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anarresinfoshop wrote

He was always a contrarian, frankly.

The context for this more recent stuff, is the Reality Winner fuckup by The Intercept's editors. After criticizing how they handled that situation, and the pro-Biden/DNC slant of many of the newer reporters and that same editorial staff, he left, along with another co-founder. So, since then, he's become pretty jaded with anything he sees as liberal, or influenced by liberalism, and also has become more isolated. Ironically, since he has always been a liberal, but is also a contrarian who thinks he is "above that" kind of dichotomy, this led him to be subsumed by the liberal/conservative paradigm which he did not recognize or have any substantial critique of. To people like this, it is difficult to have a meaningful conversation because their definitions are all skewed and now they're in a propaganda bubble while thinking they're outside all of the bubbles, looking in at yours. In reality, it is ridiculous to argue that anyone is outside the purview and influence of liberal politics, we are all reckoning with that and staking your identity on being "smarter" or "better informed" or whatever, leads to this kind of error. Paired with a (very unfortunate) certain sense of permission to engage with conservative social maliciousness that comes from being a violent crime/state repression victim (He was kidnapped along with his family in Brazil, as well as being stalked/targeted by American Democratic Party officials during his time in the United States for his journalism), you can kind of see how this has developed into his current personality.

One might note that he is engaging with these alt-right American accounts while he is in Brazil, which kind of removes him from having to reckon directly with the consequences of his speech arguably. One may also note that this shift has all happened post-2020, largely, which was a very isolating and strange year for pretty much everyone.

Call it, journalist-main-character syndrome, I guess. Sad to see, he was a very good (but still liberal) journalist for many years. He is also a big reason for why Bolsonaro is out of power now, still, so it's especially disappointing to see him pursuing this kind of hurtful and damaging politics...and also, just kind of bizarre, frankly.

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