Nathan Robinson Is Confidently Wrong About Everything

Everything in Robinson's hitpiece directed at Matt Yglesias is wrong

I’ve never been much of a fan of Nathan Robinson.

He writes in the sneering, abrasive, condescending style of 2017 Gawker or Jezebel. Yet like many who write in that style, while he often churns out very polemical pieces, they typically are poorly-reasoned and factually mistaken. I’ve previously taken Robinson to task for misreading a piece by Peter Singer so badly that he concluded that Singer supported raping disabled people and arguing against AI risk primarily by simply noting that it sounds like science fiction. Best case scenario Robinson cannot read, worst case scenario he’s a lying, slandering hack. Neither gives one much hope in the quality of his writing.

Well, Robinson is at it again, with a new piece titled Matt Yglesias Is Confidently Wrong About Everything. Matthew Yglesias is a center-left pundit policy-wonk, who often does deep dives on subjects like energy policy, healthcare, and the daily political goings-on. He’s a sharp and thoughtful guy, never saying anything too outrageous, almost exactly like what one would expect from a center-left cofounder of Vox.

Robinson, however, has a much harsher view of Yglesias. He thinks Yglesias “produces smug pseudo-analysis that cannot be considered serious thought,” and “ought to be permanently disregarded.” Robinson describes Yglesias as a “professional bullshitter,” and favorably quotes Dave Vetter who says Yglesias’s “business model is to write horrifically ill-informed, reactionary opinion pieces about subjects they know nothing about, sit back and let the backlash and subsequent revenue pile up.”

His specific criticisms aren’t at all convincing. Robinson’s first complaint is that Yglesias regards those far to the left of him as naive and idealistic.

I think the core frustration that many of us have is that Yglesias’s basic posture is that of the Serious Adult who lectures the left on how we are childish, unrealistic, and out of touch with The Data. In his view, centrism is sensible, mature, realistic.

…

You can see how, before we even get to the arguments, just the attitude on display here is likely to provoke irritation, because it is condescending and smug. When Yglesias writes of the “socialist niece who posts obsessively about Genocide Joe,” he is not taking seriously the possibility that this woman could be correct: that she has been persuaded by the International Court of Justice filings showing evidence that Israel is engaged in genocide and posts “obsessively” because she sees genocide as morally urgent.

One can, of course, disagree with Yglesias ideologically. But merely pointing out that he has an ideology, and thinks that others who are more politically extreme are naive, doesn’t show that he is prone to frequent errors. People almost always think that those of different ideologies often have some cognitive failing; the fact that Yglesias shares this view doesn’t mean that he’s a reckless ideologue. It just shows that, like Robinson, he has beliefs, and thinks those who disagree with his beliefs are wrong. I can understand why this might annoy Robinson, but it doesn’t show any pattern of widespread error.

The complaint about Yglesias’s discussion of the “socialist niece who posts obsessively about Genocide Joe,” is even more ridiculous. Yglesias was not making a value judgment about such a view. The title of the article the quote was pulled from is Young voters care about the same stuff as everyone else. Here is the quote in its surrounding context:

In fact, the median young person self-identifies as moderate, just like the electorate as a whole. And at all ages, less-engaged people are less ideological and more moderate than consistent voters. Your socialist niece who posts obsessively about Genocide Joe is not representative of the typical member of her generation, who is on the bubble as to whether to vote for Joe Biden.

Yglesias, therefore, wasn’t saying anything about whether this person was right! And Yglesias has discussed Gaza where he lays out a series of views and gives arguments for them. For instance, Yglesias argues that Israel’s policy in the west bank is obviously unjustified, and that while Israel has a just war aim (destroying Hamas) they’re engaged in unjust tactics. While Robinson later discusses Yglesias’s views on Israel, it’s particularly bizarre that he opens by dishonestly misquoting Yglesias’s views on Israel, in an article where he wasn’t talking about ideal Israeli policy.

Robinson next complains about Yglesias’s book One Billion Americans which you might be able to guess from the title argues that America should try to have one billion Americans. After quoting Yglesias describing the proposition that America should remain the number one power in the world as uncontroversial, Robinson writes:

And so the book then follows the inference where it leads. But look at what a poor argument this is: We should try to remain “the number one power in the world.” Why? Well, we don’t need to say why, because the premise is “uncontroversial” and can thus be adopted without reasons being given. For Yglesias, the very fact that something is the D.C. political consensus is enough to treat it as correct! Note that this offers absolutely nothing to anyone outside of the United States who might wonder why the U.S. is entitled to remain “the number one power in the world.”

