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After the events of today I’m going to curl up with Xunzi: The Complete Text. That’s just how I roll. Most of my friends are more outraged than I am. I don’t know why. It just is that way. It is heartening that people care about me, and I appreciate it. But there’s not much more to say than has been said, and perhaps even less. Things happen. If today I was a dying man, I would tell you that I was the child with a book in hand, not the proud one demanding that my views be heard because of the stridency of my voice. My views aren’t important, the truth as best as I can understand it is important. My friends know who I am, and that is all that matters to me. I regret the day that I am the story. That’s besides the point, and uninteresting to boot. Being at the center of a mini-media mini-controversy is rather tiring.
Yes, I just juxtaposed Brantley Gilbert with Xunzi. Nowhere else….
Plus you don’t need their stinking money. (At least I hope so).
Diversity, while celebrated, has to be carefully regulated. The Outer Party can only take so much.
One blogger known to you likened the experience to being asked out on a date by a leper, then dumped.
Carry on, please.
For those interested, Gawker (via Politico), Twitter.
You wrote for VDARE? The indiscretions of youth.
The NYT is getting back at Steve, not you. Maybe, Ron. I suspect.
And it probably doesn’t help that you are listed right under Steve on the blog roll.
If the greatness of one’s enemies are the measure of a person, Steve’s doing pretty
damn well for himself.
American professional journalism. LOL. The gift that keeps on giving.
This sucks. The comments on the Gawker site are so stupid, it’s making my brain hurt.
I think NYT would have been the perfect place for you.
Why read them?
I was really sorry to hear about this plus it’s disturbing the watch the Overton window narrowing. The G comments section was vile and stupid. Best wishes.
You’re great. Keep on, keepin’ on. But I prefer my Scots-Irish hillbillies like this:
I just want to add my voice to the long list of people who think what happened absolutely sucked.
Total lack of principle by NYT, AFAICS. Do they want diversity (of thought/opinion/view/knowledge) or don’t they?
It’s a bit stupid saying they want diversity, and then not wanting it when they get the sort of diversity of thought they weren’t planning on getting.
They have just deprived themselves of one of the best read, best educated and best thinking people around.
It’s a hatchet job, and it stinks.
I could go on about it for quite a while, but I’ll shut up now.
One blogger known to you likened the experience to being asked out on a date by a leper, then dumped.
Carry on, please.Replies: @Sandgroper
I’ve been on a date with a leper – it wasn’t *that* bad.
This is terrible. I I were you I would defend myself vigorously. This kind of thing has happened to too many other innocent scholars.
I was surprised, and really pleased, to see you on the last. Then I was disappointed, but not surprised, to see you dropped. I’m sorry. You would have added expertise and intellectual diversity to the NYT. But I suppose you were too diverse; it’s kind of like asking an atheist to speak in church.
guilt by association….
Ain’t that a pisser. You have an important niche to fill Razib, I feel it. Meanwhile the high and mighty New York Times will continue it’s rather spectacular decline. The mainstream N.E.W.S. now stands for Nonsense Everybody Wants Sickness 🙂 With the ridiculously fast decline of the newspaper business thank goodness we have the internet to take it’s place. I found you back in 2007 and have been a loyal reader ever since.
Razib,
Take solace in the fact that your ouster is further evidence that you speak the truth.
Buzz
I think that this is one of those (Groucho) Marxist clubs–one you should be happy not to be a member of
There is no media or journalism, only propaganda.
(Oddly enough watching a documentary on life inside North Korea while I type this comment.)
yes.
I always try to get in a plug for Johnny Dowd when I can :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRBUa8ZkGCQ
And Jim White :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFskdl_gTE4
I know Razib is not interested in pushing this, but I storified the story as it unfolded on Twitter
https://storify.com/omarali50/razib-khan-at-the-times
There’s a G.C. Lichtenberg quote for the occasion that “my works are like a mirror; when an ass looks in, you cannot expect an angel to look out.”
I kind of wish I hadn’t canceled my NYT subscription when Nate Silver quit, so that I could cancel it now instead.
Restart it for one day.
If you signed a contract, can’t you sue them? The NYT is still publishing Nicholas Wade and he drew much stronger fire than Gawker. Good luck.
I think NYT would have been the perfect place for you.Replies: @Realist
“The comments on the Gawker site are so stupid, it’s making my brain hurt.”
Why read them?
