Counter-Currents
Nathan J. Robinson: Socialism for Thee but Not for Me
Travis LeBlanc
Nathan J. Robinson
1,555 words
Looks like there has been another cancelation on the Left.
Nathan J. Robinson, the 32-year-old founder and Editor-in-Chief of the socialist magazine Current Affairs, author of the book Why You Should Be a Socialist, and irrefutable proof of the reality of physiognomy blew up his commie cred this week when he fired the majority of the Current Affairs staff in retaliation for them trying to form a worker co-op. The author of the article “The Need for Workplace Democracy“ fired his staff (which was composed entirely of women and “non-binary” people) because they demanded better working conditions.
Robinson is a particularly repellent creature. For one, he’s a big “red-brown alliance” witch hunter: He’s gone after Jimmy Dore and Aimee Terese for being too friendly with the Right. He wrote some articles attacking Krystal Ball for suggesting that Right-wing and Left-wing populism might have common interests. This past June, he wrote a concern-trolling article called “How to End Up Serving the Right“ where he accused Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi of being useful idiots for the Right. He’s big on questioning other Leftists’ commitment to the Leftist cause.
Many on the Left consider Robinson de facto controlled opposition, as he is constantly attempting to steer the socialist Left into more establishment-compliant directions. He caused much annoyance during the 2020 Democratic primaries for hedging his bets by trying to support both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — and then trying to prop up Pete Buttigieg before going 100% unapologetically in the tank for Biden.
I’m just warming up here. Robinson’s wrap sheet is loooooooooong.
He is also a pedophilia apologist, so much so that he even defended Milo Yiannopolous during his cancellation for talking positively about pedophilia. “Ironically, the remarks that finally got him expelled from the mainstream were among his less indefensible,” Robinson said at the time.
At one point, Current Affairs employed Yasmin Nair, a Jewish pedo apologist, as an Editor-at-Large. In 2005, Nair wrote an article entitled “Can We Talk?: Censorship, Pedophilia, and Panic“ in which she mused:
The stigmatization of groups like NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association), which have asked for conversations about the age of consent, means that we drive forms of desire inwards and underground . . . the problem with the current discussion around ‘adult-child’ relationships is that we are conditioned to think that sex with an older person is traumatic.
In a 2017 Current Affairs article entitled “WHAT WE’LL TOLERATE, AND WHAT WE WON’T,” Robinson described Nair’s article as “thoughtful and provocative.”
Robinson is, of course, also a race denier. He wrote a very long and deeply unconvincing article attempting to refute Charles Murray’s ideas where he said (presumably with a straight face), “When we talk about black American music of the early 20th century, we are talking about one of the most astonishing periods of cultural accomplishment in the history of civilization” — and I would wager my life that he doesn’t actually listen to any of it.
One of the more amusing episodes in the Nathan J. Robinson saga was that he has been a fanatical denier of cancel culture, only to then get fired from The Guardian for a couple of tepid tweets about Israel. The first tweet read, “Did you know that the US Congress is not actually permitted to authorize any new spending unless a portion of it is directed toward buying weapons for Israel? It’s the law.” The other continued, “or if not actually the written law, then so ingrained in political custom as to functionally be indistinguishable from law.” Being the weasel that he is, he then tried to claim that he was only joking.
The man has no shame whatsoever, including about posing for pictures in front of his Corvette. I’m not one to begrudge a man his living, and I realize that he can’t help it if he comes from a privileged background, but ostentatious displays of wealth are extremely bad optics for someone trying to present themselves as an egalitarian spokesman of the proles.
But perhaps the most obnoxious thing about Nathan J. Robinson is the fact that he speaks in a fake English accent despite not having lived in England since the age of six. After 26 years, his accent should be more than ambiguously Mid-Atlantic.
In short, the guy is a phony and a degenerate, so this cancellation is particularly gratifying.
A bombshell tweet was dropped on Wednesday by Lyta Gold, Current Affairs’ Jewish Amusement Editor (whatever that is):
I am grieved to tell you that @nathanjrobinson has effectively fired me & most of the @curaffairs staff because we were trying to organize into a worker’s co-op. This isn’t a bit. I wish it was.
The tweet then links to a Google drive containing an official statement signed by five Current Affairs editors.
