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I don't think it's harbinger of much. Left-wing publications occasionally publish counter-narrative stuff, because controversy and debate generates clicks and viralness. An article castigating J.K. Rowling is less likely to go viral, given it's old news, than one praising her. Look at all the articles from The Atlantic, Washington Post, and elsewhere from 2015 or later about the 'coddling of the American mind', overprotective parents, 'how the left has gone too far' etc., yet Covid and post-Jan 6th has seen the most restrictions on discourse to date. There has always been a niche of 'center-left critique of the left'. Reddit and other sites have more censorship than ever. Unless you are already rich, and or famous, or have a big brand, your options are much more limited if you are outside the window. Discussing and debating race vs IQ and crime stats will still get you banned from almost everywhere online.
Agreed. The 'literally violence' rhetoric is bumping up against the reality that publications exist to sell clicks or subscriptions. Which I'm sure feels like a knife in the back of the 'literally violence' faction.
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As ancient as "please read literally any other book" seems now, some senior NYT people simply never got off the 2015 "Gryffindors for Hillary!" train. They overslept and missed the stop all the cool junior staffers got off at.
Lagging cultural updates seems a more likely explanation than this being some watershed cultural moment caused by a retvrn to fundamental principles of journalism.
(I'm sure someone's already written about this, but there's an essay in how much of fandom is now about tearing down the last popular thing and denouncing it as problematic to show how cutting edge you are. Weaponizing "eww, that was so six months ago" fashion-bullying was huge for the cultural revolution.)
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