It’s their loss. I’m glad you don’t feel too badly about it. “Razib, we hardly knew ye.” Some of their subscribers will say that, and then they will come find you here.
“I kind of wish I hadn’t canceled my NYT subscription when Nate Silver quit, so that I could cancel it now instead.”
Restart it for one day.
I’ve sent both a letter and an email to the New York Times defending Razib’s integrity and urging them to reconsider their decision.
Not a surprising development. Once somebody associates you with a perceived or real hateful/racist you are finished at least for the mainstream media. Maybe if you make it clear that you are a hard left guy you can shield yourself. (Gregory Clark) And those who accuse you of being racist etc. think that they are being good guys while actually prolonging the suffering of unluckier survivors of natural selection.
I really thought Razib, being from a Muslim country and having a Muslim name, would protect him from SJW’s persecution or at least buy him some time.
I am so sad to see this. I search in vain for an adjective for our current intellectual climate, something more precise than “corrupt.” One solace is that your work will be remembered, while the work of these apparatchiks will be used merely to illustrate the depths to which discourse could fall.
Dude, you should sue. It would be interesting to see how the courts would rule over someone losing a job because of political or scientific speech. Goes against the 1st amendment. There is an argument to be made that losing the job denies you your 1st amendment right.
My guess ? They knew who they were hiring and planned all along to do just what hey did .
I always try to get in a plug for Johnny Dowd when I can :
And Jim White :
You’re living in the past , the 1st amendment is an archaic relic . And just like the moderators on this and other websites the owners do have the right to block comments they find offensive or in the case of the NYT’s any unsettling intrusion of reality .
Sure, you can block comments. This is different. It is the duty of our government to protect free speech. If you can be fired for expressing a political or scientific view, then there is no free speech. This is a viable argument. And we’re long overdue for a champion.
So congress can’t pass a law denying speech. By not having a law saying it is expressly forbidden to fire people over political speech, it is the same as having a law that says you can. In effect, we have a law denying people free speech.
Which isn't to deny that they can exercise that right in a way that narrows the discourse. They can and they just did.Replies: @Dave
i don’t think this is a first amendment issue fyi. obviously it’s unfortunate 😉
***
"Although the specific elements required to prove a claim of tortious interference vary from one jurisdiction to another, they typically include the following:
"The existence of a contractual relationship or beneficial business relationship between two parties.
"Knowledge of that relationship by a third party.
"Intent of the third party to induce a party to the relationship to breach the relationship.
"Lack of any privilege on the part of the third party to induce such a breach.
"The contractual relationship is breached.
"Damage to the party against whom the breach occurs."
***
[from Wikipedia.org]
****
Defamation, of course, is a tort, in and of itself; it also vitiates any constitutional claim that there was a First Amendment privilege to induce the breaching of a pre-existing contractual relationship.Replies: @Roger Sweeny
There isn’t much chance that a US court is going to agree with you. Like it or not, of course newspapers are going to have a legal right to fire opinion columnists because they don’t like what they say.
Which isn’t to deny that they can exercise that right in a way that narrows the discourse. They can and they just did.
Moldbug liked Brezhnevian. I think it captures the way ideological purity is maintained to the contrary of all demonstrable facts.
To strain this analogy a bit further. Under Brezhnev the elite could ckearly see reality coming into conflict with ideology. I don’t think we have even got to the point of Khrushchev apologizing for Stalin’s mistakes.
If one has to be disrespected in public, it might as well be via one’s opponent making an ass of himself in the process.
You’re young and the present regime hasn’t long to run.
Good luck to you.
The first amendment (like all aspects of the constitution) is only a restraint on the government. As a private institution, the NYT is not beholden to the Constitution’s restraints. It doesn’t have to respect anyone’s speech in their newspaper anymore than it has to respect people’s right to bear arms on their property. That being said, culture is upstream from politics and its unfortunate that Western society has become so touchy. The first amendment is contingent upon our society’s value for free speech as a principle and incidents like these don’t bode well for it. It will be interesting (and to be cynical, likely unpleasant) to see how this trend continues. I mean, will all the thinkers and politicians of tomorrow have to answer to every tweet and facebook post they made as a youth? God forbid anybody be curious and test the boundaries of orthodox opinion.
I think that the first amendment issue is interesting because a parallel between it and so called “institutionalized oppression”(racism) can be drawn.
The left argues that while no governmental law is explicitly racist, governmental and societal institutions have racism built into them. So this is what enables leftists to decry racism even though there are no governmental laws explicitly permitting it. The left calls this “institutionalized racism.”
