I already will never forgive the NY Times for its normalization of Donald Trump, its absurd focus on the Clinton Foundation and “her emails” in 2016 – playing a significant role in giving us the disaster that is Trump, etc. But this latest piece, normalizing a f***ing NAZI, puts the NY Times into the line-the-bird-cage category. Seriously, is the NY Times so desperate for “clicks” that it will degrade itself and destroy what was once a great newspaper in the process? With that, check out the following tweets about the Times’ “normal Nazi” story. I’ll add more good ones as I see them, but these are a great start, IMHO.
P.S. These are all excellent people to follow on Twitter, and also a great argument for why Twitter is a flawed but essential social media tool.
What the hell is this, @nytimes? This article does more to normalize neo-Nazism than anything I’ve read in a long time. https://t.co/btyFyujkh6
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 25, 2017
Somehow the NYT’s post-election paranoia that it didn’t understand Trump’s America has led to its publishing an deeply sympathetic portrait of a white supremacist.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 25, 2017
It is completely insane that big U.S. media keep printing the anti-Semitic garbage of *actual Nazis* without even bothering to correct them. Like… https://t.co/BQewLwxw6N pic.twitter.com/0DDWYSpDc9
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) November 25, 2017
I think there can be value in attempting to understand people who do terrible things. But if it’s done in a way that’s both ahistorical & unwilling to wrestle w/the moral & material implications of their violence then the attempt inevitably fails.
— Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) November 26, 2017
Figures that the first New York Times article ever showing sympathy to a millennial would be about a Nazi.
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) November 26, 2017
It is definitely responsible to profile a Nazi as if he’s just an odd curiosity and not part of a violent and dangerous movement. https://t.co/0gJuaCpd0v
— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) November 25, 2017
my explanation is that the overwhelming whiteness of political journalism is a genuine impediment to understanding white racist extremists as a genuine, dangerous threat and reporting on them accordingly https://t.co/Kc0RWk6L8p
— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) November 25, 2017
It’s critical for the press, when covering professional hatemongers, to avoid treating the abnormal as normal or to humanize the inhumane. By that basic measure, I’d score this @NYTimes piece: #Nazis– 1, @Public– 0. https://t.co/ydUIv9b7G6
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) November 25, 2017
.@nytimes gets rightfully called out for normalizing Nazis by the CEO of ADL – and retweeted by @ADL. That’s what it’s come to! https://t.co/Ag4YJJXGNk
— Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) November 26, 2017
WTF happened to the @nytimes? They have a climate science denier on staff and now support Nazis? https://t.co/ewf4YtajhT
— Rogue NASA (@RogueNASA) November 26, 2017
why did the NYT actually link to the page where you can buy a swastika armband pic.twitter.com/tTBIr1n6CA
— Michael Whitney (@michaelwhitney) November 25, 2017
In sum, we can be misled about mass belief systems by focusing on vivid exemplars. Same goes with racists. By & large, the average white racist in America is not some hipster Nazi millennial with four cats and a Twin Peaks inspired tattoo. 6/x
— Christopher Federico (@ChrisPolPsych) November 25, 2017
Get ready to read a fucking sentence. It’s a sentence about a Nazi. Are you ready? Lay the fuck down.
Here goes.
Quick reminder: It’s about a fucking Nazi. A Nazi. Nazi. It’s a sentence about a Nazi.
“In person, his Midwestern manners would please anyone’s mother.”
— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) November 25, 2017
You know who had nice manners? The Nazi who shaved my uncle Willie’s head before escorting him into a cement chamber where he locked eyes with children as their lungs filled with poison and they suffocated to death in agony.
Too much? Exactly. That’s how you write about Nazis.
— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) November 25, 2017
Also, @nytimes, the polite Nazis cleaned the chambers as best they could, but they couldn’t scrub the bloody scratches off the walls and ceilings. The ceilings. The bodies of children in mass graves were found clutching each other, their skeletal faces masks of abject terror.
— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) November 25, 2017
This is a good thread. Would be interesting, if instead of normalizing nazis, if the @nyt actually assessed them through the eyes of those they hate: blacks and jews. https://t.co/eGEYwKKUoU
— Soledad O’Brien (@soledadobrien) November 26, 2017
Serious question for @nytimes –what is the editorial process that lets these stories run–without challenge, without context. https://t.co/XTpkKhSLAv
— Soledad O’Brien (@soledadobrien) November 26, 2017
This is the parody NYT deserves > Nazis Are Just Like You and Me, Except They’re Nazis – The Atlantic https://t.co/N3ygDhk7s3
— BWD ? (@IrisRimon) November 26, 2017
image 1: nyt profile of neo-nazi
image 2: nyt profile of unarmed man executed by police pic.twitter.com/8RWOTtmuTo— shon. (@SeanMcElwee) November 25, 2017
Sad but true. https://t.co/1zGRKLvFFW
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 26, 2017
Instead of long, glowing profiles of Nazis/White nationalists, why don’t we profile the victims of their ideologies?
