James Lindsay, anti-Communist@ConceptualJames
Since it's the relevant time of day and week, I'll tell you that for maybe the fourth or fifth time, I was invited and tentatively scheduled to go on the Piers Morgan show today to talk about something relevant. In this case, it was the rise in rank antisemitism. Obviously, I didn't go on, but the issue matters enough to tell the story.
I don't like or trust Piers, as anyone might not at this point. This isn't anything personal. It's completely professional. It's therefore more accurate to say I don't like or trust the brand Piers Morgan operates, and I have never been inclined to "feed the snake," so to speak. This is a matter of personal dignity and professional outcome.
The best I have to say about his show is that Piers Morgan is the Jerry Springer Show for contemporary politics. When I see people I know on the show, I lose respect for them. I think it's trashy. I think it's a sellout for a spot of attention. It's disappointing and saddening. And that's the best that can be said for it.
His producers have been professional and interested in trying to make it work. They always generously offer me some 20 minutes of one-on-one time with Piers, whether to discuss Woke Right or antisemitism, followed by one of his signature Jerry Springer shitshow panels. Typically they will not tell me who the panel will include until after I tentatively agree. Then they tell me who the panel might include; I laugh at them; and I don't do it. That's what happened this week.
After telling me that Piers disagrees with Tucker and Candace about antisemitism and that he (and they, his producers) think I have some of the most insightful commentary on this phenomenon in the game right now, they asked me to come on the show again today. I was hesitant but again tentatively agreed. I also wanted to know who was going to be on this shitshow attention-whore panel.
On Monday, his producer gave me the following list of names for the panel and asked me if any of them are acceptable to me:
Tim Pool
Dave Smith
Ben Ferguson (don't know him)
Scott Horton (don't know him)
Jack Posobiec
Myron Gaines
The claim was, "Trying to put interesting people in the same segment and see if we can get somewhere," which I obviously mocked. That's not what his show is about, and I said so.
Not only did I say this looks like a bad idea and then decline participation, I explained rather sharply ("don't give me this shit" was something I said more than once) to his producer that I think Piers's show is the Jerry Springer Show for contemporary politics. I have no interest in participating in that, so I'm not, and I won't.
It isn't just that, though. As I explained, following "don't give me this shit," the problem is: "You know [the show] is about getting people to yell and fight on the air while reflexive narratives get dropped" (bold added). And that's the real reason I won't participate and am sad to see people whore themselves out by being on there.
I've talked about reflexivity before, but it's a dialectical style of propaganda and a "theory of change" developed by George Soros in the 1980s. The general idea is that you end up causing people to believe false things by exploiting the gap between the truth and what they are willing to believe, usually with the intention of devaluing and shorting some "institutional favorite." That might be a stock, a currency, a bank (a bank run is the quintessential example), or the United States of America. It is the last one I perceive the Piers Morgan Show of consistently doing. I will not participate in the shorting of my country so I can have a few minutes of attention on a shitty show.
The way it works is by using the "debate" (Springer squabble) platform of the show to allow "dissident" guests to push counter-hegemonic, subversive ideas and then to get people to fight over them so they go viral. The point isn't necessarily to get people to believe the ideas (though that happens), but to get people to believe there's a real fight over the ideas (that they're actually legitimate and important). Much of what gets called "debate" these days qualifies as this. It's like sowing seeds of doubt in the country.
I had intended to rightly accuse Piers of facilitating this process, either for profit or other motives, during our one-on-one time, had we done it. The purpose of his show, day after day, week after week, is to elevate fringe and subversive ideas under the guise of "debate" in a high-traffic model taken from trashy shows like Springer, Maury Povich, and The View.
That my thesis is correct isn't just proved by the unbelievable stack of evidence that is the existing Piers Morgan shows; the panel they suggested proves it. They suggested that panel, from all possible people, knowing good and well from past discussions I'm not interested in talking to the majority of those people (and not because they "disagree" with me, like I'm afraid of disagreement).
The issue with several of the suggested panelists is that they are knowingly or not advancing subversive, agitating, propagandist views through the medium of the Piers Springer show, and elsewhere. They're not experts; they're noisemakers, rabble-rousers, subversives, and provocateurs.
This isn't a mistake, an accident, or a quirk. It's also not just consistent; it's Piers Morgan's brand. I told his producer to "call back when [he's] serious," but that will never be the case.
Earlier, I said that the best that can be said for this show is that it is trash-for-clicks and an opportunity for a parade of media apparatchiks to be attention whores, but there's worse that can be believed: that the subversion is the point. Inviting one subversive after another on as a standard matter of course eventually seems to suggest, if not prove, a rule. Again, I will not participate in the subversion of my country, especially not for clicks. Prostituting my country for a little attention is not in the realm of what I'm willing to participate in.
But could I have made a difference? I don't know. Some of my friends have gone on and have done so. Maybe it's worth it. Likely, I could have too. I certainly have things worth saying on this matter that are also things worth hearing. But Piers Morgan isn't the only game in town, and he's simply not dignified enough for me to cave in even if he were.
So, today, I'm proudly not participating in this excrement ejected from the bowels of political commentary. "Getting my message out" simply isn't worth the price of being at that wretched table.
