A Left-wing Journalist Gets it Right

A Left-wing Journalist Gets it Right

Matt Taibbi is a man of the Left but in a recent column he correctly described what the left really is—a religion. He says we are in a religious war where political narrative replaces faith and truth becomes heresy. I agree with much of his analysis and I would also like to point out where I think he is mistaken.

Taibbi argues that today we have two religions. The religion of the Left and the church. 

With regard to left wing religion Taibbi gives a couple of examples. First, he writes about the report that border patrol agents were rounding up refugees using whips. It turns out they were not. People watching the video had mistaken the loose reins on the horses as whips. When it became clear they were mistaken politicians and the press went on as though the story was true. Vice President Harris said the images evoked memories of slavery; Representative Maxine Waters said the pictures were “worse than what we witnessed in slavery,” President Biden himself promised his own agents would “pay” for “strapping” refugees. Even the New York Times, five days after the photograph was taken, reported that Border Agents were “in some cases using reins to strike at running migrants.” None of this was true.

The second example Taibbi gives is the coverage of a new book arguing that the Hunter Biden stories in the fall of 2020 were authentic even though the mainstream press called them “Russian disinformation.” Turns out they were true, but the Main Stream Media has largely ignored the book.

Taibbi chastises the media for becoming an oppressive bummer. And he says “the press business has taken on characteristics of that other institution where talking, joking, and thinking aren’t allowed: church.” Taibbi has made three serious miscalculations in comparing the media to church and I want to come back to them in a moment. But one thing he is certainly right about. The Left-wing Progressives and their media are a religion and a really bad one. “As church-raised boomers stopped going to mass, they spent more and more time fixated on The News….” Taibbi is arguing that for modern, left-wing Progressives, the news is their religion. In an earlier video I have argued the exact same thing. The Left, the Progressives, the Marxists, must be understood as a religion or you will not understand them at all. I’m glad to see Matt Taibbi has come around to that conclusion himself.

Taibbi says the media has become exactly like churches: They sell belief instead of facts. “The news became a series of gospels that get told and re-told for the faithful, who responded accordingly…Questioning gospels, however, is heresy, so mainstream reporters in particular avoided taking second looks at universally accepted initial takes. This phenomenon is why we seldom saw skeptical responses to questionable themes in big stories…

“Every time I turn on the TV now, I want to jump off a cliff. I went into journalism precisely because at the time, it was one of the only professions to encourage actively godless people to apply….Now, after three decades, it turns into this?”

Matt is right. The media has a narrative, a world view, and they are evangelistic; they want to persuade to believe it. And they feel perfectly free in lying to you in order to advance that narrative. So, yes, the news media is a religious cult. And a lousy one.

Problem with Matt’s analysis:

First, Churches, like Matt Taibbi, believe truth is objective. We share that cultural value. It comes from Christianity’s belief in a “God Who is There.” I am a Protestant Evangelical Christian. I believe truth is objective. I believe it is out there, independent of my opinion. I believe new facts can be discovered and my views corrected. We even believe this to a significant extent in theology. In John 14:11 Jesus says: “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.” In other words, if you won’t take my word for it look at the evidence. Christianity is not like the Left in its treatment of truth; it agrees with Matt Taibbi.

Second, Churches admit their doctrinal position. It is printed on every church website. It’s in every church constitution. We are different from the Progressive Left: We do not lie about our religion. We do not lie about what we believe. We do not lie about being a religion. It is characteristic of many cults to mislead about what they really believe. And the Left-wing cult does this.

Third, the biggest fact is, as always, doctrinal. The Left holds a different  view of human nature. Leftists view men and women as basically good but basically stupid. They cannot be given the facts and allowed to decide for themselves. They might do something foolish like voting the wrong way. So the Left-wing elite believe in controlling the flow of information—in social media, in entertainment, in universities, in every educational institution. They intend to control how you think and vote and act. Because you cannot be allowed to do that for yourself. They perceive themselves as vastly superior to the rest of us—and they have to make our decisions for us. They come to this conclusion because of their theology of human nature.

Matt Taibbi is an excellent journalist and I subscribe to him on Substack, linked below. He is right about the Progressive/Left but mistaken about Christianity. He is committed to the truth because of his Christian cultural heritage. Matt, I would invite you to consider more seriously the basis of Christianity—the person of Jesus Christ.

Thank you for watching. Please check the resources below. May our God bless you this day in a mighty way. 

My video, The Religious Origins of the Rights Movements: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ggE_qI85WA

Link to Matt Taibbi on Substack: https://taibbi.substack.com/?utm_source=discover_search