It's Okay to Protest Matt Yglesias (and! This Week's Writing 10/12/24)

Why pundits hate direct action, and why they should maybe not.

not Matt Yglesias

Hello! Before we get to the links, I thought I’d share some thoughts on whether it’s okay to protest substackers out in the wild.

Very brief version: It is!

Slightly longer version:

The group Climate Defiance this week showed up at a talk/luncheon at which substacker and pundit Matt Yglesias was speaking. Climate Defiance demanded that Yglesias account for his support for fracking. They chanted, held up a banner, and told him he sucked. (You can see video here.)

There was a lot of pushback from pundits like Dan Drezner (who also has a Substack). People argued that Yglesias is not important enough to protest. They argued that direct action of this sort doesn’t change people’s minds. They argued the action made Yglesias look cool. (Which…I guess it’s in the eye of the beholder there.) Peter Beinart argued that the protestors shouting down Yglesias was an example of “the tactics of authoritarians” (!)

Basically, a lot of pundits and people whose main engagement with politics is punditing (or, you know, tweeting) were irritated at the sight of a fellow pundit and tweeter being confronted in public in an aggressive (though nonviolent) way about his punditing and tweeting. If you dislike someone’s punditing, the pundits believe, you should respond with additional punditing. Punditing is good, honest, effective. Direct action is disreputable, dangerous, ineffective. According to pundits.

I’m a pundit too, but I think it’s worth asking whether the pundits here are entirely disinterested, or if we’re seeing an example of what I call chattering class solidarity. It’s true that direct action doesn’t always sway people. But…does punditing sway people? Is direct action, as a tactic, really less legitimate, or less effective, than substacking or blogging?

There are some differences of course. Writers like Yglesias have a huge platform and possibly readers in policy-making positions. But getting to that point is difficult and takes luck, connections, networking (it doesn’t hurt to have a somewhat famous father like Yglesias.) For activists who have been (fairly deliberately) shut out of policy discussions, direct action may be the only way to get their message out to a large audience. And getting the message out, with a viral video clip, is often the only way to find like minded people and to build a mailing list, a donor list, a list of activists.

Substack is a way to build community and encourage like-minded people to keep up the fight. Direct action does that too. Critics often sneer at direct action as preaching to the choir. But of course punditing is often preaching to the choir too.

And (as an activist I admire has said) the thing about the choir is that they show up and want to be preached to! If you don’t preach to the choir, eventually the choir gets disheartened; they feel like they’ve shown up for no reason and no reward. Direct action, like punditing, keeps the choir engaged; it reminds people they have community and support. It’s a way to keep people engaged through periods when change is not much of an option, so they are ready and able to act in those small windows when change becomes possible.

I’m not saying that chanting at a Matt Yglesias event is going to end fracking as we know it. But…there aren’t a lot of options for ending fracking as we know it. Before we can get better climate policies, we need to build power, partly by convincing people who are convinceable, but also by energizing and engaging people who are on our side, but who need people or events to rally with or around.

I’d just suggest that pundits (like me!) might take a minute to think about why they do what they do, and whether typing away for mostly like-minded people is really much more effective, or moral, or canny, than direct action. Again, change is hard. It’s not always immediately evident how to bring it about. Instead of mocking folks who are trying a different (and personally riskier) method than punditing, maybe pundits could acknowledge (against all our instincts!) that we don’t have all the answers, and offer a modicum of solidarity. As a pundit, it’s the least—or is that the most?—I can do.

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Okay, that did go on a little longer than I thought it would. But! nonetheless! Here are the punditing links for this week!

Politics

Kamala Harris doesn’t owe the mainstream press anything. (Public Notice)

Biden is still the best president on labor issues maybe ever. (EIH)

Trump lies about natural disasters because he hates solidarity. (EIH)

The Greens want to harm their enemies. (EIH)

Cultural Criticism

The doc LEAP OF FAITH argues for Christian unity…and shows why Christian unity might be the problem. (Religion Dispatches)

With his golden throat, William Shatner will save us all. (EIH)

Poetry

I was a featured poetry reader at Stone Soup! (YouTube)

Short pastoral poet poem. (dadakuku)

My shepherd
is stuck
in the fucking
bower.