There is dissension in the ranks at Vox, the far-left opinion website, with co-founders Matthew Yglesias and Ezra Klein seemingly clashing over the former’s decision to sign the Harpers open letter against cancel culture.
Yglesias joined dozens of largely liberal-leaning writers, artists and academics in signing the letter, which criticizes a growing ” intolerance of opposing viewpoints” in the west. While couched in anti-Trump virtue signaling, the letter’s main target is cancel culture, which was recently condemned by President Trump in his Mt. Rushmore speech.
“It is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought,” declare the signers, including J.K. Rowling, Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood, Steven Pinker, Malcolm Gladwell, Gloria Steinem, and Salman Rushdie.
The letter has already caused anger among the far-left, who are now condemning Noam Chomsky and other leftists who signed the letter for daring to defend free speech.
The presence of Matt Yglesias’ signature on the letter has also caused chaos at Vox.
In a letter to the company, part of which was posted to Twitter, transgender Vox critic-at-large Emily VanDerWerff declared that Yglesias’ decision to sign the letter “makes me feel less safe at Vox.”
Shortly following VanDerWerff’s letter, there were signs that two of Vox’s founders, Klein and Yglesias, may be at odds.
“A lot of debates that sell themselves as being about free speech are actually about power,” said Klein. “And there’s *a lot* of power in being able to claim, and hold, the mantle of free speech defender.”
“Should I reply to this with a concrete example,” shot back Yglesias, “or stick to my commitments to you?”
Yglesias didn’t spell out what he had “committed” to his fellow founder, but now appears to have deleted his response to Klein.
However, in a tweet posted yesterday, Yglesias said he had committed to “not doing contentious stuff on Twitter anymore.”
After other Twitter users drew attention to the apparent silencing of Yglesias by his colleagues at Vox, both he and Klein issued statements saying the rumors are overblown.
“The idea that I would try to get Matt, literally my co-founder and oldest friend in journalism, fired over this letter is risible,” said Klein.
“I’ve asked Matt, and others at Vox, to not subtweet colleagues. My mistake here is this read like a subtweet of him, when it honestly wasn’t.”
“Nobody is losing their job and I think I’ve spoken my mind very clearly on the subject,” said Yglesias, who just a day earlier had admitted to making a commitment to “not doing contentious stuff on Twitter.”
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Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.