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I'm curious to know what John thinks of Glenn revealing his departure from the Manhattan Institute on the Turcker Carlson show.
Glenn, in your recent conversation with Jason Riley, you asked of the Kendis and the three-named crowd: Why does it work? Why do the shallow arguments of the anti-racist folks resonate so widely? Why do their narratives become the currency of the realm?
In that spirit, I’d value your thoughts on why Ta-Nehisi Coates’s writings on Palestine resonate so strongly with you. I see Coates applying the same lens to the Middle East that you’ve critiqued on race: a binary of oppressor and oppressed, strong emotional pull, and a disregard for historical and structural complexity - without the grounding in reality and data that serious analysis demands.
Critical race discourse thrives because it offers emotionally resonant shortcuts. For those not steeped in history - or not willing to wrestle with it - the heuristic is persuasive. Persuasive enough, at least, to dissuade them from pushing back.
You’ve been brilliant at dismantling these reductive racial narratives while staying grounded in both humanity and intellectual rigor. But your response on Palestine felt different.
Am I wrong to see echoes of the same dynamics in Coates’s framing of the Israel/Palestine conflict? Do you see his arguments (and so, your responses) as fundamentally different in these two domains?