Ben Domenech: Selling Soothing, Snake-Oil Conservatism On FOX News Primetime

With Ben Domenech’s somnambulist, soothing, well-articulated, Establishment conservatism, Fox News is lulling viewers back into a meaningless, middle-of-the-road, political impotence.

And a load of claptrap.

Last night, June 5, Big Tech censorship was obviously panned vigorously for speech oppression, but an Israeli actress ensconced in Hollywood got to make allusions on air to her preference for censoring anti-Israel comments, when those are uttered by people lacking “expertise” on Israel. More philosophical bunkum, but certainly in line with neoconservatism’s Israel First position.

Americans—certainly this writer, who is pro-Israel—support unfettered speech! That used to be the American position—which includes the rights of people to express anti-Israel positions no matter the state of their expertise, which the silly sabra seemed to be demanding as a condition for speech on Israel.

Discussed too was the incitement to murder whites, expressed by a deviant at Yale, Aruna Khilanani. This, according to panelist Liz Wheeler, was best understood not as murderous anti-whitism needing to be aggressively combated, but with the aid of her unscholarly, unlearned allusions to the Frankfurt School… Wheeler’s ignorant theoretical escapism will help your life as much as voting Republican did.

In this context, Lynette Ackermann asked me, “Ilana, Have you any suggestions for a new paradigm for the 21st century?”

Reply: “What I am strongly suggesting in my commentaries about anti-whiteness is… keep it real. When it comes to anti-whiteness—a very serious, grave reality—you need a scrappy strategy, not a paradigm.” No theoretical escapism!

But the worst slot belonged to Douglas Murray, much revered for his accent and inchoate, wishy-washy positions. The segment dealt with Facebook’s verdict to ban Donald Trump for another two years. (Frankly, President Trump had not stood up for voters like myself, whose websites are banned for life, presumably, with no ability to appeal. And the former president’s response to Facebook’s Nick Clegg was, to put it charitably, puzzling: “Next time I’m in the White House there will be no more dinners, at his request, with Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. It will be all business!”)

Likewise, for his part, Domenech evinced great concern over Facebook curtailing the power of politicians; not so much about the power of the people curtailed.

But Murray is really something. The sassy, salient line he repeated again and again on the live broadcast—it doesn’t appear in the Fox News online video—was this: The Big Tech meddlers are “not fit for purpose“:

“… it is high time we make it clear that we cannot and will not live under the rules of Big Tech. They are not up to the job that they have taken upon their shoulders to perform.”

The premise of that statement is that, while Deep Tech is not up for the job;  someone is up for the job of censor and speech adjudicator. On display here is “Bic Con” deception, Tory deception, too. These establishment conservatives do not trumpet absolute free speech: Richard Spencer’s, Nick Fuentes’, Tommy Robinson’s, Michelle Malkin’s, mine. They seldom come to the defense of dissidents. For this reason, Murray is wont to make a stupid (cleverly worded) statement:

“We are dealing with kids here,” he said, adding “these companies got everything about the last year wildly wrong” and citing Big Tech’s censorship of the Wuhan lab leak theory.

Crystal clear premise once again of the Murray fatuity is this: If Deep Tech were more mature and accurate in their prediction (Murray awoke pretty late in life to most truths, too)—they might be in a position to adjudicate which speech if fit for consumption, which not.

Wrong. Absolutely wrong, but well-spoken.