This is going to become the stuff of legend, so I wanted to take note of it: The New York Times decided to devote the entirety of its front page to a list of 1,000 names of COVID-19 victims. It’s Memorial Day weekend, and we are at or near the 100,000 mark in terms of nationwide death toll from the virus so . . . Well, there was some rationale for this, anyway, and the New York Times staff devoted hours to the project:
Simone Landon, assistant editor of the Graphics desk, wanted to represent the number in a way that conveyed both the vastness and the variety of lives lost. . . .
“We knew we were approaching this milestone,” she added. “We knew that there should be some way to try to reckon with that number.”
Putting 100,000 dots or stick figures on a page “doesn’t really tell you very much about who these people were, the lives that they lived, what it means for us as a country,” Ms. Landon said. So, she came up with the idea of compiling obituaries and death notices of Covid-19 victims from newspapers large and small across the country, and culling vivid passages from them.
Alain Delaquérière, a researcher, combed through various sources online for obituaries and death notices with Covid-19 written as the cause of death. He compiled a list of nearly a thousand names from hundreds of newspapers. A team of editors from across the newsroom, in addition to three graduate student journalists, read them and gleaned phrases that depicted the uniqueness of each life lost . . .
Scarcely five minutes after their list was published, people on Twitter began pointing out an obvious error: Jordan Haynes, 27, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was the sixth name on the Times list, but he did not die of COVID-19. He was a homicide victim, whose body was found in a car in a wooded area near Interstate 380. Exactly how the “team of editors” made such a colossal blunder, we don’t know, but they’ve deleted Haynes’ name from the list and promised to publish a correction tomorrow.
By the way, if the Times wished the list to be representative of the U.S. coronavirus toll, at least three-quarters would be over 65 years of age, and about 52 percent would be from four states — New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Michigan — with the highest death tolls. Iowa? With only 449 reported coronavirus deaths, the Hawkeye State is not even a full percentage point of the death toll, but 0.45%. If the “team of editors” needed the names of four or five dead Iowans to represent this, in a list of a thousand names, how was it that they chose this homicide victim? And if they can blunder so badly in this, what else do they get wrong?
“It seemed like a good idea at the time” is not a strong defense in a murder trial, and the question everybody seems to be asking in regard to the death of Ahmaud Arbery is why Gregory McMichael and his son thought it was a good idea to grab their guns, jump in their truck and go out in pursuit of a man they assumed to be a fleeing burglary suspect.
It is not my habit to play Monday-morning quarterback in controversial murder cases. I’m not a lawyer, and my opinion in such matters is no more valuable than anyone else’s. However, I’ve spent more than 30 years in the news business, and I know a thing or two about media bias. In 2009, when I saw a bunch of pundits pontificating about the alleged “lynching” of a census worker in Kentucky, I got the wild idea to hit the road and investigate the reality of the story on the ground. As it turned out, the census worker had committed suicide and staged it to look like a lynching, in an insurance fraud scheme, but by the time the truth came out, the pundits who had smeared this Kentucky community as a haven of “anti-government extremism” seemed to have lost interest.
Could it be that the media’s coverage of the Ahmaud Arbery case is similarly biased? I’m trying to resist the itch for a road trip, but meanwhile I’m sick and tired of the way the story is being spun:
Brunswick is a seaport town on the Georgia coast with which I have a personal connection. During World War II, my maternal grandfather moved to Brunswick to work in the shipyard and my grandmother joined him there, working in the canteen that served meals to the more than 16,000 workers who built 99 “Liberty ships” in the Brunswick yards in a span of about three years. Founded in the 1770s, Brunswick remains today a major harbor, and its picturesque Old Town district attracts many tourists who visit nearby Jekyll Island and St. Simons Island.
