The Right Is Becoming What It Hates

On Sunday, California Governor Gavin Newsom was falsely accused of racism in the sort of frenzied social-media pile-on that many have long associated with the left. But this week, it was the populist right launching a frivolous controversy.

The story begins in Atlanta, where Mayor Andre Dickens, who is Black, was interviewing Newsom, who is white, about his newly released book, Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery. Newsom wrote, among many other things, about his struggles with dyslexia. “What would you like for the reader to know more intimately about you?” Dickens asked. “Even growing up with dyslexia and all that, what do you want us to take from that?”

“That, like so many folks, I put a mask on,” Newsom answered. “I wasn’t who I am … So it’s a story about resilience, redemption. It’s a story about humility and grace,” he said. “I just want to put it all out there. You know, I’m not trying to impress you. I’m just trying to impress upon you: I’m like you; I’m no better than you. I’m a 960 SAT guy. And I’m not trying to offend anyone, trying to act ‘all there’ if you got 940. You’ve never seen me read a speech, because I cannot read a speech.” He added: “You know, my dyslexia, I haven’t overcome dyslexia. I’m living with it.”

There was nothing racially offensive––or even racially tinged––in the exchange (as is clear when watching this one-minute, 51-second clip of it). So how did it become a racial issue? Enter an anonymous X account called End Wokeness that has 3.9 million followers––more followers than the governor of California. Whoever runs it posted a 38-second clip from the longer exchange alongside an inaccurate and highly misleading teaser: “Gov. Newsom to a black crowd in GA: ‘I am like you. I’m a 960 SAT guy. I can’t read.’”

In fact, the crowd in Georgia seemed to be racially diverse, and possibly mostly white (as other photos and videos taken at the event suggest). Newsom was answering a question about his message to readers of his book, not to that particular audience, let alone to Black people. And the X account misleadingly shortens his quote so that Newsom appears to say something that he didn’t.

An anonymous account posting false engagement bait on X is very common. The platform encourages this behavior. Such posts are usually best ignored. But in this case, the people who amplified the accusations are hard to ignore. They include Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X; Donald Trump Jr., one of the president’s sons (“I honestly thought this had to be a deepfake or something because it’s so insane and racist beyond belief”); Republican Senators Ted Cruz (“He’s like the perfect Democrat, made in a laboratory, dripping with racist condescension”), Tim Scott, and Rick Scott; GOP Representative Randy Fine of Florida; the rapper Nicki Minaj (“His way of bonding with black ppl is to tell them how stupid he is & that he can’t read”); the broadcaster Megyn Kelly; the podcasters Adam Carolla, Dave Rubin, and Steven Crowder; the TV host Batya Ungar-Sargon (“Here is Gavin Newsom literally presenting himself as dumb to appeal to Blacks”); and the talk-radio host Mark Levin.

A few notable figures on the right risked the ire of the mob by challenging its false narrative. “The accusation against Newsom is that he was condescending to black voters,” the activist Chris Rufo wrote on X. “But from the video, the crowd appears to be heavily, if not mostly, white.”

The right-leaning journalist Brad Polumbo wrote that if Newsom had really told a Black audience that he was just like them because he couldn’t read, that kind of remark would justify “some degree of this viral backlash.” He added, “I come at this entire story as a longtime critic of Newsom, who has bashed him for everything from his horrific and hypocritical pandemic policies to his failed liberal economic agenda to his insane embrace of transgender activism.” Polumbo concluded that “the claim that he engaged in any kind of racism in this viral clip falls apart under even the most cursory scrutiny.”

Nevertheless, as in the Covington Catholic incident, when the Twitter left irresponsibly seized on an out-of-context video clip of Nick Sandmann and his classmates as if it proved them bigots, the absurd allegations against Newsom spread from social-media users and their credulous followers to publications that elevated the story. The New York Post wrote, “Gavin Newsom Ripped for Telling Black Mayor ‘I’m Like You’ Before Quoting His Low SAT Score: ‘Liberal Racism on Display.’” Fox News reported, “Newsom Ripped Over ‘Racist’ Viral Clip Telling Black Mayor ‘I’m Like You’ Before Touting Poor SAT Score.”

Nearly all of the prominent figures who mistreated Newsom here are people who once seethed at what they saw—in many cases accurately—as the left’s manufacturing of racial controversy. In this way, the populist right has started to become what it hates.