By Noah Rothman
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
The level of hostility directed at Anti-Defamation League
(ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt over his refusal to lie in solidarity with his
co-partisans on the Left is instructive.
Elon Musk was guilty only of making “an awkward gesture
in a moment of enthusiasm,” Greenblatt’s
organization wrote in response to a surge of online
agitation over footage of Musk making what his detractors called “a Nazi
salute.” Rather, the video of the event features Musk thanking Trump supporters
for their election-year efforts, telling them that “My heart goes out to you,”
and twice putting his hand over his heart before thrusting it outward as if he
were casting his heart into the crowd. “This is a delicate moment,” the ADL
conceded. “It’s a new day, and yet so many are on edge. Our politics are
inflamed, and social media only adds to the anxiety.” Nevertheless, right is
right, and wrong is wrong.
“Just to be clear, you are defending a Heil Hitler salute
that was performed and repeated for emphasis and clarity,” congresswoman Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez barked in just one illustrative example of the
outrage this act of discretion inspired. “People can officially stop listening
to you as any sort of reputable source of information now. You work for them.”
It’s not as though Greenblatt and his group were the only prudent voices
advocating against uncharitable and dubious inferences into Musk’s mental
state. But the ADL’s candor was treated as a betrayal — perhaps because it was.
Of all the misapprehensions that most plague Democrats
and their allies in the media, it is their unfounded
presumption that they can shape our perceptions of reality through rhetoric. That’s why Greenblatt’s offense was seen
as so egregious. He had defected from the mission, and all oars must row in the
same direction if the trick is going to work.
The temptation to focus on promoting the conclusions
they’d like to see the public reach over and above accurately describing the
conditions they’re observing ails the political press, in particular. That’s
why it was obvious at the time that Biden’s fabrication of a nefarious
“tech-industrial complex” covertly bringing about “oligarchy” in America would prove irresistible to media professionals. Not only does
this novel boogieman flatter progressives’ ideological priors, but it also
provides media with a framework that allows them to launder into reporting on
Trump’s administration the stale, Resistance-era nostrums Greenblatt’s
operation was castigated for refusing to promulgate.
Silicon Valley’s drift into the Republican camp has
brought about “a new kind of American oligarchy,” wrote The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker. The tech industry’s
financial support for Democratic politicians and its slavish kowtowing to
Democratic demands (and, eventually, threats) posed no such risk. Indeed, the
Democratic crusade against this sector’s bottom lines and the subsequent
alienation its members felt from their erstwhile political home seems to have
played no role in this reversal of fortune. The tech bros were playing the long
game — lying in wait for the most unlikely presidential comeback in U.S.
history, only to pounce on the chance to impose aristocratic autocracy on the
surprisingly pliant American political landscape.
What evidence supports this allegation? Well, Trump’s
Cabinet is, in the aggregate, wealthier than prior administrations. High-dollar
donors contributed a lot to Trump’s inaugural committee. Trump likes the
industries in which Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are engaged, like private space
exploration and social media. And these large private enterprises have business
before federal regulatory bodies.
But Democrats “have long kept their wealthiest donors
close,” too, the authors admit. Donald Trump likes a lot of businesses,
especially those run by pro-Trump brown-nosers. And many more firms than those
native to Silicon Valley have business before the federal regulatory apparatus
because the federal regulatory apparatus has a sprawling (perhaps even
excessive) remit.
“What wealthy donors could get in return for their
support of Trump remains an open question,” Scherer and Parker admit. Well,
wouldn’t you have to answer that question before you can allege that a
conspiracy is afoot to, if not “usher in a new kind of American autocracy,” at
least alter the civic compact in an “oligarchical” direction?
Not if your goal is to incept in the public mind a
retroactive justification for Joe Biden’s flight of fancy. Trump’s opponents
really don’t need to appeal to dubious hyperbole to criticize some of this young administration’s initiatives, but they don’t seem to
agree with that conclusion. It’s enough to make more discerning observers
wonder: if they must exaggerate the scale of the threat, maybe there is no
threat at all.
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