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This is Citations Needed with Nima

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Shirazi and Adam Johnson. Welcome

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history of bullshit. I am Nima

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Shirazi. I'm Adam Johnson. You

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unions, still a

1:00

huge obstacle to reform. Countering

1:04

Iran's menacing Persian Gulf Navy.

1:07

Open everything. The time

1:10

to end pandemic restrictions is

1:12

now. The

1:14

good Republicans last stand.

1:17

Each of these headlines comes from the

1:19

same magazine, The Atlantic magazine. For 167

1:22

years, the publication has enjoyed elite

1:24

stature in the American literary and

1:26

journalistic world. Publishing such

1:28

luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson and

1:30

Barack Obama and serving as a

1:32

coveted professional destination for writers throughout

1:34

the country. Founded in

1:36

part by a number of esteemed 19th

1:38

century authors, the magazine has long prided

1:40

itself on its cultural and political depth.

1:43

But beneath all of its

1:45

high-minded rhetoric about democracy, free

1:48

expression, fearlessness, and American ideals

1:50

is a vehicle of center right pablum.

1:54

And to launder reactionary opinions for

1:56

a liberal-leaning audience. As

1:58

the employer of warmongers, like Jeffrey

2:01

Goldberg, Ann Appelbaum, and David

2:03

Frum, under the ownership of

2:05

a Silicon Valley-tied investment firm

2:07

held bent on destroying teachers'

2:10

unions, The Atlantic Magazine time

2:12

and again proves a far

2:14

cry from the truth-pursuing, consensus-disrupting

2:16

outlet that it so often claims

2:18

to be. On today's episode,

2:21

we'll provide a deep dive into the

2:23

history and general ideology of The Atlantic

2:25

Magazine, examining its currents of middlebrow conservatism,

2:27

left-punching and deference to boring business owners

2:29

that have run through the magazine throughout

2:31

its nearly 17 decades in

2:33

operation. Later on

2:35

the episode, we'll be joined by a friend

2:37

of the show, writer John Schwartz. David

2:40

Frum, Jeffrey Goldberg, a lot of these other people, makes

2:43

you understand what their job actually is.

2:46

So the naive might believe that the job of

2:48

journalists is to try to find out the truth

2:51

and tell other people about the truth. And

2:53

if that were the case, obviously their careers

2:56

would have been ended by their catastrophic

2:59

wrong statements and claims before the

3:01

war. So that would be if

3:04

that were their job, to find out the truth. If

3:07

their job was to start wars,

3:10

then obviously they would be promoted and

3:12

we know what happened. And so that tells us

3:15

a lot about what their jobs actually are. This

3:18

is a spiritual successor, TM, to

3:20

a couple episodes, specifically our episode

3:22

on The Economist magazine, the refined

3:24

sociopathy of The Economist from episode

3:26

98 from 2020. Anytime

3:29

you do an episode on

3:32

a single publication, it can be difficult for

3:34

fairly obvious reasons, which is that publications

3:37

oftentimes do have ideological diversity. So much of

3:39

what we're discussing today is really

3:41

the kind of broad outlines or the overwhelming

3:43

ideological tilt, we should say. There are of

3:45

course going to be exceptions to this, of

3:47

course. I believe we've had Atlantic writers even

3:49

on the show because some of

3:52

them don't suck. And so there will be some

3:54

generalizations with that caveat. I think it's fair to

3:56

say that these are quantifiable and objective determinations

3:59

as to the idea. ideological proclivities of

4:01

this publication, because all publications have

4:03

some ideological leanings. And this

4:06

is also, in some ways, a spiritual successor to

4:08

a fairly recent episode, episode 195, David

4:10

Leonard and the Elite Consensus Manufacturing

4:12

Machine, where we talked about the

4:15

fundamentally conservative ideology of

4:17

the New York Times, specifically. So

4:19

this is not to say that there haven't been

4:21

wonderful things published in the New York Times, or

4:23

that everyone who works or writes for the New

4:25

York Times shares one

4:27

single political bent or

4:29

one kind of ideology. No, but

4:31

as we have often discussed on

4:34

this show, the New York Times

4:36

itself is ideologically committed

4:38

to certain things, as voice time

4:40

and again by its publishers and

4:42

by its senior editors. It is

4:45

committed to a worldview that promotes,

4:47

say, capitalism on purpose. Maybe

4:49

that's not weird in the American media

4:52

industry, of course, but it definitely establishes

4:54

a tone, a voice, a

4:56

perspective, institutionally. And that

4:58

is the same as we've discussed

5:00

as The Economist, at other publications

5:03

as well, and certainly for The

5:05

Atlantic magazine. So let's start with

5:07

a bit of history about The

5:09

Atlantic magazine. The Atlantic was

5:12

founded in 1857 in Boston, Massachusetts as

5:15

The Atlantic Monthly by publisher

5:17

Moses Stressor Phillips, in association

5:19

with prominent writers of the

5:21

time, such as Ralph

5:23

Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe,

5:26

and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Its

5:28

first issue, published in November 1857, included

5:32

a mission statement explaining the magazine's

5:34

goals in the area of literature,

5:36

arts, and politics. While the

5:39

first two are fairly anodyne, the

5:41

third is worth reading in full,

5:43

as it reveals that a kind

5:45

of reaching across the aisle style

5:48

of centrism and unflinching US patriotism

5:50

have been at the magazine's core

5:52

since its inception. The excerpt

5:55

reads as follows. In

5:57

politics, The Atlantic will be the origin.

6:00

of no party or clique, but

6:02

will honestly endeavor to be the

6:04

exponent of what its conductors believe

6:06

to be the American idea. It

6:09

will deal frankly with persons and

6:11

with parties, endeavoring always to keep

6:13

in view that moral element which

6:16

transcends all persons and parties, and

6:18

which alone makes the basis of

6:20

a true and lasting national prosperity.

6:23

It will not rank itself with any sect

6:25

of anties, but with that

6:27

body of men which is in favor

6:29

of freedom, capital F, national

6:31

progress, capital N, capital P,

6:34

and honor, capital H, whether

6:37

public or private." And

6:40

it's often romantic and wistful reflections of its

6:43

own history. The Atlantic magazine credits itself with

6:45

being founded by abolitionists, which is partly true,

6:48

or at least abolitionist sympathizers. Yet

6:50

it kind of routinely undermines this by

6:52

also reaffirming its commitment to quote-unquote American

6:54

ideals, whatever that means. I

6:56

guess slavery wasn't an American ideal. For

6:59

example, a 1994 presentation by Colin Murphy,

7:01

the magazine's managing editor at the

7:03

time echoed its kind of vaguely

7:06

anti-political mission statement of 1857, writing

7:08

quote, among educated people

7:10

throughout the United States, the issue of slavery was

7:12

obviously a great moment, but so too

7:14

was another matter. And in the boldest terms, it

7:16

might be said to have involved an attempt to

7:19

define and create a distinctly American voice, to

7:21

project an American stance, to promote something that

7:23

might be called an American ideal. You would

7:25

go on to state, few places remain

7:27

where scientists, politicians, business people, and writers

7:30

were members of the military, the clergy,

7:32

and academia, where Republicans and Democrats, black

7:34

and whites, the believer and

7:36

the unbeliever can regularly hear one another speak,

7:38

the Atlantic monthly is one of those places,

7:40

unquote. So the general idea is the Atlantic

7:42

monthly Is this sort of definition

7:45

of the center.? It is a place where

7:47

the right and the left get together, Republican

7:49

Democrat, And there's this kind of romantic, shared,

7:51

patriotic ideal of free exchanges of ideas. This

7:54

is kind of central to their kind of

7:56

fart-snipping worldview, the Marketplace of Ideas, Adam, Throughout

7:58

the rest of the. Infantry the magazine

8:00

with publish pieces asking thought provoking question

8:03

such as what would happen if America

8:05

fails to become a maritime power and

8:07

quote what unanticipated effects will the expanding

8:09

thing called be Your Time have on

8:11

the American psyche? Unquote Jumping ahead we're

8:13

gonna talk about the eighties and nineties

8:16

little because is really where they can

8:18

enter their peaks interest ideological orientation which

8:20

is and signing thirty it is. Lana

8:22

had been majority owned by a ranching

8:24

family but an eighteen eighty real estate

8:26

developer More Zuckerman who also for very

8:29

long time owns. The fourth largest newspaper

8:31

in America, as a New York Daily

8:33

News was known to hobnob with President

8:35

Reagan and Clinton's He funded both democrats

8:38

and Republicans, and he fancied himself a

8:40

journalist and an editor. He didn't just

8:42

become the new owner, was also the

8:45

chairman and was on the editorial board

8:47

does explicitly exercising creative control and editorial

8:49

control over the. Publication.

