still going and is about to livestream episode 135.
Indie News Network - The Next Logical Step in Media and Organizing
That October, I reached out to some of the newer creators I was following at the time about the idea of pooling resources, amplifying each others’ content and being guests on each others’ shows.
was launched 3 years ago this month. We started with 16 members, many of whom have moved on, but the concept and model are still the same.
INN was founded on, and is still to this day, about amplifying each other and sharing resources/knowledge.
The members share a premium Canva account; we share both a premium Restream and a premium Zoom account, in which we can choose to publish to either our channels or the network channels or both.
I kind of lead the thing, coordinate a schedule weekly & am the principal driver, but the idea is that it should be able to run autonomously without any one member.
The big goal is to counter the massive wave of corporate driven crap pushed out to most we know with better, more helpful content that the actual people make. To create and help shape the media we want to see. We're still trying to figure all this out as we go along and evolve over time. I also publish the INN Newsletter separate from this newsletter - initially it was just to write articles, but there was so much video activity I started publishing a weekly update every Friday starting in June 2023, adding a daily newsletter starting in August this year.
Israel-Palestine, Ethnic Cleansing & October 7
I was raised as a Conservative Jew. I was a Bar Mitzvah, I was married under a Chuppah and visited Israel myself 30 years ago, but was never really comfortable with my religion. I was always more non-secular, but “culturally Jewish.” My father has always been a rabid Israel supporter and used to always host big meals for the big holidays with 30+ people attending, family & friends & business associates & random “stragglers.” I stopped practicing entirely after I moved out of my parents house and became a “twice a year Jew” (went to temple only on Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur) once I got married, because it was important to my wife.
I was never really bought into the prayer, or the Hebrew (I can read it but have no idea what it means), or much of the religion at all, besides the food & the lessons to be a good person.
I would be completely fine if religion were completely abolished worldwide across the board.
The conflation of Zionism with Judaism is something that needs to be understood and is also never discussed. There was never a conversation in my family or community that there were Jews anywhere opposed to Israel existing (“Israel has a right to exist” is a mantra in the Jewish community as a standard response to an accusation of genocide or ethnic cleansing).
I had never heard a discussion within the Jewish community about the difference between Zionism & Judaism, or that Einstein was opposed to the creation of Israel - or WHY. “Israel is always right & the homeland for the Jews” is the only permitted narrative, and everything they do is acceptable & can’t be questioned for morality under that framing.
For much of my life, I had, admittedly and ashamedly, turned a blind eye to Israel and their treatment of the Palestinian people. More accurately, it had been shielded from my view.
For those who wonder how people can go through life and NEVER hear about it, I can confirm that there is a massive silent effort within the Jewish community and within Israel-supporting (AKA Zionist) families to not really speak about Palestinians all, to not let their children learn about it at all, aside from when Israelis are attacked in retaliation.
“Self-hating Jew” is the typical slur thrown around to discourage any Jews who start asking why Israel feels the need to imprison all the Palestinian people, deny them right of return or citizenship - and that’s just the beginning of what a disadvantage the Israelis deliberately place on every Palestinian - by design. Anyone who isn’t Jewish asking questions like that? Well, they’re automatically painted & smeared as an anti-Semite, cast out and ostracized from access to businesses and opportunities run by Israel supporters of all religions. Thought like that is not welcome in a “civilized” society. We’ve seen that hyper-inflated in the past 13+ months.
Israel being under attack and persecuted is the default mindset, and nothing has ever happened due to Israel’s behavior; it’s shrugged off as necessary when confronted that Israel is occupying the Palestinian people & are responsible for their well-being. Selling the myth that Israel never does anything wrong is an important component to the brainwashing & ensuring compliance. Often, families and Jewish leaders don’t address that side of the conversation, because it leads to hard questions with monstrous answers that they would rather avoid telling their children.
Below is an hour-long conversation I had with INN’s
, one of my close friends, where we discussed the pushing of a narrative which tries to link black people and Jews equate the struggle of the Jews in the USA with the struggle of African Americans. We talk about the brainwashing of Jewish kids about the Palestinian people & the framing of Israel as the birthright land of the Jews.I literally had to seek out this kind of coverage to find it, because corporate media would never allow speech this critical of Israel. Once I saw it, I couldn’t un-see it. Courageous journalists like Asa Winstanley, Richard Medhurst, Sam Husseini, Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, Alan MacLeod, shows like The Convo Couch, The Jimmy Dore Show, Going Underground, Redacted Tonight, anti-Zionist independent Jewish journalists & commentators like Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Dan Cohen, David Miller, Lee Camp, Eleanor Goldfield and others, as well as documentaries like “Gaza Fights for Freedom” all introduced me the perspective of the Palestinians. They are censored, largely banned from major media outlets speaking on behalf of the Palestinian people.
One specific moment(s) that changed my view permanently was in May 2021 when the IDF murdered journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the riot police attacked her funeral and attacked her pall bearers.
In that same month, the IDF destroyed the high rise building in Gaza which housed the Associated Press as well as many other media outlets. It showed me just how one-sided the “battle” was, especially with US & UK financial and military backing. How they will murder the people telling the truth about Israel’s brutality, rather than allowing anyone to hear about their behavior. “Dead men tell no tales.”
