Seeking to dominate politics, media, and culture completely, the Left treats conservatives, particularly effective ones, as inherently controversial and sinister. The Left spends much of its energy trying to knock these figures out of public life. Reporters, of course, assist the Left in these campaigns, cobbling together hit pieces on these conservatives, the subtext of which is that mere resistance to liberalism constitutes a scandal.
The same media which lauds influential liberals hates influential conservatives and treats the latter’s political methods, which are indistinguishable from their ideological counterparts, as singularly dubious. Reams and reams of newspaper space are devoted to long anthropological looks at the utterly conventional political behavior of conservatives. These pieces, meant to be so concerning, don’t add up to anything unless you accept their premise that any participation by conservatives in politics is worrisome in and of itself.
The Washington Post recently outed the creator of the “Libs of TikTok,” a much-read Twitter account that simply draws attention to revealing videos made by unhinged progressives. That’s hardly a political dirty trick, but it is treated as such by the author of the piece, Taylor Lorenz, who writes darkly:
Libs of TikTok reposts a steady stream of TikTok videos and social media posts, primarily from LGBTQ+ people, often including incendiary framing designed to generate outrage. Videos shared from the account quickly find their way to the most influential names in right-wing media. The account has emerged as a powerful force on the Internet, shaping right-wing media, impacting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and influencing millions by posting viral videos aimed at inciting outrage among the right.
Quoting liberals accurately but disapprovingly is apparently a grave offense in the eyes of the media that merits the most intense investigative coverage. You would think from the tone of Lorenz’s piece that the anonymous creator of the Twitter account had committed a major crime. Lorenz portrays ordinary politics as uniquely dangerous: “’Libs of TikTok is basically acting as a wire service for the broader right-wing media ecosystem,’ said Ari Drennen, LGBTQ program director for Media Matters, the progressive media watchdog group. ‘It’s been shaping public policy in a real way, and affecting teachers’ ability to feel safe in their classrooms.’”
The Left’s vast propaganda project is thoroughly Orwellian. It is designed to shame citizens into surrendering their free speech and assembly under the guise of good citizenship.
Notice that Lorenz collected this quote from Media Matters, which amounts to a wire service for the left-wing media ecosystem. The entire stock and trade of Media Matters is flagging quotes from conservatives and presenting them as disturbing. It is engaged in the same rudimentary opposition research as the creator of the “Libs of TikTok,” but don’t expect any deep dives from the Post on its operations and the careers it has ruined.
It is laughable how routinely the media casts resistance to conservatism as noble and resistance to liberalism as nefarious. We are supposed to find it very unsettling and extraordinarily newsworthy that the creator of the “Libs of TikTok” holds conservative views and participates in Republican politics. So what? Lorenz tries to glorify this gratuitously invasive piece as an important defense of the LGTBQ community, as if nothing but submission to its agenda should be permitted in our politics.
Principled opposition to that agenda is inconceivable to Lorenz. It is clear that what she sees as the righteousness of her cause entitles her to the very invasions of privacy that she decries against herself. Liberals like Lorenz can dish harassment out but they can’t take it. The moment their own methods are turned on them, they cry foul and pontificate about the perils of “online harassment.”
The public is right to tune out this hypocritical nonsense. For years, the media called Rush Limbaugh a fringe thinker even as his audience dwarfed that of his supposedly more “mainstream” critics. We now see the same phenomenon at work against Tucker Carlson, the most-watched host on cable television. The breathless stories about him and other popular conservatives are just disguised attempts to drive out of our politics repositories of common sense who appeal to at least half the country.
Instead of just admitting their desire for total dominion over politics, liberals pretend that these mainstream conservatives are threats to public order and seek to silence them through smears. The more popular they become, the more liberals tell us they don’t belong in our politics. This makes no sense, unless you define “democracy” as they do — as unchallenged liberalism to which all citizens must conform.
The Left’s vast propaganda project is thoroughly Orwellian. It is designed to shame citizens into surrendering their free speech and assembly under the guise of good citizenship. That project aims to create a servile populace unable to recognize liberal tyranny, much less resist it. To accomplish this goal, liberals seek to train the people into seeing the most unremarkable politics as deeply controversial and the lingering practice of conservatism as akin to a crime. They long for the day when the only voices in our politics are liberal ones, treated on Twitter as oracles of wisdom who are never to be questioned.
