Candace Owens, Trumpian Coronavirus Denier

IDW member Candace Owens features prominently in a NYTimes article today about the right-wing approach to the Coronavirus pandemic: denialism and then when that is no longer tenable, blame the left:
Alarm, Denial, Blame: The Pro-Trump Media’s Coronavirus Distortion.

On March 10, the day that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned every American to adopt an “all hands on deck” mind-set, Ms. Owens scoffed at what she called “the mass global mental breakdown” as financial markets plunged. “People think it’s novel that 80 year olds are dying at a high rate from a flu,” she wrote, adding that when future generations study the world’s coronavirus response, “This tweet will age well.” 

Ms. Owens is the kind of influential conservative — she has a huge online audience as well as sway with the White House and top cable news and radio producers — who has been central to spreading doubt about the seriousness of the virus to Mr. Trump’s most loyal supporters. 

In an interview, Ms. Owens said she did not believe that her tweets were irresponsible. “Do I think it’s irresponsible to say the economic impact will be the legacy?” she said. “It’s not about being responsible. It’s about being honest.”

Trump and his team of monsters from hell cannot lose access to the White House soon enough for sane people in the world.

Speaking of Trump and his team, the current pandemic must have put a real crimp in Trump's plans to ratfuck the Democrats.

Way back a million years ago, in August, I posted an article called Trump is the ratfucker.

And just a month later, Trump's biggest ratfucking scheme (so far. that we know of.) was revealed when his quid pro quo attempt with Ukraine hit the news on September 25. Trump Pressed Ukraine’s President to Investigate Democrats as ‘a Favor.'

Now I don't doubt that Trump is planning more ratfucking attempts. That's who Trump is. You can't expect Trump to do anything without cheating. He's cheated his way through life - when he wasn't just handed advantages - and he's not about to stop cheating now.

I still think Trump and his malicious elves Andy Ngo and Ngo's lawyer, Republican committeewoman Harmeet K. Dhillon are likely to try a ratfucking attempt a la the Nazi's Reichstag fire - frame the Democrats for the actions of one rando.

And I think they are likely to do it via antifa. But they can't very well use antifa performance art in the middle of a stay-at-home pandemic.

But once social distancing is over, expect to see more signs of Trumpian ratfucking. All the polls now indicate Biden will beat Trump and Trump is not about to stand by and let that happen without using every possible dirty trick that he and his monstrously evil supporters can dream up.

Our country depends on stopping Trump.

Trump is the ratfucker

I've been talking about the connection between Trump and Quillette's favorite grifter, Andy Ngo via Ngo's lawyer, Republican committeewoman Harmeet K. Dhillon for the past month.

It was my hunch that Trump would try to use Ngo's fear-mongering over Antifa as a deflection tactic.

A week later, my hunch was further confirmed when Dhillon showed up at Trump's rightwing social media summit.

Just a few days after that, I saw that Andy Ngo was proceeding with the obvious next step - try to connect Antifa to the Democratic party.

A week ago, on what I think is the obvious co-ordination between Ngo, his lawyer and the Trump campaign I wrote:

There is a slight problem with the Antifa tactic - Antifa, being a bunch of anarchists and random zanies likely hate the Democratic Party as much as the Republican Party. 

But I am confident that Trump's ratfuckers will come up with a scheme to try to link Antifa and the Democrats. And Andy Ngo has already made an attempt to do just that.

The movie "All the President's Men" discussed the dirty tricks committed by the Nixon campaign, called "ratfucking."

But as we can see in the image at the top of this post, Trump does his own ratfucking, personally.

And this will not be the end of it. According to the NYTimes yesterday:

The Trump campaign was unapologetic on Tuesday about a New York Times report on its Facebook advertisements that use the word “invasion,” which featured prominently in the El Paso suspect’s manifesto. A senior Trump political adviser had a single-word answer — “no” — when asked if the campaign would change the tenor of its ads.

Trump's tweet about Antifa from today makes it obvious - any time Trump is accused of causing harm to the country because of his unrestrained racism and fear-mongering, he is going to try to do a both-sides. With plenty of help from grifter Andy Ngo. Expect Trump to mention Antifa a lot more, and to try to smear Democrats with that conveniently anonymous collection of masked individuals.

