Written By: Justin K.P.
Read my follow up, “How Matt Taibbi’s ‘Anatomy of a Struggle Session’ Article Is Detached From Reality”, here .
How Matt Taibbi Changed And Now Helps Zionists.
Journalist Matt Taibbi, formerly of Rolling Stone magazine, now of Racket News on Substack, will tell you he hasn’t changed his views and has stayed consistent throughout his career, but this is just objectively false, especially on the issue of foreign policy and Zionism.
When Matt Taibbi hosted the Useful Idiots show with Rolling Stone, he hosted filmmakerAbby Martin to talk about her documentary on the great March of return in Gaza, “Gaza Fights for Freedom,” and hosted Electronic Intifada founder Ali Abunimah to talk about censorship of Palestinian activists.
Today, Matt Taibbi ran a bizarre hit piece on journalist Jeremy Scahill for pressing California representative Ro Khanna over funding for Israel’s Iron Dome, and Palestinians’ right to armed resistance.
Taibbi has claimed time and time again that he has no position on Israel, but a closer look at his work shows he has clearly taken the side of the Zionists.
At one point in Matt’s hit piece on Jeremy Scahill, Taibbi lamented politicians “who capitulate in the belief they’re doing the right thing, like California State Senator Scott Wiener or Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez” and linked to a press release from AOC saying “Ocasio-Cortez Joins House Members and Advocates in Calling to Block Bombs to Israel”, implying that pressuring politicians to block bombs going to Israel’s genocide is a bad thing.
Taibbi also shows his Zionist sympathies in who he chooses to criticize and who he chooses to promote.
In his piece, Taibbi claimed that Jeremy Scahill- a serious and non-partisan investigative journalist who has put in the work to expose the genocide in Gaza- did a “histrionic, emotional political performance dressed up as an interview” and gave “not an interview, but a struggle session” for daring to question Ro Khanna- an elected official- on important issues relating to Palestine.
“When you see three journalists of this type doing an interview and fifty more cheering online, it’s a pack of people afraid of one another making nervous shows of solidarity,” Taibbi bizarrely wrote about Jeremy Scahill for daring to question a politician.
On the other hand, Taibbi celebrated Zionist billionaires buying up CBS News and installing genocide denier Bari Weiss as the head.
On Bari Weiss being installed as the head of CBS News, Taibbi wrote:
Just three years after that moment, after building a broad roster at The Free Press, she’s taking a $200 million offer to save desperate, near-extinct CBS News. Naturally, every entitled fat-keistered slob clogging the rolls of non-functional news organizations is crying she doesn’t deserve it. How many of these plaintive mannequins denouncing her “grift” would have the guts to leave one of the cushiest gigs in the print media and bet on themselves in the open market? Zero-point-zero percent, as in not one.
What a bunch of jealous, worthless losers. Ironic that this happened the same week that Malcolm Gladwell admitted he wasn’t packing anything down there. The set on Bari is visible from space, and that’s why she’s getting paid. That, and a lot of hard work. How miserable do you have to be to begrudge that?
This is just purely dishonest framing.
The reality is that Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, was bought by the production company Skydance, owned by David Ellison who “quietly donates quite a bit to the State of Israel and the IDF” according to the Jerusalem Post, and who is the son of Larry Ellison, the biggest private donor to the IDF and a close personal friend of Benjamin Netanyahu .
David Ellison installed Bari Weiss as the head of CBS News because she is a self described “Zionist Fanatic” who has boasted that “my Zionist activism is connected to my journalism”, and has written and published articles denying well documented Israeli atrocities committed against Palestinians, including the starvation siege of Gaza and the massacres at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid sites, which IDF militants have admitted to committing .
Matt Taibbi mentioned none of these facts in his article and instead portrayed the Zionist media takeover as a story of Bari Weiss leaving “one of the cushiest gigs in the print media and betting on themselves in the open market”, which itself ignored the fact that Bari Weiss’s The Free Press took money from tech billionaires Marc Andreessen and David Sacks from day one.
