Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Nov 7 8 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Many Democrats say they want to understand what happened. Few genuinely do. That's because, at some level, they know they're guilty of having participated in a witch hunt in which they falsely accused their fellow Americans, and even their friends & family, of fascism & racism.
Red Scare's @annakhachiyan is right: many of the people who loudly declared their fellow Americans racists and fascists are covert narcissists who now feel wounded and exposed by Kamala's defeat. At some level, they know they're guilty of witch-hunting and, per usual, are projecting.

People who spent years calling patriotic Americans brown shirts and worse are now saying it's time to be kind. This guy is not kind. Not at all. I'm for reconciliation; it's the higher road. But that can't happen until there's some acknowledgment of the deranged and psychopathic witch hunt the Woke carried out against innocent people for over a decade.Image
For over a decade before the election of Trump, Left-wing groups like CAP, led by @johnpodesta & @neeratanden, and @mmfa started a witch hunt against climate heretics like @BjornLomborg @RogerPielkeJr and many others. It was like a dress rehearsal for the much larger witch hunt to come.
@johnpodesta @neeratanden @mmfa @BjornLomborg @RogerPielkeJr In 2022, the Washington Post brought both witch hunts together when it tried to accuse @AlexEpstein of racism because — wait for it — he defended the right of Africans to use fossil fuels.

Nobody's more eager to move on from the last two decades of progressive witch hunts than me. But there can't be any moving on until there's some society-wide acknowledgment that a group of powerful elites systematically engaged in character assassination against not only their political enemies but dissidents, apostates, and heretics within their ranks.

That witch hunt didn't emerge organically from the public. It was created from on high, starting with CAP and Media Matters, out of the idea that it was necessary to enact a progressive agenda. The news media fully participated. It proceeded to brainwash half the country into believing that their fellow citizens were racist, fascist, and phobic nature haters. The media creating the crudest caricatures of ordinary Americans, and the vast majority of Democrats bought into them.

The psychopathy of social media, and the stupidity of mobs, enabled the witch hunt.

There have been some excellent books published recently on the topic, but a full accounting of the cruelty and madness of the last decade has not yet been written.

x.com/shellenberger/…
Finally, Democrats admit that they were too scared to tell the truth about basic things, like the border crisis and transgenderism, out of fear of the Woke mob:

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More from @shellenberger

Nov 15
Over the last decade, Democrats & the media said that those of us who opposed DEI, racial quotas, and open borders had gone “far right.” We hadn’t. Rather, Democrats and the media had gone far left. We are only now emerging from 10+ years of extreme, psychopathic gaslighting. Image
Make no mistake: it was the mainstream news media that induced the mass psychosis that radicalized Democrats into believing that the US had somehow become *more* racist, against all available evidence. Image
The media did this. The mass brainwashing came from college-educated elites in control of the most powerful propaganda machine in world history. They got Democrats to believe the ludicrous view that their fellow Americans had somehow become secretly racist, practically overnight. Image
Read 13 tweets
Nov 14
None of @RobertKennedyJr 's views "have any value whatsoever," say the media. But even the author admits RFK's right about fluoride, raw milk, and the danger of Big Pharma. Elites are freaking out because they know RFK will hold them accountable for their gross abuses of power. Image
This article is downright nasty: "But RFK Jr. is indeed a grade-A crank. Why should he have input on anything?"

Anything? Really?

"Let’s not pretend that Kennedy’s views have any value whatsoever."

The author is guilty of the obnoxious and over-the-top rhetoric he accuses @RobertKennedyJr of.

I don't agree with RFK about nuclear and vaccines, but it's wrong and gratuitously malicious to say Kennedy's views have no "value whatsoever" and to suggest he shouldn't have "input on anything."

Even the author admits that RFK is right about excess corporate power. "I’m ready to acknowledge the merit of Kennedy’s frequent claim that medical regulators are beset by conflicts of interest."

But then the author completely misrepresents his views, saying "Kennedy sounds less like a reformer and more like someone trapped in a web of conspiracy."

That's just false. Kennedy's views of Big Pharma are little different from the conventional, Ralph Nader-influenced views of the Democratic Party from 1962 to 2016.

Kennedy is criticizing the revolving door between Big Pharma and the government, which is the opposite of a "conspiracy" or a "theory."

RFK's whole problem with the revolving door is that it's legal and right out in the open, i.e., the opposite of a conspiracy, which is secret and (usually) illegal.

It is notable that the author never mentions the disastrous Covid lockdowns, abusive vaccine mandates, and other abuses of medical power.

His entire focus is to attack the people who rightly denounced the over-reaction.

The author is particularly disrespectful toward two of the people who were most right about the disastrous Covid lockdowns — @DrJBhattacharya @MartyMakary @VPrasadMDMPH — and most courageous in speaking out against them.
The author can't keep his own argument straight. He says Kennedy is wrong about everything — and then agrees with him on three things, one of which, corporate oversight and accountability, is at the center of Kennedy's career.