Legitimate journalists would do well to keep track of Andy Ngo if they want to scoop the next big story of the campaign. It's sure to be an utterly shameless example of ratfucking.

This video clip is the ratfucker scene from "All the Presidents Men" with Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein and Robert Walden as Donald Segrettti.

Trump is back to ratfucking

TRUMP THIS WEEK

Last summer I noted the connections between the IDW, Andy Ngo, his lawyer Harmeet K. Dhillon a Republican Committeewoman and Trump and Trump's plans to ratfuck the election campaign.

Trump stopped doing his ANTIFA ratfucking scheme for many months, first because his attempt to ratfuck Joe Biden through Ukraine led to a scandal, trial and impeachment (but not removal, tragically for the USA) and then not long after that, the coronavirus pandemic locked everything down.

But black people coming out to protest the killing of a black man gave Trump a good excuse to start the ratfucking scheme back up again. Which he promptly did.

TRUMP LAST AUGUST
A MONTH BEFORE THE UKRAINE
SCANDAL HIT

The next step, which Trump attempted already last summer, is to try to connect Antifa violence to the Democrats.

Donald Trump ~ new adventures in ratfucking

This article in Gizmodo recently caught my eye:

Homeland Security Admits It Tried to Manufacture Fake Terrorists for Trump:

An internal investigative report, made public this month by Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, details the findings of DHS lawyers concerning a previously undisclosed effort by Trump’s acting secretary of homeland security, Chad Wolf, to amass secret dossiers on Americans in Portland attending anti-racism protests in summer 2020 sparked by the police murder of Minneapolis father George Floyd.

The report describes attempts by top officials to link protesters to an imaginary terrorist plot in an apparent effort to boost Trump’s reelection odds, raising concerns now about the ability of a sitting president to co-opt billions of dollars’ worth of domestic intelligence assets for their own political gain. DHS analysts recounted orders to generate evidence of financial ties between protesters in custody; an effort that, had they not failed, would have seemingly served to legitimize President Trump’s false claims about “Antifa,” an “organization” that even his most loyal intelligence officers failed to drum up proof ever existed.

In the run-up to the 2020 election I tweeted several times about Trump's ratfucking, focusing on his connection to former Quillette editor Andy Ngo. 

So it seems that I actually underestimated how much Trump was ratfucking. 

He's a soulless monster who will try any dirty trick to get power and that is why Trump must be beaten down.

NO KINGS ~ beware of Trump's ratfucking

 

It's another No Kings protest October 18 - I was at the one back in June. 

I think Trump and his fascist enablers, the Republican Party, were taken by surprise by the popularity of the June demonstration, but they are clearly ready for this one, already trying to smear millions of Americans as "anti-American."

And since they are ready, they will likely attempt some kind of dirty trick, like paying goons to dress up like "antifa" and commit violence during one or more marches, in an effort to smear patriotic Americans. 

Dirty tricks is exactly who Trump is. 

And the fascist Republican Party is happy to go along with it, if it keeps them in power.

And I have to say, those who argue that the assassination attempt against Trump was staged have been given ammunition, so to speak by the ugly Trump mug picture in Time Magazine. His ear shows not a trace of ever being clipped hard enough by an AR-15 style bullet to spray blood.

And only the most delusional of MAGAs would claim that Trump is not capable of a staged assassination attempt. There is nothing that Trump won't do to grab and keep power. NOTHING.

UPDATE - no ratfucking seen at the Times Square No Kings march - just Cartman, a plea to Kristi Noem and the classic "shit is fucked up and bullshit."

The Andy Ngo saga continues

Slate has a perfect summary of the past couple of months of Andy Ngo's career:

Andy Ngo, the right-wing journalist and provocateur who was embraced by mainstream Republicans and covered favorably in mainstream media after he was attacked by antifa activists during a street fight in Portland, Oregon, may suddenly be persona non grata among conservatives. Nearly all mentions of Ngo were scrubbed from the upscale right-wing publication Quillette after a newly-released video showed him acting friendly with members of Patriot Prayer, a far-right hate group that has repeatedly sought out fights with leftists. 

Ngo, who has used selectively edited videos to paint antifa as a violent, criminal group was hit with punches and milkshakes during a clash between antifa activists and members of the Proud Boys, an organization labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Many on the right rallied around Ngo after that altercation, and spread false rumors that the milkshakes thrown at him and others had contained quick-dry cement.  

