Journalistic Malpractice, The Atlantic Version
The Atlantic is storied journal now owned by a billionaire widow and captured by the diversity left. This illustrates the nature of power in our society. (2000 words, 10 min.)
The Atlantic is an august journal with a history going back to before the Civil War. It once spoke for the brahmin elite of Victorian Boston, and has published more distinguished authors than I can name. It has gone woke, though not as extremely woke as some other journals of its social background. It recently published David Frum’s illuminating piece on Canada’s indigenous problems and the reconciliation hustle.1 This may be to its credit, or may have been an oversight, or a bit of flank protection (“we’re not woke, we cover all sides!”) enabled by the Canadian subject matter, or possibly all of that.
But the Minnesota ICE raids and the state of Minnesota’s nullification campaign involve President Trump, so they triangulate no more. Here is the CEO of The Atlantic, yesterday on X:
The full article, “Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong”, by Adam Serwer, is here (apparently outside the paywall, so they’re very pleased with it): https://t.co/CiHjM7VuDz
Before they decided that everything was racist, literary critics would speak of close or (another favoured word) attentive reading, calling for attention to the connotations and presuppositions of each phrase, even each word. A close analysis of this flaunted paragraph results in a pretty good fisking.
But first, the CEO’s three-word tweet is plainly false: the paragraph screenshotted is not extraordinary, but on the contrary, banal. It is competent in that it is grammatical (we live in an age of low standards), but its diction is a stream of clichés. It makes an impossible claim to moral and psychological knowledge, and the impossibility is obvious to anyone not inside the bubble. The attempt to sound profound is merely sophomoric, except inside the bubble, where the CEO is very pleased.
The paragraph under analysis, once again, for convenience (and in case the tweet disappears):
An Assertion of Virtue
Secret fears and moral depravity presume and inscribe what most Atlantic readers already think about Trump’s supporters. Rhetorically, the author is on solid ground given his audience, though of course empirically he has no access to anyone’s secret fears, and no more knowledge of morality than any other journalist.
The assertion that virtue is actually common is interesting if debatable. Many eminent philosophers would disagree. The ideas that virtue is not required for social functioning, or is so common that it can be presumed and assimilated to an idea of human nature, are in fact central to liberalism, which wants to argue for maximizing freedom and therefore slides easily into minimizing the possibility that vice could misuse freedom. Neo-Marxists, who are not few amongst the intelligentsia, go further and hold that virtue is a figment of false consciousness. Already, The Atlantic’s attempt at profundity plays them false.
The Tenets of MAGA, as Imagined
The second sentence announces that we are about to learn all the basic tenets of MAGA, and that all are false, indeed proven here false. We are left to infer these metaphorical cornerstones, which apparently are 1) that federal agents are brave, but Minnesotans are not; 2) that diversity is not a source of strength; 3) that social media atomizes society; and presumably (though we’re now at some distance from the opening declaration) 4) that Western civilization is worth preserving.
Presumptions (2) and (4) are clearly true and foundational to MAGA, though far from “all” of what MAGA believes. I’ll deal first with (1) and (3).
Federal agents face many dangers, especially in a world informed by The Atlantic, and like Minnesotans, some are brave. But the writers of The Atlantic live in a world where sweeping declarations are unscrutinized if ideologically conformant. Plainly, not all Minnesotans are brave: the deployment-dodger Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey come easily to mind, except at The Atlantic. Here is Frey at the time of the BLM riots that did so much damage to his city:
But some Minnesotans are brave. Liz Collin of Alpha News is an oppositional journalist of the kind not found on The Atlantic, and has courageously endured much harassment. Here is the same person who stormed the Cities Church, at her house during the BLM riots:
Point 1, then, is not really about courage or Minnesotans. It is there to allow The Atlantic to throw the invective “armed thugs” at federal agents who did not choose to be there, and who put up with much abuse from leftist ideologues.
Point 3 asserts that MAGA believes in an atomized society caused by social media, and, of course, means to imply that MAGA is a pathological consequence of atomization. Social media is more often and likely more accurately blamed for tribalization than atomization, but then we are not really here for sociological analysis.
Serwer tells us that Minnesotans “have found and loved one another,” and we are supposed to be impressed, but do we really want people turning to politics for love? A politics of love, like Kamala Harris’s attempt at a politics of joy, smacks of totalitarianism. The state ought not to go there. In no desirable society does the state concern itself with joy and love.