The statement is an interesting glimpse into Mr. Robinson’s mind and narcissism:
We all joined Current Affairs at different times. The Business Manager was even hired with the explicit instruction to help shepherd the magazine through the process of creating a more democratic workspace, in alignment with our socialist values. The organizational restructuring has been a topic for most of 2020 and 2021. We discussed it informally, we tried piecemeal reforms, we did a full-organization survey and one-on-one interviews with editors and staff to try to find consensus on a collective vision. Everyone’s stated goal, including Nathan’s, was to create a democratic workplace where all voices were equally valued.
Okay, so they wanted to commie the place up a bit. It’s a commie magazine. They’ve been commie in style, so how about becoming a commie magazine in substance? After all, it’s how Nathan J. Robinson always said a business should be run. As recently as a couple of months ago, Mr. Robinson was tweeting stuff like this:
But when we finally got around to discussing organizational models during a Zoom meeting on August 7th, Nathan became agitated. He insisted that in our attempt to set shared internal values, we were disregarding his vision for Current Affairs as published in the first issue. There was a palpable shift in his demeanor, and he behaved in a hostile manner throughout the rest of the conversation. The next morning, he started removing people from the company Slack, and sent letters requesting resignations, eliminating positions, and in some cases offering new “honorary titles” which would have no say in governance.
So the staff of Current Affairs wanted Communism as it appears in the writings of Karl Marx, but what they ended up getting is Communism as it always ends up being in real life. Before they knew it, they were all being lined up against the wall by a megalomaniacal dictator.
Shortly after being blindsided by this sudden turn of events, Robinson sent the Current Affairs staff an e-mail that contained the following:
This organization has been heading slowly for some sort of reckoning where it was going to have to be made clear once and for all what kind of authority I wanted to have over it. And I was in denial about the fact that the answer is I think I should be on top of the org chart, with everyone else selected by me and reporting to me. I let Current Affairs build up into a sort of egalitarian community of friends while knowing in my heart that I still thought of it as my project over which I should have control.
Now, I’m not even against the idea that Robinson has the right to do this. Sure, hypocrisy is breathtaking — but it is his company, he is the star of the show, and going through with this commie plan of giving an equal say to a staff which is composed entirely of women and the mentally ill would definitely have destroyed the company.
What really turns the stomach is that he behaves this way toward people he describes as “friends” and who probably considered him a friend. He could have just said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about the whole commie plan, and I changed my mind.” Or he could have done what Cenk Uygur did when the staff of The Young Turks tried to unionize and come up with some bullshit excuses for why, in this specific instance, they could not live up to their commie principles. He could have just said “no.” He would still look like a huge hypocrite, but firing his “community of friends” just makes him look like a hypocritical full-blown sociopath.
If I had to guess, he fired the staff because keeping them around would have been a constant reminder of what a fraud he is. Out of sight, out of mind.
The response to this debacle on the Dirtbag Left has been one of amusement. Robinson has made a lot of enemies along the way, and many people were glad to see him get his comeuppance.
There has also been a trend of people writing Nathan J. Robinson-themed rap lyrics.
I think Nathan J. Robinson was aware that this bombshell was coming. Both his personal Twitter account and the Current Affairs Twitter had been inactive for the last few days. He has reportedly said that Current Affairs will be going on a one-month break as he hires new staff, but I honestly cannot see how he can come back from this complete annihilation of his credibility as both a commie and a decent human being.
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19 comments
Just an editorial question:
When you said that he said this (quote is yours)
“When we talk about black American music of the early 20th century, we are talking about one of the most astonishing periods on which I would wager my life that he doesn’t actually listen to.
There was not end quote, but I suspect that the “I would wager my life that he doesn’t actually listen to” part was editorial commentary (that might have been set in parenthesis) on the duplicity of Mr Robinson as opposed to a quote from him discussing Charles Murray’s lack of interest in early 20th century jazz and blues music?
Yes, that was a typo which has now been corrected. Sorry.
Thank you Travis LeBlanc for keeping up with the leftist Napoleons and Squealers so we don’t have to!! What a little socially epistatic, spitefully mutated beta worm. And the Corvette… HAHAHA!!!!!
Happy to say that I never heard of this creature or his gazette. But as described, he seems the perfect emblem of his kind.