The same argument applies to free speech. While it’s true that there is no governmental law explicitly preventing Razib from expressing his views, governmental and societal institution have built into them mechanisms that prevent Razib from expressing his views. Perhaps we should call this institutionalized censorship.
It is the NY Times loss. They have lost all credibility with me And shame on them for using Gawker as the Holy Roman Inquisition to root out heretics.
I wonder if they knew all along that you were toxic material from a pc perspective. Perhaps they wanted a staged execution, ” pour encourager les autres”. A quick and dirty watsoning for public consumption.
If I were you I’d play even dirtier and expose the mentioned GNXP/ Gawker cofounder.
no.
If I were you I’d play even dirtier and expose the mentioned GNXP/ Gawker cofounder.
life is short. i'm not interested in a food fight.Replies: @BB753
Not a First Amendment case, no; but, still, a potential legal case:
***
“Although the specific elements required to prove a claim of tortious interference vary from one jurisdiction to another, they typically include the following:
“The existence of a contractual relationship or beneficial business relationship between two parties.
“Knowledge of that relationship by a third party.
“Intent of the third party to induce a party to the relationship to breach the relationship.
“Lack of any privilege on the part of the third party to induce such a breach.
“The contractual relationship is breached.
“Damage to the party against whom the breach occurs.”
***
[from Wikipedia.org]
****
Defamation, of course, is a tort, in and of itself; it also vitiates any constitutional claim that there was a First Amendment privilege to induce the breaching of a pre-existing contractual relationship.
That is why a claim of tortious interference will fail. Third parties are free to tell the NYT any bit of public information they want.Replies: @D. K.
***
"Although the specific elements required to prove a claim of tortious interference vary from one jurisdiction to another, they typically include the following:
"The existence of a contractual relationship or beneficial business relationship between two parties.
"Knowledge of that relationship by a third party.
"Intent of the third party to induce a party to the relationship to breach the relationship.
"Lack of any privilege on the part of the third party to induce such a breach.
"The contractual relationship is breached.
"Damage to the party against whom the breach occurs."
***
[from Wikipedia.org]
****
Defamation, of course, is a tort, in and of itself; it also vitiates any constitutional claim that there was a First Amendment privilege to induce the breaching of a pre-existing contractual relationship.Replies: @Roger Sweeny
“Lack of any privilege on the part of the third party to induce such a breach.
That is why a claim of tortious interference will fail. Third parties are free to tell the NYT any bit of public information they want.
If I were you I'd play even dirtier and expose the mentioned GNXP/ Gawker cofounder.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Jason Malloy
I wonder if they knew all along that you were toxic material from a pc perspective. Perhaps they wanted a staged execution, ” pour encourager les autres”. A quick and dirty watsoning for public consumption.
no.
If I were you I’d play even dirtier and expose the mentioned GNXP/ Gawker cofounder.
life is short. i’m not interested in a food fight.
It is seeming more and more that way, isn’t it?
(Oddly enough watching a documentary on life inside North Korea while I type this comment.)
Which isn't to deny that they can exercise that right in a way that narrows the discourse. They can and they just did.Replies: @Dave
Isn’t that ironic? It’s the press that’s denying us freedom of the press.
That is why a claim of tortious interference will fail. Third parties are free to tell the NYT any bit of public information they want.Replies: @D. K.
Not if their intent in doing so is to induce “The New York Times” to breach a contractual obligation that they know exists, they do not. At any rate, his being a “racist” or a “White supremacist” (!) is not a “bit of public information;” it is, at best, a subjective appraisal, and arguably a slur that is directly actionable as a libel, since being so labeled, today, is much like being labeled a “communist,” in the 1950s, or a “heretic,” a thousand years earlier still.
The writer did not present “public information” to “The New York Times” itself, regardless. He or she published claims on Gawker.com, in order to produce an outcry from its readers– many of them social-justice warriors who live for just such a “two-minutes hate”– in hopes of inducing “The New York Times” into then breaching its contract, simply to avoid the public-relations disaster of its being publicly condemned by its own ideological kin.
A newspaper has the right to choose its writers, and to be as ideologically pure and closed-minded as it wants.Replies: @D. K.
You know this is true, stay the course.
no.
If I were you I’d play even dirtier and expose the mentioned GNXP/ Gawker cofounder.
life is short. i'm not interested in a food fight.Replies: @BB753
Let me try to understand.. Surely, if they’d read your stuff, they must have known you were not fully pc- approved.