Why not a piece about the mother of Heather Heyer, the woman who was killed in Charlottesville?
Follow-ups on those who were injured?
Or how PoC are coping?
— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) November 26, 2017
Most Nazis were ordinary Germans. Actually, all of them were. Except Hitler, who was a failed ordinary Austrian artist. Later, ordinary Germans voted for him. Ordinary people do evil things, often to eradicate extraordinary people who point out said evil.
This is not news.
— Sara Benincasa (@SaraJBenincasa) November 26, 2017
Drink up this thread. https://t.co/R8YCgJ3yiK
— Mike Signorile (@MSignorile) November 26, 2017
You can only really write pieces like that if you’re convinced that the violence which these extremists represent, and engineer, will never touch you. Likely because you’re white, wealthy, and mobile and they’ll probably target vulnerable, static “minorities”.
— Jasmin Mujanović (@JasminMuj) November 26, 2017
The form is very familiar to me from the Balkans. It was rampant during the 1990s: Karadzic gave interviews to Western media every other day, there’s hours of footage. In the meantime, he was murdering thousands. But hey, dead Bosnians are so “other” and his English was great.
— Jasmin Mujanović (@JasminMuj) November 26, 2017
Now the fascists are in the US, they’re in the UK, they’re in the EU and sober ur-journalists roll their eyes at the alarmists who tell you that the normalization of extremism, illiberalism, and violence never ends well — not even in established democratic regimes.
— Jasmin Mujanović (@JasminMuj) November 26, 2017
But trust your gut: trust that sick, queasy feeling you’ve had for months, trust your anxiety, and trust the fear you see in your neighbors eyes. All is not well, and everything won’t be OK. Not unless both ordinary citizens and responsible politicians act today.
— Jasmin Mujanović (@JasminMuj) November 26, 2017
Don’t go down the road where the normalization of hate speech leads to (more) deaths and then tit-for-tat reprisals. That’s when the wheels truly fall off and no think people piece will help then. And we’re too close to that as it is. Closer than the NYT can admit. /xx
— Jasmin Mujanović (@JasminMuj) November 26, 2017
The @nytimes is a business. controversy and fear sells, and a sympathetic profile of the nazi boy and girl next store has both. would love to see the ad revenue from page visits after the outrage subsides. look elsewhere for responsible journalism. https://t.co/8kP0V0f6qi
— Brennan Gilmore (@brennanmgilmore) November 26, 2017
Perfect parody of the NYT Nazi profile. https://t.co/J9gaL6Otmg pic.twitter.com/kGwUUOCDVb
— Emily Nussbaum (@emilynussbaum) November 26, 2017
Jeffrey Dahmer: I made an altar from the bones and genitalia that I didn't eat from my victims.
NY Times reporter: Meet the Midwestern sex-postive locavore who adds a Goth twist to his arts and crafts!— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) November 25, 2017
Don’t waste a single second on that trash @nytimes piece about the friendly Nazi. Here’s a short story for you instead:
— Indivisible Charlottesville (@indivisibleVA05) November 26, 2017
This August, a bunch of Nazis came to #Charlottesville to commit violence and terrorize our city. In response ordinary people came out to protect our communities.
— Indivisible Charlottesville (@indivisibleVA05) November 26, 2017
The people who refused to back down in the face of Nazi terrorists are normal people just like you. They have families and friends. They eat pasta. They go to chain restaurants.
— Indivisible Charlottesville (@indivisibleVA05) November 26, 2017
They just decided not to be silent. And they showed that ordinary people can stand up to Nazi terrorists.
— Indivisible Charlottesville (@indivisibleVA05) November 26, 2017
Also see the following by BV’s own Adam Siegel.
The @NYTimes goes beyond the pale (time and again) in effort to #normalize @RealDonaldTrump, @GOP, & their (neo)#Nazi supporters/tendencies.
Well past time to look in mirror & decide whether they like what they see.
PS: Read @JuliusGoat thread beforehand & be disgusted… https://t.co/YlXB94XGPb
— A Siegel (@A_Siegel) November 25, 2017
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