So the staff of Current Affairs wanted Communism as it appears in the writings of Karl Marx, but what they ended up getting is Communism as it always ends up being in real life. Before they knew it, they were all being lined up against the wall by a megalomaniacal dictator.
I’d not heard of him either, but thanks to Jim Goad’s superb account I now consider him a Good Thing: he clearly adds to the Gaiety of Nations.
Unless of course he is a merely a character made up by Evelyn Waugh, or even Kenneth Grahame.
Goad didn’t write this one
My mistake — kudos to Travis LeBlanc!
I cannot believe that a ‘staff’ of 5 well-educated editors think they comprise an oppressed group that should be under the umbrella of “Workers of the World, Arise”!
Could Counter-Currents and Current Affairs merge? Counter-Affairs? Current Currents? Like the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. Caviar and champagne all round.
I do like the ring of “Current Currents” for our email newsletter. But I don’t see any upside in associating with Leftists. The anti-woke Left are fun, but they would suffer deplatforming and antifa swarm attacks for associating with people like me.
It’s obscure but Ribbentrop is to wine as Molotov is to cocktails…Why might this be so? Ribbentrop was a wine merchant. Is there a Ribbentrop/Molotov drink at a club someplace?
Regarding the corvette, nothing’s too good for the working class, I suppose, as per the old communist motto!
I can’t help feeling his troubles are somehow related to his abuse of the I word, given the coincidental ethnicity of his opponent.
He has really impressive credentials though. It’s said that Yale law school is the single most selective academic institution in the country.
great article from trav. I love how he keeps us abreast of the stuff happening on the ground.
Yes he does. But do not imagine for a second that there are not other forms of affirmative action beyond race and gender. Everyone knows that elite academic institutions have all been captured by the Far Left (today more than ever, though it’s been a continuously worsening problem since the 1960s), and that there is vicious discrimination against rightists (and even against harmless Christian “conservatives” who simply want to be “loyal” to their precious “Faith”). In the modern academy in America, the rulers attempt to maintain the illusion of ideological neutrality by allowing the rare occasional neocon or libertarian to gain tenure somewhere. These apostates from the true Right are then held up as exemplars of the Right, thereby totally consigning true rightists to oblivion.
I went to one of the most academically elite East Coast colleges (“Ivy League”) from 1979-83. Even back then admissions were highly competitive, though at least truly smart white kids were being considered objectively by the best schools. I was admitted solely due to academic ability (unlike many – perhaps a full half of the student body – who were there for ‘legacy’, AA, super-wealthy parent, specialized talent {“Candidate X is America’s #1 high school flutist, horse-jumper, soup kitchen founder, sculptress, etc!”}, or athletic reasons; well over one quarter of the studentry were Jews, too, which I always thought was also due to factors beyond the purely meritocratic). Even then the blackout (in retrospect; there was no internet, so future race realists/nationalists like me and a few of my peers gathered into the campus Republican Club were left groping around in the theoretical dark, suffering “racial splinters in our minds’ eyes”, like Neo in The Matrix) against the true Right was comprehensive. Although the bulk of my classes were in political thought, political economy/neoclassical economics, and (Western) philosophy, I never heard of Heidegger, Evola, the German Conservative Revolution, any type of nationalist thought, any racialists, Raymond Cattell, race and IQ, the JQ – nada. Indeed, despite many economics classes, I’d only heard of harmless classical liberals Mises and Hayek via self-study outside the classroom!
Anyway, my point is that this Robinson creep obviously benefitted from specialized admissions treatment due to his Far Left activities. The admissions staffs at all these elite places treat student applicants the same way Jewish-controlled Hollywood treats a brilliant spec script from a Hard Right screenwriter – no interest if not “politically/ethnically acceptable” (but if from a precious nonwhite group, or the Far Left, then special consideration becomes ‘merited’). The generation of whites 40 or older is possibly the very last which any shot at fairness in non-STEM school admissions (and to repeat, we still faced tremendous discrimination going back to the 60s; I bet Dr. Greg Johnson had to mask his ‘real’ views to make it through his own PhD). So let’s judge all lefties and their credentials sceptically.
True, but you can’t fake the lsat scores. What do you do now, i am interested to know?
