There’s a bit of a brouhaha the last couple of days about the discovery of a closed Google group that Left-leaning journalists and activists use to coordinate their messaging.
Which really is of no interest to me whatsoever. I assume many such sorts of coordination and communication among political activists and journalists, which is why I wasn’t at all overwrought a few years ago over the JournoList saga.
But buried in the story is something that I DO find interesting. The progressive Left has this funny habit of denouncing and bashing the institutions of the center-right while at the same time, copying them.
Several years ago the progressives became aware of the effectiveness of the state-based center-right think tanks, and of their association, the State Policy Network (of which IPI is a member). That attack continues, but even as the progressives were bashing and accusing SPN members, they were copying the model and creating state level policy groups. (The Progressive States Network (PSN) was set up as a progressive copy of SPN).
And today, in the link above, we read that one of the topics of the Gamechangers Salon has been to create and promote an alternative to ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), all while hyperbolically denouncing and protesting ALEC, and intimidating corporations into leaving ALEC. It’s ALICE (yes, really) that is the progressive alternative to ALEC (of which IPI is also a member).
Such hypocrisy. Such cynicism. Publically bashing an organization or organizations while, at the same time, privately acknowledging their effectiveness and setting up their own left-leaning versions.
I hope some of the corporations who have been pressured into dropping their membership in ALEC will begin to realize that they are being used. The very people who are pressuring you to drop your support of ALEC will demand that you support their left-leaning equivalent, ALICE, or you will be denounced for that. You are being used.