t feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact,” Matt Taibbi recently wrote in a widely shared Substack post, “but the American left has lost its mind.” Taibbi’s post is largely about public defenestrations taking place at media organizations across the country, in which editors and writers have been mobbed and fired for publishing views that run counter to the dominant narratives on the left after the killing of George Floyd.
New York Times editorial editor James Bennet was pushed out for publishing an essay by Sen. Tom Cotton that called for the U.S. military to “disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers” who were rioting and looting on American streets. David Shor was fired from the data science firm Civis Analytics after tweeting a paper by political scientist Omar Wasow about the effectiveness of nonviolent protests versus riots (though it’s unclear exactly why Shor was removed from his position and he says a nondisclosure agreement prevents him from discussing the episode). Intercept reporter Lee Fang issued a public apology after tweeting an interview with a black protester named Max who thinks the protests should place greater emphasis on all forms of violence that affect black communities, not just police violence.
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