8:51

Itself And this is someone who made of

8:54

money in real estate. The Boston Globe reported

8:56

that same year in Nineteen Eighty that

8:58

Zuckerman planned to hire Richard Nixon as a

9:00

contributor. Documents. Portfolio would include

9:02

the following: where he wrote an article about

9:04

the scandal of Part Time America the some

9:07

July Twenty Four team for Wall Street Journal

9:09

where complains that Americans are working long enough

9:11

when she says the Full Time Scandal of

9:13

Part Time America which he says quotes fewer

9:15

than half of Us adults are working full

9:17

time. Why slow growth and perverse incentives of

9:19

Obama Care where he blames the Ac A

9:22

for making America's lazy Now one thing that

9:24

Zuckerman did that's relevant to the in in

9:26

the interest of his podcast, which is a

9:28

magazine cover we've actually discuss several years ago

9:30

which is a. Landing Magazine was a huge

9:32

huge promoter, was actually the first promoter

9:34

of the Broken Windows theory. Know got

9:37

to keep minds. Ackerman made all this

9:39

money of real states. A Broken Windows

9:41

is a policy largely born on a

9:43

real estate interests which has to say

9:45

you over police and hyper criminalize petty

9:47

and small time behavior sensibly to stop

9:49

bigger crime. But really, it's because you

9:51

don't once graffiti and broken windows as

9:53

this as a man who quite literally

9:55

owns tens of thousands of windows yes,

9:57

of the Atlantic really. as where the

9:59

broken windows. Policy was first

10:01

promoted to liberal. Elites

10:03

right? The intellectual class of American

10:06

society. This was the March Nineteen

10:08

Eighty Two issue. the article by

10:11

James You Wilson and George L.

10:13

Telling headline, the Police and Neighborhood

10:15

Safety and this article the Broken

10:18

Windows article is now kind of

10:20

legendary, right? Infamous, I would argue

10:23

at least as your Lindsey the

10:25

citation needed. Certainly infamous as it

10:27

really did promote this idea to

10:30

liberal elite intellectual circles in this

10:32

country of. It being really

10:34

important to crack down on the

10:36

petty crimes, to keep our society

10:39

together, right to deter or worse

10:41

crimes, right? Keep your neighborhoods nice

10:43

and tidy, make the city's look

10:45

like the suburbs this kind of

10:48

idea and the. Violence and

10:50

over policing and then mass

10:52

incarceration? That it right can

10:54

be overstated. We have done

10:57

many, many episodes referencing these

10:59

policies and they were really

11:01

born out of this initial

11:03

salvo. Issued through the

11:05

Atlantic Magazine in Nineteen Eighty Two.

11:08

Because. And cases are clear. The. Think.

11:11

They landed magazine thousand and the function

11:13

it serves and will get into this

11:15

more later is it launders right wing

11:17

idea? the Liberals which is an important

11:19

fulcrum for pushing right wing ideas as

11:21

being. Something. That's science driven normal.

11:23

good for squishy liberals because this is again

11:25

if I'm someone who wants to push right

11:28

wing ideas I you know you can. Blair

11:30

preached to the choir on a medium Fox

11:32

News or they're not as value in people

11:34

find that obviously. Yup and Shapiro's the world

11:36

but selling right wing ideas that are not

11:38

necessarily right wing on their face to liberals.

11:40

This also helps create does positive changes in

11:42

policy. sort of like how you had to

11:45

sell the Iraq War to the New York

11:47

Times in the New Yorker Magazine. Right? because

11:49

you you have to have some Liberal by

11:51

and if it was only. Promoter by

11:53

obvious warmongers. It wouldn't than be called

11:55

bipartisan. A wouldn't than be called moral

11:58

than you know, Would not. been

12:00

laundered through those channels. It just would have

12:02

been, yeah, kind of imperialism. But this way,

12:04

it sounds like intellectual freedom bringing. pushing broken

12:06

windows in the national review is not going

12:09

to get you very far. Pushing broken windows

12:11

in the New Republic and the Atlantic gets

12:13

you very far. That's also the gop, obviously,

12:15

this is a function largely of the New

12:17

Republic, especially in the 90s. And

12:20

so Suckerman sold the Atlantic magazine

12:23

in 1999 to David Bradley, founder

12:25

of the corporate executive board company, a consultancy

12:27

firm, a great generic corporate name. According

12:30

to the Washington Post, Bradley made $142 million when the

12:32

company went public and use some of that money to

12:34

buy the Atlantic. One of Bradley's

12:36

first moves was to hire journalists and centrists

12:38

Hawk Michael Kelly as an editor. In

12:41

1995, Kelly coined the term fusion paranoia

12:43

to refer to supposed conversions of the

12:46

conspiracy minded members of the political right

12:48

and left. And in 2002, he wrote

12:50

a piece for the Jewish World Review

12:52

headlined anti war efforts, advert liberal values,

12:54

unquote, regarding opposition to the war

12:56

in Iraq, in which he posed the question, wasn't

12:59

the freeing of the Iraqi people like the freeing

13:01

of the Afghan people be a great moral victory.

13:04

And it's worth mentioning that much like the New York Times,

13:06

and the New Republic that the Atlantic magazine

13:09

was central to selling the Iraq War, to

13:12

skeptical liberals and centrists, they had

13:14

pro Iraq war voices writing to

13:16

them Michael Kelly, Robert Kaplan, a

13:19

I fellow William Schneider, and Brookings rent

13:21

a hack like Stuart Taylor Jr. and

13:23

Jonathan Rauch, these guys wrote

13:25

a number of articles pushing the Iraq War and

13:28

the Atlantic magazine in 2002 and 2003. And so they

13:30

again were part of that effort along

13:34

with the New York Times, TNR,

13:37

and others, the Economist magazine to kind of

13:39

sell the Iraq War. It's not a right

13:41

wing thing, but a kind of respectable bipartisan

13:43

centrist policy. So under David

13:45

Bradley's ownership, by 2005, the

13:48

Atlantic magazine launched the Davos

13:51

inspired thought leader laden Aspen ideas festival.

13:53

The festival was named after its partner

13:55

in the effort the Aspen Institute, a

13:58

Gates, Ford and Carnegie, and a foundation-funded

14:00

think tanks. Speakers at the festival have

14:02

included folks like Sam Harris, Mark Zuckerberg,

14:05

Barry Weiss, J.D. Vance, Jordan Peterson, the

14:07

Walton family, and many, many others. Some

14:09

definitely not as ghoulish. We picked some

14:12

bad ones, but occasionally some token labor

14:14

leaders, of course, and poets might be

14:16

thrown in. But when a ticket to

14:18

the entire festival has a five-digit price

14:21

tag, it's fairly obvious who the audience

14:23

really is. Now back to the Atlantic

14:25

itself. One of David Bradley's highest profile

14:28

moves would be to hire Jeffrey Goldberg,

14:30

currently the magazine's editor-in-chief.

14:34

Now Goldberg, a native of

14:36

New Jersey who decided to

14:38

join the Israeli military and

14:40

voluntarily became a prison guard

14:42

in occupied Palestine, was recruited

14:45

from the New Yorker magazine,

14:47

another elite American institution where

14:49

he peddled one of the

14:51

most consequential and destructive conspiracy

14:53

theories of the last generation.

14:56

That Iraqi President Saddam

14:58

Hussein was behind the

15:00

9-11 attacks and had,

15:03

in Goldberg's writing, quote,

15:06

possible ties to Al-Qaeda,

15:09

end quote. But to the

15:11

Bradley-helmed Atlantic magazine, Goldberg was

15:13

a hot commodity. The

15:15

magazine just had to have him. Bradley

15:18

hired Goldberg in 2007 after

15:21

more than two years of bribing him

15:23

to join the staff with things like

15:25

hefty signing bonuses and ponies for his

15:27

kids, literally, according to

15:30

an August 2007 Washington Post

15:32

story. Goldberg would spend

15:34

his early years at the magazine

15:36

primarily cheering on US militarism, defending

15:39

his beloved state of Israel, and

15:41

fear-mongering about big bad

15:43

Iran, penning such pieces

15:45

as the attention-grabbing September 2010

15:47

cover story, quote,

15:50

the point of no return, end

15:53

quote. Effectively, a report straight from

15:55

the mouths of the Israeli military

15:57

intelligence establishment In an effort to force

15:59

the. Obama administration to launch

16:01

a military attack on Iran.

16:03

Goldberg wrote that according to

16:05

Israeli intelligence estimates quotes are

16:07

run is at most. One

16:10

to three years away from having

16:12

a break. Nuclear capability. Often.

