SAM HARRIS has long presented himself as the voice of reason at a time when the two political sides were moving further and further apart. Despite being a professed atheist and liberal, he claimed to take issue with matters of political correctness and the increasingly authoritarian nature of the radical left.
Having built an impressive audience across the political spectrum, driven by the popularity of his Making Sense podcast, Harris has increasingly alienated much of his audience with his obsession with former President Donald Trump.
In an interview with the TRIGGERnometry podcast released this week, Harris discussed the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.
“Whatever the scope of what Joe Biden’s corruption is–we can just go down that rabbit hole endlessly and understand that he’s getting kickbacks from Hunter Biden’s deals in Ukraine or wherever else, or China–it is infinitesimal compared to the corruption we know Trump is involved in,” he told the hosts. “It’s like a firefly to the sun.”
“It doesn’t even stack up against Trump University,” he continued. “Trump University, as a story, is worse than anything that could be in Hunter Biden’s laptop in my view.”
Sam Harris is an intellectual fraud. https://t.co/PhIrI1g7cE
— Ben Kew 🐶 (@ben_kew) August 18, 2022
Harris went on to argue that although Twitter and other social media companies censoring the New York Post story about Hunter Biden was “a left-wing conspiracy to deny the presidency to Donald Trump,” such action was “warranted” to help Joe Biden defeat the incumbent.
“It doesn’t matter what part’s conspiracy, what part’s out in the open,” Harris replied. “If people get together and talk about what should we do about this phenomenon…if there was an asteroid hurtling toward Earth and we got in a room together with all of our friends and had a convo about what we could do to reflect its course, is that a conspiracy?”
“Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement (on his laptop),” he continued. “I would not have cared.”
Harris issued a response on Twitter on Thursday afternoon, saying that he didn’t speak “very clearly” in his comments and that he “was essentially arguing for a principle of self-defense.” Yet such “clarifications” are beginning to wear thin. In the run-up to the 2020 election, he even admitted he found Trump “more despicable” than 9/11 architect Osama Bin Laden.
“I find Trump more despicable than I found Osama bin Laden,” he said at the time. “With Osama bin Laden, it’s just obvious to me that he could have been a mensch in some sense, right? He’s making serious sacrifices for ideas that he deeply believes in. He’s committed to a cause greater than himself.”
People may question why should Harris’s disdain for a Republican president should undermine his entire intellectual philosophy. The answer is simple. Harris is willing to discard everything he claims to oppose, from the importance of free speech and democracy all the way through to the threat of radical Islam and the cultural toxicity caused by identity politics, in pursuit of his deranged hatred of Donald Trump.
It is all very well for Harris to portray himself as an opponent of progressive orthodoxy, yet it all adds up to nothing if he is willing to sacrifice his principles for the purpose of removing Trump from power. He may endlessly criticize the Democratic Party machine, but at the moment of decision, he will stop at nothing to keep it in power.
Ben Kew is English Editor of El American. He studied politics and modern languages at the University of Bristol where he developed a passion for the Americas and anti-communist movements. He previously worked as a national security correspondent for Breitbart News. He has also written for The Spectator, Spiked, PanAm Post, and The Independent
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Ben Kew es editor en inglés de El American. Estudió política y lenguas modernas en la Universidad de Bristol, donde desarrolló una pasión por las Américas y los movimientos anticomunistas. Anteriormente trabajó como corresponsal de seguridad nacional para Breitbart News. También ha escrito para The Spectator, Spiked, PanAm Post y The Independent.