Diversity and Other Slogans
Serwer is, however, correct that MAGA is suspicious of the rhetoric of “diversity,” and does not think “diversity” a source of strength. Intellectual diversity can be a source of strength, but that is not what the rhetoric means. The associated languages of “community” and “cohesion” often mean precisely the opposite of “diversity”: they are demands for conformity.
“Community” in particular moves the focus of concern from the individual citizen (now in strong disfavour) to the group. It is an illiberal move, and it is deliberate. The language of diversity and community is a bureaucratic language, for all the spurious authenticity they want to imply. It is the language of the state bureaucracy, here decorated with transgressive trim.
The language of communitarianism is accompanied by an ideology of what Serwer calls “neighbourism”, the word “neighbour” occurring 16 times in the article: he doesn’t like citizenship, now superseded by physical proximity. I wrote about some of the problems of this rhetorical move from the citizen to the neighbour, a rhetoric now promoted to an ideology, yesterday.
A Civilization in Scare Quotes
Serwer concludes that the supposedly autonomous resistance of Minnesota has “preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization.” The mocking scare quotes are what gamblers call a tell: The Atlantic, quondam home of Brahmin letters, can no longer name its own civilization outside derisive quotation marks. We are in the presence of a massive collapse of cultural self-confidence. All that is worthy of preservation are middle-aged church ladies with whistles.
The Atlantic cannot, of course, resist imputing racism to ICE and Border Patrol - or is it MAGA? - accusing them of filling empty souls with “lies about their own inherent superiority.” Obviously, ICE and Border Patrol are as racially diverse as any bureaucrat could want, and Trump has increased the racial diversity of the Republican coalition. But we have again left the realm of fact and entered that of the leftist imaginary: it is always Little Rock in 1957.
Western civilization and American culture are reduced to nullities, and the progressive mind can see nothing left but race. This is tactically helpful, as race is a favourite subject. In any case, the left doesn’t see much value in the United States, and despises its culture.
A Journalism of Kitsch
On his way to this perorative paragraph, Serwer does actually commit some real journalism, reporting on people delivering food or using their cars to harass federal agents going about their duty. But it is kitschy and propagandistic: June Cleaver gathers food in a church basement, all-American infantilized “moms” face down ICE, just folks coming together in the face of the enormity of law enforcement.
Facts not Mentioned
Serwer mentions the Antifa-adjacent Minnesota ICE Watch organization, but its association with the violent anti-American left is not mentioned. Nor are the numerous incidents of violence, which are obscured into a few snowballs, nor the threats against independent journalists, nor the dubious funding and state-government links of Minnesota ICE Watch. Serwer presents a fantasy of what anarchists called autonomism: the autonomous and spontaneous organization of resistance, which is clearly not what is happening.
James O’Keefe is one of the journalists who have faced threats, in his case death threats.
Cam Higby (@camhigby), Hailey West (@haileyywest), and Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) are others. None is mentioned by The Atlantic. All have been harassed, assaulted and threatened. One doubts that compliant writers like Adam Serwer had the same experience. If he saw anything, he did not report it.
Here is violence, including a wounded federal officer, also not reported by The Atlantic:
Also not reported by The Atlantic (the list is long) is the extensive external funding of far-left groups. DataRepublican on X is a good source:
A Journalism of Deliberate Ignorance
The Atlantic practices a journalism of deliberate ignorance. The narrative is chosen first, the facts selected later. Some of the facts reported by mainstream journalists may turn out to be false (as with the child-as-bait story), but they are professional enough to try to avoid that. The primary tool of the propagandist is omission rather than positive falsehood.
The result is journalistic malpractice: it produces falsehood. It presents as spontaneous and peaceful what is in fact highly organized and calibrated violence. The threshold of leftist violence is skillfully judged so as to remain below the level that complicit journals could not ignore, and the compliant media cooperate. They have lost sight of the purpose of journalism, and write as activists. They are so pleased with the results, wrapped in a specious profundity, that they cannot see the problem.
The Atlantic is pushing a party line. Obviously, that line is supported by Laureen Powell Jobs, the Atlantic’s unsilent billionairess owner. The social fracture is clear: hegemonic power, exercised by high-status, credentialized and wealthy elites, opposes the democratic choice of the deplorables. They shout about “our democracy” while the administration implements the platform it got elected on, which makes another problem they can’t see.