90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, August 19, 2021

Socialist magazine founder fires staff for socialist organizing, confesses he felt ownership of what he'd made

I love this story so much that I want to move in with it and live happily ever after. Seriously this is just one of those moments when a leading proponent of leftist politics reveals himself to be a complete flaming hypocrite. It’s not even contested at this point because, as of two hours ago, he has admitted as much.

If you’re not familiar with Nathan J. Robinson, he has a doctorate in sociology from Harvard but is probably best known as a writer who had a long sting as a socialist columnist for the Guardian. In 2015 he founded his own site called Current Affairs, an online political magazine that promotes his socialist views.

I feel like I should provide an example and I swear this was the first thing I came across on his site with Robinson’s name on the byline: “Manatees Are Better Than Us.” The subhead reads, “Is a utopian pacifistic society possible? The lives of manatees show that it is possible to live without violence or the state.”

Well, it turns out that manatees are definitely better at utopian socialism than Nathan J. Robinson. We know this for certain because today a group of his former employees announced they had all been fired after they tried to form a worker’s co-op. Apparently doing socialism at the socialist magazine was grounds for termination.

“On August 8th, editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson (author of Why You Should Be a Socialist) unilaterally fired most of the workforce to avoid an organizational restructuring that would limit his personal power. Yes, we were fired by the editor-in-chief of a socialist magazine for trying to start a worker co-op.”…

“When we finally got around to discussing organizational models during a Zoom meeting on August 7th, Nathan became agitated. He instated that in our attempt to set shared internal values, we were disregarding his vision for the Current Affairs as published in the first issue,” the letter said.

“The next morning, he started removing people from the company Slack, and sent letters requesting resignations, eliminating positions, and in some cases offering new ‘honorary titles’ which would have no say in governance.”

The full letter was posted on Twitter. It states that 24 hours after saying he’d lost all faith in the staff, Robinson reversed course and admitted he just didn’t want his magazine to be “a democratic workplace.”

“We are sad, aghast, betrayed, and of course, angry to realize that this person we trusted has been lying to us for years,” the former employees state. They note that Robinson eventually wrote an email to them admitting “I am not good at running an organization.” Well, not a socialist one, anyway.

As mentioned above, Robinson has written a long mea culpa on Facebook which admits his handling of this was awful and that his magazine may not survive the fallout:

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant

Walk right in it's around the back, just a half a mile from the railroad track

An' you can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant

Joe Rogan slams flip-flopping Fauci for causing mistrust in COVID vaccines after his multiple U-turns and mistakes on the virus and brands him '100 per cent wrong'

Rogan went after Dr. Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to president Biden, on his Podcast 'The Joe Rogan Experience' on Tuesday
Rogan and his guest, AI researcher Lex Fridman, said Fauci has lost public trust after not being transparent about so-called 'gain-of-function' research
Rogan honed in on Fauci's shifting guidance on masks, which he initially said were ineffective, and his claim there was no asymptomatic transmission of COVID
'When they don't know, they never say ''We don't know,'' Rogan said. 'They don't say ''this is very confusing and we're trying to figure it out as we go along."
The host said part of the issue with Fauci is communication and that he and other scientist 'talk down' to people because of ego making them less trustworthy
Fauci has been criticized for 'flip flopping' on COVID guidance in the past

Joe Rogan launched an attack against Dr. Anthony Fauci's credibility, saying he has been '100 percent wrong' and blamed his shifting guidance for the mistrust in the COVID vaccine.

Rogan went after Dr. Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to president Biden, on his Podcast 'The Joe Rogan Experience' on Tuesday.

The podcast host and his guest, artificial intelligence researcher Lex Fridman, said Fauci has lost public trust after not being transparent about so called 'gain-of-function' research at the Wuhan Institute.

Gain of Function Research (GOF) is a controversial practice that involves altering a virus or pathogen in order to study the development of new diseases and their transmission. The research can ultimately make the virus more contagious or more deadly in a lab.

According to an NIH definition, GOF includes studying and altering viruses in animals to make them transmissible to humans – and potentially more contagious and deadly.

Rogan said the media has ignored 'all the things (Fauci's) done to lead people to distrust him,' specifically his handing of the National Institutes of Health grant to EcoHealth Alliance.

The organization has been in the spotlight because of their collaborations with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is where some people theorize the coronavirus originated and escaped from.

Fridman also put the blame on Fauci and 'shady greedy a**holes' for public mistrust of science and Rogan attacked Fauci for his shifting guidance against COVID, while dismissing Fauci's prior claims that scientists must react to the evolving virus in real time.

Rogan honed in on Fauci's shifting guidance on masks, which he initially said were ineffective, and when he told American's there was no asymptomatic transmission of the virus.

The COVID tsar later claimed he had made the remarks on masks to stop them running out at the start of the crisis, when supplies for medics were very low.

'There's also a problem with people like him where they make these statements that you're led to believe they have an understanding of the situation…but then it turns out they're 100 percent wrong,' he said. 'But then they come up with a new statement and you're supposed to believe that.'

'When they don't know, they never say ''We don't know,'' Rogan added. 'They don't say ''this is very confusing and we're trying to figure it out as we...

Communist China has sent warships to the Taiwan Strait in an act of aggression against both Taiwan and the U.S. According to Tuesday reports, China has been holding assault drills involving warships and military jets near its maritime border with Taiwan.

Beijing claimed the drills came in response to unspecified “provocations” and “external interference.” In addition, Chinese state media reported Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan suggested the U.S. would not be willing to defend Taiwan from a potential Chinese invasion.

China also reiterated its intent to seize Taiwan sooner or later.

“No one should underestimate the strong determination, will and ability of the Chinese people to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” expressed Spokesperson Hua Chunying of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, China. “No matter how much weaponry the U.S. provides to Taiwan, it will never change the general trend of cross-strait relations, let alone stop the process of China’s reunification.”

Officials in Taipei said Chinese warplanes entered Taiwan’s airspace in effort to...