Matt Taibbi himself occasionally writes for Bari Weiss’ the Free Press most recently in January of this year .
Bari Weiss and the Free Press have:
Run a smear campaign against the beloved Palestinian writer and poet Refaat Alareer, which led to him being labeled as an “Amalekite” by the IDF, which murdered him along with multiple members of his family, including children.
Spread IDF lies claiming that Palestinian journalists Hossam Shabat and Anas Al Sharif were combatants, which led to them being targeted and killed by the IDF.
Attempted to get foreign policy analyst Trita Parsi deported from the United States for opposing the U.S/Israeli war on Iran.
How’s that for a “struggle session,” Matt?
Yet Matt Taibbi will attack journalists who speak out against the genocide in Gaza and press politicians on it, while collaborating with and promoting the monsters behind the Free Press, who spread lies that help get Palestinian journalists killed.
Whether Matt Taibbi will acknowledge it or not, this is taking a side, and it’s not one that history will look back kindly on.
What Exactly Happened To Matt Taibbi?
I don’t know exactly what happened to Matt Taibbi and why he changed, but this is my best guess.
Matt Taibbi was one of the reporters who worked on the Twitter Files, which, while likely a limited hangout, still revealed information that was inconvenient for elements of the establishment, such as the fact that the deep state was working with Twitter to suppress counter narratives on issues ranging from the Ukraine proxy war to Covid-19 protocols .
Before Matt Taibbi testified before Congress on this information, he received a visit from the IRS that was clearly an intimidation tactic used to silence him.
The Wall Street Journal wrote at the time :
The bigger question is when did the IRS start to dispatch agents for surprise house calls? Typically when the IRS challenges some part of a tax return, it sends a dunning letter. Or it might seek more information from the taxpayer or tax preparer. If the IRS wants to audit a return, it schedules a meeting at the agent’s office. It doesn’t drop by unannounced.
The curious timing of this visit, on the heels of the FTC demand that Twitter turn over names of journalists, raises questions about potential intimidation.
At the hearing , Matt Taibbi was threatened with 5 years of jail time by Democratic representative Stacey Plaskett over a minor error he made over the Twitter Files reporting.
This, in effect, turned Matt Taibbi away from ever reporting or doing anything serious again that threatened the establishment, instead focusing on writing culture war-related slop.
But even Matt’s coverage of an issue as important as Zionism is framed through the lens of the American culture war.
But Palestinian mothers who have their babies killed in front of them by Israeli quadcopters, Palestinians raped and tortured in Israel’s rape dungeons , hundreds of thousands of South Lebanese civilians who had their homes demolished by the IDF, Palestinians terrorized by settler terrorists in the West Bank, the parents of schoolgirls slaughtered at the Minab school in Iran- among other victims of Zionism do not care about American culture war issues.
Matt Taibbi seems to now believe the entire world revolves around his culture war gripes, even framing issues as important as mass genocide and ethnic cleansing around it.
Matt Taibbi may not acknowledge it, but he- as journalist Ali Abunimah put it- is using “Palestinians as fodder for your petty point scoring”, and actively aiding Zionist narratives.
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Taibbi's latest post is maybe his most revealing. This is man who continuously refused to comment of the genocide in Gaza, saying it was complicated and he didn't know enough to comment on it, but at the same time did nothing to educated himself. As The Dissident points out, after the Twitter Files, the IRS visit, and dem threats, Taibbi hunkered down and his reporting has been irrelevant ever since. Scahill has been reporting from the Mideast for years. He has talked to people who have witnessed the genocide first hand. He reports about events and peoples Taibbi knows nothing about and apparently doesn't care to. Scahill I'm sure has an agenda when interviewing US politicians, but its based on real investigative journalism. Something Taibbi has apparently forgotten how to do.
Taibbi is a real head scratcher. All changed after his Congressional testimony.
Then he did that weird U-turn with the Epstein files, acting like it was all made up.
and funny, I don't even know what this guy^ is talking about "Islamofacists".
The gov't shills make up new expressions every day lol.