In his most recent article, he still pilloried the president, even as he called Trump “the leader of a superpower nation.” In that same article, however, he wrote a scathing criticism of the American Left, saying that the group has “lost its mind” and that the press is suffering as a result.
The piece – aptly named “The American Press Is Destroying Itself” – is a painfully accurate depiction of how so-called “self-described liberals” have devolved into a “cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.”
Robespierre, of course, is a nod to the radical Jacobin leader behind the Reign of Terror, a dark period in French history marked by violence and paranoia. Ironically, he became a victim of the Reign of Terror, as he took a moderate stance and opposed the move to condemn all enemies of the regime.
Taibbi, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, blames the leaders of the “new [American Left] movement” for twisting liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry and racial harmony. These days, these values are replaced with ideas that promote vitriol, and anyone in opposition is shamed, threatened and even intimidated.
Even worse, he writes, is that these so-called leaders are manipulating organizations into establishing that anything can be an offense. For instance, a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) – a nonprofit that styles itself as a disruptor of online hate – led to tech giant Google threatening to ban advertisements for The Federalist and Zero Hedge. The latter, in particular, has been demonetized for content promoting “hatred, intolerance, violence or discrimination based on race,” says Google. A report by the Epoch Times, however, revealed that CCDH has ties to the left-leaning British Labour Party.
These “toxic and unattractive” ideas are coming for journalism, Taibbi notes. Just this month, major news organizations, including the New York Times, the Intercept and the Philadelphia Inquirer, have dealt with internal uprisings from so-called liberal staffers, who demanded heads roll when they found specific things “problematic.”
Of course, “problematic things” is the codeword for ideas that ran counter to their imposed narrative.
The “madness” – as Taibbi describes it – was fully on display with the events that led to the ousting of New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet. After the paper published an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton, which called for the military to prevent rioting and looting, both the staffers and the paper turned on him. The Times retracted the op-ed, saying that it did not meet its standards of publication, and blasted its “contemptuous” tone.
Before he resigned, Bennet argued that publishing some conservative voices in the paper would give readers more confidence in the fairness of the Times’ reporting.
“The main thing accomplished by removing those types of editorials from newspapers — apart from scaring the hell out of editors — is to shield readers from knowledge of what a major segment of American society is thinking,” Taibbi wrote in his article.
These days, the Times’ editorial department takes its cues from pretty much anyone, thanks to a staff directive that allows anyone to veto anything that gives them the “slightest pause.”
Despite these failings, Taibbi notes that the American Left, in all its lunacy, will only tighten its grip in newsrooms across the country – and plunge journalism into another Reign of Terror.
“People depend on us to tell them what we see, not what we think,” he writes.
“What good are we if we’re afraid to do it?”
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