16:15

Understood to be the capacity to assemble more

16:17

than one missile ready nuclear device was in

16:19

about three months of decided to do so

16:21

and quote. This. Was.

16:24

Porsche. And. Remain so.

16:26

Goldberg also quoted a quote

16:28

israeli policy maker and quotes

16:30

as claiming Iran would have

16:33

a nuclear weapon quote nine

16:35

months from June. In other

16:37

words, March. Of twenty

16:39

eleven. And quote. Now

16:41

it should be noted that the following year and

16:44

Zune of Twenty Eleven. Goldberg.

16:46

Road A in Bloomberg.

16:48

Entitled Quotes Around Once the Bomb

16:51

and this well on it's way

16:53

and quote. And. Industries

16:55

Goldberg wrote Quote: it would take

16:57

a run anywhere from six months

16:59

to a year after expelling the

17:01

inspectors to enrich uranium to bomb

17:04

strength. And in this period, it's

17:06

almost guaranteed that Israel or the

17:08

Us would bomb it's nuclear facilities.

17:10

And put he added quote: various

17:12

Western Intelligence agencies an independent analysts

17:15

think that the Iranians already possess

17:17

enough low enriched uranium to produce

17:19

two or three bombs. And quote.

17:22

He. Was insisted that his nuclear

17:24

alarmism again. Total Horse.

17:27

it was quote a

17:29

reality based worry. And.

17:31

Books based on his characterization

17:33

of Iranian leaders as quote

17:35

bloody minded mullahs bent dominating

17:38

the Middle East and quit.

17:40

So you're governments in the better part

17:42

of Twenty Level Twenty Twelve Running: Pro:

17:44

Bombing of Iran Flags of the Polls

17:46

if anyone was looted, laundering, fear mongering

17:48

by the Israeli government and Israeli military.

17:50

Which course we ended up bombing Iran

17:52

to the we're kind of just there

17:55

was a problem. This is consistent with

17:57

his Hezbollah Sleeper Cells in America story

17:59

from two thousand. Two, and of course

18:01

Saddam Hussein, an arcade are working together

18:03

from two thousand two in two thousand

18:05

three at a lot of pro war

18:07

fear mongering for like again part of

18:09

putting in this kind of prestige you

18:12

format next to a bunch of poems

18:14

and well written movie reviews. Gonna give

18:16

it some gravitas, You can't just dismiss

18:18

it as right wing fear mongering. That's

18:20

ultimately why the stuff's important and impactful.

18:22

And twenty fourteen the magazine were higher.

18:24

David from as it senior editor from

18:27

of course is best known as George

18:29

Hw Bush's speech. Writer who coined the

18:31

term axis of Evil in Twenty Four

18:33

Teeny at the Right in opposing the

18:35

Atlantic Magazine incidentally that same year for

18:38

claiming that Palestinians were using crisis actors

18:40

in their pictures. When Israel bombs Thousand

18:42

Twenty Fourteen. He accused

18:44

the A P. New York Times of

18:46

using fake photos palestinian actors with fake

18:49

blood that ended up not being true

18:51

to moly. The Manic has become a

18:53

kind of. Retirement Community for washed

18:55

up Neo cons and up A on

18:58

Elliott kind David from pretty much anyone

19:00

who supported the Iraq War who was

19:02

not discredited, they were much like Jeffrey

19:04

Goldberg given promotions, the high status, high

19:07

paid, well paid elite positions and the

19:09

Atlantic to pontificate on other threats that

19:11

may or may not be emerging than

19:14

most recently. of course, to smear Palestinians

19:16

as people who lie about being bombed.

19:18

Cut the Twenty seventeen David Bradley cells

19:20

as majority stake in the magazine to

19:23

the Emerson Collective. the. Paolo alto

19:25

base. Quote: Unquote Philanthropic Llc

19:27

down by Laurene Powell Jobs The

19:29

way Steve Jobs, his widow. The

19:31

company is named after Ralph Waldo

19:34

Emerson, again one of the Atlantic

19:36

Sounders. Because. it's an

19:38

l c emerson collective is legally

19:40

permitted to invest and for profit

19:42

companies lobby and make political donations

19:44

so the investment firm takes full

19:46

advantage of his ability to do

19:48

so that donated to former cargo

19:50

mayor rahm emanuel had former governor

19:52

terry mcauliffe tubes interests click nice

19:55

and invested in multiple at tech

19:57

companies powell jobs herself has given

19:59

money to pro charter school politicians

20:01

as every billionaire does. They all donate to

20:03

pro charter schools, which if you've listened to

20:05

the show, throw back to Episode

20:07

One, this is kind of their MO. In

20:11

a 2016 New York Magazine glowing profile of

20:13

Pal Jobs, they wrote quote, Pal

20:16

Jobs joined the boards of Teach for All,

20:18

an umbrella organization of the Teach for America

20:20

and the new schools venture fund were sought

20:22

in different ways to quote disrupt school districts

20:24

and loosen the hold of teachers unions on

20:26

public schools unquote. If you get

20:28

in if you listen to Episode One, you know Teach for

20:30

America is a scab organization funded by the Walton family. The

20:33

Emerson Collective doesn't disclose all of its

20:35

investments, although in a 2017 interview

20:38

with Education Week, Ruslan Ali, one

20:40

of Emerson's executives and former

20:42

Obama administration assistant secretary said

20:45

that she was quote, not prepared to

20:47

answer unquote the question as to whether

20:49

Emerson would commit to publicly disclosing its

20:51

political contributions and investments in education related

20:53

candidates, causes and companies. But

20:56

the Emerson Collective and Lorraine Pal Jobs didn't have

20:59

to do much to exert influence over the

21:01

publication, which of course was already ideologically fairly

21:03

center and right wing, but they have of

21:05

course, double down on their

21:07

anti teachers unions content, their pro

21:09

charter school content.

21:12

In 2018, they launched the speech wars

21:14

vertical, which was funded in part

21:16

by the Koch Institute that was supposedly consistent

21:18

with their pedigree of being pro

21:20

free speech. This has since

21:23

shut down. It's not exactly clear when

21:25

but they received a few million dollars

21:27

to fund journalism and commentary about the

21:29

threats of free speech, a

21:31

task taken on most notably by

21:33

Connor Friedersdorf, who's kind of the resident

21:35

guy who complains about Oberlin undergrads. This

21:37

was supercharged during this coke funded initiative

21:39

to gripe about free speech on campus.

21:42

They repeatedly wrote about cancel culture and sort of

21:44

that type of thing, part of that elite meltdown,

21:46

which was both ideological and due to their coke

21:49

industry funding, because that is a huge hobby horse

21:51

of the Koch Institute. And

21:54

then they sort of pivoted around 2017 as

21:56

well into this arbiter of what is and

21:58

what wasn't a conspiracy theory. On

22:00

2017, editor Kurt Anderson wrote

22:02

a pretty thin, largely speculative and

22:04

anecdotal 12,000 word cover story

22:06

about how America had lost its mind. In

22:10

the article, he laments the rise of conspiracy theories.

22:12

Now much of which is again

22:14

perfectly fine and not true. You

22:17

know, things like reptile people, things

22:19

of that nature. But within this, he

22:21

lumped other conspiracies. A few

22:23

years later in 2020, they ran a

22:25

publication called I Was a Teenage Conspiracy

22:27

Theorists, which we

22:30

discussed in episode 180, Havana Syndrome

22:32

and the Power of Mainstream Acceptable Conspiracy Theories,

22:35

which we noted that this

22:37

was written by Atlantic editor Ellen Cushing,

22:40

who lumped all quote unquote, conspiracyism together.

22:43

So she included Illuminati, Pizzagate, and

22:46

MKUltra, even though MKUltra is real and

22:48

well documented. It also

22:50

pathologized conspiracyism and flattened it as

22:52

a primarily psychological phenomenon rather than

22:55

one promoted by money interest. Here

22:58

the Atlantic would go on to produce Shadowland, a

23:00

documentary for NBC and Peacock that was produced by

23:02

Jeffrey Goldberg that dealt with the rise of conspiracy

23:05

theories. And of course, nowhere in any

23:07

of this do they mention that the biggest, one of

23:09

the biggest, you know, maybe even the

23:11

most consequential conspiracy theory of the

23:13

last 20 years, which is to say Saddam Hussein

23:15

was working with Al Qaeda, that

23:18

Jeffrey Goldberg promoted was mysteriously

23:20

left off. That's right. The

23:22

producer of the conspiracy doc.

