Ep 245: The Authenticity Affect (Part III) - Left Politics as Effete, College Kid Artifice

SPEAKER_1 (0:03)

This is Citations Needed with Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson.

Nima Shirazi (0:08)

Welcome to Citations Needed, a podcast on the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. I'm Nima Shirazi.

Adam Johnson (0:15)

I'm Adam Johnson.

Nima Shirazi (0:16)

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Adam Johnson (0:44)

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Nima Shirazi (0:55)

Democrats make South Carolina the first primary state, to better reflect parties' deeply diverse electorate. Asserted the Associated Press in 2022, Mamdani's New York victory exposes fault lines in Jewish Democratic politics.

Insisted Reuters in 2025, the Democrats Upstairs-Downstairs coalition is at a breaking point. Announced the New York Times' Thomas Edsel in 2026

Adam Johnson (1:25)

It seems every time there's a midterm or general election, we're bombarded with the narrative that the leftmost candidate are at odds with the more traditional constituents. Figures like Zohran Mamdani and Abdul Saeed, for example, are dividing diehard Democrats, struggling to gain those Democrats' support or alienating large parts of their would-be base. After an upset in particular, we're told that quote some or quote many voters don't know how to grapple with the electoral victory that, by the media's estimation, shouldn't have happened.

Nima Shirazi (1:55)

But how many is some? How many is many? Are these politicians' policies truly alienating? Or are they just new candidates in the process of cultivating a base, and often going up against challengers with 5, 10, or 15 times more campaign funding than they have?

All too often, media outlets not only neglect to support their weasel-word-filled statements with researcher data, but also ignore the evidence that tells a different story. Say, polling, showing that Mamdani had a double-digit lead with Jewish voters. Or that significant portions of Democrats actually do support left-populist policies.

So where do these narratives come from? And what purpose do they serve?

Adam Johnson (2:36)

On today's episode, the third and final part of our three-part series on the media's authenticity affect, we'll dive into the tactic we're calling authenticity-mongering, where media runs countless stories that left-leaning or progressive elected officials are simply out of touch with traditional democratic voters. Examine how this assertion relies on cherry-pick data, insinuations, and torturing numbers to bypass evidence revealing an electoral reality inconvenient to the corporate media and conservative democratic leadership's simplistic self-serving narrative.

Nima Shirazi (3:06)

Later on the show, we'll be joined by labor organizer and writer, Danya Rajendra.

Danya Rajendra (3:10)

Authenticity is in the eye of the beholder.

Like, what is it? I really think that this authenticity-mongering is just another way that we talk about applying a political screen to who is and isn't. We are part of a community as determined by powerful interests that we don't choose.

Adam Johnson (3:31)

On this episode, we'll discuss the modern tenancy of attempting to paint those who oppose the status quo as somehow alien or foreign or implying they kind of won by cheating. That there's this natural constituency in the Democratic Party and they're, we're told over and over again, that they're mostly conservative. And this is oftentimes they use black voters or Latino voters as a way of kind of lending it more authenticity credibility. But there's a general impression that left-wing candidates who win primaries but also just who win general elections are somehow at a touch with their base and that this concept of left-wingism is a particular white or even sometimes European coded import that is alien to the otherwise authentic capitalist pro-business, pro-Israel, pro-US military consensus among democratic voters. And effectively after a primary is won, and we've seen this of course more acutely of late, the pundits that be will go through the numbers and torture the data to let you know that yes, yes, they technically won. And yes, the people who won are technically people of color.

But they're actually avatars for a grand left-wing white driven conspiracy.

Nima Shirazi (4:41)

Right. College-educated, urban-living, avocado-toast-eating constituency that has nothing to do with the real Americans.

Adam Johnson (4:50)

And the reason why this is a popular go-to is, for the same reason it's a popular go-to on the right, which is to say anything progressive has to be coded as a feat, an elite, and the product of some Oberlin dorm room theorizing versus an accurate representation of organic political demands is because it delegitimizes their victory. It sort of reduces it to a one-off or a kind of spasm of left-wing, high-falutin electoralism that again is somehow not representative of the authentic, true Democratic Party.