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Elon Musk has suspended a slew of liberal journalists and pundits from Twitter. It is, as Benjamin Braddoc puts it, a red wedding for the liberal establishment. I initially believed that he was just the "controlled" opposition of the deep state, obviously he's stepped on way too many toes for that. This imo underscores an important truth to the ultra principled who believe in free speech absolutism and neutral institutions, the overton window won't shift the other way just to punish the "heretics" who've assailed this sacred virtue. Social media, our Frankenstein, has made it insanely easier for mob rule to influence culture (not that it wasn't already).
I still don't believe we're witnessing complete course reversal, but this could just be the first legitimate W for the right.
EDIT: It looks like he's lifting the suspension.
Definitely the biggest W for the right since Trump. If Elon can succeed in bringing "the press are regime shills, institutions are all controlled by progressives, progressives only care about who/whom" to the mainstream, then a lot of the hard work is done. All these institutions have going for them is credibility. Once it's gone, it doesn't come back.
How is this a W? What part of banning liberal journalists is a W? Was their credibility somehow based on not getting banned from Twitter?
When someone high-status like Elon Musk tweets "That is because The New York Times has become, for all intents and purposes, an unregistered lobbying firm for far left politicians," it hurts their credibility.
No, it hurts Musk's credibility. The NYTs credibility is unassailable.
This is, to a large extent, self-referential. The NYT is always credible within the "mainstream" narrative because the NYT is a core part of the network of institutions that sets that narrative. But I've got scare quotes around "mainstream" because the NYT and allied outlets simply don't represent any sort of board social consensus anymore. They represent the official line of establishment Democrats, with space occasionally given to more extreme leftist positions to keep activist groups on-side. Their function is to align elites within these spaces and sell Blue Tribe normies on what those elites want.
Republican politicians and other explicitly right-wing public figures and organizations can already almost entirely ignore the NYT, because none of their supporters care what it says. Only 14% of Republicans and 27% of independents have confidence in mass media to report accurately (source).
The danger for "mainstream" media in Musk's Twitter takeover is that Twitter has deep reach among Blue Tribe normies. Musk is going to allow 'unapproved' narratives to spread to and among them, and these narratives will in many cases likely outcompete those coming from above. This could have the effect of seriously undermining the ability of Blue Tribe elites to sell any large constituency on their views, with obvious electoral consequences.
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