23:24

Right. And then had articles about

23:27

how Iran was a year away from having a

23:29

nuclear weapon and how Israel was about to bomb

23:31

Iran and how there has been less sleeper cells

23:33

waiting to pounce in 2002, some of which

23:35

could be construed as a conspiracy. I think

23:37

it's fair to say, I think it's conspiracy

23:39

theory by definition. And

23:41

then of course, the conspiracy theory to end all

23:43

conspiracy theories, which is Saddam Hussein both is pursuing

23:45

and has or has nukes, but also

23:48

is working with Al Qaeda ended up not being

23:50

true at all. That's something Jeffrey Goldberg has never

23:52

really addressed. He's kind of cheekily referenced it here

23:54

and there. Well, his career has not suffered

23:56

for it. So no, Jeffrey Goldberg is one of

23:59

the biggest promoters. of conspiracy theories in

24:01

media, certainly the most profound

24:03

conspiracy theory in terms of impacting, you know, he was

24:06

on NPR in February of 2003, a

24:08

month before the war, talking about how Saddam

24:10

Hussein had, quote unquote, possible links to

24:12

al-Qaeda. He is now the arbiter of

24:14

what is and what is a conspiracy theory, and this is

24:16

kind of the ideological function of places like the Atlantic, as

24:18

they determine what is and what isn't true. And if you

24:21

have conspiracies that confirm to those

24:23

in power, in his case, the George W.

24:25

Bush administration, then that's not a

24:27

conspiracy. That's just a, well, I mean, it is,

24:29

right? But it's not one

24:31

that's sort of icky and dirty, like those

24:34

far left-wing conspiracies. It's completely okay because it's

24:36

about an official state enemy. You can kind

24:38

of make up whatever you want, despite how

24:40

thinly sourced and how evidence-free the whole thing

24:42

was. And this is kind

24:44

of the function of why running these magazines

24:46

is useful, because it has the official stamp

24:48

of approval, and it doesn't sort of

24:50

matter how dubious it is. To discuss

24:52

this more, we're now gonna be joined by a friend

24:55

of the show, writer and

24:57

analyst, John Schwartz. John

24:59

will join us in just a moment. Stay with

25:01

us. ["The

25:23

Episode." John, welcome back to Citations Needed.

25:25

It's great to have you here. Oh, it's great to

25:27

be talking to you guys. Yeah,

25:29

so this is a fairly big topic, but

25:32

one I know you've been thinking and writing

25:34

about for some time, because it falls

25:36

squarely within your charge and

25:38

our charge, which is out of the Atlantic

25:41

magazine and its ideological function

25:43

within the broader U.S. media

25:45

sphere. Now, it's changed owners throughout

25:47

the years, as we discussed at the top of the

25:49

show, but has largely stayed

25:51

consistent in its general tone and ideological

25:53

disposition. Like other outlets that we've done

25:55

episodes on, The New York Times, The

25:58

Economist, The Atlantic, prizes. itself on

26:00

its kind of upwardly mobile, wealthy,

26:02

insidery, commentary and reporting. It's

26:05

sort of seen as a magazine by the elites

26:07

for the elites. And we

26:09

argue that this serves a key function as

26:11

a lot of these kind of fulcrum publications

26:13

do or maybe we can call them even

26:15

pivot publications of selling right-wing ideas

26:17

to liberals as kind of their main function

26:20

rather than the other way around, right, rather than sort of

26:22

selling liberalism to right-wingers because right-wingers don't give a shit what

26:24

the Atlantic has to say. And I

26:26

want to sort of talk about this general

26:28

ethos, whether it be austerity, war, which we'll

26:31

talk about more later, promoting

26:33

charter schools, promoting privatization of

26:35

social security, promoting broken

26:37

windows. Where the Atlantic kind

26:40

of falls within that broader milieu of making liberals,

26:42

you know, neither had to go, yeah, maybe that

26:44

idea from American enterprise institutions is so bad. Yeah.

26:47

Well, I think that something that is

26:49

now sort of part of a lost

26:51

world of past American culture, who

26:54

is now may not really realize

26:56

this, but it was a big deal when

26:58

I was a youthful writer,

27:01

was that there was a kind

27:03

of hierarchy of prestige at the

27:05

top of the publishing world in

27:08

America. And at the

27:10

tippy tippy top was and

27:12

is the New Yorker, fanciest

27:14

magazine in America. But

27:16

there were two others that were close behind

27:18

the New Yorker, and number two was the

27:20

Atlantic, and number three was Harper's.

27:24

And again, hard to remember,

27:26

even if you lived through it, pretty

27:28

much vanished from the consciousness of anybody

27:31

under 40 at this point. But

27:33

all of that mattered a lot in America's

27:36

intellectual life. And the Atlantic

27:38

remains one of the most prestigious

27:40

publications in America today, and absolutely

27:43

is a conveyor belt for awful

27:46

right wing ideas to nice,

27:48

polite, well educated, well

27:50

meeting, wealthy liberals. And

27:53

this has been true for a long, long

27:55

time. The Atlantic started out as

27:58

somewhat different from what it is now. Duper,

28:01

New Englandy, WASP-E

28:04

abolitionist publication when it

28:06

started. That

28:09

brand of liberalism in the United States, if

28:12

you think of John Quincy Adams, I don't

28:14

know how much people listening to this program pay attention

28:17

to the lives of times. Who doesn't?

28:19

Yeah, who doesn't? John Quincy Adams, one term president who

28:21

then returned to the House of Representatives after he was

28:23

kicked out of office. That

28:25

was a particular brand, a particular flavor

28:27

of liberalism that has vanished

28:29

from the US landscape now. I

28:32

would say preferable to the liberalism we have

28:34

now, but in any case, it then morphed

28:36

later on into what it is today. There's

28:39

a super interesting example of

28:41

that that they published in 1949 that you can find on

28:46

the Atlantic website today. The

28:48

headline is Israel Young Blood

28:50

and Old, and it's

28:52

by someone named George Biddle. That's

28:54

significant because Biddle was from this

28:57

famous WASP-E, New Englandy family, the

28:59

Biddles. He was friends with FDR,

29:01

and he traveled to Israel right

29:03

after the 1948 war to report

29:07

for the Atlantic. You

29:09

can actually, in this article, in

29:12

real time, see Jewish

29:14

Israelis being promoted in the minds

29:16

of WASPs to being white people.

29:19

This is from Israel Young Blood and

29:22

Old in the Atlantic. He

29:25

describes the citizens

29:27

of this new state of Israel and

29:30

describes them as possessing youth, a

29:32

high proportion of physical beauty, health,

29:35

vitality, politeness, good nature. He

29:38

says, once he is comparatively

29:40

few marked submittic types and

29:43

fewer still of the east

29:45

side bearded, skull-capped, moth-eaten, grease-spotted,

29:48

parchment-dry rabbis. He's

29:50

promoting them to white, just to be clear. They're

29:52

not Arabs, right? They're white adjacent.

29:54

Yeah, they are now white adjacent. So

29:57

the Jewish Israelis have been promoted to white. The Arabs have

29:59

now been promoted to white. been demoted. And it's clear

30:01

that all of this is in the surface of

30:03

the fact that he says this country is going

30:05

to be able to serve US interests. That's

30:08

why one group is being promoted and

30:10

one group is being demoted. The Arabs,

30:12

he describes as foul,

30:14

diseased, smelling, rotting

30:17

and pewulating with vermin and

30:19

corruption. Slinking about

30:21

the streets, flat-footed with loose,

30:23

dribbling lower lifts. Carrying

30:26

with them sacks of refuse. That's

30:32

pretty racist even for 1949. Yeah,

30:35

it's extraordinary. And as I say, this

30:37

was the mass wasp overmind of 1949

30:40

being like this

30:42

new country, they're going to be able

30:44

to do stuff in the Mideast that

30:46

we want done and now they're beautiful.

30:48

Look at them. Exactly. The bulwark against

30:50

barbarism. Precisely. And that was promoted by

30:52

Herzl. A theme that they

30:54

still write today, which we'll get into. Well,

30:56

indeed. Well, this actually gets to our next

30:58

question, John. This idea of how the Atlantic

31:01

serves American imperialism,

31:03

kind of neo-colonialism, foreign

31:06

interests, right? Like the way that we

31:08

understand foreign affairs in this country and

31:10

how our government pursues it, who is

31:12

on the inside, who is obviously on

31:14

the outside and what that means to

31:16

be on the outside at the other

31:18

end of whether it's a bayonet or

31:20

an M16 or a gigantic

31:22

missile. And so as we've

31:24

discussed with you before, the Atlantic remains

31:27

kind of a retirement home

31:29

for discredited Iraq war-boosting neo-cons.

