The Atlantic libels me as a "white supremacist" for the second time this spring
Once a month lately, somebody named Ali Breland libels me as a “white supremacist” in the once august digital pages of The Atlantic. Last month, he was up in arms that Charlie Kirk had interviewed me:
[Kirk] discussed crime stats with the white supremacist Steve Sailer in a way that veered toward race science.
And this month, Breland is upset that The Guardian’s doxxing of my publisher Lomez last month turned out to be a fiasco for Respectable Opinion because it revealed to the world that Lomez is a really cool guy. From The Atlantic:
The Far Right’s New ‘Badge of Honor’
Extremist influencers no longer need to preserve their anonymity at all costs.
By Ali Breland
JUNE 10, 2024, 12:04 PM ET
The far-right publisher known as “Lomez” kept his identity private, and for good reason. His company, Passage Publishing, has printed books from a German nationalist,
Obviously, Hitler. What other German nationalists are there?
Well, in this case, the unnamed German nationalist is the distinguished author and anti-Nazi Ernst Jünger, whose 1929 memoir of trench warfare on the Western Front, Storm of Steel, is a classic example of the late 1920s explosion of realistic accounts of combat in the Great War, along with All Quiet on the Western Front and A Farewell to Arms. You can buy it in various translations from eminently respectable publishers. For example, Amazon will sell you the Penguin Classic Deluxe Edition in paperback or in Kindle, or in 17 other versions. The selling point of Passage’s edition is that it’s in the superb original 1929 translation into English rather than in the less-inspired later versions.
Breland then switches, for unexplained reasons, to the plural:
anti-democracy monarchists,
The unique Mencius Moldbug.
and white supremacists promoting “human biodiversity.”
Me. Although there is only one of me. “They” is not a pronoun of mine.
Of course, by any and all sane definitions of “white supremacy,” I am absolutely not a “white supremacist.” But irrationality is rampant in the fever swamps of wokeness, such as, apparently, The Atlantic.
Breland, of course, does not link to any supporting evidence for his hate speech slur, linking only to Jason Wilson’s boring doxxing article in the cootie-free Guardian. Linking to me or to Passage would make it to easy to factcheck his assertions, and some readers might discover more interesting writers than what The Atlantic tends to serve up these days.
And, like The Guardian, he especially doesn’t post a picture of Lomez, such as this widely available one online of the former U. of California at Irvine instructor taking his kids to Disneyland:
Last month, The Guardian revealed his true identity: [Lomez — I don’t dox people], a former lecturer at UC Irvine. This made [Lomez] very upset. On X, he called the behavior of Jason Wilson, who wrote the Guardian story, “obsessive” and “delusional.” “They want to harass [me], they want to discredit our ideas,” he said during an appearance on a conservative podcast. Lomez’s fans and followers joined in the outrage. The conservative activist Christopher Rufo posted on X that Wilson is “a human worm,” adding, “Even the mafia has a greater sense of decency.” A conservative Substack author wrote that the Lomez’s identity reveal would bring the “threat of violence” from “antifa goons.”
Well, yeah, it does.
When information that someone wants to keep private is aired to the entirety of the internet, even when that person has been posting their ideas in public, they tend to get mad. …
In the [Lomez] saga, however, outrage wasn’t the whole story. Between the flurries of angry social-media posts, Lomez whipsawed to an entirely different emotional register: satisfaction. An hour after venting his frustration about getting doxxed, Lomez, who did not respond to a request for an interview, let his followers know that they could use the code “Wilson” for a discount on Passage Publishing books.
No, you can’t get a discount, but you can get free shipping from Passage by entering “Wilson” as the promo code. For example, the paperback version of my anthology Noticing is $29.95, but if you type in “Wilson” you don’t have to pay the $4.90 shipping charge (offer only good within the United States).
Hopefully, The Atlantic will issue a correction.
While I prefer you buy Noticing from Passage because then we don’t have to share the money with Jeff Bezos, his firm, Amazon, is really, really good at logistics. So if you want the paperback right away to give as a Father’s Day or graduation present, Amazon Prime customers can get Noticing overnight.
Or you can download the Kindle file version from Amazon instantly. For overseas customers, this also saves on shipping costs.
He seemed to relish the “badge of honor” of getting doxxed, as he said during the podcast appearance. “Breaking,” he posted: “the Guardian has exposed a family man with a loving wife and many beautiful children, who played college basketball, worked for Google, traveled the world, then had a 10-year career in academia before starting a highly successful publishing company. I’m shook.”
I tried to warn the doxxers that exposing the secret identity of a fellow who comes across in real life like an American version of Daniel Day-Lewis — 15 minutes after I first met him, I was saying to myself, “Of course I want this guy to be my publisher: he’s awesome!” — was not going to be the crushing victory the Woke intended.
In this reaction, too, Lomez’s supporters followed suit. … Another account, referencing the right-wing online community sometimes called “Frogtwitter,” posted, “Every time an anon frog is doxxed it’s like: * PhD * hot * 6'5" * was backup qb for the Broncos * owns 19% of Wyoming.”
Lomez is under 6’ tall, but he says he did succeed in his goal of dunking a basketball one more time after he hit 40.
For the record, here’s a picture of Ali Breland, who is okay-looking by the standards of Mother Jones’ journalists:
And here’s Guardian doxxer Jason Wilson:
His portrait has elicited some unkind comments, but I’m more of a glass-half-full relativist: for an Antifa-adjacent Portlander, he’s a rugged, masculine-looking guy. Compare him to this collection of Portland Antifa mugshots from the endless Mostly Peaceful Protests of 2020:
