An Open Letter to Paul Krugman

Dear Paul Krugman,You used to be the kind of journalist I thought was telling the truth. I looked up to you, as I did so many writers at the New York Times. I was a different person then. That was before everything changed. The year was 2020, a summer of riots and a breakthrough moment when many of us realized for the first time that the Gray Lady was not telling us the truth.I have been on the internet for 30 years. I watched the collapse of traditional media and the rise of opinion-based journalism, the kind you do, Paul. Do you mind if I call you Paul? Mr. Krugman sounds so formal, and really, I’d like for you to see me as a human being, someone worthy of your attention and respect.Now that I have confirmation of what I’ve assumed all along, that people like you, Kara Swisher, Peter Baker, and Susan Glasser would like people like me thrown into re-education camps or gulags, I feel it’s worth the extra effort to get you to see real people again.To the horror of many, you went viral last week for your comments on what all of you will do with Trump supporters and the system that elected him. It was ugly, Paul. As ugly as anything I’ve seen written by a high-minded journalist and certainly closer to what the Nazis believed about the Jews than anything I’ve seen in my lifetime:“Purging of the United States, we need a de-MAGAfication. I’m not going over the top by using a word that’s very similar to the de-Nazification that we pursued successfully after World War Two in Germany. It’s not just the MAGA ideology, but the whole structure of hugely unequal power, hugely unequal wealth that made this horrific moment possible. It’s not going to be easy, but, and maybe it’s not going to be doable, but we have to try, because this is an absolute, this is a nightmare, this is the nightmare beyond, I think, even the worst fantasies of progressives, beyond the worst fantasies of conservatives, who still have a conscience, there still are plenty of those, but they’re no longer MAGA. This has to be turned around, and we should not, above all, whitewash or forget this moment. This is where a lot of forces in America have been leading, and if we don’t do something beyond just getting rid of Trump, it’s going to happen again.”It can’t have been easy, watching Trump win a second time and this time the popular vote, or to admit you are no longer relevant and that the only value you have is in giving the base of the Democratic Party their daily dose of hate and fear. Why didn’t Americans listen to your constant bleating about the end of the world? That’s an important question to ask, Paul.After all, they’re your most popular videos.Your Substack, with over 500K subscribers, is no less alarmist:It looks like your Substack is paying you more than you made at the Times, that’s for sure. So why not keep pumping it out, day after day, like a broken record — fear, hysteria, hatred, more fear, more hatred. What could possibly go wrong? You all seem certain you’re about to take back power and put things back where they belong. The only question you seem to have on your lips is not how we can better address the needs of the people, but what you will do with all of those MAGAts.You don’t even pretend there is a whole country or even half of a country that voted all of you out, not once but twice. You have no shame in admitting you see yourselves as better than the working-class half of America. You fully admit it. You bask in it. You know your power, Paul, and that’s maybe the only true thing you know about yourself.So let me set you straight on a few things. You are not the Allied Forces after World War II, and Trump is not now, nor has he ever been, Hitler. The closest thing to Fascism this country has ever seen is with all of you in power. It became “all sticks of wood bound together as one,” a “fasci,” with all elements of our society mandating conformity or else. Your side ruled through fear and violence, and still does. You violently beat Trump supporters and feel emboldened to do so, just like Hitler’s Brown Shirts. You probably never even knew that in 2015, Trump supporters were beaten and harassed and called Nazis. On the Left, there is no such thing as free thought and speech, which is why cancel culture collapsed the empire and why Tyler Robinson had to silence Charlie Kirk. So who are the real fascists, Paul? On your side, thought and speech are heavily policed throughout our culture. Everyone is tracked, monitored, and under constant surveillance lest they like the wrong tweet, follow the wrong person on social media, or read the wrong news outlet. Just because people like you cosplay that ICE is the Gestapo doesn’t make it so. It took 80 years for the world to forget about the Holocaust. But no one should ever forget what that looked like, and i