‘Woke’ Journalists Are Our Allies

Researcher Zach Goldberg discovered the time when journalists suddenly started talking about privilege, diversity, equality, and “whiteness.” He has published graphs based on LexisNexis searches.

“So many of these . . . look the same that, without the title, it looks like I’m simply posting a single chart,” Mr. Goldberg noted.

His findings support Matthew Yglesias’s “Great Awokening” theory: White liberals have shifted sharply left on race. It wasn’t a response to President Trump, though his triumph intensified leftist fervor. “It began roughly with the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri,” says Mr. Yglesias.

Steve Sailer wrote that “the establishment’s Ferguson narrative was something between a hate hallucination and a hate hoax,” and the truth didn’t matter. “A big part of what happened is that White Progressive Twitter assumed it must take the accuracy of Black Twitter about Trayvon and Michael Brown on faith,” he wrote.

The term “Great Awokening” captures egalitarianism’s religious nature. New social media technology and the corporate media’s lurch to the left promoted radicalization. True believers level endless charges of “privilege.” Evidence, whether about racial differences or Michael Brown’s guilt, cannot compete with the fantasy. Heretics who raise doubts are evil.

There is a reaction. Almost every white advocate I’ve met who joined after 2014 says it was the Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown case that “woke him up.” Race is the subject about which the media are most transparently deceptive, and this prompts doubters to look for alternatives. The more people disbelieve the media, the more they will join our cause.

Several polls show Americans’ trust in mass media is declining, but this doesn’t tell the whole story. A partisan gap developed about the time of the 2016 campaign; Democrats trust the media more than Republicans.

According to the General Social Survey, Democrats’ trust is increasing, reversing a long-term decline. Gallup polls show the same pattern. Gallup also reports women, non-whites, and college graduates are most likely to trust the media.

White progressives and white conservatives can be distinguished according to who believes the corporate media and who does’t. In blogger Scott Adams’ words, Americans operate in “two realities.” This applies especially to partisan politics and race.

Recent data from the Pew Research Center show white conservatives are not becoming identitarians. However, they are tired of white liberals’ claims that the country “hasn’t gone far enough” to achieve equality. They also distrust media outlets that are always clamoring for greater efforts.

Of course, everyone gets his news somewhere. The Media Insight Project reports people distrust the media generally, but have more faith in the source they use most often. Most media are liberal. Thus, conservative media users have fewer sources they trust and are therefore more insular. They are also more vulnerable to deplatforming.

Not surprisingly, Tucker Carlson, talk radio hosts, and online Dissident Right commentators are under attack. Contemporary “mainstream” journalism loves to identify targets and demand they be fired or deplatformed. They sometimes do this in partnership with antifa.

The president has done nothing about deplatforming, saying pathetically that you fight it by “just being good.” Scott Adams, who accurately predicted the 2016 election, predicts doom for the president in 2020 because of online censorship. There’s a new campaign to get the president himself banned from Twitter. Jared Taylor has long argued that Mr. Trump should shut down his Twitter account and move to Gab. Many of his 60 million followers would follow him, which would immensely strengthen Twitter’s only direct competitor. Mr. Trump either doesn’t have the brains or the backbone to do that.

Social media justify censorship by claiming they are fighting “radicalization.” Yet it’s the corporate media that sounds increasingly radical with its attacks on “whiteness.” The Columbia Journalism Review says the insular nature of conservative media readers means they are “more likely to believe ‘fake news.’” Yet it’s the corporate media that encourage hostility — and potentially violence — for their targets.

It promoted “hands up, don’t shoot,” a claim that led to riots and indirectly to attacks on police officers, but the corporate media’s irresponsibility goes well beyond race. Alex Jones speculating about Sandy Hook has done far less damage to national unity than CNN, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, The New York Times, and others entertaining theories that the President of the United States was working for the Russians. Alex Jones has been deplatformed; Brian Stelter is haranguing me even now from the airport TV set.

The mainstream media encourage conspiracy theories. A slim majority of Democrats polled in December 2016 thought Russia had directly tampered with vote tallies to get Donald Trump elected. There’s no evidence for this. A poll from the same company showed that by 2018, 67 percent of Democrats believed it. So far as I know, no major network ever made such a claim, but they implied it. The media will never ask themselves whether they had any role in misinforming the country.

The “Great Awokening” came at the same time as the crackdown on aggressive policing — and a nationwide spike in violent crime. Baltimore has not recovered from the 2015 Freddie Gray riots.

Many college campuses are in a permanent state of racial hallucination. Students say they are terrified of lurking racists — even if all they saw was a shoelace in a knot (thought to be a noose), a priest (thought to be a Klansman), or something equally harmless. Whether these fears are sincere or invented is irrelevant; claiming oppression brings rewards.

Colleges spend millions of dollars on “diversity” programs, but activist groups always demand more. Racially segregated graduation ceremonies and residence halls, race-based activist organizations, and academic departments such Black Studies all strengthen non-white identity. Courses and conferences condemning “whiteness” and “Beckys” (a slur for white women) promote hostility towards whites. Nkosi Thandiwe explained that he murdered Brittney Watts because he was angry about “white privilege.”

Zach Goldberg’s graphs show that America is becoming one giant college campus. A fan flashes the “OK” sign at Wrigley Field and The Washington Post decides it is national news. W magazine complains the television program “Game of Thrones” mistreats “immigrant populations.” Time runs articles trying to convince Americans that Vikings and Medieval Europeans were multiracial. From the top down, most corporate media push racial grievance, division, and antagonism — and then claim they are trying to achieve equality.

Americans are constantly being told Nazis, racists, and Russian agents are everywhere. It seems to be driving people crazy. A 2018 study from the American Psychological Association found 62 percent of Americans report that the “current political climate” causes them “stress.” Almost 70 percent said thinking about the nation’s future causes them stress, and young people are the most likely to say they are “stressed.” Almost a quarter of Americans report “discrimination” causes them stress, an increase from 2017. This includes almost half of blacks and more than a third of Hispanics. Constant press coverage about right-wing extremists on the march only makes things worse.

Many white Americans believe this nonsense. The “NPC” (short for “Non-Playable Character”) meme was crude, but accurate. Confederate statues went from inoffensive to hateful seemingly overnight; so did the “OK sign.” It is no longer possible for a white to claim he is not racist because the standards keep changing. Tomorrow, anything or anyone could be “racist.” Anyone who thinks political correctness has gone too far will find out just how far it can go. Many will be forced into our camp because they have nowhere else to go.

Anger against “whiteness” is what unites the leftist coalition. “Victims” of oppression can get sympathetic media coverage and financial benefits. Thus, there will always be a new “outrage,” and the media will play up even the most outlandish.

There is hope in those who tune out. Many support alternative media, despite deplatforming and discrimination. White advocates must join with civic nationalists, classical liberals, and the occasional principled leftist to fight for a free internet.

We must do more. A defensive stance of simply opposing political correctness is doomed. We have to offer a positive alternative. Ironically, our best allies may be the leftists and media themselves. Their increasingly transparent biases will drive people into our arms.