oh look it's the guy who's an expert on communism because he lived in Russia during the mid and late 1990s
He always semi-liked cops. plus he is liberal, just one who isn’t completely incurious about “how did that happen” and not trusting official line
Yeah his Chapo episode during BLM was heinous, probably an all time low for the podcast. A bunch of rich, white guys sitting around talking about how cops aren’t all that bad during the height of the protests :cringe:
435
https://reddit.com/r/BlackWolfFeed/comments/hoh1ts/435_cancel_crisis_feat_matt_taibbi_7920/
Oh fuuuuck I forgot about that episode. I never listened to it. Wasn't Taibbi also on there after a bunch of journos and professors signed that letter about cancel culture too lol?
Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald signed it too lol. I feel like Chomsky can’t be held responsible for anything he says or does anymore he’s too senile
Chomsky has always been a free speech absolutist, to the extent that he even once went to europe to support an author that was being tried for holocaust denial.
I remember that one because I swear someone said cops count as working class too.
Yeah, I think he mentioned it two or three times somewhere I was listening to. He is not a leftist. to normie/whitey people cops are something you call to when there are troubles, not the trouble themselves, and he is one of them.
Plus he doesn’t like absolute statements (just his quirk), if you tell him the sun always shines, he will ask you about nighttime.
he is one of them.
Maybe I'll go through his old articles (and substack stuff?) about BLM. I'm curious what he said. I used to respect him back in 2009-10 when I read some of his stuff about the 2008 near second great depression. He was one of the rare journalists who did his homework, had a cynical eye, did actual journalism, and explained what happened very well.
But that those articles are now more than a decade old. The more I learn about him - the more I dislike him. His takes on anything other than banksters and Wall Street seem to be very crappy.
https://reddit.com/r/BlackWolfFeed/comments/hoh1ts/435_cancel_crisis_feat_matt_taibbi_7920/
“To jump straight from, you know seeing an episode like the George Floyd killing to ‘all cops are white supremacist murderers’, that’s unsupportable”
“Lots of non-white people are cops”
“Being a cop is a working class job”
On an episode during July 2020, while he was also there to bitch about cancel culture
Substack is the grift platform, idk why, American Prestige, and, Derrik Davidson might be the only non grifters on it
maybe bc text posts are almost no entertainment value so you gotta be wanting to be grifted to pay people for private tweets
One of my best friends from college married a cop. He wasn't a cop at the time, he worked retail, but he became a cop shortly after they got married after taking a two year criminal justice program at a tech. I would generally consider him to be a 'good guy' and he clearly understands the contradictions st the heart of the system, but with a kid now he doesn't have the money to make another career pivot out. And he would like to, because he has been shuffled from department to department, mostly because of his refusal to pump his arrest metrics. But he still understands ACAB.
It's not 'bootlicking' to point out there are alot of varied dispositions within the police force. It is bootlicking to use that fact to obfuscate the point that it is the very system itself that needs dismantling and overhaul, and any good actor within the system recognizes that. The fact that Matt is going onto Twitter to make that specific point means that he doesn't get the discourse and he is bootlicking, if in a smug, technically correct way.
The correct position for residential schools in Canada wasn't to become "one of the good teachers" - it was abolition.
The correct position for slavery wasn't to become a good slave holder- it was plain abolition.
I did hear a few white classmates talk about how if they were "back in those days" (the last residential school closed in the 90s) they'd have signed up to work as a residential school teacher and push the institution from the inside.
Pushing the death camps to the left from the inside :maybe-later-kiddo: don't forget to vote for Strasser in the midterms for harm reduction
I can never get over those sorts of turds (Greenwald too) who say "It's the principle of the thing." No. It is not. You're creating controversy so get exposure, you build your brand, and you - most importantly - make more money. That's the polar opposite of the saying.
The best example of a cop he can think of is a normal person trying to get a paycheck, nothing more. And that’s his best scenario
“Hassled as kids and wanted to make changes”?? Wtf? Your bullies from childhood are all grown up now and live in another state. What could they do about it as a cop other than take out their rage on random people?
Seems like every single person I thought was cool in the aughts turned out to be a giant shithead
I think Taibbi still is one of the more clear-eyed and least hyperventilating journalists we have.
His socioeconomic reporting is par excellence. If you haven’t read The Divide it’s a must (Griftopia is really good too).
And I have to say his “A Killing On Bay Street” about the police murder of Eric Garner was one of the most underrated books of his.
It does seem like he’s got more RW fans now. But that’s just because he’s critical of Biden and understood and isn’t afraid to explain why Trump won.
As his Substack attests his news reporting is always razor sharp, consistently good for a couple of lol HST-type takes and doesn’t pull punches on the fundamental criminality of the duopoly and its Wall St puppet masters.
Too bad he doesn't apply that "clear-eyed, non-hyperventilating" style to policing
The man seems completely unaware of the systemic and ideological nature of police as demonstrated by his sappy trash tweet above
I don’t think he’s unaware of the systemic rot in policing.
Reading between the lines it sounds like he’s implying that some are resigned to it just being a job that also happens to leave very little room for cops to be people too.
Cop culture is fucking completely rancid to the core. And I’d bet more than a few know just how toxic it is. Problem is there’s nowhere for a “good cop” to go. It’s all omertà, locker room, frat boy, don’t cross the blue line mafia shit. Just ask Serpico, Adrian Schoolcraft, Michael (something) in the Baltimore police, etc.
Until there’s a way for bad cops to be rooted out there are no good cops. There are good “people” on a personal level. Which is what I think he’s saying. And that can be true in a sense. But as long as this system exists there are no good cops. Because, as the decisions made by those three attest, it’s impossible in such a corrupt and concealing system to do your job as a good cop.
Look if you have to read between the lines there's probably nothing there, someone who touts himself as a communicator and journalist should be able to make their intention plain (you were able to do it easy enough with your last paragraph)
Either he knows what the system is and is more concerned with making asinine takes like "cops are people too when they hit you" or he doesn't know about the system, pretty damning either way for someone of his "caliber"
It does seem like he’s got more RW fans now.
If you've got Right Wing fans, you're not a leftist in my eyes.
