Matt Taibbi has made a valuable contribution to the documentation of the government’s suppression of heterodox and nonconforming speech on Twitter. He is an honest and dogged journalist. I have therefore sought to draw attention to his work in face of such denials and evasions as those to which FBI Director Christopher Wray testified under oath on July 12 before an occasionally showboating congressional committee last week. Taibbi wrote in a post dated July 12 (written, I am sure, before Wray’s testimony): “There can’t possibly be controversy at this point as to whether or not this censorship program is going on.” Well, there shouldn’t be.
I subscribe to Taibbi’s Racket News site for access to posts such as “Twitter Files: Missouri v. Biden Edition” (July 11 — if he posts an accessible video version I’ll be back with it). Taibbi places most of his posts behind the site’s paywall, but he opened up his July 12 post “Where have all the liberals gone?” Addressed to anyone with “an explanation, a personal testimonial, anything,” he invited comments on it and it has racked up nearly 2,500.
Taibbi is a self-described traditional American liberal who seeks to understand what he now sees. He cannot reconcile former positions with “this censorship picture[.]” As he puts it, “The change in thinking of traditional American liberals is the only part of this censorship picture that still doesn’t quite compute for me.”
He suggests that the left has gone astray. Without reconciling the contradictions, if that is what they are, I think the left has manifested its totalizing heart. That’s what we contend with now.
Taibbi has now posted a video version narrated by Jared Moore (below). I thought some readers might find it of interest in addition to Taibbi’s post.
