Zero stories in the Atlantic about Hind Rajab, zero stories about Israel killing medical workers or journalists—but five articles in two weeks on a Twitch streamer.

The Atlantic, along with the New York Times, is the quintessence of elite liberal opinion. It is popular with Democrat-aligned readers who are high-income and high-status, and shapes the Acceptable Range of Discourse on the American left, such as it is. What it publishes matters, but—more importantly—it matters to people who matter. Thus, it’s useful to, on occasion, stop and highlight their editorial priorities.

In the past two weeks, the Atlantic has published five stories with substantive discussion of left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, adding to a broader media outrage over the streamer’s alleged taboo comments on Hamas and shoplifting:

This broader media panic, it’s worth noting, reached its absurd nadir Wednesday when Reps. Mike Lawler and Josh Gottheimer proposed a bipartisan resolution in Congress formally condemning Piker.

For the tastemakers at America’s “most prestigious” magazine, a relatively obscure Twitch streamer’s comments about Hamas and stealing are an urgent moral crisis requiring not one, not two, but five interventions about the societal implications of his commentary. Piker, of course, has no meaningful power. He holds no institutional position, has no major media backing. He is not an elected official, he is not the president, he does not command a military or paramilitary of any note. He is a Twitch streamer that only 21% of Americans have even heard of. Yet, his every vaguely controversial comment requires the attention of four different Atlantic staff writers.

For comparison, here are just a few topics that the Atlantic has not covered in the past 31 months since the beginning of the Gaza genocide:

  • Zero stories on Hind Rajab, the 5-year-old Palestinian girl whose murder by the IDF (along with six of her family members and two paramedics) caused international outrage.
  • Zero stories on Israel’s unprecedented killing of journalists in Gaza.
  • Zero stories about Israel’s unprecedented attacks on healthcare workers.
  • Only one (1) story about Israel’s unprecedented killing of children. Indeed, outside of this—and one other early story (both from Fall 2023)—the Atlantic has never cited the child death toll in Gaza, and even this one early reference conspicuously makes no mention of Israel’s role in creating it.

Indeed, the only time the Atlantic has substantively reported on the obscene overall death toll in Gaza was to smear its credibility and claim it was being exaggerated by “Hamas” (this article, by Graeme Wood, gave us the now-infamous “It is possible to kill children legally” line)—an argument since thoroughly debunked by medical professionals who were actually there.

This is consistent with the Atlantic’s routine middlebrow handwringing over “political violence” while the publication, headed by a former volunteer Israeli military prison guard, has been one of the most consistent media nodes for promoting violence against Palestinians in the Western press.

The US and Israel backing over two-and-a-half years of the widespread and unprecedented slaughter of reporters, children, and medical officials merits little to no coverage in the Atlantic. But Piker saying Hamas is better than the IDF and making an off-handed comment about “microlooting” solicits multiple panicked reactions over “America’s moral core”—including one from the very same columnist who lied about Gaza’s child death count and defended “legally” killing children in the context of a genocide that ultimately killed, at a minimum, 20,000 children.

This is consistent with the Atlantic’s routine middlebrow handwringing over “political violence” while the publication, headed by a former volunteer Israeli military prison guard, has been one of the most consistent media nodes for promoting violence against Palestinians in the Western press. As I detailed in my new book, How To Sell A Genocide, the Atlantic was central to shaping elite liberal opinion in the early months of the genocide by publishing a dozen articles dismissing calls for a ceasefire, promoting the “beheaded babies” hoax (it has still not retracted), smearing campus protestors, blaming mass starvation on “Hamas,” lying about death counts in Gaza, and consistently downplaying genocidal rhetoric from Israeli leaders.

Similar to how the Atlantic‘s Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg made his name in journalism by promoting baselsss conspiracy theories about Saddam Hussein having a role in the 9/11 attacks in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, then turning around and crowning himself an expert on the dangers of conspiracy theories, one of the most consistently pro-violence, pro-genocide outlets in Western press has spent the past two weeks pearl-clutching over shoplifting and insufficient deference to the alleged moral superiority of the IDF. The glaring hypocrisy and bad faith are obvious for anyone outside of their elite bubble to see, but for those occupying this comforting alternative universe—where shoplifting organic heirloom tomatoes solicits more outrage than the slaughter of 20,000 children—it all makes sense. Clearly, property—and the preservation of Western norms around the sanctity of property—is an ideological line worth defending more so than the mechanized elimination of medical workers, children, doctors, and journalists in Gaza. The former impacts them and their wealthy readers. The latter is, at best, inconvenient background noise, and, at worst, something they actively support and like but find it tacky to openly defend.

This is why their most recent Piker meltdown is a useful object lesson in elite media priorities. Disciplining someone they perceive as an emerging, independent voice of the left (and, perhaps more importantly, disciplining those who platform him like the New York Times and Pod Save America) is one of the Atlantic’s most important roles. It polices the left flank of Acceptable Thought, especially when it comes to liberal acceptance of zionism. And anyone gaining traction complicating this narrative must be swiftly removed from the realm of Seriousness, a charge made even more urgent by the fact that Piker has no boss they can tattle to. Absent this boss, absent someone to snitch to or bully, expect even more panicked and indignant articles about Piker’s alleged radicalism as the rest of the Atlantic’s output defends––or whistles along with––the military their editor-in-chief volunteered for as it levels horrific violence in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.

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