Ngo used his newfound fame to boost his profile, appearing on Fox News and other cable news outlets and embracing his victimhood. 

Just weeks later, however, a video surfaced on Twitter showing Ngo pal around with the Proud Boys-adjacent group Patriot Prayer. 

The video shows Ngo laughing as the group plans a violent attack on antifa members at a Portland bar in May. The video surfaced as part of a lawsuit brought by the bar, accusing Patriot Prayer members of causing a riot.

Many Quillette critics on Twitter suggested that Quillette had fired Ngo because of the video but Lehmann denied it...

Quillette, where Ngo worked as a photo editor until Monday, announced after the video surfaced that Ngo was leaving his job at the site. Ngo’s name was scrubbed from the site, The Daily Beast reported.
Quillette editor-in-chief Claire Lehmann told The Daily Beast that Ngo left the site weeks earlier but the move was not publicized until Monday.

“Andy actually moved on from Quillette a few weeks ago because he is undertaking bigger & better projects, we just hadn't updated the website and he hadn't updated his Twitter bio until today,” she told the Daily Beast. “I haven’t seen the video,” she added.
Lehmann also said that Ngo had been on a “break” from a “brain injury” he suffered at the Portland rally.  

Ngo, however, did not remove Quillette from his Twitter bio until Monday, noted National Observer reporter Caroline Orr, the same day that the Patriot Prayer video was released.

Columnist Tabatha Southey had a great response.

The question is, will Andy Ngo devote himself to ratfucking for Trump, or will this hurt his ratfucking career?

Pinkerite's 3rd anniversary

It's November 17, Pinkerite's third anniversary, and quite a few things have happened since the second anniversary, in the world of Steven Pinker, the Intellectual Dark Web and Race Science.

And coincidentally tomorrow, November 18 is the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the great Satan of the Intellectual Dark Web. Pinkerite has referenced the SPLC on many occasions. Consider donating to this worthy organization. Pinkerite donates automatically each month out of gratitude for all the information SPLC provides about racists and racemongers.

If the IDW hates SPLC, they must be doing something right!

Some noteworthy items from the past year:

• For Pinkerite, the biggest deal of the past year is that for the first time since Malcolm Gladwell criticized Pinker in 2009, someone in the establishment media asked Pinker about his connection to racist Steve Sailer

• Quillette author and infamous grifter Andy Ngo's ratfucking campaign, to demonize the amorphous, anonymous Antifa was so successful that when Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6 to stop election certification and destroy American democracy, Trump attempted to blame it on Antifa.

• My suspicion that Proud Boys were engaging in ratfucking by disgusing themselves as Antifa turned out to be true. 

• And Andy Ngo was caught posing as a BLM supporter

• At that point, many in the group became suspicious of a fellow protester, who was wearing tinted oversized ski goggles, a mask that obscured his face, black clothing and a Black Lives Matter flag worn as a cloak. Protesters said the man was attending the demonstration alone and did not respond to questions.

• Ngo went after an opponent who has negatively impacted Ngo's Post Millennial advertising.

• Charles Murray blew up the traditional pretense, used by race pseudoscience promoters, that race pseudoscience cannot be used to harm individual Black people.

• Andrew Sullivan disavowed Charles Murray - sort of.

• Grifter James Lindsay sent his online followers after me because I criticized his hypocrisy, resulting in a huge and lucrative spike in traffic for this site

• I was attacked by grifter Peter Boghossian for criticizing Pinker, which Boghossian apparently believes is inappropriate because Pinker is far more becited than me.
• And then out of the blue, traditional gender roles entrepreneur Evan Marc Katz, who I last criticized way back in 2017 on my personal blog, jumped on board the Boghossian thread to attack me.

• Quillette managing editor Colin Wright called me insane, twice - because that's what men do to women who disagree with them

• Juneteenth finally became a national holiday

• Quillette founder Claire Lehmann became an international laughing stock

• Steven Pinker was a laughing stock thanks to the NYTimes review of his latest book

• The University of Austin - associated by some with the Intellectual Dark Web was announced. Steven Pinker was initially part of the project but then quickly dropped out.

• Sociobiologist Kathryn Paige Harden published a book that racemongers proceeded to use to claim victory for race pseudoscience. The New Yorker ran a profile of Harden related to the book's publication. I am still waiting for a direct response to the racemongers from Harden's fans Eric Turkheimer and Adam Rutherford.

