Read on Twitter
Thread: The fact that a toxic reactionary like @mtaibbi still has a gig with @RollingStone and gets treated as a commentator worth quoting shows (1) that "cancel culture" is a myth and (2) that our cultural discourse is thoroughly degraded.
Now just because I find the civility-uber-alles crowd obnoxious doesn't mean I am for the excesses for purity testing or political correctness. I don't believe people should be defined by the worst moment in their lives. I believe in progress and redemption.
But I don't believe that people who proudly flaunt their resistance to progress should be spared cancelling. Our society is improved by cancelling awful behaviour and rewarding intellectual distinction or moral virtue. A society that rewards depravity is a failed society.
Taibbi has good reason to fear what he calls liberal censoriousness. He fears reckoning. Remember, he co-authored a book which brags about sexually harassing Russian co-workers and raping drunk teens. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-two-expat-bros-who-terrorized-women-correspondents-in-moscow/2017/12/15/91ff338c-ca3c-11e7-8321-481fd63f174d_story.html
Sample passage from the book. (p. 134)
Finally, with #metoo 
, Taibbi was called out. e.g. https://jezebel.com/writers-matt-taibbi-and-mark-ames-serviced-no-one-but-t-1820007051
, Taibbi was called out. e.g. https://jezebel.com/writers-matt-taibbi-and-mark-ames-serviced-no-one-but-t-1820007051
Another: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/matt-taibbis-not-so-secret-russian-past_b_59f729e9e4b06acda25f4b8e
You'd think that would get Taibbi cancelled, right? Of course, he survived. He claimed the book, which carried the clear disclaimer that it was "non-fiction", was indeed fiction. He got a sycophant to write a defence. He even apologised.
But in all the focus on the book's lurid passages, something far more glaring was completely ignored: the man the authors chose to write the book's foreword. Eduard Limonov was the founder of the Nationalist Bolshevik Party. Can you guess the politics from its flag?
Yes, Limonov was not just a proud Nazi, he also had history. During the Bosnian genocide, Limonov made a name for himself by having himself filmed with the convicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic firing a machinegun at besieged Sarajevo.
But all of that is in the past, right? People change; learn from mistakes. But of course Taibbi has learned no lessons. A man who once bragged about forcing sex upon employees would have more humility than the above statement suggests. He is still chums with genocide apologists.
As one of Greenwald's boys, he joined the Intercept but was quickly forced out. The company said it was because female employees had complained about his abusive behaviour. Others have made more serious allegations. https://twitter.com/MaerRoshan/status/1259348475839299584
The abusive behaviour is unsurprising, because in contrast to his smarmy behaviour on screen, he is known to be a proper asshole. He once threw coffee in the face of a vanity fair writer for asking a tough question then tried to creepily follow him. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2010/02/this_is_what_happens_if_you_te.html
None of this I'd have paid much attention to or even bothered to know had it not been for his new @RollingStone where he hosts a series of conspiracy theorists, 9/11 truthers, genocide deniers and Putin and Assad apologists.
Having lost a mainstream audience, Taibbi has been angling for the Alex Jones set, using Syria trutherism as a bait. Some of the apologia is so egregious that a group of journalists, editors, scholars & activists wrote to Rolling Stone asking them to withdraw their affiliation.
The show has a few limited themes. Putin did nothing wrong. Assad is innocent. Democrats are the real evil. #Russiagate is like Iraq WMDs. Of course internet nutters have been lapping it up and @RollingStone is delighted with the traffic.
So back to cancel culture. I am one of the people who led the effort to get this conspiracy nut canceled. Many notable intellectuals, journalists, scholars and activists signed the initiative. Yet, this loathsome creature persists. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uWwtTd67UqC-V23PgMigsPdnH64i7wWFNc_fukBk7As/edit
And here is where the utter cynicism of this whole revolting enterprise becomes clear. Remember Tara Reade and the allegations against Biden? Guess who started it? It was Taibbi's @RollingStone co-host.
So next time you see someone quoting Taibbi, give them nothing but contempt
So next time you see someone quoting Taibbi, give them nothing but contempt
