The Enormous Blast Radius of the NYT’s Dog-Rape Debacle

No Light, Instead Darkness Visible

 

The Enormous Blast Radius of the NYT’s Dog-Rape Debacle

Kristof’s decision to publish his Israeli-rape-dogs phantasmagoria, but it’s important to widen the lens and examine how this latest disgrace is part of a broad institutional failure inside and outside the media environment that produced it.

It has become common to point out the Times’ hypocrisy here by noting that when its opinion section published an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton calling for the tougher policing of riots, the Times unraveled: Opinion Editor James Bennet was pushed out, as were Bari Weiss and Adam Rubenstein.

But this purge was more than just a demonstration of elite fragility. It ensured that an ideological monolith would serve as the gatekeepers of future articles. The years that followed October 7 demonstrated how this would apply to anything Israel-related: accusations were published first and investigated later, if at all. Kristof’s article was an escalation in the war on truth, not an innovation.

The Times retains a ton of influence over other publications in the same ideological sphere, which includes much of American and British corporate-left media. So the institutional rot isn’t limited to the Times; it seeps into media practices on a much wider scale.

Kristof’s article represents the entry of this particular libel into mainstream discourse after months of confinement to the fringes. Now it won’t require anyone else to “report” it to keep it in the news ecosystem. One needs only to reference the New York Times or the scandal Kristof’s claims have kicked off, and voila: Lots of people in establishment media spaces are suddenly talking about imaginary Israeli monster dogs.

At Spiked, Brendan O’Neil explores the “Anatomy of [this] blood libel:” “‘One of the marks of anti-Semitism is an ability to believe stories that could not possibly be true’, wrote Orwell. We are back there again. In fact, there is something dispiriting even in the sight of Jews and their allies – spiked included – having to point out the mechanical impossibility of dogs being commanded to rape humans. 

‘Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies’, wrote Sartre. ‘They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.’ This, right here, is the moment we are in. The anti-Semites are revelling in the vision of Jews and their friends being compelled to discuss dog penises and human anuses. This in itself is a victory for the scum. They are amusing themselves. They are enjoying this. It is obscene.”