• FAIR - the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism was founded, basically to carry on the Christopher Rufo-lead Republican campaign against discussing racism in classrooms, which they are cynically calling CRT. No surprise its board of advisors is full of Trump supporters, Koch employees and race science promoters. But you're wondering, "is Steven Pinker a member of that board of advisors?" 
• Of course he is.

Top posts for year 3:

• James Lindsay and Your Mom - 5.95K

• Meet FAIR - the organization full of Trump supporters, Koch employees and race science promoters - 1.05 K

• The Brian Ferguson Interview - 971

• I Have a Nightmare: Steven Pinker, Quillette and the "biological reality of race" - 534

• PZ Myers dissects evolutionary psychology: brief, sharp and fabulous - 472

• The Left, the hereditarian Right and the New Yorker - 454

• Yes, Kevin Drum, Quillette is defending phrenology - 418

• Reasons why Robin DiAngelo is bad Part 1: Race essentialism - 409

• American Renaissance still loves Claire Lehmann's Quillette - 350

• You and Your Racist Friend - 325

Harmeet K. Dhillon & Andy Ngo - the biggest clowns in the Trump circus

Wow how did I miss this story in the NYTimes from June 4?

Lawsuit Aims to Hold Nebulous 'Antifa' to Blame for Injuries

From the story:

A conservative writer from Portland, Oregon, filed a lawsuit Thursday against purported elements of the nebulous, far-left militant groups collectively known as antifa, days after President Donald Trump blamed those groups for inciting violence at protests over police killings of black people. 

The suit was filed on behalf of Andy Ngo, who is known for aggressively covering and video-recording demonstrators. 

“I am hoping that this marks a turning point, that militants belonging to a criminal movement can no longer depend on the anonymity ... to get away with their crimes,” said Ngo, who previously was a writer with the online publication Quillette and now is with The Post Millennial. 

Ngo has drawn attention to antifa for years and said he was targeted and suffered brain injuries when he was assaulted while covering protests in Portland a year ago. Video of the attack was widely viewed online and led to national calls for investigations as well as a subsequent rally led by the Proud Boys, a right-wing organization that has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Antifa — short for “anti-fascists"— is an umbrella term for leftist militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations. 

That makes it more difficult, but not impossible, to pursue a lawsuit, said California-based attorney Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican Party official who sued on Ngo's behalf. 

Dhillon said the timing of the antifa lawsuit was coincidental to recent protests over the death of George Floyd, who struggled to breathe as his neck was pinned down by a white Minneapolis police officer’s knee. She said she waited months to sue in the futile hope that authorities would bring criminal charges against Ngo's attackers.

This is obviously part of Trump's long-standing ratfucking Reichstag fire plan to make ANTIFA the bogeyman. The lawsuit is the next step after Trump declared the "nebulous" group a "terrorist organization" and will be used to justify more authoritarian moves by Trump.

Pinkerite has written about these two clowns several times. Andy Ngo is a right-wing stooge and failed "journalist" who makes money through the free speech grift.

It's the involvement of Republican Party official Harmeet K. Dhillon in this scheme that demonstrates how truly degraded and corrupt and - there's no other word for it - evil - the Republican Party has become.

I'm glad others are talking about Trump's Reichstag Fire tactics.

Quillette and the sleazy career of Andy Ngo

I'm not a fan of Jacobin, with its tendency to bash feminism and its support for the career of feminist-hating Doug Henwood.

But this Jacobin article has a good summation of the sleazy career of Andy Ngo, including his promotion by Quillette:

For his next act, Ngo joined Quillette where he is a “sub-editor.” Described as the voice of the intellectual dark web, Quillette published a report on May 29 claiming fifteen reporters who cover the far right were really “Antifa journalists.” According to the Columbia Journalism Review, the article by “estabished right-wing troll,” Eoin Lenihan, was picked up by the neo-Nazi Stormfront website within a day, and a day after that a video was uploaded to YouTube containing “imagery of mass shooters intercut with images of the [Antifa] reporters.” The names of the journalists were put on a list called “Sunset the Media,” while the video ends with a notorious neo-Nazi saying he won’t “disown” anyone who kills the reporters. 

