by Matthew J. Peterson
Many people seem surprised that CNN gave a platform to white-supremacist Richard Spencer this week. They angrily decry the outrageous hypocrisy of the Left putting Spencer on the national airwave when it routinely de-platforms those on the Right for far less than giving voice to self-avowed neo-Nazis. But why? Don’t you know the rules?
You know—the rules the Left is used to making, and the rules the “kept Right” is used to keeping. Did you actually think any of what is going on in Big Tech is really about stopping radical hate and violence? If that were true, all the folks from Antifa praising their terrorist lunatic who tried to shoot up a government facility this week would be de-platformed. Don’t hold your breath.
The Left demands that every elected Republican official publicly apologize for a some nutjob murderer in New Zealand, but do you think that means Leftists have to apologize for Antifa’s “principled” domestic terrorism against journalists and government buildings here at home? Pfft. What are you, a racist?
Spencer was deemed useful to pronounce Trump’s tweets racist. He quickly went on to complain that Trump has done nothing for white nationalists, contradicting the media narrative that Trump is somehow serving their interests before CNN cut the interview.
But his job was done.
CNN doesn’t care about how gross it is that they gave him a platform. Spencer is now their little pet—their weapon to de-platform others, their new patsy they can trot out at will to say what they need him to say while cutting whatever’s inconvenient.
But, you object, how can avowed racists be treated as indisputable judges of what is racist and what is not? Aren’t we told daily that racist microaggressions are committed by those who think they aren’t racist?
Shut up, bigot. Learn the rules.
Yes, Democratic lawmakers can’t discipline their arrogant little children when they spout off nasty, anti-Semitic comments. And they don’t have to.
They don’t have to worry about making outright anti-Semitic remarks, or about outright racist remarks concerning “whiteness” being intrinsically evil, and hating it. You, however, better start worrying and apologizing for microaggressions of which you aren’t even aware and for distant ancestors you never knew.
They don’t have to resign from their governorship for posting KKK and blackface pictures as some kind of a sick joke when they got out of medical school. You’re a racist because you voted for President Trump in 2016. You’re a racist for even thinking about voting for him in 2020.
The mainstream media outlets don’t have to apologize for wild conspiracy theories that terrify half the nation, willingly concocted and spread in partnership with government officials against the opposing party. You have to apologize for not believing them.
They don’t have to apologize for spreading insane stories about how Justice Kavanaugh was a serial gang rapist. But you, well—you better #BelieveAllWomen.
Their professors don’t quiver in fear that fellow academics will find out their true views like conservative ones do, even though such views are shared by half the nation and billions of Christians throughout the world. No, their “serious intellectuals” gleefully publish trashy, non-scholarly articles bashing half the country as racist fascists from their cushy academic perches without thinking twice, and mock the Christian faith with impunity.
They don’t have to worry about making careful edits or quadruple checking their numbers or about facing protest and backlash if they conduct academic studies on controversial topics. They’re on the right side of history. You’re not.
They will discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, and political views as they please. You, on the other hand, better not. They don’t have to worry about their schools or businesses getting shut down. You do.
They don’t have to worry that calling a man a man or a woman a woman will get their social media accounts banned. You do. What are you, one of those bigoted, evil people who thinks men can’t get pregnant and unborn babies are human beings? You’re anti-science.
They don’t have to worry about the respectability of their publications if they associate with wild conspiracy theorists. They put batshit crazy charts worthy of the most rabid Q-anon follower in prominent places within prestigious pages.
These fundamentalist zealots have turned our public square into the show trial court of the woke inquisition, replete with the choice between public confession and the guillotine of unpersoning. But the media is not your priest, and the public square is not a court of law. Stop playing their game.
At some point, you will need to join the rest of us and wake up. That’s right. Get woke.
Study up on the systemic problem of identity politics and political correctness. Learn how it threatens America and has become its own religion. Listen and consider its bigotry, racism, and hatred of Americanism—and begin calling the Left out on it.
Proclaim what Abraham Lincoln called the central principle of American political thought: that at the fundamental level of being, all people are created equal, according to the laws of nature and nature’s God.
Proclaim, as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King did, that we ought to judge others not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
And let ’em beclown themselves by calling that racist.
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Matthew J. Peterson is the Claremont Institute’s Vice President of Education and the Editor of The American Mind. [Follow him on Twitter @docmjp.]
Photo “Richard Spencer” by CNN.