October 7 pushed the narratives and Israel murdering Palestinian children to unprecedented levels, further reinforcing what I’d learned about Israel’s tactics over the previous few years. But THIS DID NOT START ON OCTOBER 7, 2023. It didn’t start in 1948 or even in 1932 in Germany.
Most Jews never ask, or bother to investigate, what happened in 1948 - we just accept that the land was gifted by “the world” to the Jewish people after the extermination of 6 million in the Holocaust during World War II. I never heard the question asked or addressed whether anyone was living on that land, and how that happened, and what happened to them, specifically.
It’s forced me (and many others) to look a lot closer at everything the USA does and led me to be outspoken about how Israel must be stopped and what that looks like.
One can’t truly be anti-imperialist while ignoring the influence & propaganda & whitewashing of child murder & prisoner torture pushed by Israel, the US & UK with regard to treatment of the Palestinian people.
Never Stop Growing and Experimenting
Interviewing: Friends of Indie Left
In January 2022, I decided to try an interview show, Friends of Indie Left, where I interviewed the journalists and podcasters that tell the truth in the face of corporate corruption- that get censored. I recorded 11 episodes in 9 months - maybe some day we’ll bring it back.
Executive Producing: The Politics of Survival
, who joined INN at the start, did not have her previous podcast deal renewed and asked us to help - I led the team of 5 we built to rally around and support her, produced & hosted & promoted 80 episodes of The Politics of Survival over the past 3 years, even as she moved to Moscow. I even got to be a guest on the show in one of the final episodes…Indie joined Tara Reade on The Politics of Survival to talk about Geopolitics, Independent Media, her Podcast, INN and more!
Watch the Full Interview, streamed LIVE Friday, June 15 to INN and Tara's channels
Host, Engineer & Editor of Jesse Jett’s INN Show
The same month we started Tara’s show (March 2022), we invited
to join us at INN after he’d been a guest on several shows the prior months. Amazingly enough, he asked me to co-host and produce his exclusive INN show, American Tradition - we usually stream every other Tuesday, when it works out. This week we produced our 50th episode after 2 1/2 years.It’s therapy, fun work and a privilege to be able to help Jesse share his art with the world.
Odds and Ends, Skills Acquired Along the Way
I also have gotten the writing bug occasionally, sporadically, when I am inspired to do so.
I make a lot of the graphics & intros you see for my channels and INN using Canva, with the help of the INN members.
I also learned how to some basic video editing and use DaVinci Resolve to clip all the shows.
I’ve tried to help dozens of channels with graphics, their livestreams, publishing to Substack, etc.
There are several other shows & podcasts I’ve produce(d), plus I never even got a chance to touch:
the creation of the Indie Media Awards to highlight the small group of people who are usually censored and shadowbanned but are still dedicated to telling uncomfortable truths & fighting the corporate machine
all of the coverage of specific issues like Julian Assange’s case and freedom, the Twitter Files releases, the Israeli assault on Gaza (again - it started LONG before October 7, 2023), all of the strikes covered and the criticism of 3rd party labor unions https://www.youtube.com/@indleftnews/playlists
the launch of the Indie’s Tech Tips channel in January 2023
Indie's Tech Tips: New Channel & Show! Exclusively on Rumble!
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Did you know we started a Tech Tips channel for content creators? We've already got 8 episodes uploaded! Please subscribe, share and tell your friends!
Now What?
All of this has led me to a point where I am firmly anti-electoralism at the federal level, because our vote has zero influence on policy. It’s a consent ritual that has zero material impact on our lives, especially living in a state that is usually pre-decided before the polls ever open. There are solutions outside the system of ticking a name in a voting booth and checking out until the next election, largely centered around mutual aid, education & supporting local business over multinationals wherever possible.
I remain focused on trying to awaken the people around me about just how controlled their lives are by corporate media, begging them to opt out and sharing which journalists and outlets they should pay close attention to. News flash: it’s the the ones exposing corruption, those fighting for people’s ability to speak & publish & produce without fear of government persecution, and telling the stories that corporate media tries to bury.
There’s a LOT more here, too - obviously - like all the other people who were involved at INN and those who still are a part of it today, for example. One day, I will probably write a book, but this is a good start.
Thanks for coming to my rant and learning more about the perspective of the person behind the keyboard, microphone and newsletter.
Hi! I’m Indie. I champion corporate-free independent media which challenges the narratives that cable & broadcast media push on behalf of advertisers.
Founder,
Publisher, Indie Media Today &
co-host & livestream engineer of multiple shows
livestream & podcast producer
multi-platform content publisher & content distribution expert
self-taught video editor, clip producer
freelance graphic designer
independent news aggregator
Founder, the Indie Media Awards
Fiercely independent politically, anti-duopoly (or corporate UniParty).
Nicely Done!
What a pleasure it has been to read more about you, Indie! I was curious about some of this before, but so much more of it is stuff I had never thought of. Though I've always considered you kind of a workhorse, I'm amazed to see how much more you've done in independent media that never came to my attention. I'm very glad I got to learn a little more about the man behind the avatar.