Now They Go After Recalcitrant “Dirtbag Left Stars”! By James Reed

This story is behind a paywall, and we don’t give money to the Left, but the gist of the article seems to be that the present tyrannical Left regime of manic globalists, are now going out to cancel those from the Left, that have old Left values, a concern for economic equity, rather than putting woke politically correct causes first. You know, dealing with poverty and unemployment, instead of say transgender toilets. The Left originally gained support from working people as it addressed, it seemed, issues of economic equity, but it did not take long to morph into its true form, that we see today in all its horror. Thus, I am not so concerned about the elimination of the old Left, which is dead in the water anyway now. The Dissent Right needs to pay more attention to the working class, and less to middle class people, who tend to be pro-globalism anyway.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/these-dirtbag-left-stars-are-flirting-with-the-far-right

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/daily-beast-leftists-right-wing/

“The Daily Beast is facing intense backlash over an op-ed that claims members from the “dirtbag left”—a collection of leftist podcasters and Twitter personalities—are cozying up with right-wing extremists.

The roughly 4,500-word article posits that leftist media personalities are legitimizing and even adopting far-right views. The piece's author, Alexander Reid Ross, bases his conclusion on his subjects' tweets, podcast appearances, comedic bits, and the like.

The story has been met with a thorough online thrashing of Ross and the Daily Beast. While a few have praised it, more, including many of the story's subjects and their associates, have mocked it as ill-informed, inaccurate, and unsupported by the evidence. They claim Ross has taken things out of context in an effort to malign them with what Max Blumenthal, a subject of Ross' earlier (and retracted) reporting called "McCarthyite smears." Several have claimed Ross has a history of shoddy, biased reporting. Ross and the Daily Beast have stood by the story.

Ross believes the attacks on him, which he says range from "off-base to hateful" and have also been directed at his friends, are indicative that he's onto something. He described the saga as "terrifying" to both himself and his family, partly based on lies, and said that one of the smears had made its way onto a site frequented by people "of fringe political beliefs united in their commitment to cyber-stalking (and linked to suicides)."

"In short, making it seem like I’m in some conspiracy to smear people on the left is, in fact, an unfounded conspiracy theory meant to discredit me and smear the groups I work with," he told the Daily Dot via email, noting that he was speaking in his personal capacity.

"It’s irresponsible and baseless," he added. "But at least it goes further to demonstrate the paranoid style of those who have a lot of difficulty coping with honest journalism."

Naturally, Ross' subjects are among those most strenuously pushing back against his conclusions.

Reporter Alex Rubinstein called it "actual fake news." In the Daily Beast piece, Ross suggests that Rubinstein is among the leftists parroting far-right opinions based on some of his tweets analyzing overlaps between right-wing and leftist views, as well as his previous work for Russia-backed RT America.

The Daily Beast's email seeking comment from comedian Jimmy Dore led to Rubenstein to call the then-unpublished story as a "smear piece." Ross makes much of Dore, whose photo is featured in the story, interviewing a member of a far-right group on his show.

As evidence of the comedian's supposed extremist inclinations, he also notes Dore's remarks about lockdowns, claiming he's "gotten populist mileage himself out of anti-lockdown sentiment" because he questioned shuttering small businesses while Amazon remained open, and said that the World Health Organization had cautioned against lockdowns.

Dore told the Daily Beast that he supports lockdowns as "one tool" to fight COVID-19, and his statements were based on the WHO saying it doesn't "advocate lockdowns as a primary means" of controlling the virus.

Others have heaped insults on what they describe as the story's convoluted logic and guilt-by-podcast-appearance.

Ross told the Daily Dot that the "article is based on facts and statements that people made, not simply their relationships as one would expect with 'guilt by association.'"

"Lot of words to say 'Dore had a Boogaloo guy on once,'” commented one of his critics.”