31:31

I mean, from Anne Applebaum

31:33

to David Fromm, Jeffrey Goldberg,

31:36

the editor-in-chief now, and former

31:38

IDF prison guard, Elliot Cohen

31:40

as well. And the Atlantic

31:42

itself was, as we've

31:45

also discussed with you, central to

31:47

selling the invasion of Iraq in

31:49

2002, 2003. Publishing article after article promoting

31:55

The invasion, namely by such luminary

31:57

experts as Michael, Kelly, Robert Kaplan,

31:59

and John. The American Enterprise Institute

32:01

fellow William Snyder and Brookings rent

32:03

a hacks like Stuart Taylor Jr

32:05

and Jonathan Ross So this kind

32:07

of like parking lot of washed

32:09

up neo cons still remains very

32:12

much part of the bread and

32:14

butter of like The Pages of

32:16

The Atlantic right today, pushing biden

32:18

that you know recently to bomb

32:20

Iran or as we keep reading

32:22

to inflict even greater slaughter upon

32:24

Gaza John can you talk if

32:27

you will about the genre of

32:29

like high brow. War Monger.

32:32

Imperialist. And how

32:34

the Atlantic as long defined

32:37

this particular genre of socially

32:39

acceptable sociopath. The. Yes,

32:41

Sitting This is so fascinating to me

32:44

about this and thing that is so

32:46

difficult for me to come to terms

32:48

with about this is that I grew

32:50

up. Like essentially in the

32:52

Atlantic's headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland

32:54

which is just outside Washington,

32:57

Dc and it landed, graders

32:59

were sick on the ground.

33:01

Atlantic writers who are well

33:03

respected. A among the people

33:05

that I knew growing up had in

33:07

Appelbaum from the trees is because six

33:09

exactly go out into the yard. Feals.

33:12

A sudden on your skin and ticket and

33:15

apple valve as many as you ist. And

33:18

once I broke out of

33:20

that mindset, you're in retrospect,

33:22

it is absolutely horrifying. And

33:24

when you look at their

33:26

career trajectories, you seen what

33:28

this job actually is. So

33:30

one of them, as you

33:32

mentioned now is David From

33:34

David from listeners of the

33:36

show? Probably No. Was. A

33:38

speech writer for the George W Bush

33:40

Administration, he is the person who claim

33:43

the same as Axis of Evil phrase

33:45

that was used in the Seat of

33:47

Union address. I believe in two thousand

33:49

and Two This sort of set the

33:52

stage for be coming Invasion of Iraq

33:54

in two thousand and three. Then Jeffrey

33:56

Goldberg of course was one of the

33:58

weeding propagandists done. Mccain entered his

34:01

articles and aggression or record saying

34:03

like here's why We Must Fight

34:05

Saddam Yeah, there's a. Wonderful

34:07

example of this. Her Jeffrey Goldberg

34:10

and I think October of Two

34:12

Thousand and Two were Sleep was.

34:14

Debating. The War to Be and one

34:16

of Jeffrey Goldberg contributions to this debate was

34:18

he said he does not sufficient space for

34:21

me to refute. so the arguments made in

34:23

Flint over the past week against the War

34:25

will like Thanks. It's just not enough room

34:27

on the Internet like God dammit. If there

34:29

were enough room and you better believe that

34:31

I would trust these people in intellectual debate.

34:33

But unfortunately there's just not. But

34:36

he goes on to say it. The administration

34:38

is fine today to once many people would

34:40

undoubtedly call a short sighted in inexcusable act

34:42

of aggression. In. Five Years However, I

34:45

believe that the coming Invasion of Iraq will

34:47

be remembered as an act of profound morality.

34:49

Newsroom As on October third, Two Thousand and

34:51

Two. I read that as like I'm setting

34:53

my clock by this. Let's look back to

34:56

this but a fucked over Thirty Thousand and

34:58

Seven find out about this profound act of

35:00

morality many ways. The point is David From

35:02

Jeffrey Goldberg A lot of these other people.

35:05

Makes you understand what their job actually

35:07

is. So the naive might believe that

35:10

the job of journalists as to try

35:12

to find out the truth and tell

35:14

other people about the truth and is

35:16

that where the case? Obviously their careers

35:18

would have been edited by their. Catastrophic.

35:21

Li wrong statements and claims before

35:24

the war so that would be

35:26

if that were their job. To

35:28

find out the truth is their

35:30

job was to start wars. Then

35:33

obviously they would be promoted and we

35:35

know what happened. And so that tells

35:38

us. lot of hope Their jobs actually

35:40

are and he a demon from is

35:42

still there. Jeffrey Goldberg was rewarded for.

35:45

His. Catastrophic propaganda and that's the

35:47

story. That's where we are today

35:49

and they will never stop. They

35:52

will never give it up on

35:54

Iraq. Specifically, I wrote an article

35:56

for the twentieth anniversary of the

35:58

Iraq War so last year because.

36:01

David. From had written article. In

36:04

the Atlantic. Where. He

36:06

referred to. The

36:09

U S. finding an arsenal of

36:11

chemical warfare shells and warheads in

36:13

Iraq, Now I guess I

36:15

was a long time ago. Now those twenty

36:17

years ago. but I hope people remember that. That

36:20

never happens. That's. A rock

36:22

did not possess weapons of mass

36:24

destruction and you don't need to

36:26

know anything about this issue. To.

36:28

Understand that like you just on it's face

36:30

is preposterous because. You may

36:33

river the whole. Purported. Reason

36:35

for the war with Iraq having weapons of

36:37

Mass destruction David from a saying that they

36:39

were found. But have you ever

36:41

heard George Bush or Dick Cheney say anything

36:43

about his arsenal? not like you might think

36:46

of it basis? Do you That they were

36:48

totally vindicated by the location of his arsenal

36:50

in Iraq and Saddam Hussein's the various plans

36:52

that they would have mentioned it. but they

36:55

did not because that didn't happen. In the

36:57

arsenal did not exist. And.

37:00

I wrote to the Pr Vice President

37:02

of the Atlantic and it's like hey,

37:04

by the way, what is the evidence

37:06

for this And also I just talked

37:08

to Charles golfer who ran the Cia

37:10

program to try to find out what

37:12

the story was. Was it on the

37:15

story on the programs? the do this

37:17

in two thousand, three, two thousand and

37:19

four and he says you're on. And.

37:21

Nationalists, the athletic like one hundred

37:23

percent stood behind it and refuse

37:25

to correct anything about it. So

37:27

they were right. The. Cia

37:30

was or on Dick Cheney, George W.

37:32

Bush? her on the Atlantic. This what

37:34

they're talking about. Tasteless. Yes,

37:36

Was speaking of. Act as if you know that's

37:38

a good segue. into her next question, which is

37:41

about their newfound position. Self appointed positions are returns

37:43

a conspiracy theories, so that kind of jumped on

37:45

the posts. Twenty sixteen. Anti.

37:47

Fake News Anti Conspiracy Band Wagon The

37:49

Jessica overhead of front page article about

37:51

the price of Conspiracy Conspiracy America which

37:53

we discuss to the top of the

37:55

show. They had a series on Peacocks

37:57

about conspiracy isn't Now you know, some

37:59

of them are kind of just do

38:02

not in the like. But the idea

38:04

of Jeffrey Goldberg as we discussed determining

38:06

what is and is in a conspiracy

38:08

is pretty extraordinary for anyone Like you

38:10

said who pays attention to his central

38:12

role in selling what was probably the

38:14

single most consequential conspiracy theory of a

38:16

lease my generation, which was the idea

38:18

that Saddam Hussein was involved in the

38:20

Nine Eleven attacks, that that he had

38:22

ties.like significant Title Qaeda when he was

38:24

writing for The New Yorker. Jeffrey

38:27

Goldberg painted a fairly

38:29

elaborate conspiracy. About.

38:31

Shady. Al Qaeda members being housed

38:33

in Iraq, meeting with Saddam Hussein and

38:36

you know, the northern deserts in this

38:38

kind of clandestine operations. He painted a

38:40

fairly elaborate picture, none of which has

38:42

ever been verified by any other reporter.

38:45

Never. Been followed up on no one's backed, have

38:47

any those claims That kind of just drifted away

38:49

and got sort of. They. Got

38:51

memory hold the Guinness was means you're

38:53

putting he went on npr. As

38:55

we discussed in the show before and discuss

38:58

his alleged findings as a legit reporting showing

39:00

these not just tenuous link for direct links

39:02

direct contact between On Kind and Saddam Hussein.