If I were you I'd play even dirtier and expose the mentioned GNXP/ Gawker cofounder.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Jason Malloy
Not dirty to anybody but her. Gawker is a Frankenstein monster that wouldn’t hesitate to throw its own mother in the fire. Atonement never looked so profitable.
No matter what their intention is, it doesn’t matter. The fact that he wrote for vdare is public information, and a simple objective fact. Gawker brought it to the attention of their readers, and the Times either found it out from those readers or from one of its employee’s reading Gawker (or both).
A newspaper has the right to choose its writers, and to be as ideologically pure and closed-minded as it wants.
To many cultural liberals (those born to liberal parents in liberal social environments)—elite liberals—the right-wing political spectrum is alien and homogenous, and it all seems incredibly hateful and distasteful all the way to the center. Razib’s politics are actually pretty liberal, but since identity politics are largely and increasingly the defining feature of elite liberal morality, any expressed indifference, skepticism, or opposition to the tenets of Diversity are seen as strongly conservative, yet potentially open to discussion (brownitude can add a little leeway here). Any sympathetic discussion/beliefs about hereditary group inequalities on top of that (no matter how accurate or principled) is interpreted as hard right, and thus outside the realm of legitimate public discourse.
They knew about Taki. It was highlighting Z’s openness toward biological inequalities that flipped the NYT’s ambivalent gamble on a conservative into fire alarm bells about a reactionary.
Regardless if they had some prior knowledge about this openness, they no doubt did not know the full extent of it based on their extremely limited sample of his 4 million words, and they certainly did not apprehend the liability of it until Gawker manufactured it. Things can be “made” controversial. Some things much easier than others. Gawker knows this and exploits it for power and profit.
Must cause these people considerable stress and effort to keep it bottled up, because they tend to live in racially diverse locales where conscious thought on the subject is necessary for one’s well-being.
Bro Country: bad hip-hop becomes bad country.
A newspaper has the right to choose its writers, and to be as ideologically pure and closed-minded as it wants.Replies: @D. K.
Yes, it does have the right to choose its own writers. It chose Mr. Khan and entered into a contract with him! It then immediately breached the contract– and, not because of anything that Mr. Khan did, or did not do, that would have rendered the contract null and void, and thus unenforceable as a matter of law. “The New York Times” chose to drop Mr. Khan as an op-ed writer merely for public-relations purposes that were (presumably) beyond the express or implied terms of their contract. His having his previous writings posted on Web sites that Gawker.com finds beyond the pale was not illegal. Unless Mr. Khan lied to “The Times” about the fact that he had been published on such Web sites, “The Times” had no legal grounds for breaching the contract that it had just entered into with him.
So Mr. Khan may have a cause of action against the Times for breach of contract. The legal stuff you had put up was about a third party causing “tortious interference” with that contractual relationship. I said that there was no way a case of tortious interference could be won against Gawker. I stand by that.
My theory is someone at the NYT liked his stuff, knew what he had done, and was hoping to sneak him in to spread some heresy before someone noticed what he had done and took him down.
There is no way to win it if they go unsued, that is for certain. If I were in his position, and was instead intent on suing “The Times” for its breach of contract, I would certainly sue both Gawker.com and the writer per se for tortious interference, at the same time. Let them both fight their way out of it, if they can.
We all knew that the NYT has a party line, and that Razib doesn’t hew to it. What this incident tells me most is that the people at the NYT are incompetent on their own terms. A competent organization would have done a little poking around before offering Razib a contract. They’d easily discover the company he keeps, or visited this site and seen the articles “Why Race as a Biological Construct Matters” and “Verbal Intelligence by Demographic” listed as two of his six “personal classics”, and realized that Razib held beliefs unacceptable to the editors and (ever diminishing number of) readers of the NYT. If they’d been competent, on their definition of competent, they’d never have made the formal offer in the first place, just kept running an occasional piece as a “guest contributor”.
Razib, before they made their decision, did they give you an opportunity to tell your side?
i’ve been watching this on repeat and each time i laugh hysterically. how strange it is that it’s so desperately mainstream and calculated yet to *me* it’s very extreme in a cringey way (places Beats by Dre headphones on.) it’s so urbane it is overwhelming to me. looks like a Budweiser commercial.
Razib,
You were treated in a deeply sh*tty manner. And I say this as a member of the hard left.