Brunswick seldom makes national news, but that changed last month when the New York Times devoted a 1,700-word article to the February shooting death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery. Why would this homicide be worthy of national attention? Because Arbery was black and the man who shot him is white and, until the case became the subject of round-the-clock coverage on CNN, no charges had been filed in the case. Now that 34-year-old Travis McMichael and his father, Gregory McMichael, have been charged with murder and aggravated assault, one might hope that journalists would be content to leave the matter to the justice system, but that’s not how the media operate in such cases. Instead, Americans are still being bombarded with updates and commentary on the alleged “lynching” of Arbery, who is described as a “black jogger” who was the victim of racism. . . .
The New York Times is published by atheist perverts who hate America, and who have covered themselves in disgrace for decades. They forfeited whatever credibility they still had when they refused to return the Pulitzer they got for Walter Duranty’s Stalinist propaganda during the Soviet “show trial” era, and their irresponsible reporting about the Duke University rape hoax helped incite a campus firestorm that, among other things, radicalized Trump adviser Stephen Miller.
The argument, by journalist and author Katherine Stewart, is that because religious voters supported Trump, that means he governs without regard for science.
Stewart also claims that Republicans, more than Democrats, are likely to deny science.
In her op-ed, titled “The Road to Coronavirus Hell Was Paved by Evangelicals,” she writes:
Donald Trump rose to power with the determined assistance of a movement that denies science, bashes government and prioritized loyalty over professional expertise. In the current crisis, we are all reaping what that movement has sown.
At least since the 19th century, when the proslavery theologian Robert Lewis Dabney attacked the physical sciences as “theories of unbelief,” hostility to science has characterized the more extreme forms of religious nationalism in the United States.
She then goes on to provide several quotes from pastors who pushed back against the idea of closing their churches.
Stewart admits: “By all accounts, President Trump’s tendency to trust his gut over the experts on issues like vaccines and climate change does not come from any deep-seated religious conviction.”
But she adds: “But he is perfectly in tune with the religious nationalists who form the core of his base.”
Putting aside, for now, the partisan bias involved — Ms. Stewart and the New York Times are only against religion when it gives them an opportunity to attack Republicans — what of their effrontery in defaming the 19th-century Presbyterian theologian R.L. Dabney? They might as well have dragged down in the mud the names of Knox, Calvin and Luther, and indeed all of the Apostles, as no honest student of the Bible could ever have disputed Dabney’s faithfulness to the Gospel.
You would never see the New York Times smearing Muslims this way, and indeed they would be the first to scream “Islamophobia!” at anyone who dared mention the many Muslim beliefs and practices that liberals might otherwise find objectionable. Likewise, you won’t find any criticism of the (alleged) Catholicism of Andrew Cuomo or Nancy Pelosi in the New York Times. It is only those Christians who vote Republican whose faith is routinely impugned by the New York Times.
There is a specific set of “fundamentalist” beliefs that the Left finds objectionable. To believe in Sola Scriptura — the authority of the Bible — is objectionable to the Left, since a Bible-based faith contradicts the moral relativism and man-made authority the Left prefers.
Supposedly, the Bible is “anti-science,” and therefore Christians are to blame for the spread of coronavirus in the United States. This argument fails to explain, of course, why the Chinese in Wuhan were eating bats, a practice specifically condemned by the Bible (Deuteronomy 12:18).
This column by Katherine Stewart (@kathsstewart on Twitter) is the point of no return. By publishing this column, the New York Times has finally — unmistakably and irrevocably — declared war on God. Let us pray that the Almighty will pour out His undiluted wrath upon them. Let them go bankrupt and be utterly obliterated. Pray to God that this destruction should come upon them suddenly, “as a thief in the night.”
As I’ve previously explained, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs first alerted America to the danger of Belgian extremists, and whenever The Flemish Menace™ makes another terrorist attack, it’s important to give Charles credit. Consider the latest news from Pensacola:
The F.B.I. was investigating but did not confirm a report that the Saudi trainee had watched videos of mass shootings at a dinner party sometime this week, according to a senior American official who was briefed on the investigation but not authorized to speak publicly.