Two journalists, including Shane Burley, wrote of the unnerving effect of being put on a Neo-Nazi death list. Another targeted journalist wrote that Quillette had crossed the line from being merely reactionary to “reckless endangerment” and bluntly stated that its list “could’ve gotten me killed.”

It's likely that Andy Ngo and Trump's reelection campaign will engage in some ratfucking in Portland today.

Jesse Singal and Razib Khan express their deep concerns about human rights and dignity for trans people

Left side, top to bottom: Matt Walsh, Pamela Paul, Jesse Singal
-------------------------------------------

Some More News has an excellent installment about all the anti-trans ghouls and grifters out there. Musk, Rowling, Shrier, Pamela Paul, Matt Walsh, Harmeet K. Dhillon and Andy Ngo are mentioned by name. 

Jesse Singal is not mentioned by name, but his face is displayed a couple of times.

The episode points out that a constant theme of anti-trans grifter ghouls is that trans people were talked into becoming trans thanks to some pro-trans conspiracy, and the ghouls love to promote stories of the tiny minority of gender transitioners who detransitioned. The ghouls are very concerned about the possibility of regret by transitioners.

Minute 28:27: 

According to a 2021 meta analysis, less than one percent of participants in gender-affirming surgery regretted it. For context, the regret-rate for successful knee surgery is 2.9% Which you may recognize as more than 1%. Gender-affirming surgery has a lower regret-rate than almost any other elective surgery. 

Now Jesse Singal is best-known for his crusade against trans rights, while his long-time pal Razib Khan is better known for his promotion of race pseudoscience. 

And as of yesterday, his hatred of New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie.

But don't worry, Khan also hates trans people, probably as much as Jesse Singal does. Khan was recently seen on Twitter, mocking the idea that trans rights are human rights. 

Khan likes to frame his contempt for Amnesty International as a concern about their form of advocacy - they don't make an argument in a tweet for why trans rights are human rights, you see, merely an assertion. 

I have not yet found Khan himself making an argument that trans rights are not human rights. Maybe because, if he laid out his hatred and bigotry explicitly, it would make him look even more like a gigantic asshole.

Not to be outdone, Jesse Singal, Khan's long-time pal tweeted:

Singal writes about Trump's anti-trans executive order, while citing fan of "Gender Wars" cards and Pinker protege Carol Hooven, and spewing bullshit about "left-of-center thinkers."

What’s going on here, as usual, is that left-of-center thinkers are trying to squeeze a scientific argument into the clothes of a moral one. They have foolishly accepted the framing that we should only treat trans people with dignity and grant them certain rights if they are really the sex they say they are.

It's so funny that Singal pretends to care about treating trans people with dignity while being on very friendly terms with the psychopathic ghouls of Kiwi Farms and while attacking individual trans people from behind his paywall-blocked podcast like the disgusting political operative grifter/faux journalist he is.

Who the fuck does he think he's fooling, exactly?

Singal has justifiably become known for being a useful tool of the far-right and Republicans in their project to win votes by demonizing trans people, but he gets mad when people mention that. 

Meanwhile the Jesse Singal follower labeler on Bluesky is chugging along, receiving many positive reviews.

But back to Razib Khan, for he was recently seen promoting the complete Trump ratfucker tool Andy Ngo. I assume that Trump will partner with Ngo and Ngo's former (or current) lawyer, the ultra-evil Harmeet K. Dhillon to do more ratfucking, using antifa as an excuse to crack down on all dissidents, much like the Nazis used Marxists. These Republicans are absolute fascist filth.

Dhillon is discussed in the Some More News video at minute 39:32 with the point made that she's the Swiss Army tool for right-wing extremist causes.

But Khan does not neglect to stop for a minute to lick the boot - this time Marc Andreessen's buddy, Joe "natural aristocracy" Lonsdale. Khan knows that the only reason a mediocrity like him has any notoriety at all is because he's been a right-wing plutocratic bootlicker since at least kooky Holocaust denier Ron Unz.

The IDW does its part to help Trump

Per the Guardian:

The podcast host Joe Rogan has said he will vote for Donald Trump over Joe Biden in the presidential election, should the former vice-president be the Democratic nominee. 

The comic was speaking on Friday’s edition of his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, which regularly tops the iTunes chart for downloads. Rogan has nearly 6m Twitter followers, regularly appears on television as a commentator on mixed martial arts, and is seen as an influential voice with young and blue-collar male voters. 

