Proof that political descriptors ‘right’ and ‘right wing’ have lost all meaning: Ad Fontes Media’s new Media Bias Chart places Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi’s Racket News on par with Fox. ‘Skews right.’
As Alex Berenson pointed out recently, Taibbi is,
“…the former Rolling Stone writer who famously called Goldman Sachs a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity” but who these days is called conservative because he, like me, does not endlessly parrot the elite media consensus.”
Personally, I think of Taibbi as Hunter S. Thompson’s natural successor in refining gonzo journalism for a digital news audience, minus the alcoholism (I assume), and with a good degree more discipline.
Eugyppius can help us make sense of how someone like Taibbi might get boxed into the right in these polarising times:
“In this new world, being “on the right” has acquired a different significance; it simply means “not being on the left.” Thus libertarians, free marketeers, the traditionally religious, gun enthusiasts, free speech advocates and even certain strains of environmentalists who are not worried about carbon dioxide all find themselves “on the right.”
It’s not just ‘not being on the left’ though. It’s also not being far left enough.
As example, an old friend telling me I ‘skewed right’ after I expressed misgivings about taking an experimental gene therapy, and confessed that I read a broad range of news media, not just left-leaning news like the New York Times and ABC.
My Political Compass map at the time, next to my friend’s:
That’s me, on the left, ‘skewing right.’
Soon, it will just be Good People, and Nazis. In some quarters, we’re already there.
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This is so true. I retook the quiz you mentioned about a 12 months ago (the first time I took it was about six or seven years ago) after years of being berated as a "far-right wing extremist, conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer" for expressing grave concerns about our governments' covid response. The results were more or less the same, and I remained well into the left/libertarian quadrant. These meaningless insults are all noise designed to bully us into submission or at the very least, silence; I pay them no attention anymore. I am fundamentally the same person I always was, regardless of how loud, obnoxious people (no offence to your friend, I have some just like them) like to label me.
My interest in the political affiliations of others in the community is non-existent. All that matters is whether they are going to try to jab me again and how far they would go to try.