The gunman, who killed three people and injured eight others, did not have any apparent ties to international terrorist groups and appeared to have radicalized on his own, according to the official.
The gunman, identified as Second Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, was killed by a sheriff’s deputy who responded to the attack. Lieutenant Alshamrani was training to become a pilot and initially entered the United States in 2018, according to the official. But at some point Lieutenant Alshamrani returned to Saudi Arabia and then re-entered the United States in February 2019, the official said. . . .
OK, they haven’t gotten to the part about the Belgian connection yet, but I’m sure if we keep reading, everything will become apparent:
Six other Saudi nationals were detained for questioning near the scene of the shooting, which took place over two floors in a classroom on the base. Three of the Saudis who were detained had been seen filming the entire incident, according to another person briefed on the investigation.
It was not known whether the six Saudis detained were students in the classroom building, and there was no immediate indication that those filming the incident were connected to the gunman, the person said. . . .
Seriously, there must be a Belgian angle to this, although the motive is apparently still mysterious to these New York Times reporters:
Investigators were trying to determine what motivated the gunman.
Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, and Representative Matt Gaetz, a Republican whose district includes Pensacola, both described the shooting as an act of terrorism.
(Of course, these Republicans are RAAAAACIST!)
But federal law enforcement officials said it was too early to establish the gunman’s motive.
The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist activity, cited a Twitter account with a name matching the gunman that had posted a “will” calling the United States a “nation of evil” and criticizing its support for Israel.
(Because we know how much Belgians hate the Jews.)
SITE said the account had also quoted Osama bin Laden, the former Qaeda leader, and was critical of United States foreign policy.
“I’m not against you for just being American,” the posts said. “I don’t hate you because your freedoms, I hate you because every day you supporting, funding and committing crimes not only against MuslimsBelgians but also humanity.”
(Obviously a typographical error, which I’ve corrected.)
The account could not be independently verified, and law enforcement officials did not confirm that it was connected to the gunman.
The gunman was a member of the Saudi Air Force.
The lieutenant was a trainee with the Saudi Air Force. Saudi pilots have trained at the Pensacola base since 1995.
The gunman used a locally purchased Glock 45 9-millimeter handgun with an extended magazine and had four to six other magazines in his possession, according to one of the people briefed on the investigation.
During a news conference Friday night, the FBI declined to release the shooter’s identity and wouldn’t comment on his possible motivations.
“There are many reports circulating, but the FBI deals only in facts,” said Rachel L. Rojas, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the Jacksonville Field Office.
FBI’s Rachel Rojas tells media that teams are continuing to process the large crime scene, and they will work into the morning. The work cannot be rushed. pic.twitter.com/fhXRCzKXiv
Well, I think we’ve got enough information now to know the gunman’s motive, despite the reluctance of federal officials and the New York Times to jump to any hasty conclusions. Charles Johnson and his LGF readers all understand that Belgian crypto-Nazis are to blame.
Writers bashed former President Barack Obama after he criticized “woke” social justice warriors during a speech Tuesday.
Obama spoke at the Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago and hit back at alleged activists who attack other people on the internet because of their “flaws,” according to the former president. His comments saw bipartisan support, but some liberals disagreed with his thought that this rhetoric is “not activism.”
Journalist Ernest Owens wrote that he “gasped” when he heard Obama’s comments and called the former president’s views that of a “boomer” in an op-ed featured in The New York Times Friday.
“But the former president’s disdain for the kind of criticism that has become popular to dismiss as ‘cancel culture’ … is misguided,” [Owens] wrote, adding:
“His eagerness to dismiss one part of what happens when young people stand up for what they believe in as ‘casting stones’ is a reminder of a largely generational divide about whether it’s impolite to speak out in favor of the most vulnerable among us and the world we’d like to live in. While there’s some debate about which generation Mr. Obama belongs to, he’s solidly in the older camp.” . . .
