December 1, 2023

Jeremy Boreing is the CEO of The Daily Wire, the right-wing media outlet founded by Boreing and Brett Kavanaugh penis-defender Ben Shapiro. Boreing was on right-wing podcaster Tim Pool’s “Timcast.” In a video posted by Jason Campbell of Media Matters for America, Boreing explains that if everyone said the “N-word,” nobody would get into trouble, and while he says he’s “not recommending” everybody do that, his point is  …. that everybody should?

The problem is that anonymity on the internet allows for the ghettoizing of beliefs that are not approved by the regime. So a lot of people will say, “Well, I have to be, I have to be anonymous on the internet because if my boss finds out that I've got these views, they'll fire me.” But you're only in the position where your boss could fire you for finding out about those views because you've allowed those views to be completely ghettoized through anonymity online.

If 5 million people came out today and said the N-word—not recommending it—but no one would ever get fired for saying the N-word again. You wouldn't be able to. You would have brought that to a conclusion. That little absurdity in our culture would be brought to an end.

Boreing is essentially explaining how cultural norms are created, but he’s also arguing that the movement away from using racist, dehumanizing language is somehow a sign of oppression. Who is this regime? Who is being oppressed? While he doesn’t say it explicitly, it seems to refer to the kind of (white) people who desire to be allowed to say the N-word unabashedly.

“Timcast,” like much of the right-wing media ecosphere, appeals to the feeble faux-intellectual logic of (mostly) very young men. A more robust investigation of Boreing’s strange thesis might include asking him why he gave an example of saying the “N-word,” and then did not recommend actually doing  it? Another simple question might be: How come everybody at The Daily Wire isn’t freely using the “N-word?” Clearly it doesn’t have to do with the fear of being fired by Boreing—or maybe it sort of does? Maybe it has to do with the fact that losing your audience by being crassly racist—as opposed to maintaining some plausible deniability around one's racism—could lead to people losing their jobs.

Republished with permission from Daily Kos.

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