No, you can’t fake standardized tests. But that means less than you think. Schools publish their admissions test scores (or did; many are now dropping the SAT, LSAT, etc, for black privilege reasons) as “medians”, which means you don’t know what any individual’s scores were. Maybe Comrade Robinson can upload his to the internet.
Having said that, I suspect his were pretty good (but maybe not that good). I bet his being a loud leftist helped his graduate admissions. I’ve seen other suspicious cases like his. Still, he seems intelligent if despicable in character. I’ve known some very smart leftist douchebags over the years. I’ve wondered about that all my life. Some leftists don’t really believe their own crap, esp about race (probably “gender”, too), but go along with it out of weird ‘solidarity’. But I’m convinced that there are sincere, smart but braindead liberals. I don’t know how to account for it, other than to quote Russell Kirk on liberals: that they are “often clever, never wise”. Intelligence and wisdom probably positively correlate, but I’ve come to believe that that correlation is weaker than a smart person might otherwise suppose.
As to me, I’m nobody. I’m in slightly upper middle management in what can be called a marketing company. I’m widely viewed among family and friends (and I suspect colleagues) as an underachiever. This likely has, in part, to do with my ideological extremism and fervor (perhaps also intellectuality – I prefer my interests and hobbies to my job – as well as unwillingness to “sell out” and become a neocon). I was somewhat dissolute and professionally undisciplined in my youth. I wanted to be a Far Right activist and white “community organizer”, but there really was no outlet for me (unlike for tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of analogous leftists and nonwhites). I worked on many political campaigns (post-college, always in paid consultant or managerial capacities); I worked for a while for the GOP itself; I spent some years as a staffer at a conservative “think tank” / advocacy organization. I made enemies for my alleged “white supremacism” among the lower-echelon Reaganite/GOP crowd (in fact, I never discussed scientific racialism [except among trusted friends] even after the publication of The Bell Curve and similar works in the 90s, but always and only ever emphasized “Middle Americanism” [along Sam Francis/Pat Buchanan lines], as well as the present problems and future dangers of mass (nonwhite) immigration – but being very passionate about the issue, I did so with anyone who would listen, which did not help my career in conservatism, despite of course being ultimately correct).
More than this I probably shouldn’t say. I’m about to turn 60 (I’m nearly the exact age of Obama), and I do need to work for the next 5 years, after which I shall retire; sell my blue state home and move to a certain red state; and then try to get more involved in the movement. I hope to do some writing for CC and similar sites, and perhaps a few mainstream conservative print publications, in retirement. I also want to write a book on race and (real) conservatism (true conservatives are neither race denialists, nor “colorblind”, nor indifferent to demographic change).
Wow, thanks for replying to me. Most people here regard me as pond scum. I’m the same way, although never as distinguished as you were. The best part of me is my white nationalism and love of literature and fantasy. I’m not my job.
Epic pinko fail!
Update on this story….
Yesterday the Board of Directors of Current Affairs issued a statement claiming no one was fired because Nathan J. Robinson technically did not have the authority to fire people.
https://twitter.com/curaffairs/status/1428531722711445504
Today, Nathan J. Robinson issues a statement where he attempts to throw the Current Affairs business manager under the bus and plays the anti-racism card.
Nathan says they were hiring a new editor and it came down to a white woman and a POC woman. Nathan wanted to diversify the staff and preferred the POC but the business manager and others were dead set on the white woman. This spiraled and he tried to fire people for not believing in his mission of the magazine. Plus, some other stuff. It’s a long tap-dancing statement.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HmsRdH7L_Y4oU8XhwmV8jd61n_rVl8ShIgStgKjEIAA/edit
A lot of people found Nathan’s explanation plausible and convincing but then….
Brianna Rennix, who has been with Current Affairs since nearly the beginning and is intimately acquainted with the recent events, issued her own statement disputing Nathan’s account. Rennix says Nathan’s statement is deceptive and more or less affirms the original statement issued by Lyta Gold and the rest of the staff.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ASCt2AhelemZuWNtwg73XqumqD2sAneG/edit
I think he looks like Oscar Wilde..
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=a%2FXIxuG%2B&id=954EB624A60ABAF4AA1E4B0E88ECAB0B979923F6&thid=OIP.a_XIxuG-VAvAT_Pds8sPdgAAAA&medi
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