The issues that my fellow millennials, along with even younger people in Gen Z, tend to be “judgmental” about are the same ones many of our parents and grandparents have been debating for decades. Being outspoken about climate change, women’s rights, racial justice, LGBTQ inclusivity and gun control — and critical of those who stand in the way of progress on these issues — is work that’s been left to us. . . .
The group that Mr. Obama joins in his scolding of outspoken young people is dominated by white straight men, far-right conservative talking heads, and celebrities who feel entitled to audiences who appreciate their art and dutifully ignore their missteps. It’s no surprise that Fox News fretted that his comments were “snubbed” and didn’t receive sufficient coverage from broadcast television networks.
Whatever one might say about this controversy, it is obvious that Ernest Owens is profoundly ignorant, despite his Ivy League education. He is a man who thinks in slogans, and has never made any effort to understand the reasoning of anyone who might sincerely disagree with him, instead dismissing them in terms of identity-politics formulations and ideological labels — “white straight men, far-right conservative talking heads.” Why would any intelligent person take me seriously if, in offering a rebuttal of Mr. Owens, I made a point of his being a gay black man?
Well, ad hominem arguments are sometimes relevant, as a way of understanding motives in an age of identity politics. Democrats seek power by leveraging our tribal impulses — “You are [insert identity category] and therefore should vote Democrat” — and this formula has the effect of turning every policy debate into tribal warfare. The perpetrators of identity politics claim to be on the side of Progress, with a capital P, and define their opponents as advocates of Hate, with a capital H. In reality, however, “progressives” are the ones fomenting hatred and, rather than leading us into a utopia of enlightenment, instead point us toward the darkest depths of a degenerate and atavistic barbarism.
How does one refute the libelous accusations implied by Mr. Owens’ argument (which, I hasten to add, is not actually an argument as any student of formal logic would define an argument)? For you see that his assertion is that he and his generation have a monopoly of wisdom and charity, while their elders are all selfish fools. According to Mr. Owens, we of older generations are ignorant — we don’t know nothin’ about no “progress on these issues” — and are guilty of insufficient sympathy for “the most vulnerable among us.” Obviously, I don’t have an Ivy League diploma, and therefore can perhaps be forgiven my ignorance, but how is Mr. Owens (Penn, Class of 2014) better qualified than me to determine whether our former President is “misguided”? Upon what credentials does Mr. Owens claim this authority to sit in judgment of his elders?
On Monday night, a black gay man was attacked for existing in both of these identities.
Empire actor Jussie Smollett was hospitalized after allegedly being assaulted in Chicago by two individuals who also tied a noose around his neck, and who poured an unknown chemical substance on him. The unidentified culprits appear to be Trump supporters who, according to TMZ, yelled at Smollett, “This is MAGA country,” along with hurling racist and homophobic slurs. . . .
It shouldn’t be a coincidence that such bigotry escalated from written hate mail to physical violence. History often showed us during the Jim Crow era of the 20th century that discriminatory laws led to lynchings and other legalized acts of white supremacy. What happened to Smollett was a form of white terrorism that targeted both his racial identity and sexual orientation simultaneously.
Of course, Jussie Smollett was not a victim of “white terrorism,” yet having been so naïvely credulous as to believe this hoax — which never fooled any intelligent person — now Mr. Owens expects us all to accept his authority to pass judgment upon former President Obama.
As a “white straight . . . far-right conservative,” of course, I could never expect the New York Times to publish anything I wrote (even if I would consent to have my byline appear in that disgraceful publication, which of course I wouldn’t), but they do not hesitate to provide a platform for the opinions of Mr. Owens, who is demonstrably a fool.
And that, you see, is the point of my argument. Once it can be shown that one’s antagonist is a fool, the debate has concluded, because no intelligent person would take advice from a fool. Selah.
For two years, Rachel Maddow’s show was about one thing: “Russia! Russia! Russia!” She hyped Robert Mueller’s investigation as the silver bullet that would slay the Trump werewolf, and when Mueller failed, Maddow’s ratings slumped and have never recovered.
