It’s quite possible that if Zohram Mamdani wins election and becomes Mayor of New York, his plans — government run grocery stores in food deserts, free mass transit, free daycare — won’t come to fruition. Running New York is hard and delivering on promises is tough. I’d still vote for him, though. And I love that his response to a debate challenge from opponent (and sex harasser) Andrew Cuomo was “Why should I debate Donald Trump’s puppet when I could debate Donald Trump himself?”
The opposition and outrage he generates, not only from Republicans, but some Democrats, makes me think of Vaclav Havel’s essay about The Power of the Powerless. As Havel explains it, tyrants who claim to rule because they have the right ideology cannot tolerate even small dissents: it’s not that the dissenter has any power, it’s that saying “No, I disagree with your beliefs” is the same as saying “you do not, in fact, have the right to rule.” They cannot accept that.
Mamdani saying government can help people contradicts one of the basic Republican “truths,” that government can’t help people. He’s also contradicting Democratic centrists who think they know what wins elections; if Mamdani proves them wrong, that’s going to upset them — OMG, what if people stop believing centrists have the one true path to winning! Sure, Mamdani’s doing what they say Democrats should do — talk about economy and “kitchen table issues” — but he’s doing it the wrong way!
As Oliver Willis says (quoted at the link), “the Mamdani thing is showing you how limited the range of acceptable opinions actually is in America. republicans can be a stone’s throw away from endorsing genocide and thats fine but one guy goes slightly to the left of dem party orthodoxy and we’re right in the middle of Soviet Russia.” It’s likewise telling that some people would sooner see former governor Cuomo — a Trump-friendly sexual harasser who botched the state’s pandemic response big time — in the mayor’s office than Mamdani.
Which leads me to this law-school journal article by Mary Anne Franks about how limited our concept of defending unpopular speech — free speech rights include the speech we hate! — have become. That it’s more likely to apply to angry white men (e.g., Tucker Carlson and other right-wingers arguing Hitler was the good guy), corporations and people in positions of power than the dispossessed, the marginalized and the oppressed. The speech rights of white men take precedence (just as white male grievances and achievements must be taken seriously).
Christine Blasey Ford got death threats for speaking out about Brett Kavanaugh assaulting her; she was not described as a free speech martyr but as a partisan attacking him. When accused sexual assailant/minister Johnny Hunt sued the people who’d identified him as such (he lost!), it wasn’t presented (as far as I’m aware) as a free speech issue (nor in general when rapists and harassers sue the victims who spoke out). “there has been no attempt by the ACLU [I should mention I donate to the ACLU and believe it does vital work, though I think this criticism is still valid] or prominent civil libertarians to champion the women of the #MeToo movement as free speech heroes or to denounce the aggressive attempts to censor them. There was no similar national handwringing over the free speech crisis created by the threats, harassment, and lawsuits against women who spoke out about male sexual abuse as there was over the supposed free speech crisis on college campuses when students protested appearances by white male supremacists.”
Which leads me to Bari Weiss. For years she’s built her brand as the advocate of edgy free speech and repressed ideas, never mind that she’s a textbook example of what Franks is talking about: Weiss’ support for free speech invariably sides with the status quo. She’s had zero sympathy for free speech when anyone takes the side of Palestinians, for instance.
Weiss coined the term intellectual dark web to refer to beliefs and speakers she claimed were shut out of the mainstream. You know, beliefs like “there are fundamental biological differences between men and women” and “identity politics are bad” — nobody ever dares say that kind of thing in public. Mark Lilla, for instance, has called for an end to identity politics, and look how he was silenced: interviews with Vox, articles in The New Yorker, books … (see here and here for a couple of my past blog posts on this topic). Pundit Lee Siegel talked about how he’d be shouted down and silenced for his views on rapists … and said it in an op-ed in the New York Times. Suzanne Venker sometimes declares her misogynist views are the truths the mainstream media won’t tell you — and she says this on Fox News, which is mainstream media.
Common or not, it appears this brand of bullshit has paid off for Weiss: the probable new owner of CBS is talking about putting her in charge of the news division (even if it doesn’t happen, being considered boosts her status). She’ll be anti-woke! She has a “shit-kicking, anti-establishment disposition” — if you assume that CBS News, the New York Times and the Republican Party are anti-establishment and that college kids who protest against Israel or right wing speakers are the powers that be.
No conclusion, really, just noting a pattern I think is real.
