One other interesting note about these three: Two are gay men and one is a bi woman. Now I read and enjoy other gay writers who I mostly agree with. For example, Douglas Murray and Bruce Bawer. Murray is far and away my favorite political commentator today.
But here, I would like to call your attention to these three:
Why? Well these three have each had run-ins with woke establishments seemingly controlled by a small minority of far-left children. In the case of Greenwald, he left The Intercept, an outlet he founded.
So what did they do?
Well they fled to Substack.
You'd think that would be the end of it. But no, the children continue to hound them. They want Substack to deplatform writers they disagree with. And short of that, they call for a boycott of Substack. Of course they do.
I only point out that these writers are gay and bi to emphasize how ridiculous the children are. These are not far-right extremists. Rather they are center left and far from homophobic. But the children demand lockstep adherence to their far-left wokeness. Otherwise, banishment and cancellation.
Now I don't know much about Substack. I certainly don't know whether the owners have backbones or whether they are invertebrates like Dean Baquet.
I for one hope they withstand the noise. But either way, some good will come out of this. Because they have proven their business model. And others are copying it. When the children chased Donald McNeil out of The New York Times, he re-emerged at Medium.
That is, today I can subscribe to individual writers I enjoy without having to support some larger institution that I find unworthy. If Substack folds, surely someone like Ben Shapiro will happily step into the void. In any case, as with book publishing, the gatekeepers are losing their hold over public content consumption. We no longer have to rely on Dean Baquet and his woke newsroom kindergarten to read Bari Weiss.
No doubt there are writers on these platforms that I intensely disagree with. But so what? Speech is not violence no matter what the children believe. Let everyone have their say; if we must, we can judge the winners by their readership and subscriber counts. It is a rather old-fashioned and liberal viewpoint, but I believe that the most appropriate response to speech I disagree with, is more speech.
How is it that the Left lost its liberalism?
This morning I noticed yet another writer I like appear on Substack: