The mainstream press is often clumsy and obvious with their attempts to smear conservatives. Every once in a while, however, a narrative will develop that is actually quite clever.
In the wake of Google firing James Damore, the software engineer who penned a thoughtfully-crafted memo titled, “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber: How bias clouds our thinking about diversity and inclusion,” many conservatives were quick to castigate the company.
In response, the mainstream press pushed back, not only taking Damore’s memo out of context in order to make it appear as thoughtless as possible, but knocking the conservatives who slammed Google over the engineer’s firing.
This is where the narrative comes into play.
Newsweek published a piece on the matter, titled: “Who is James Damore? Alt-Right Furious After Google Fires Engineer Over Anti-Diversity Memo.”
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In the article, writer Sofia Lotto Persio writes: “The tech giant’s decision sparked outrage on social media, with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and alt-right media outlets claiming the company was censoring James Damore…”
However, despite using the phrase “alt-right media outlets” near the beginning of her piece, Persio only mentions one outlet by name – Breitbart:
Breitbart led its site Tuesday with several articles on the firing; one featured a picture of a face, the mouth gagged with tape, with the word “silenced” written across it. In some memes shared on Twitter, the “Google” logo was rearrange to spell “Goolag”, meant to associate the tech giant with Soviet Russia’s “gulag” prison camps.
Immediately after speaking of Breitbart and Twitter memes, she writes:
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro dubbed Google’s managers “corporate fascists” and the tech giant a “leftist monopoly” and, in one of several tweets about the issue, suggested Damore should “immediately declare himself a woman and sue Google for discrimination based on gender stereotypes.”
Based on the title of Persio’s article, as well as the fact that she wrote of plural “alt-right media outlets” before singling out only Breitbart and Ben Shapiro, one could be forgiven for immediately linking Shapiro with the alt-right.
Whether Persio realizes it or not, she’s implying that Ben Shapiro, the number one journalistic target of anti-Semitic tweets in the twelve-month period between August 2015 and July 2016, according to the Anti-Defamation League, is part of the “alt-right.”
This doesn’t need to be stated, but for the benefit of Sofia Lotto Persio, it will be. The alt-right harbors a staggering number of virulently anti-Semitic individuals. Placing Ben Shapiro under the banner of “alt-right” is repugnant, not to mention grossly ignorant.
Setting aside its unseemly nature, this is a cunning narrative. By tying Shapiro to the despised and discredited alt-right, the mainstream press can tarnish one of the only remaining commentators who has the intellectual honesty to criticize the progressive movement and those within his own political sphere in the same breath.
Ben Shapiro is not a member of the alt-right, but kudos on the Machiavellian attempt to link him to it, Ms. Persio.