Rachel Maddow was trying to get to work. She only had to get from the glass door of her doctor’s office to the tinted-windowed S.U.V. that was idling at the curb, waiting to spirit her to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, but there was a hitch. Maddow had torn three ligaments in her left ankle — fishing accident — and one of those ligaments ripped off a piece of her bone, so now she was lumbering toward the sidewalk, her foot strapped into a boot, her lanky body bent over crutches that creaked and boomed with every hit to the sidewalk. In Manhattan, this had the effect of a kind of ritualistic drumbeat, alerting every liberal within earshot to her presence.
A woman with a graying ponytail suddenly wriggled into Maddow’s path. “Rachel,” she said, extending her phone to secure a selfie for a friend in Oregon who watches her show every single night and was going to bug out when she saw this. Maddow smiled for the camera as a man in long shorts planted himself 20 feet away, holding his own phone up horizontally to film the scene. When he saw Maddow see him, he smiled and waved slowly, as if he were a proud relative capturing a milestone. Farther down the block, a woman screamed something incomprehensible in her direction. As Maddow finally neared the curb, a woman with silver hair and chunky glasses materialized at her side and said with blasé familiarity: “I don’t know what happened to you, but I just want to say I love you. Keep up the good work. Can I give you a hug?”
Maddow balanced on her good foot. She spread her crutches out to accommodate the stranger’s embrace. “What’s your name?” Maddow asked brightly, as if she had hobbled out expressly for the purposes of saying hello. “Emily,” she said. She made a perfunctory gesture toward the silent bald man next to her. “This is Ed, my ex-husband.”
“Big fan of yours,” Ed said, and he went in for a handshake, which Maddow was eager to meet until she discovered, midreach, that her ankle could not make the pivot to a second greeter. “Whoa,” Maddow said. “No twisting! Sorry!”
“Be careful with her!” Emily said to Ed, and then, as she saw Maddow breaking away and toward the car, she urgently called out: “So — so what do you think? Elizabeth Warren?”
Finally sealed in the back seat, Maddow propped up the ankle. Then she turned and said, as if I were a friend and not yet another stranger pumping her for information: “That was dangerous! Did you see my twist with Ed?” . . .
Translation: “She’s so popular! Fans mob her in the streets! She’s like The Beatles on Ed Sullivan in February 1964!”
This 400-word anecdotal lead is the scene-setter of a 6,000-word feature. For those of you who aren’t in the journalism racket, 6,000 words is about eight times longer than the standard news article. It’s a bit longer than your average chapter of a non-fiction book, and it certainly took an entire week, if not more, to write something that long. What does the New York Times pay for freelance work? A dollar a word? If so, that 400-word lead is worth about three days’ work by a $15-an-hour laborer. And you’d have to hire that $15-an-hour worker for a month and a half to pay him what Amanda Hess got for that entire 6,000-word feature.
And it’s just publicity, not journalism — this article is simply free advertising for Maddow and her book, and why? Because she’s a Democrat, MSNBC is a Democrat network, the publisher and editors of her book are Democrats, and the New York Times is a Democrat paper. So this is not ordinary free publicity, it’s partisan political propaganda.
Noting how the New York Times profile includes some rather absurd vignettes of Maddow’s adoring fandom, Ed Driscoll remarks: “If this is what ‘real life’ looks like in America’s blue regions, the Babylon Bee is really going to have to up its satire game to compete.”
Oh, Maddow’s book? It combines a hostile attack on Big Oil with a conspiracy theory about (you guessed) Russia! Russia! Russia!
The New York Times suddenly made a major revision to a supposed bombshell piece late Sunday concerning a resurfaced allegation of sexual assault by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh — hours after virtually all 2020 Democratic presidential candidates had cited the original article as a reason to impeach Kavanaugh.
The update included the significant detail that several friends of the alleged victim said she did not recall the supposed sexual assault in question at all. The Times also stated for the first time that the alleged victim refused to be interviewed, and has made no comment about the episode.
