“We Didn’t Start the Fire” Is Not A Critique of Corporate Power
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Josh Hawley gave a disgusting speech attacking “cosmopolitan elites” at a Trumpist conference recently. This lead to perhaps the most ridiculous of Matt Stoller’s many ridiculous arguments ever:
The worst Online Matt is on a roll today pic.twitter.com/qTjZEP2xD2— that's not mass politics stan account (@Convolutedname) July 19, 2019
pic.twitter.com/Wkpy3uhHVL— that's not mass politics stan account (@Convolutedname) July 19, 2019
Look, if you don’t think (((cosmopolitan))) elites are conspiring to deny us all aspects of American culture from Seinfeld to hip-hop to fireworks to racism, I don’t know what to tell you.
It’s not exactly news that these dudes on the ostensible left who construct their political identities around despising the Democratic Party grade Republicans on a ridiculously generous curve, but praising Josh Hawley as a critic of corporate power because he’s issued some vague criticism of some social media companies he perceives as being unfair to Donald Trump is particularly ridiculous:
Josh Hawley is such an anti-corporate populist he thinks the CFPB is unconstitutional: https://t.co/xhkqmH5gu7 pic.twitter.com/8hPr6Aw0Ip— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) July 19, 2019
Josh Hawley is about as "populist" or "anti-corporate" as Mitt Romney, which I guess explains why Stoller likes him so much https://t.co/4Sdfwc7EbS— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) July 19, 2019
Which of course is also true of Hawley’s party as a whole:
When Republicans take on “cosmopolitan elites” they mean being cruel to refugees and asylum-seekers while showering foreign shareholders with tax breaks. https://t.co/IOqr3ofg45— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) July 20, 2019
I would like to think that this would stop anyone from taking Stoller seriously, but I guess if you stuck with him through “Mitt Romney can be successfully persuaded to support pro-choice judges, rather than reactionaries like Sonia Sotomayor” why stop now?