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Jeet Heer Profile picture
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22 Sep, 4 tweets, 2 min read
1. In the New York Times, James McWhorter wrote about the late actor Fredric March's membership of a fraternity calling itself the Ku Klux Klan. McWhorter's piece is partly effective but undermined by the mental habits of reflexive contrarianism.
2. The strongest point of McWhorter's piece was the call for a holistic understanding of March's life: he really was a life-long passionate supporter of civil rights, with the KKK frat membership an anomaly. But then McWhorter wants to also minimize the frat.
3. The strange thing here is that the main argument (March's really stellar life) is plausible & sufficient in and of itself, that McWhorter didn't need to make the absurd claim that frat could call itself the Klu Klux Klan just because "boys" love the "k" sound.
4. McWhorter's piece shows the degree to which the professional anti-cancel culture people share the faults of the people they criticize: a one-dimensional & melodramatic view of history & inability to see nuance. More here: jeetheer.substack.com/p/a-holistic-h…

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More from @HeerJeet

Jeet Heer Profile picture
23 Sep
1. John Eastman, author of infamous coup memos, is an eminently respectable member of the legal establishment as both a professor and star in The Federalist Society. His role as an advocate for a coup should spark an effort to delegitimize not just him but that establishment
2. The rioters of January 6 are subject to criminal penalties. No such penalties apply to theorists like Eastman who provided the rational for the coup attempt. But surely civil society has the power to sanction and ostracize?
3. We're already seen civil society sanction in people speaking out about Eastman's upcoming participation in a big political science conference. But I would insist that the sanction should extend beyond Eastman to institutions that support him.
Read 6 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
17 Sep
1. Bob Woodward is indeed very good good at selling books. But having read the two previous books he's written on Trump, I want to extend a few cautions about his new book and its supposedly earth-shattering revelations about General Milley.
2. Woodward is best seen as the ne plus ultra of access journalism elevating the form away from daily journalism into a kind of court history. Like all court historians, he relies on the gossip of courtiers. This has some value, but courtiers tend to be self-serving.
3. It's usually fairly easy to figure out which courtiers Woodward is relying on: they tend to be the ones who are shown in a heroic light as the pivots of momentous events. In Fear, Rob Porter & Gary Cohn allegedly saved us from Trump's worst instincts.
Read 6 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
15 Sep
1. I often think about Anne Applebaum's argument that the collapse of the 1990s neo-liberal consensus is due to "the losers of the competition" created by meritocracy revolting against the system. As an precursor to this, she cited Apartheid South Africa created by loser Boers. ImageImage
2. Applebaum's argument, found in her recent book Twilight of Democracy & excerpted in the Atlantic, is a perfect distillation of the elite centrist worldview: that all anti-systems politics is just sour grapes, that Bernie=Trump, that meritocracy is real, etc.
3. The South African example lays out the ludicrous assumption: that the British Empire was a meritocracy & Boers were resentful louts. In fact, apartheid was one extreme variation of racist state found in white settler colonies like Australia, Canada & (ahem) USA.
Read 4 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
14 Sep
1. The appearance of an English language magazine called Hungarian Conservative (available in newsstands all over the Anglosphere) reflects a curious inversion of the 1990s, when Westerners of all sorts (liberals as well as conservatives) flooded Eastern Europe as missionaries Image
2. In the current moment when USA confidence is flat on the floor, it's weird to recall the giddy decade after 1989 when Americans (and Westerners of all sorts) parachuted into the former Eastern bloc with advice on modernization.
3. The imperial hubris of the 1990s shared not just by conservatives but also (perhaps more so) by centrists like Anne Applebaum and liberals like Larry Summers. They knew what ailed Eastern Europe and had all sorts of remedies, quack or otherwise, to sell.
Read 4 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
13 Sep
1. The @benyt piece from last night highlights Michael Wolff's seeming revelation about Steve Bannon doing p.r. consulting for Jeffrey Epstein & also asks about Wolff's own habit of hanging out with the likes of Epstein. There's more to this story.
2. Bannon doing p.r. work for Epstein raises more questions than answers, frankly. As @joshtpm notes, Epstein could have hired anyone in crisis management & that's not part of Bannon's skill set. Wolff's own relationship with Epstein suggests something more.
3. Wolff's Epstein ties are numerous. They met in late 1990s (Wolff's starry-eyed account part of 2007 New York magazine report), in 2003 Wolff organized an attempt to buy New York magazine with partnership of Epstein & Harvey Weinstein.
Read 5 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
10 Sep
1. It's interesting to compare this New York Times op ed by Sami Sadat claiming Afghan forces betrayed by USA with this New Yorker account Sadat as a commander. ImageImageImage
2. There's nothing new, of course, with the Times giving op ed space to alleged war criminals (paging Doctor Kissinger). But the larger issue is that on Afghanistan, the media's go to experts are either USA military or American allies in Afghan government
3. The Western media covered Afghanistan the way it often covers the global South: with westernized, USA-aligned urban voices being elevated. Big problem in a predominately rural country where USA-led coalition never won allegiance of hinterland.
Read 4 tweets

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