The deeper I dig into the controversy provoked by the Harper’s Open
Letter, the more convinced I am that it reflects a faultline on the
American left. First and foremost, it involves race and class with
people such as Thomas Chatterton Williams and Matt Taibbi, two of the
leading figures leading the charge against “cancel culture”, contending
that Black “identity politics” has become an infection almost as deadly
as COVID-19.
There are perhaps two degrees of separation between these two
high-profile pundits and the campaign waged by Adolph Reed Jr., Cedric
Johnson and Walter Benn Michaels against “antiracism”.
And another two degrees between their frequent interventions on Jacobin
and Nonsite and the debate over Project 1619, which Reed and some
blue-chip historians regard as an insidious propaganda campaign that has
the audacity to claim, for example, that Abraham Lincoln was a racist.
When Boston decided to remove a statue depicting Abraham Lincoln with a
freed black man at his feet, this just became the latest example of
cancel culture’s threat to both art and our historical legacy.
Within this boiling cauldron of charges and counter-charges, Jacobin,
the DSA and the Sandernista left are at the center, just like the eye of
a hurricane. This became obvious to me after listening to Chapo Trap
House podcast number 435, titled “Let’s Get Cancelled”. Made on July
9th, just two days after the Harper’s Open Letter appeared, it featured
two Chapo members, Will Menaker and Amber A’Lee Frost, interviewing Matt
Taibbi. Like all such podcasts, there is uniformity of opinion, so much
so that it sometimes becomes so tedious that you can barely stay awake.
For people on such a high horse about the need for free and open debate,
you’d think that they’d do a podcast with a range of opinion.
full:
https://louisproyect.org/2020/07/28/chapo-trap-house-and-matt-taibbi-crack-down-on-the-antiracists/
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