Here, once again, Robinson either cannot read or is lying to you. Robinson suggests, both in this article and another article reviewing One Billion Americans, that Matt never argues for the proposition that America remaining the hegemon is good. This is something that one cannot think if they’ve read One Billion Americans. While Robinson quotes Matt saying America being the #1 superpower is regarded as uncontroversially good by most policy-makers, he flatly ignores just a few paragraphs later where Matt says:

But while some left-wing intellectuals might suggest that the end of American hegemony would be desirable, I’ve never heard an elected official from either party articulate that view. The desirability of staying on top is made all the more obvious by the fact that the main rival we face is not something cuddly like a hypothetical version of the European Union (EU), which managed to actually get its act together and coordinate foreign policy

Instead, American power is rivaled by the growing power of the People’s Republic of China, a country that’s aggressively using its commercial clout to try to silence critics abroad, conducting egregious human rights abuses against its Uighur minority, and cracking down on freedoms in Hong Kong.

Additionally, Matt worries that if the U.S. began to fall behind China, the only way to catch up would be taking aggressive action, which would be bad for both us and China. He writes:

Most fundamental, the only real way for it to stop shrinking would be for China to suffer some horrendous misfortune or for its government to make some tragic miscalculation. This is, of course, not impossible.* But it would be silly to count on it. And while there are reasonable debates to be had about securing our country against industrial espionage and trying to maintain our companies’ intellectual property, it’s silly to think there’s anything we could actually do to keep China poor, and the ethics of trying to pull that off are extremely dubious.

Finally, he argues in the book that a world with a billion Americans would have greater prosperity among Americans. Such a world would let in many immigrants, who could productively contribute to the United States, unleashing large amounts of innovation, and free up women to have kids who currently don’t because of costs. Does this sound like someone who feels “we don’t need to say why,” America should remain #1 because “the premise is “uncontroversial” and can thus be adopted without reasons being given.” Yglesias spends a surprising amount of time arguing for a proposition that’s adopted by nearly every American.

(A point that Yglesias doesn’t make is that historically about 75% of the time a new country overtakes an old hegemon, there is war. So if you think U.S. China war is bad, you should be happy about America staying on top).

Next, Robinson criticizes Matt’s statement that it’s “sus” to care more about Gaza than any other conflict in the world. Robinson argues that this is reasonable given that more children have been killed in Gaza than any other conflict in the last three years. Additionally, the war has been carried out by U.S. arms.

I wouldn’t expect Robinson to be one to underestimate the scale of U.S. atrocities, but apparently he is. Has he ever heard of Saudi Arabia? Their war in Yemen killed half a million people and left tens of millions severely malnourished. Like the war in Gaza, it was carried out almost exclusively with U.S. arms. Saudi Arabia, to a far greater extent than Israel, would have been unable to carry out their war if it weren’t for U.S. arms. And the Saudis are just one of the butchers that the U.S. routinely arms. No one is a single issue voter on policy towards Saudi Arabia. So why are people single-issue Israel voters?

I’m not going to address every claim in the Robinson article. The claims I’ve responded to so far have been rebutted in the order that they were presented, but Robinson’s article is so filled with misleading nonsense that it would take an extraordinarily long article to address it in any detail. I assume no one wants to read 5,000 words of responding to Robinson.

Hopefully, however, the article has been enough to show Robinson’s persistent indifference to the facts. Every quote he pulls is out of context, he either cannot read or chooses not to, and every smear is built on sand. One can have criticisms of Yglesias—I certainly do—without resorting to dishonesty. In fact, I probably agree politically with Robinson in quite a few cases where he disagrees with Yglesias—I think that the liberal consensus that Yglesias represents is too pro war. I think Israel’s actions in Gaza have gone very far beyond what’s justified. My problem with Robinson is not primarily ideological (though I often disagree with him ideologically): it’s that he’s a dishonest propagandist with a Trumpian disregard for the truth.

When I read Robinson, quite well-regarded among modern socialists, it makes me sad that Chomsky—a real hero of mine—is no longer writing. Chomsky wasn’t averse to narratives, but he always provided extensive documentation in support of his ideological claims. If you track down Chomsky’s footnotes, you’re inevitably impressed by his brilliance and carefulness—his pieces don’t just assume that you already disagree with him, but instead extensively argue in support of his thesis. Robinson has all of the withering snark of Chomsky, but none of the substance. While Chomsky is a careful compiler of the facts, investigating Robinson’s claims inevitably causes them to go up in smoke. Robinson is what he accuses Yglesias of being: “confidently wrong about everything.”