Why is Western media discourse structurally incapable of thinking about power?

Supporting an American or Israeli policy in a Middle Eastern conflict has become, in European and Francophone newsrooms, an act that requires justification. Understanding why this reflex exists is more useful than being outraged by it.

A STRUCTURAL BIAS, NOT A CONSPIRACY This response is not a coordinated phenomenon. It is a viewpoint that has solidified over many years, in which Western power is instinctively associated with illegitimate domination and resistance to that power—whatever its nature—with a form of dignity. This framework, inherited from Third-Worldism of the 1960s and academic post-colonialism, has taken over newsrooms well beyond activist circles. It now functions as an editorial unconscious.

The result is an asymmetry of treatment that defies analytical coherence. Liberal democracies—the United States, Israel—are held to a standard of moral perfection never applied to the regimes they confront. The Iranian regime can finance Hezbollah, repress its women, and........

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