39:04

this was of course the way link to

39:06

the trauma of Nine Eleven to the Iraqi

39:08

government to justify the war in Iraq. Now

39:11

he sang, i'm Going to Term and what Isn't

39:13

What isn't a conspiracy An unknowing of Do That

39:15

Marshawn Peacock Network. Where we

39:18

talk about that. So talk about this kind

39:20

of role as a gatekeeper of kind of

39:22

acceptable opinion. When. Why there's some

39:24

conspiracies that are considered vulgar and inappropriate,

39:26

Some conspiracies that you can promote and

39:28

just kind of move on with your

39:30

life and no one ever talks about

39:32

it. Ever an indoors at the highest

39:35

level of American intellectual thought and publication.

39:37

And I should note he also published

39:39

quite a big big conspiracies about Iran

39:41

and their nuclear program in Iran wanting

39:43

to attack Israel and two Thousand Ninety

39:45

doesn't him as well as a sort

39:47

not a one off things but he

39:49

did this for quite a. and he

39:51

was. or at least until the reporter.

39:53

That's. right and that is a

39:55

pleasing to understand about the liberal

39:58

million like the liberal and lateral

40:00

world. This is a key

40:02

difference between the liberal

40:04

intellectual world and the

40:06

conservative intellectual world, both

40:09

of which are teeming with conspiracy

40:12

theories of just an extraordinary,

40:15

incredibly colorful and delightful

40:17

to investigate if you're into the

40:19

weird ways the human brain operates.

40:22

What usually happens is that the

40:25

conspiracy theories in the liberal world

40:27

can be differentiated from the conservative ones in

40:30

the sense that the liberal ones are generally

40:32

things that are not true but

40:34

could possibly be true in

40:37

this universe. So Saddam

40:39

Hussein collaborating with Osama bin Laden

40:41

on its face, a

40:44

bizarre idea that almost certainly would

40:46

not happen. But it's not like

40:48

physically impossible. Human beings could actually

40:51

execute this conspiracy. Whereas

40:53

the right wing conspiracies now are there's

40:55

an old lady who lives in a

40:57

hut, in the woods, and she is

40:59

stealing our children and vivisecting them to

41:01

drink their adrenochrome. Right. Not

41:03

likely. Yeah, which is actually

41:05

impossible and has never happened.

41:08

Slightly less possible. Yeah. And

41:10

so that is what makes Jeffrey Goldberg so

41:12

skilled as a propagandist, is that

41:15

he would never come within a million

41:17

miles and as you say, actually attacks

41:19

the conservative bizarro world

41:22

conspiracy theories, all

41:24

in the service of selling his own

41:26

more plausible but still

41:28

completely wrong conspiracy theories. And

41:31

it is galling for people

41:33

like ourselves with our feet firmly

41:36

planted in reality as they are.

41:38

And we never make any mistakes

41:40

on this subject. But it's

41:43

absolutely incredible to see and I agree with you

41:45

as like, here's the conspiracy theorists telling us about

41:47

conspiracy theories. Well, yeah, well, I mean,

41:50

I think it really has to do with as we've

41:52

been saying on the show, and also you've been pointing

41:54

out John this idea of what is allowed and what

41:56

is not only allowed, but what is authorized

41:58

as being kind of the highest

42:00

level of intellectual thought, using

42:03

that and then laundering it through

42:05

the reputation, the kind of highfalutin

42:07

reputation of a magazine like The

42:10

Atlantic. It's almost like

42:12

the magazine equivalent of the argument

42:14

like, Abe Lincoln was

42:16

a Republican and so Republicans are

42:18

clearly for freedom. The

42:21

Atlantic started as an abolitionist magazine,

42:23

so therefore The Atlantic has an

42:25

intellectual acumen in history that is

42:27

unimpeachable and so therefore time does

42:29

not evolve, right? Time doesn't move

42:31

on, things don't change. You got to have

42:34

like one kind of identity, one criteria and

42:36

then you get to maintain that kind of

42:38

status in the way that you propagandize yourself.

42:40

And I think the one way that this

42:42

has also happened is

42:44

The Atlantic's obsession with so-called

42:47

cancel culture and namely

42:49

the unruliness of college kids, right?

42:51

Like campuses are getting out of

42:54

hand. It is really

42:56

a kind of consistent and intense

42:58

focus of theirs. In

43:00

2018, The Atlantic partnered with

43:02

none other than the Charles

43:05

Koch Foundation to launch its

43:07

quote-unquote speech wars project that

43:10

in its own words was a quote,

43:12

born out of The Atlantic's legacy of

43:14

covering threats to free expression, freedom and

43:16

justice. Beginning with the magazine's founding

43:18

in 1857 as a

43:21

nonpartisan journal that argued for the cause

43:23

of abolition and more urgently by

43:25

the public's increasing sectarianism and declining

43:28

tolerance for challenging points of view,

43:30

end quote. Now the

43:32

most prominent pontificator of these

43:34

allegedly sectarian scolds is Connor

43:37

Friedersdorf. Now let's

43:39

talk, if you would, about this

43:42

kind of ruling class's obsession with

43:44

this cancel culture topic, the idea

43:46

of, oh, we have to hear

43:48

views that challenge our sensibilities, which

43:50

I mean, of course, on

43:53

its own is not a terrible idea. That's

43:55

actually great. That actually happens a lot,

43:57

especially on college campuses. But what about...

44:00

this version of cancel culture pearl

44:02

clutching do you think is so

44:04

central to the Atlantic's overall editorial

44:07

mission? This entire thing,

44:09

this entire focus on college campuses and their

44:11

hatred of free speech and so forth is

44:14

a focus that was encouraged

44:17

and described as a project for

44:19

the future in the famous

44:21

Lewis Powell memo of 1971. People

44:25

listening to the show are exactly the kind of weirdos

44:27

and oddballs who will know what I'm talking about. Just

44:30

before Lewis Powell was put on the Supreme

44:32

Court by Nixon, he was a tobacco

44:35

lawyer for the most part, like the absolute

44:37

worst kind of corporate lawyer you can imagine.

44:40

He wrote this memo for the Chamber of

44:42

Commerce about how the right is being decimated

44:44

and here's how we have to fight back.

44:48

This strategy was put

44:50

into action over the last 50 years and

44:52

they really have won. They really succeeded. They

44:54

put in the time and effort and they

44:56

did it. One of the things

44:58

that he was talking about was free speech

45:00

is being crushed on college campuses. It's

45:03

a real obsession of theirs and I think that

45:05

the explanation for it is pretty straightforward.

45:07

I'm sure you've seen about both the

45:10

billionaire hedge fund guy, private equity, I

45:12

don't know, Bill Ackman, and

45:14

how he was converted to the cause

45:16

of anti-wokeness because his daughter went to

45:19

Harvard and became a Marxist. John

45:22

Musk also has been outraged by

45:24

the fancy private school education one

45:27

of his kids got in Los Angeles and turned

45:29

his child against him. Those

45:32

aren't the challenging ideas that they

45:34

want to see, right? We

45:36

need to expose people to. Absolutely not.

45:38

They bewitch our youth and

45:40

so we've got to stop that from happening.

45:42

The most challenging idea we can hear is

45:44

just more like anti-communism.

45:46

Exactly. What

45:49

I'm thinking of here that we need more of on college

45:51

campuses is the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal and

45:55

possibly the op-ed page of Investor

45:57

Business Daily. like

46:00

the Wall Street Journal except absolutely-

46:02

Mad money. Yes, out of their

46:04

minds. And so this

46:06

is a subject that strikes right at the heart

46:09

of America's ruling class. Their

46:11

children are being indoctrinated with the wrong ideas

46:14

and so they want to go ahead

46:16

and prevent that from ever happening. So their

46:18

children don't come home at Christmas and start

46:20

lecturing them at the proletariat. But

46:23

the fact is, in America, 95% of

46:27

cancel culture, political correctness, whatever you want

46:29

to say about this, is from

46:31

the right. And it

46:33

is so powerful and so omnipresent that people

46:36

don't even think of it

46:38

using those words. There is

46:40

a real problem with the sculpturing of free speech in

46:42

the United States. It's just that most of it comes

46:44

from the right. And it

46:46

makes sense that for a magazine like

46:49

the Atlantic that they would endlessly

46:51

dither about the much smaller, much

46:54

less consequential kind of political

46:56

correctness that you see from the purported left.

