Originally published at: Mehdi Hasan shatters Matt Taibbi's credibility in brutal MSNBC interview | Boing Boing
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Taibbi is a talented writer in terms of style, but also a sad case of populism gone awry for a privileged individual (he’s the son of a well-known NYC TV reporter). This is not unheard of, whether we’re talking about brocialists gone fashy or the original “Beefsteak Nazis”.
Not that he was ever a trustworthy ally to actual progressives and liberals. His conduct when co-running The eXile in post-Soviet Russia was rife with bro-like antics and mean-spirited punching down that wouldn’t be out of place on a Faux News segment.
ETA: they also regularly published columns by hipster edgelord fascist Eduard Limonov, one of the founders of Russia’s National Bolshevik Party (essentially a right-wing populist party that incorporated Russian ultra-nationlism and elements of Soviet communism).
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Would it be reasonable to suspect that his “bro-like antics” in Russia enabled the FSB to blackmail him, or are his political choices entirely voluntary?
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There’s some controversy over why he and Mark Ames closed up shop and left Russia, but their criticism of the burgeoning Putin regime probably played a part. Sadly, though, I think a lot of this is genuine misguided populism, a shift from focusing on the misdeeds of real elites (e.g. billionaires like Musk) to the boogeyman ones (intellectuals, academics, the “deep state”, Jewish cabals, feminists, “woke culture”, etc.) promoted by the far right.
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My impression is that there wouldn’t be much of a way to blackmail him for multiple rapes of teenagers when he admitted happily to raping multiple teenagers in his book.
I suspect he’s just a guy who was never very progressive who somehow got a reputation for progressivism, and then got even more and more conservative when actual progressives called out his misbehavior. (See also: Glenn Greenwald)
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Haven’t been so baffled and disappointed by the loss of a once-strong reporter to crazytown since Glenn Greenwald.
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One odd bit in this exchange is Taibbi saying “the government. . . (sigh) I can’t even report on that yet” like he’s got some secret bombshell he’s sitting on. (Or he wants us to think he does. Who knows.) Except if it’s like his Twitter Files “bombshell”. . . .
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Twitter is blocking links to Substack, so Matt Taibbi is quitting Twitter.
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Wow, that interview felt like Matt Taibbi bringing a note card* to an open book exam.
*and the only thing written on the note card was “Facts and information are for chumps!”
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And it’s certainly not Elon Musk doing this; it’s the Biden Administration because they hate links.
/s
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Taibbi asked to go on Hasan’s show, then whined that he’d been ambushed.
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And on top of that, tosses out an ad hominem attack while claiming (falsely of course) to be the victim of an ad hominem attack. 
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Like a thief in the night - except from the front in broad daylight, by invitation.
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“I invited myself onto his show, and he pointed out massive foundational blunders that disqualify all my claims that I hadn’t prepared responses for - therefore DEEP STATE AMBUSH, proving the truth of all my claims.”
This is Trump-level whining victimology. The student has surpassed the master.
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After Taibbi’s Twitter departure, Hasan couldn’t help but get in a parting shot.
“So hold on, literally the day after he told me that likes and admires Elon Musk, specially for Musk’s handling of Twitter, and refused point blank to criticize Elon Musk, Taibbi is quitting Musk’s Twitter? You literally can’t make this stuff up,” the MSNBC host tweeted.
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