The author then claims that "Neither Makary nor Prasad responded to requests for comment for this story" before saying that, in fact, one of them did: "Bhattacharya wrote back to say that “politically minded doctors” such as myself “have done much damage to public confidence in public health.'”

That's some amazingly blatant "medical misinformation" coming from a magazine that has been one of the main advocates for government censorship of "medical misinformation" on X and other social media platforms.

The unhinged quality of the article may be explained because the author is rightly triggered at the possibility that politically-minded doctors, journalists, and the medical establishment upon which both groups depend may finally be held accountable for their role in the disastrous Covid lockdowns and authoritarian vaccine mandates.Image
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Read 9 tweets
Nov 12
The US and Australia have had a strong relationship for decades. Why, then, is Australia's Prime Minister @AlboMP attacking our relationship by pursuing mass global censorship, overtly aimed @elonmusk & X, which under previous management had banned @realDonaldTrump ? Image
Do the people of Australia know that their Prime Minister is undermining their nation's historically special relationship with the United States? Why would @AlboMP be doing this just days after the election of @realDonaldTrump, which was made possible by free speech on X?
@AlboMP @realDonaldTrump Is @AlboMP aware that Twitter, before it was purchased by @elonmusk , banned @realDonaldTrump, even though Twitter's own "Trust and Safety" Staff had determined that he had *not* violated its terms of service?

Here's what happened:

Read 17 tweets
Nov 9
They call it the “Democratic” party, but it’s not. They rigged 2016 for Hillary to beat Bernie. They got Klobuchar & Buttigieg to quit for Biden in 2020. They got Biden to quit for Kamala in 2024. Now they’re trying to get Sotomayor to quit for Kamala. It’s an authoritarian party Image
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Kamala waited three whole days before getting the knives out Image
Read 10 tweets
Nov 6
Pure, perfect projection. The lack of self-awareness is awe-inspiring. Image
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FWIW, I don’t think the cope will continue. The loss of the popular vote, the rightward movement of every state, and the threat of long term dominance by a nonracial working class party will force a significant correction in message in 2026. Image
Read 5 tweets
Nov 4
NBC last night aired a Trump message after a NASCAR race in an apparent effort to comply with the "equal time" rule after sparking controversy when it put Kamala Harris on SNL.

"A source familiar with the matter told the [Hill] Reporter the appearance was related to providing Trump with equal time."

It's a big victory that NBC acted. It shows that the public pressure we all brought to bear worked. X is game-changing. It's also further proof that NBC knew it was guilty.

But NBC still knowingly broke the law and interfered in the election, and it is still not in compliance with the law. That's because NBC promoted Harris and Kaine within seven days of election, the time was not comparable, and the other candidates, including Senator Tim Kaine's opponent, did not get comparable time.

There is no way that the time was comparable. The SNL skit was funny and humanizing and created by the best minds in television. The Trump campaign had to cobble something together at the last minute.

And, as of now, over 9 million people have watched the clip on YouTube. There's no way that 9 million people will see the Trump message that NBC put on after NASCAR.

As @BrendanCarrFCC notes, "The FCC adopted the seven-day rule to avoid gamesmanship by candidates (usually gamesmanship by the candidate seeking the Equal Time in the exemplar case) and for orderly planning (usually for the broadcaster)."

And, he notes, "NBC structured the SNL candidate appearance (just hours before an election) in a way that denies all other candidates their one week procedural right."

Finally, by law, NBC was required to give equal time to @HungCao_VA @RobertKennedyJr & @DrJillStein and it didn't.

NBC continues to act as though it is above the law. We should accept it as a victory that it felt the need to give Trump some time after NASCAR, but we should not let up the pressure.

Please, share this post to send a message to Congress and the FCC to hold @NBCUniversal accountable!

✊❤️Image
Over the last week, we have seen the news media engage in disinformation, election interference, and dirty tricks:

— The media made unsubstantiated claims that Trump admired Hitler, which was always ridiculous;

— The media, en masse, falsely claimed that the Trump rally in New York was "fascist" and that a comedian told a "racist" joke about about Puerto Rico;

— The media claimed that the Trump team had "fully embraced" vaccine skepticism;

— And the media falsely claimed that Trump had called for the assassination of @Liz_Cheney

For seven years, the media has demanded mass censorship, by it and the US government, of social media, including X. They are still demanding it.

They have justified their demands for censorship by citing alleged "election misinformation," "vaccine misinformation," and "election interference.

And yet now, just in the last week, the media have engaged in all three.

It's only thanks to @elonmusk's purchase of X that the public has achieved, for the first time, true freedom of speech on the Internet.

It has allowed independent journalists to expose media disinformation in real-time.

For that reason, the media are obsessed with shutting down X. If @KamalaHarris is elected president, that's a real possibility.

I reached out to multiple people at CNN and NBC yesterday to request comment on their disinformation and election interference. None have responded.

It's clear that they believe they are not only above the law, they don't have to comply with their own demands for honesty and accuracy.

x.com/shellenberger/…
Join us tomorrow night for the antidote to legacy media disinformation!

Read 4 tweets

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