46:59

There's definitely a sort of ruling class neurosis. You see this

47:01

with people like Conor Friedestorff, his entire beat for the most

47:04

part is to whine about college campus

47:06

sort of free speech. And so far that

47:08

he actually becomes kind of very defensive about

47:10

it and even has to post a from

47:13

2019 saying, why I cover college controversies. Should a

47:15

journalist care about free speech wars in the era

47:17

of Donald Trump? But it's like there's

47:19

a whole vertical dedicated to that at the Atlantic,

47:21

central to the Atlantic. I did a report for

47:23

my sub stack about there was a heat wave

47:25

in Texas that killed several people who were stuck

47:27

in prisons and led air conditioning. And basically nobody

47:29

covered it. And so I was like, you know

47:31

what, I'm going to take the same timeframe, which was a month. I'm

47:34

going to see how many people covered college campus controversies, which

47:36

killed zero people. The Atlantic had eight different

47:38

stories about cancel culture in that timeframe. The

47:41

Washington Post New York Times said, I think 12 and what

47:43

was a seven respectively. And so

47:46

it's like if I was an alien,

47:48

intercepting reading publications or intercepting our news

47:50

coverage from cable from, you know, Andromeda

47:52

or whatever, I would think that

47:54

this was one of the most urgent things going on in

47:56

this world. And of course, we see in many ways why

47:59

that is with the. destruction of Gaza where

48:01

it's like the central, what is seen as kind

48:03

of ground zero is any kind of opposition to

48:05

these types of things is from colleges. So

48:08

it is both a disproportionate neuroses from the ruling

48:10

class, but also there's a logic to it. Because

48:12

if you're worried about what people think five, 10

48:14

years, 20 years from now, you want the

48:16

kind of Koch brothers vision of

48:18

colleges, which is basically just their fucking

48:20

vocational schools, their training schools for

48:22

people to learn how to make widgets, but not to think

48:25

about anything. Well, the rich can think about things, but the

48:27

poor aren't supposed to think about things, right? The rich can

48:29

major in philosophy and Latin and study

48:31

those types of things. But the poor really

48:33

just should be widget makers or pushers of

48:35

widgets, peddlers, peddlers of widgets. And the obsession

48:37

with this idea of like, up the college

48:39

kids is all over the Atlantic.

48:41

It is because again, I think it reflects the

48:43

elite consensus and also the kind of ideological disposition

48:46

of those in charge and those who fund it.

48:48

And it is definitely seems to be out of proportion

48:51

with what the actual things that are

48:53

actually important. And I think

48:55

it's like you really can't run an elite publication

48:57

like the New York Times or

48:59

the Atlantic without having 75 different stories

49:02

about college campus neurosis. It is like

49:05

the thing they get mad at. And now again, I

49:07

think that you're right to some extent it is it

49:09

becomes personal because their own kids are now coming back

49:11

with nose rings and Marxism

49:14

and lesbianism and only scary things. Yeah,

49:16

you know, like for one summer before they go

49:18

interned for Goldman Sachs. Yeah, exactly.

49:21

Well, John, so as someone who worked

49:23

for 10 years at

49:25

an outlet that was kind of

49:28

outside of this New Yorker, New

49:30

Republic, Atlantic, Harpers, that kind of

49:32

level of what they would self

49:34

describe as like the most prestigious

49:36

publications, as you've been saying, like,

49:39

how much of this do you

49:41

see as also being like terrified

49:44

to lose that higher ground or terrified

49:46

to lose that kind of arbitration

49:49

of intellect of

49:51

truth in this space as

49:53

I mean, you know, it's gonna sound kind

49:55

of like hokey and old manish. That's fine.

49:57

I'm a hokey old man. But like, the

50:00

idea that, oh well, the kids

50:02

are getting their news from TikTok, and so

50:05

no one's reading the Atlantic anymore. And so

50:07

we have to be anti-woke, and we have

50:09

to be pro-colonial, and we have to talk

50:11

about things this way, because that is still

50:13

where our leaders are going to get their

50:16

information, and we have to somehow discredit

50:18

these other sources. What do you kind

50:20

of see as that kind of

50:22

motivation in the pages of these types of

50:24

magazines? I think that is absolutely one

50:27

of, if not the biggest motivation on their

50:30

part, because the thing

50:32

about the US empire

50:34

at this point is that its

50:37

claims are so preposterous, are so

50:39

contrary to what people can see

50:41

with their own eyes, and absolutely

50:44

Gaza is a prime example

50:47

of this. But then you

50:49

have the invasion of Iraq, which

50:51

is a cornerstone of my worldview,

50:53

which was this towering edifice

50:56

of lies, and as

50:58

soon as it meets reality, it just

51:00

collapses into dust. And

51:02

what you are left with at that

51:05

point, when everything that you are advocating

51:08

is obvious lies for anyone with eyes to

51:10

see, is just screaming

51:13

at people and trying to intimidate

51:15

them intellectually, because a lot of people, they

51:17

don't spend their lives studying these issues. Like,

51:19

I was very lucky to have a job where I could

51:21

do that, and so I

51:24

was confident enough to know that what

51:26

the people were saying was preposterous and

51:28

was nonsense. Well, it's regular human beings, like

51:30

they don't want to be yelled at when

51:32

they haven't spent a lot of time studying

51:34

these issues, and they don't like being told

51:37

that they're idiots and simps for Vladimir Putin.

51:39

And so that's all they have left, is

51:42

these shrill, bizarre attacks on anyone

51:45

who has a different worldview. And

51:47

the thing that's funny to me

51:50

about the Intercept, we

51:52

are seen as these horrendous barbarians, you

51:54

know, among these other publications,

51:57

that we ourselves are out of their minds. I mean, in

51:59

fact, I'm pretty... Really, I'm a very nice

52:01

well behaved maps like I've always follow

52:03

the rules I sent. thank you Know

52:05

that I gotta I gotta do that

52:07

more often. It's magical what it will

52:09

do for your life. People really loves

52:11

that you does. Yeah, you don't act

52:13

like I ask about how people's moms

52:15

are doing and so. My. Political

52:18

perspective is not very complicated, it's

52:20

just like. Like. Number One:

52:22

I had a bad thing for the

52:24

Us government to constantly lie about everything.

52:26

And number two, I think it's bad for

52:29

the Us government to just murder people all

52:31

the time. Seems like a fairly civilized take,

52:33

but not civilized in the mind of the

52:35

Atlantic Breath. While of America doesn't kill people,

52:37

China and Russia will, someone has to do

52:40

the killing. Ms will be as big, Exactly

52:42

exactly like we have So much practice. You

52:44

want to be killed by America Or like

52:46

by these amateurs. And China and Russia, these

52:49

rule on really upstarts. that's what. Yeah john.

52:51

I mean, I think this idea of who

52:53

gets to speak for civilization right to kind

52:55

of. ah. Present. It back

52:58

to the readers to endorse it

53:00

to analyze it. Specifically.

53:02

In the way that is deemed

53:04

most, I guess most in favor

53:06

of maintaining a card power structure.

53:08

I mean, I know it's kind

53:11

of. the seats seems sort of

53:13

obvious, but like this idea that

53:15

the same publication can endorse broken

53:17

windows, policing and turn around and

53:19

then indoors the Invasion of Iraq

53:22

and then you know, continue to

53:24

endorse school privatization like there's a

53:26

clear agenda here Ss and it

53:28

doesn't seem to be the pursuit

53:31

of challenging viewpoints. Or truths as

53:33

we keep saying. But Axes is kind

53:35

of maintenance of the a social and

53:37

political superstructure and just sort of getting

53:39

that imprint of authority and of importance.

53:41

I think you know something out of

53:44

and I talked about a lot as

53:46

as idea of seriousness. So I before

53:48

e let's go. I'd love to hear

53:50

your thoughts on the kind of seriousness

53:52

vibe of the Atlantic, Why it takes

53:55

itself so seriously, Why it needs everyone

53:57

else to consider it so you don't

53:59

see. in this space. Yes,

54:01

well this is a core

54:04

part of the self-conception of anybody with

54:06

power, which is that they are the

54:09

serious rational ones and then the rest

54:11

of us are these like, you

54:13

know, irrational children who are out of our

54:15

minds running around far below them on the planet,

54:18

you know, the surface of planet Earth and

54:20

they have this Olympian view from 40,000

54:22

feet. And in fact John Adams, the

54:24

father of John Quincy Adams, said something

54:27

famously along these lines to Thomas Jefferson

54:29

where he talked about how, you know,

54:31

power always believes that, you know, can

54:33

see far into the future and can

54:36

see everything that's happening when in

54:38

fact it is only serving its own ends. It's really

54:40

worth looking up and reading that because he was right

54:42

then and he could perceive that

54:44

then because the United States was

54:46

not the most powerful country on Earth yet and

54:49

so we were less powerful and so he

54:51

could see things from the perspective of people

54:53

without power. Anyway, it is

54:56

funny. It's just uniform. It's a uniform

54:58

perspective of people with power and there's

55:01

nothing they hate more in my

55:03

experience than making jokes about them

55:06

because they have the money, they

55:08

have the guns, but they do not have any jokes

55:11

and it drives them crazy.

55:14

Like they themselves are not funny people.

