- We The 66
- Posts
- 🌊 RocaNews vs. Taylor Lorenz
🌊 RocaNews vs. Taylor Lorenz
By having a debate, is Roca fanning the flames of fascism?
Did someone forward you this? Subscribe here free!
Once a week over the next month, we are giving away a free year of Roca Premium. To be eligible, you have to be a subscriber or signed up for a free trial. If you already subscribe, you’re automatically entered. If not, enter today by starting a free trial!
By Max Frost
Last week, we began posting a debate series on our Instagram. It has us (Roca co-founders Max and Max) take opposing sides on a controversial topic and argue both sides. Our first one was about Mahmoud Khalil, the Gaza protest leader arrested at Columbia. We argued both for and against his deportation.
Lo and behold, in the comment section was none other than Taylor Lorenz – dropping a comment to compare us to Holocaust deniers.
Lorenz is as Big News as they come, having earned a reputation as an outspokenly progressive reporter at the New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets. She worked as a tech reporter at the former and a columnist at the latter, until she separated after making blatantly political social media posts. She now runs her own newsletter.
And there she was in our comment section on Saturday morning, writing, “Yaaassss I love how people in WWII took both sides on Hitler. Who can say if the holocaust was bad!! We need to hear both sides.”
This logic – that a conversation about a major political issue is Hiterlian – is why people have turned to Andrew Tate and Candace Owens. It’s why media trust is at record lows and continues to fall. It’s what the media must disavow if it is to regain a modicum of trust.
This is why Roca exists: We don’t believe in promoting any specific ideology or values. But we do believe in principles, including the principles of free speech, debate, and transparency.
In likening us to Nazis, Lorenz has it backwards: It’s her, not us, who would take us closer to dictatorship by silencing the speech she disagrees with.
Lorenz’s commentary couldn’t have come at a more ironic time, for just a day later, her alma mater, the New York Times, published an exposé on how the scientific and government establishments coordinated to silence debate on Covid’s origins. In today’s deep-dive, we examine what the NYT reported – plus how the NYT itself skewed coverage of Covid early in the pandemic.
The rest of this report is for paid subscribers, who fund our journalism. If you start a two-week free trial today, you’ll be automatically entered to win a free year. Once you sign up, you can access all of our articles here!
Editor’s Note
It’s not by chance that we had the idea for Roca in April 2020. We are skeptical people and were, naturally, skeptical about the early-pandemic news coverage. The rush to dismiss the lab leak theory bothered us in particular. It didn’t seem like it should have been a partisan issue. And shouldn’t journalists – people who are paid to ask questions – have been pressing for answers rather than rushing to conclusions?
Nowadays, we’re equally bothered by the many “independent” grifters on X, who peddle half-truths to build their own brands. We’re not like them: Our goal isn’t to sow distrust for the sake of doing so. It’s to restore faith in media by asking questions and providing real answers, regardless of how uncomfortable they make us or our audience.
So on that light Monday morning note, here are our past five stories:
And two contrasting opinions about our piece on Afghan refugees:
Sean from Marietta, GA wrote:
Thank you for this article about the plight of Afghan allies remaining in Afghanistan and refugees elsewhere.
I’m an evangelical Christian and life-long Republican. I agree that the floodgates of migration need to be closed, particularly illegal immigration. Immigrants need to be vetted and have a sincere desire to become successful, contributing citizens.
I’m a member of a private sponsorship group through Welcome Corps working to resettle a Christian Afghan family in our community. Our group has been writing to our Congressmen, the President, and the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security since the executive order suspending these programs. We expect the suspension to be lifted. We should not deny U.S. citizens the ability to responsibly sponsor refugees, nor deny the country new, contributing citizens. Efficiency in getting this accomplished would fulfill the purposes of the executive order and the expectations of U.S. citizens.
Our sponsorship group is very keen for the program to restart, and believe most U.S. citizens support this type of program. These programs provide for thoughtful, lawful immigration sponsored by private U.S. citizens in their own communities. We take on the responsibility to integrate these families in our own communities so that they become contributing members of our communities. We are aware of other Americans, across the country, who are also trying to help families in need of safe refuge, and willing to help, with our own financial and other resources, to get them started with housing, employment, and all the other aspects necessary to become successful in our country.
On the other hand, anonymous wrote:
While I applaud Khan for becoming such a huge support to our U.S. troops in Afghanistan I’d like to share a different vantage point.
I was living overseas in 2021 working in a support role for our U.S. armed forces and was right in the midst of receiving 80,000+ Afghans at one of our U.S. installations as they were being evacuated during the Afghanistan withdrawal. I saw first hand what was happening and what the majority of these Afghans were like.
Many of the Afghans that arrived at the installation didn’t truly want to be anywhere near a U.S. military installation let alone have anything to do with Americans. They took jobs supporting U.S. troops in Afghanistan for one reason and one reason only, the U.S. pays extremely well!
What you didn’t see on the news or hear about from the media is how disrespected and mistreated the Americans were by the Afghans once they arrived. Huge camps were set up to process each of the refugees and get them set up with everything they needed to start a new life, which as you can imagine takes quite a bit of time. Base leadership asked for volunteers to help in every way possible and our military personnel stepped up and gave their free time to assist 24 hours a day for weeks on end. Yet in return, they were met with angry Afghans that were violent and ungrateful. Here are some examples of what happened during that time.
When the Afghans didn’t like the food that was being served it was not uncommon for them to throw it back in the servers faces. There was even one Afghan that punched one of the food servers because they were unhappy with their meal. Mind you, they brought in chefs from the local host nation community to make all of the food and it was actually really good food.
There were porta-potties located throughout the camp, but instead of using them for their intended purpose they used them as trash cans and would instead urinate on the sides of the housing tents or just right in the walkways. There was so much human waste on the ground that anyone volunteering was told to wear work boots with thick soles so as not to ruin other shoes or get sick.
A group of male Afghans cornered a female volunteer and were about to rape her when a group of male volunteers came around a corner and saved her.
The last plane that arrived full of refugees had 8 grenades hidden on it, but not one single Afghan had any idea where they came from or who they belonged to.
While Kahn had a pure heart and the best of intentions in helping our troops, after seeing all of this with my own eyes I do not feel that is the case with many of those that have already arrived within our borders. So I can fully understand why this administration would put a ban on all Afghans until we can better vet those that want to come into our country.
Thank you all for reading. We’re eager to hear what you have to say about today’s installment. Send in your takes here!
–Max and Max