The People's Line

Now that The People’s Line has launched, we’re trying something new: our periodic audio wrap-up. We’ve received occasional emails from folks with vision problems who’ve asked for something like this, and we know that a lot of you would rather listen to a podcast or stream a video in the background, so this is what we’ve put together. Substack already offers an AI reader for articles, but our reade...

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.peoplesline.org/subscribe

Guess the term: some scholarly works of history and political theory use it in specific and coherent ways, but almost no one else does. Instead, its primary role in our discourse is to demonize political opponents and shut down debate by vaguely invoking the memory of Nazi Germany and other violent, repressive regimes. In this use, it appeals to a concept that is just too vague and subjective to e...

Let’s suppose that the standard Republican take about the supposed left-wing bias of MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and so on are true. It’s not — this is a gross simplification that calls liberal orthodoxy “left” and then ignores all of the coverage that doesn’t even meet that standard — but let’s accept it for the sake of argument. Let’s imagine that these outlets are all r...