Know Your Enemy
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Disinformation, Peter Thiel, and the Vibe Shift (w/ Joe Bernstein)
🕑 Added 2022-03-11 19:26:41 +0000 UTCIn the first half of this conversation with Buzzfeed’s Joe Bernstein, Sam asks: What is “disinformation?” Who gets to decide? And does it explain what's wrong with our politics? And in the second half: why is Trump’s favorite venture capitalist, Peter Thiel, funding New York City’s downtown arts scene? And what are the political stakes of "anti-woke" art?
This was a fun conversation with one of our favorite journalists! Enjoy.
Further Reading:
Joe Bernstein, "Bad News: Selling the Story of Disinformation," Harper's, August 2021.
Joe Bernstein, "'Look At What We’re Doing With Your Money, You Dick': How Peter Thiel Backed An 'Anti-Woke' Film Festival" Buzzfeed, March 3, 2022.
Anne Diebel, "The Dungeon Master," NYRB, Feb 10, 2022.
Comments
bR
Loved this episode as always! And what you've said about liberals sabre rattling against russia to bolster up some cold war era fear mongering really makes me hope that soon this podcast will look at the problems within the Democratic party. I mean the party is so far right that the "moderates" are indistinguishable from neoconservative Republicans.
The conversation at 45/46 minutes in is key for me. I love John McWhorter's podcast on linguistics, and sometimes he addresses "woke", and I mostly find him pretty reasonable about it (I haven't read his book "woke racism", so I can't comment on it) but as soon as you scroll down to the comments below the podcast or see the people "like"ing or any other social space, a relatively banal take becomes a tirade on the tyranny of wokeness. Maybe it's just partisanship being amplified by social media, but there really doesn't seem like there is much of a room to defect from "the party line" by even a foot because at that point it gets taken up by the people you would normally despise and you get tarred by association.
