New York Times columnist David French warns MAGA is turning off the general public with its unrelenting mobbing of dissident opinions.
Speaking on a New York Times podcast with Times journalists Michelle Cottle and E. J. Dionne Jr., French said he could see what’s coming of MAGA bullying because he’d seen it before more than 10 years ago.
“MAGA is going to learn something that the far left learned in the late 2010s, moving in the early 2020s: that a lot of your success in online aggression and shaming and mobbing and attacking and intolerance is very temporary and illusory because the majority of people don’t like those kinds of tactics and they’re going to, over time, punish the side that they see as bullying people, as being extremely cruel and intolerant,” French told Cottle and Dionne.
“A lot of MAGA looks at some of the cancel culture heyday of the late 2010s and says ‘Oh, we can do that, and we’ll do it better, and we’ll do it more effectively, and we’ll do it from the Oval Office down. But the pro-free speech position over the long term in American history is a very majority position.”
Long identified for its indifference to offending people, the “f—— your feelings” crowd that adores using words like “retarded,” is suddenly on the warpath, getting employees fired for exercising free speech in a nation where free speech is a protected right.
“You log onto Twitter and you see half a million people following a page, including Elon Musk. They're saying, you better fire this person," said Alexandra, an anonymous employee who was fired eight hours after quoting assassinated MAGA influencer and Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk after the attack on Paul Pelosi.
Days after the Pelosi attack, Kirk reflected on his attacker on his show, where he said: "And why is [the assailant] still in jail? Why has he not been bailed out? By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco, or the Bay Area, wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out, I get his bail is about $30,000 or $40,000. Bail him out and then go ask him some questions."
The anonymous source mimicked Kirk's words: "They caught the guy (allegedly)... And why is he still in jail? Why has he not been bailed out? By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in Utah wants to be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail out Tyler Robinson ... Bail him out and then go ask him some questions about Charlie."
But what was good for Kirk apparently was not good for the anonymous source in the eyes of MAGA, who enacted a successful online campaign to get the anonymous source fired.
This retaliation, warned French, gets ugly fast in the eyes of Americans.
“Any given individual moment, you might be cutting against the grain. But over time, the pro- free speech position is a majority American position. And I think MAGA is making a giant mistake in taking the old — the whole cancel culture discourse of 2019, 2020, and saying ‘Oh, we’ll just do this more, and more aggressively, and that’s going to work for us.’”
Hear the podcast at this link.