During a conversation with guest Eric Weinstein, managing director of Thiel Capital, talk turned to the election. Weinstein, who works for the Trump-supporting tech mogul Peter Thiel, said he would not vote for Trump or Biden, the probable challenger in November.

Of course only gullible Sanders supporters ever believed Rogan sincerely want Sanders to become POTUS.

It's screamingly obvious that Trump would rather face Sanders than Biden which is why Trump was ratfucking so hard with Ukraine.

Rogan was only doing his part for the Trump team, trying to get the nomination for Sanders.

And Weinstein of course is the founder of the IDW and we see how much use he is in opposing a monster from hell like Trump - not at all.

Proud Boys admit to being ratfuckers

Pinkerite has long believed that Antifa was the perfect vehicle for Trump's ratfucking:

Ngo's strategy is obviously a template for Trump's campaign: coordinate with far-right groups and the right-wing media machine to bait and even frame leftist groups in order to claim leftists are out of control and a danger to the country...

...It helps that actual members of Antifa won't reveal their identities nor pledge non-violence, making them the perfect boogeymen for the Trump campaign.

So it was good to see the leader of the Proud Boys admit that's exactly what they do.

Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio claimed in a post on conservative social media network Parler that some Proud Boys would dress in black to disguise themselves as left-wing “antifa” protesters.

“Watch out, January 6 — you ain’t gonna know who the fuck it is standing beside you,” prominent Proud Boy Joe Biggs said in a video posted to Parler.

It's odd that although the Trump campaign's "law and order vs. Antifa and Black Lives Matter" was a failure in that it did not get Trump reelected, Republicans are still using it, like violence-advocating, traitor to his country, Louie Gohmert:

YouTube vs Andy Ngo

I've written about sleazy far-right "journalist" Andy Ngo many times on this blog, from his connection to Free Speech Grifters and Quillette to his connection via his sleazy lawyer Harmeet K. Dhillon to Trump's ratfucking campaign - which of course culminated in the January 6 insurrection. Ngo was very sympathetic to the insurrectionists. 

But it was still good to see "Some More News" provide the video evidence of Ngo's friendly relationship with fascists and hear him do his fake British accent. Superb.

But wait, there's more!

Andy Ngo: The Next Generation of News Grifter | BEHIND THE BASTARDS.

The "Behind the Bastards" guy knows Cody Johnston from "Some More News" - they did a podcast together about Jordan Peterson. 

This is great and mentions Ngo's pioneering of stochastic terrorism (after Gamergate which was promoted by Ngo's pal Christina Hoff Sommers.)

Razib Khan & Matt Yglesias, selling out and Substacking

After all this talk of one of Razib Khan's biggest "science" influences, the racist J. Phillippe Rushton, and in view of Khan's public agreement with racist Charles Murray that Black Americans are an existential threat, I had a cynical thought about Razib Khan.

I thought he might suddenly find a way to seem friendly to a Black American in an attempt to deflect from the notice recently given to his two-decade long career of smearing Black Americans as sub-human, based on the racist claims of Rushton and Murray.

Like clockwork, he's posted, an interview with a "black" American on his Substack.

I guess capitalizing the word Black would be a step too woke for whoever is funding Khan now.

Speaking of funding, Khan and his buddy, Matthew Yglesias were recently joking about "selling out."

Yglesias and Khan go back quite a ways, with Yglesias giving Khan - even more obscure at the time than he is now - a boost in 2009, in Think Progress(!), the same year Khan got a nice payday from Ron Unz. 

According to Khan's Unz column in 2013, he's "interacted with Matt Yglesias as early as 2003."

More recently, Yglesias gave an interview to Khan in September, 2020.

Khan, of course, has already made it clear he has no ethics or integrity.

But since it's likely he and Yglesias are both on the plutocrat payroll, what does "selling out" mean in this context? Betraying the interests of the plutocrats?

I mean, what do Razib Khan and Matthew Yglesias do for a living, other than express their unoriginal, monotonous, conservative opinions all day long?

The fact that they both have Substacks is one reason why I suspect Substack is an astroturfing scam, similar to the money-laundering scheme that Saul Goodman created for Walter White in "Breaking Bad." 