The only first-hand statement concerning the supposed attack in the original piece, which was published on Saturday, came from a Clinton-connected lawyer who claimed to have witnessed it.
The Times’ revision says: “Editors’ Note: An earlier version of this article, which was adapted from a forthcoming book, did not include one element of the book’s account regarding an assertion by a Yale classmate that friends of Brett Kavanaugh pushed his penis into the hand of a female student at a drunken dorm party. The book reports that the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident. That information has been added to the article.”
The update came only after The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, who reviewed an advance copy of the book, first flagged the article’s omission on Twitter — prompting other commentators to press the issue.
The man telling the story, Max Stier, represented Bill and Hillary Clinton in the 1990s when Bill Clinton was accused of exposing himself to a woman in a hotel room.
Stier’s story appears in the forthcoming book The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly. “A classmate, Max Stier, saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student,” the authors wrote in a New York Times article teasing the book.
As for Max Stier, he has a long history with sexual assault claims, but from the other side. Stier, a Democrat, represented President Bill Clinton after Paula Jones accused him of exposing himself to her in a hotel room. Clinton settled with Jones for $850,000 and lost his law license for five years. Stier also worked closely with David Kendall, representing Hillary Clinton against allegations of illegally handling classified information in the Whitewater investigation. Kavanaugh worked with Ken Starr on the other side of the Clinton impeachment battle. During his confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh had accused his opponents of being motivated by “revenge on behalf of the Clintons.” This allegation seems to confirm that.
Donald Trump was elected president. But it wasn’t over.
There immediately launched an attempt to pressure Electors to change their votes, then an FBI-Democrat collusive attempt to undermine the presidency before it began, and a slow-motion coup to prevent the administration from governing. It’s still not over, as Democrats hurl themselves towards the cliff of impeachment.
Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court after a brutal smear campaign which saw accusation after accusation fall apart when subjected to scrutiny. But it wasn’t over.
After confirmation, but before the midterms, Dianne Feinstein promised to reopen the investigation of Kavanaugh if Democrats retook the Senate (they didn’t). Soon after the 2018 midterms after Democrats gained control of the House, incoming House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler signaled an intention to impeach Kavanaugh.
There have been organized attempts by Democratic operatives to get him fired from a law teaching position, and by Democrats in Congress to dig up old National Archive records in an attempt to create a public relations campaign to get him to recuse from future abortion decisions.
Today’s NY Times hit piece, which left out key details about a new accusation and the old discredited Ramirez accusation casting doubt on the reporting, has ignited calls from several leading Democrat presidential candidates and the social media mob to impeach Kavanaugh.
It’s never over.
It’s about creating a new “scandal” to replace “Russian collusion” as an excuse for Democrats to run an impeachment inquiry. And also, it’s battlespace preparation for next year’s presidential campaign. Ruth Bader Ginsburg obviously isn’t getting any younger, and Democrats want to campaign in 2020 on the idea that allowing Trump to appoint Ginsburg’s replacement would endanger “a woman’s right to choose.”
Did I ever mention I can’t stand watching YouTube videos? As a means of communication, the written word is my preferred medium; it is more time-efficient, because I can read faster than anyone can talk. Even Ben Shapiro, who talks so fast I can barely keep up, talks slower than I can read. Give me the transcript of an hour-long YouTube video, and I’ll quickly skim through it, picking out whatever facts are most of interest to me, in a mere fraction of the time it would take to watch the video. So I almost never watch YouTube videos, and thus my intellectual diet is not impacted by the Left’s demonetizing and deplatforming crusades.
The internet was an escape. Mr. Cain grew up in postindustrial Appalachia and was raised by his conservative Christian grandparents. He was smart, but shy and socially awkward, and he carved out an identity during high school as a countercultural punk. He went to community college, but dropped out after three semesters.
Broke and depressed, he resolved to get his act together. He began looking for help in the same place he looked for everything: YouTube.
