The Sovietization of the American Press (Matt Taibbi)

This one is not behind a paywall. 

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-sovietization-of-the-american

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lionel Shriver on the Triumph of Totalitarianism, 23 October 2023

Image
My Response to Rules I Don’t Accept is to Break Them By   Lionel Shriver This is the text of the Roger Scruton Memorial Lecture delivered by Lionel Shriver at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford on October 23rd 2023, titled ‘When Cowed Creatives Capitulate: Conformity and Bad Art’. We’re all weary of the word ‘woke’, and I’ll try to keep my usage of the tiresome thumbnail to a minimum. After all, even its mocking variations—wokerati, wokismo, woking class — are no longer amusing. Still, I’ve been struck by how difficult it is to address contemporary cultural conflicts and not employ that word — so pervasive, and invasive, has this rigid, joyless, tyrannical gestalt become. Like children piping up from the backseat, “Are we there yet?” countless audience members at events like this one have implored me to predict when this corrosive, killjoy ideology will be over. Because most of us are not nearly as sick of the word as we are of wokeness itself. For me, a big disappointment ...
Read more

The End of the University (Rod Liddle, Spectator 18 December 2021)

My meeting with the Durham  University mob My abiding memory of this fairly appalling year is of the face of the young student at Durham University who shouted ‘Disgusting!’ at me as I left the main college building. This followed a very short speech I’d given to about 250 students but which, I suspect, he hadn’t heard because he’d probably walked out before it began. That, incidentally, is one of the reasons this story in which I find myself took a comparatively long while to break. The speech was on a Friday evening — but it wasn’t until Monday, at the earliest, that the lefties got themselves into a real lather. Until then it had simply been a speech at which a very small minority of students had walked out before it began, neatly choreographed, for the simple reason that I was giving it. Only later did they read what I’d said and thus duly got themselves properly aerated. Can I suggest to the lefties that this is an object lesson? It is far better to stay and listen to someone ...
Read more

Matt Taibbi, The West's Betrayal of Freedom (Feb. 19, 2023)

Image
  The West's Betrayal of Freedom Westerners once endlessly propagandized "freedom" as the ultimate democratic virtue. Now, in fear of revolt, the leaders of these countries are mounting an opposite campaign MATT TAIBBI FEB 19 ∙ PAID   SAVE ▷  LISTEN   Justin Trudeau might have a “too much freedom” problem, but that doesn’t mean anyone else does.   “Freedom cannot exist without order.”   — Canadian Justice Paul Rouleau The Honorable Justice Paul Rouleau’s “ Report of the Public Inquiry into the 2022 Public Order Emergency ,” an analysis of Justin Trudeau’s decision to institute Canada’s Emergencies Act and seize funds during last year’s trucker protests, blasted across Canadian media this weekend, reduced to a handful of headlines. As has become the norm in Western media, language was nearly identical: Trudeau’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ shutdown was justified, inquiry rules   -   Politico Canada’s use of emergency powers during ‘Freedom Convoy’ met th...
Read more