If you saw "Breaking Bad" you know what I'm talking about: Walt's son created a crowdfunding web site savewalterwhite.com and a little later Goodman got a hacker to create thousands of fake accounts to make it look like regular people all over the world were sending money in. But it was coming from one very rich guy.

What would stop the people running Substack from doing the same thing? Does anybody audit Substack accounts to make sure they are attached to real human beings? 

We know that some Substack authors got paid money upfront by Substack itself, including Yglesia.

We know that the Right is fond of astroturfing and ratfucking. 

We know it's been credibly alleged that Peter Thiel "secretly" funded race pseudoscience rag Quillette. 

We know the Koch middle-man, Donors Trust, gives money to white supremacist organizations like VDARE and American Renaissance.

Why couldn't Substack be one more method to financially support those who spout right-wing talking points and race pseudoscience? 

Razib Khan claims to have thousands of Substack subscribers. I find that hard to believe. He's not well-known outside of those of us who are very online and he's a terrible writer.

On top of that, he doesn't hype race pseudoscience often, directly, on his Substack, so he doesn't really offer much for his most reliable audience, racists. He seems to reserve his most racist opinions for Quillette.

And some of his content is not at all scientific, but rather political, like interviewing Megan McArdle. 

If you want to know the opinions of "Koch-trained conservative activist", Ayn Rand fan, and Washington Post op-ed columnist Meghan McArdle, you don't have to pay a race pseudoscience-monger to hear them - McArdle's opinions are everywhere either for free, or with a subscription to something with actual worthwhile content like the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, for people who want actual science, rather than Khan's occasionally science-adjacent ramblings, there is biologist P. Z. Myers, who offers science content, the same offered in a university, for free.

To get some perspective on the cost of subscribing to Khan's Substack, consider that the Washington Post is offering a first-time subscription of $25 a year. After that it bumps up to $100 a year. Now $100 a year is more than $79 a year, but subscribing to Khan's Substack is like getting a tiny portion of the Washington Post, the equivalent of only Meghan McArdle's column plus some badly-written science pieces, all resting on a race pseudoscience belief-system that occasionally erupts, as when Khan defended racist E. O. Wilson. 

So who are these people willing to pay a minimum of $79 a year for content from Razib Khan when they could get much better content at a better rate or even for free, all over the Internet?

Yglesias' Substack, named with refreshing honesty, Slow Boring, is a minimum of $80 a year. In contrast to Khan's more generous way with free content, almost all of Slow Boring is behind a paywall. And half the content is posted by someone identified as "incumbent intern" and "incoming freshman at Yale," Milan Singh.

So for a mere 80% of the cost of a subscription to the Washington Post, you can get Matt Yglesias' center-right opinions (also available for free on Twitter or with a Post subscription) plus chatter from Yglesias' subscribers, posted by someone who just graduated from high school.

The best part of the possible Substack scheme would be that the favored Substackers wouldn't even have to know that most of their subscriber accounts are fake. Like Walter White, Jr. they might think their site (and their views) suddenly achieved grassroots popularity for no apparent reason.

The fact that Lulu Cheng Meservey, the vice president of communications for Substack is a member of Razib Khan's clubhouse as well as a member of the clubhouse of the anti-CRT grifting, IDW-riddled, far-right leaning FAIR, does not help dissuade me from the suspicion that Substack is simply a high-tech Donor's Trust.

Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie has a Thiel connection. Thiel was an investor in PandoDaily, which McKenzie worked for.

Another Substack co-founder, Chris Best, appeared on a podcast for the race pseudoscience promoting, Thiel-funded Quillette. According to a description of the interview on Padverb, "Tech entrepreneur Chris Best talks about Substack, his self-publishing platform that is attracting journalists like Andrew Sullivan, Jesse Singal and Jen Gerson." 

• Andrew Sullivan is famous for his promotion of the race pseudoscience of racist Charles Murray.
• Jesse Singal is best known for his antagonism against trans people. He's a defender of the race pseudoscience-friendly Steven Pinker. He also has a Quillette connection and a Koch connection.
• Jen Gerson has written for Quillette.

The Substack gang apparently has no problem with promoters of race pseudoscience, at the very least.

UPDATE: My suspicions about the right-leaning racism-friendly orientation of the Substack founders and funders received a boost from Jonathan M. Katz.