{"id":15321,"date":"2017-04-21T08:22:18","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T12:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=15321"},"modified":"2017-04-21T08:22:18","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T12:22:18","slug":"more-on-bret-stephens-the-nyts-new-hire-from-climate-denial-to-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/more-on-bret-stephens-the-nyts-new-hire-from-climate-denial-to-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"More on Bret Stephens, the NYT’s New Hire: from Climate Denial to Racism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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New New York Times<\/strong> hire Bret Stephens (cc photo: Christopher Michel)<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n

Outraged by the NYT hiring a straight-ahead climate denier (which at this point in the game is exactly as inane as hiring a flat-earthler as resident geography specialist) I posted on this & on our cancelling the NYT because of this a few days ago \u2014 oddly enough, this post has attracted more viewers than nearly all other posts in the last few years (except for the Gilles Deleuze essays…). Meanwhile journalists have gone & gathered info on Bret Stephens & the picture that emerges, beyond the\u00a0climate denial matter, is that of the classic racist right-wing reactionary. In fact, Stephens doesn’t miss a single topic or occasion to elaborate on his despicable racist ideology. \u00a0Below, parts of an article by Adam Johnson<\/a>\u00a0reprinted from FAIR<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/b> is the most influential newspaper in the English-language world, not just because of its reach and leadership status within the industry, but because it defines the boundaries of acceptable debate. Being in the New York Times<\/b> is a legitimizing event, one that cements ideas as not fringe, \u201cother,\u201d or in the realm of the dreaded, career-ending \u201cconspiracy theory.\u201d So it understandably upset many liberals when the Times<\/b> decided to bestow upon hard-right Wall Street Journal<\/b> deputy editorial page editor Bret Stephens the ultimate stamp of Acceptable Opinion approval by affording him a regular op-ed column in the Times.<\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just that Stephens is yet another white man, like nine of the other 12 current columnists. As Hamilton Nolan thoroughly documented over at Fusion<\/b> (4\/14\/17<\/a>), Stephens holds a number of fringe right-wing opinions, namely his consistent climate change denial, anti-Arab racism, anti-black racism, advocacy of torture and insistence that the campus rape epidemic is an \u201cimaginary enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephens has referred to antisemitism as \u201cthe disease of the Arab mind,\u201d insisted<\/a>\u00a0Palestinians have a \u201cblood fetish\u201d and \u201cblood lust,\u201d said<\/a> Black Lives Matter was a \u201clie\u201d based on the \u201cmyth of victimization,\u201d labeled<\/a> institutionalized racism another \u201cimaginary enemy,\u201d called<\/a> climate change \u201chysteria\u201d and a \u201creligion without God,\u201d and, in a piece<\/a>\u00a0subtly headlined \u201cI Am Not Sorry the CIA Waterboarded,\u201d contended Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in fact \u201cwaterboarded himself\u201d by not being \u201ctruthful with his captors.\u201d<\/p>\n

As others have noted (The Outline<\/b>, 4\/18\/17<\/a>; Think Progress<\/b>, 4\/13\/17<\/a>), these are all far-right positions that would be usually be considered outside the Acceptable Mainstream. What is less commented upon is how Stephens\u2019 hiring highlights the radical asymmetry at work when considering what is and isn\u2019t a fringe opinion. When one goes to the far right\u2014namely the neocon right, which puts a premium on anti-Arab and anti-black racism, and fetishizes American exceptionalism above all else\u2014there doesn\u2019t seem to be a line that can\u2019t be crossed.<\/p>\n

This is in stark contrast to the other end on the spectrum, where anything slightly to the left of Hillary Clinton is nonexistent in the staff opinion section at the New York Times<\/b>. All of the liberal or pro-Democratic Times<\/b> columnists during the 2016 primary, for example, were behind Clinton or, at the very least, not behind Sanders or his broader policy aims.(…)<\/p>\n

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New New York Times hire Bret Stephens (cc photo: Christopher Michel) Outraged by the NYT hiring a straight-ahead climate denier (which at this point in the game is exactly as inane as hiring a...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,52,55,59,61,79],"tags":[1927,1926],"class_list":["post-15321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-human-rights","category-intellectuals","category-israel","category-journalism","category-palestine","tag-adam-johnson","tag-bret-stephens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15321"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15332,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15321\/revisions\/15332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}