55:16

They have no defense when you make

55:18

a joke about them. And

55:20

the commentary track to the movie Life

55:22

of Brian, Michael Palin talks

55:24

about this and he says, you know, I've

55:26

always thought revolutionaries should use

55:28

jokes more because it is a very

55:30

potent weapon that the people in charge

55:32

cannot fight back against. And

55:35

so that is the Atlantic. Now I

55:37

say they don't publish, I'll say personally what drives me

55:39

crazy is they don't publish humor pieces anymore. Like I

55:41

wrote a humor piece for them many many years ago

55:43

and that is never

55:46

going to happen yet because they have laid down

55:48

the law. No more jokes. That's right. They're

55:50

not the New Yorker. They're even more serious

55:52

than the New Yorker. Exactly, exactly. Look how

55:54

much more serious we are. We don't even

55:56

have one page of jokes every week. Not

55:59

the Atlantic. my friend. Clearly,

56:01

John, the reason we had you as a

56:03

guest today is because of the continuing grievance

56:05

of that you don't get your own talk

56:07

of the town section in the Atlantic. But

56:10

that will do it for this interview.

56:12

It has been so awesome to talk to you,

56:14

John. John Schwartz, friend

56:16

of Citations Needed, was a longtime

56:18

senior writer at The Intercept. And

56:21

as we have said time and time again, our

56:23

leading David from Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic

56:26

correspondent. John, always a pleasure to have

56:28

you on Citations Needed. Oh, yeah,

56:30

always great to be here. Thank you. Yeah,

56:41

you know, we didn't mention this at the top of the show, but

56:43

I wrote an article two weeks into the Israeli

56:45

bombing of Gaza for the real news that talked

56:47

about how The Atlantic wrote all these articles

56:49

about the bombing of Gaza without

56:51

really having any voices, Palestinian voices at all. In

56:53

fact, in the first two weeks, they had 38

56:55

articles on the topic and only one token Palestinian

56:58

who was a former Palestinian authority official who wrote

57:01

this kind of dry analysis of the PA in

57:03

the context of the war. So pretty much no

57:05

real Palestinian voices. Meanwhile, of course, several

57:07

Israelis, obviously nonstop Americans, most

57:10

overwhelmingly pro-Israel. They have since, I think, had

57:12

a maybe a couple different token Palestinians, but

57:14

more or less, it's 90, 95%

57:17

people who are not Palestinian talking about Palestine.

57:21

And this is because Jeffrey

57:23

Goldberg, again, the guy was a prison guard for

57:25

the IDF. I mean, he admits

57:28

to covering up the torture of a prisoner in

57:30

his 2006 memoir. He's

57:33

pretty open about it. I guess if you sort of

57:35

put a lampshade on it, it's okay. But

57:38

this is someone who's going to have to

57:40

sell the kind of centrist war

57:42

consensus, very pro-Obama, very pro-Baid,

57:44

very pro-kind of centrist liberal

57:47

reportage. Generally speaking, again, there are exceptions here

57:49

and there. They'll have a sort of token

57:51

dissenting voice to mix it

57:53

up. It's not one party publication. It's

57:55

not the sort of gazette, But

57:58

it is largely and overwhelmingly. The conservative,

58:00

an interesting, it's and it work. And

58:02

this is ultimately why you have all

58:05

these. much like the New York Times

58:07

and Msnbc is why all these washed

58:09

up neoconservatives and up there because they

58:12

don't have any organic constituency. Among

58:14

the right anymore there will be a

58:16

think tanks and even populated but the

58:18

Trump Administration. but there's not a lot

58:21

of like populists. People are clamoring play,

58:23

Conservatives are clamoring anymore. To read David

58:25

from right, this is it's Msnbc more

58:28

wealthy democratic to rag viewers and that's

58:30

really they're kind of market. It's this

58:32

overlap have effectively conservative democratic voters. For.

58:35

Yeah, who also fancy themselves as

58:37

kind of intellectuals getting the best

58:39

well read document. Sometimes data driven,

58:41

right? But really like Intellectual Fair

58:44

and I and I. I don't

58:46

want to be dismissive of that.

58:48

I'd like things that are smart.

58:50

I think it's more people should

58:53

write things and other people should

58:55

read them, sir. Whatever. Cool. But

58:57

that's like the whole vibe. It's

58:59

more about the vibe of academia

59:02

of scholarship of intellect. That.

59:04

Then launders right wing

59:06

ideology through this kind

59:08

of elite institution. right?

59:10

The elite writing of

59:12

well heeled smarties. And

59:14

so therefore the shitty

59:16

ideas. Get. Peddled.

59:18

To Liberals and then.

59:21

Right wing ideas become liberal ideas,

59:24

and then there's only like one

59:26

that broad intellectual consensus that just

59:28

happens to be right way. While.

59:31

and then the published straight up nasty

59:33

erases streets are so italy cohen who

59:35

is the former bush official and second

59:37

turn to the projects for new american

59:39

century we just been a think that

59:42

basically was the architect of the iraq

59:44

war the spin off of the enterprise

59:46

institute a few years after the october

59:48

seventh attacks he wrote quote in his

59:50

article against barbarism he wrote quote americans

59:53

have spent the last two decades fighting

59:55

quote barbarians and syria iraq and afghanistan

59:57

unquote and that fact we said that

59:59

israel's against Palestinians was quote, a fight

1:00:01

against barbarism. He'd go on to say barbarians

1:00:03

fight because they enjoy violence. They do not

1:00:05

only kill and maim. The armies

1:00:07

of civilized states do it all the time, but go

1:00:09

out of their way to inflict pain, to torture, to

1:00:12

rape, and above all, humiliate. They exalt in their enemies

1:00:14

suffering. That is why they

1:00:16

like taking pictures of their weeping, terrified

1:00:18

victims, why they make videos of slow

1:00:20

beheadings, and why they dance around mutilated

1:00:23

corpses unquo. So you have this very,

1:00:25

again, explicitly, orientalist, racist framing that the

1:00:27

enemy is barbarians, and we are out

1:00:29

to fight barbarians. And so this

1:00:31

is a sort of highbrow publication this

1:00:34

stuff is published in. Right. That's not

1:00:36

like Fox News. That's not like some

1:00:38

dark screed on 4chan. That's

1:00:41

in the Atlantic. Right. And that gives it

1:00:43

a veneer of credibility and official sort of

1:00:45

sanctions. And so yeah, that's

1:00:48

what we're, I mean, that's the kind of stuff

1:00:50

you're dealing with here. Yeah. I think actually writer

1:00:52

David Kleon summed it up really well when he

1:00:54

wrote for The New Republic in October

1:00:56

2020 about

1:00:58

a compendium of articles

1:01:00

that was published by The Atlantic

1:01:03

as a book, articles spanning a

1:01:05

number of years of its coverage

1:01:07

of American democracy. The publication is

1:01:10

called The American Crisis, What Went

1:01:12

Wrong, How We Recover. It's 500

1:01:15

pages, has like 40 articles written and

1:01:17

published between 2016 and mid 2020. And

1:01:21

in reviewing this, writer David Kleon

1:01:23

wrote this about the magazine. Quote,

1:01:26

The Atlantic is a magazine not

1:01:28

precisely of the center, but rather

1:01:30

of a set of liberal civic

1:01:32

ideas. More than any

1:01:35

other publication, its purpose seems to

1:01:37

be the continual renewal of educated

1:01:39

Americans commitment to high mindedness.

1:01:42

End quote. And so

1:01:44

that kind of commitment to

1:01:47

not only high mindedness,

1:01:49

but also to very

1:01:51

conservative American ideals. Right.

1:01:53

Some of the most conservative, whether it's

1:01:56

broken windows policing, whether it is the

1:01:58

invasion and occupation. other

1:02:00

countries, whether it is

1:02:03

the scourge of wokeism

1:02:05

on college campuses, all

1:02:07

of these, when put

1:02:09

through the Atlantic machine,

1:02:13

come out as liberal

1:02:15

ideas, liberal elite

1:02:17

high-mindedness, and influence our

1:02:19

politics in incredibly destructive

1:02:21

ways. But that will do it

1:02:24

for this episode of Citations

1:02:26

Needed. Thank you everyone for listening and

1:02:28

for supporting the show. Of course, you

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Scare, Backups, Care, and of

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course, Computer Scare.

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Hi, I'm Nima Shirazi. I'm

1:03:51

Adam Johnson. Our Senior producer

1:03:53

is Florence Burrow Adams. Producer is Julianne

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Tweaton. Production Assistant is trending a Lightburn

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newsletter by Marco Cardolano. Since

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are I must nor him run The music

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is my granddaddy. Thanks again

1:04:04

to next.