One day in late 2014, YouTube recommended a self-help video by Stefan Molyneux, a Canadian talk show host and self-styled philosopher.
Like Mr. Cain, Mr. Molyneux had a difficult childhood, and he talked about overcoming hardships through self-improvement. He seemed smart and passionate, and he wrestled with big questions like free will, along with practical advice on topics like dating and job interviews.
Mr. Molyneux, who describes himself as an “anarcho-capitalist,” also had a political agenda. He was a men’s rights advocate who said that feminism was a form of socialism and that progressive gender politics were holding young men back. He offered conservative commentary on pop culture and current events, explaining why Disney’s “Frozen” was an allegory about female vanity, or why the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer was proof of the dangers of “rap culture.”
Mr. Cain was a liberal who cared about social justice, worried about wealth inequality and believed in climate change. But he found Mr. Molyneux’s diatribes fascinating, even when they disagreed.
“He was willing to address young men’s issues directly, in a way I’d never heard before,” Mr. Cain said.
In 2015 and 2016, as Mr. Cain dived deeper into his YouTube recommendations, he discovered an entire universe of right-wing creators. . . .
You can read the whole thing, which is not-so-subtly advocating censorship of anyone in that “entire universe of right-wing creators” — in other words, anything on YouTube that might persuade you to vote Republican should be banned, according to the New York Times.
Just by the way, it is a fact — not merely an opinion espoused by Stefan Molyneux — that feminism is a form of socialism. Anyone who cares to research the origins of the modern feminist movement will discover that it arose from radical New Left of the 1960s. There are entire books, written by feminists themselves, documenting this history. Quite simply, feminists adapted Marxist theory (i.e., the class struggle between the industrial proletariat and the capitalist bourgeoisie) to claim that the real “class struggle” was between women and the patriarchal oppression of “male supremacy.” Nor is it controversial to say that “progressive gender politics” is harmful to the interests of young men. One thing feminists borrowed from Marxism is a zero-sum-game mentality which justifies anything harmful to men (i.e., the collective oppressors) as beneficial to the “empowerment” of women. This is why, for example, feminists whipped up the “campus rape epidemic” mob hysteria to deprive male college students of due process-rights, so that any male student could be automatically expelled from college on the basis of mere accusation of sexual misconduct. Deliberate falsehoods like the UVA gang-rape hoax were promoted as part of a feminist propaganda campaign to demonize male students as rapists. Given the abundant evidence that feminism is an anti-male hate movement, why does the New York Times portray Stefan Molyneaux’s critique of feminism as controversial? Perhaps because backlash against feminism helped defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016? Perhaps because reporters like Kevin Roose are Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and this whole article about “radicalization” is just an attempt to help Democrats silence their opponents? Douglas Murray points out that Caleb Cain’s “radicalization” was harmless:
He isn’t a school shooter. He isn’t a mosque or synagogue shooter. The NYT writes of how by November 2016 the subject’s ‘transformation was complete’ but this ‘transformation’ resulted in nothing, other than watching YouTube videos.
This isn’t news. It isn’t even fully informed or nuanced analysis. It is simply another demonstration of the double-standard, drive-by shootings that parts of the media are willing to perform in this inglorious stage of its history. A habit which, funnily enough, demonstrates why people might be becoming skeptical — and moving online — in the first place.
If the only result of watching right-wing YouTube videos is that you watch more right-wing YouTube videos, why is the New York Times devoting so much journalistic effort to this phenomenon? If you want to discuss a genuinely dangerous online problem, how about the way vulnerable teenagers are getting sucked into the transgender cult?
Oh, but the New York Times is pro-transgender, so if your 15-year-old daughter starts demanding you call her “Josh” and wants to inject herself with testosterone and get a mastectomy, it would be “right-wing” (and therefore bad) for you to disapprove. Also, there’s a pretty good chance your transgender child would vote Democrat, so the New York Times would never do anything to discourage them.
