“I’m glad that nobody was seriously calling for the disenfranchisement of white men, but I wish that it wasn’t so close to actual liberal thought that it was published in the first place, and that so many believed it was genuine.”
Last week, the Huffington Post published a blog post that called for the disenfranchisement of white people. Naturally it led to a great deal of pushback from many readers, until a conservative researcher discovered that the writer did not exist, and the blog post was a hoax! The Huffington Post issued a retraction, but the damage was already done.
This is naturally something of concern on several fronts. For one, editors should have enough professionalism to check the background of their potential authors, the fact that the author of this post was a person who did not exist should never have been overlooked. But more importantly, this shows a bias on the left where the narrative is more important than the truth.
In 2006, many in the media and academia were convinced that white Duke lacrosse players raped a black stripper. That case was handled so poorly, and with so little regard for the truth that the prosecutor was disbarred and sent to prison. Rolling Stone published accusations of a group sexual assault on the University of Virginia campus in 2014 that turned out to be fabricated, and even after the lie was exposed many liberals defended the article because it sparked a “conversation” about an important topic.
Stephen Glass issued retractions in 2015 for fabricated stories written for the New Republic that frequently attacked Republicans. In all of the above examples, stories that extolled liberal articles of faith—such as the rape crisis on US campuses, or the misbehavior of white elites—were reported as fact without proper investigation.
In this case, liberals have a general belief in their own original sin. In Christianity, the original sin was a result of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit, but for liberals the original sin is being white. An article about disenfranchising rich white men likely was accepted because it agreed with liberal orthodoxy that the patriarchy and privilege of that class disadvantages others, particularly women and minorities.
The fact that the editors and readers couldn’t distinguish between fact and fiction of this laughable piece suggests that the Huffington Post, and liberal thought, is becoming a self-parody. I’m glad that nobody was seriously calling for the disenfranchisement of white men, but I wish that it wasn’t so close to actual liberal thought that it was published in the first place, and that so many believed it was genuine.
