"I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right."
Their core psychological mechanism is called moral licensing combined with ends-justify-the-means reasoning.
Once someone is convinced their ideology is the sole path to justice/salvation/progress/paradise, every ethical norm becomes conditional: “If this action advances the One True Cause, it is not merely permissible — it is obligatory.”You see this pattern across the spectrum:
- Communist revolutionaries in the 20th century openly argued that lying, terror, and mass murder were ethical imperatives if they hastened the arrival of the classless society. Trotsky’s phrase “Their morals and ours” captures it perfectly: bourgeois ethics are just tools of oppression; revolutionary ethics permit anything that weakens the old order.
- Islamists today use the same logic: a suicide bombing that kills children is not a moral atrocity if it is performed as “jihad.”
- On the modern left, activists increasingly defend political violence, doxxing, cancel campaigns that destroy innocent livelihoods, and censorship with the formula: “If speech is violence, then violence against speakers is self-defense.” Punching a “Nazi” (a label they apply to anyone right of center) is therefore celebrated as “anti-fascist resistance.”
- Studies on moral injury among extremists (e.g., ISIS fighters, far-left Antifa members) show they rarely feel guilt for atrocities when they believe the act served the ideology.
- Haidt’s moral-foundations research finds that people who score high on “loyalty to the in-group” and low on “care for individuals” are especially prone to this pattern.
This has already mortally wounded what used to be called “journalism” and replaced it with something else that still uses the same name.Here’s how the ideologue’s “ends-justify-the-means” ethic plays out in newsrooms today:
- Narrative über alles
Modern newsrooms no longer ask “What happened?”
They ask “How does this story advance The Cause?”
If the facts don’t fit, the facts get trimmed, buried, or “re-contextualized.”
Example: every major outlet sat on the Hunter Biden laptop story for 18 months because telling the truth would have helped Trump. More than 50 former intelligence officials were recruited to call it “Russian disinformation” with zero evidence — and journalists ran that lie as fact because the ethical breach served the greater good of stopping Trump. - Doxxing, de-platforming, and cancellation are celebrated as “accountability journalism”
When the New York Times doxxed the anonymous author of the “LibsOfTikTok” account (a woman who simply reposted public videos), the newsroom framed it as heroic “investigative reporting” rather than life-ruining harassment. Why? Because she made progressive activists look ridiculous, and that could not be allowed. - Violence is excused or memory-holed when the “right” side does it
- 2020 riots that caused $2 billion in damage and dozens of deaths: “mostly peaceful.”
- A Bernie supporter tries to massacre Republican congressmen at a baseball practice: disappears from coverage in 48 hours.
- Trump rally attendee gets shot in the face in 2024: CNN headline literally says “Secret Service removes man from rally.”
- Open admission that lies are acceptable if they stop “disinformation”
Read the leaked Slack messages from NPR, CNN, MSNBC, etc. after Trump’s 2024 victory. Senior editors openly say things like:
“We cannot platform election deniers.”
“Some lies are more dangerous than others.”
Translation: we will censor and smear because democracy dies if the wrong people speak. - The new ethical standard is literally “strategic truth”
The Poynter Institute (which trains "journalists") now teaches that “objectivity” was a mistake and that reporters should practice “moral clarity” instead — meaning pick a side and use the megaphone of the press to enforce it.
The ideologue’s belief that any breach is justifiable has not merely “affected” journalism, it has killed it and replaced it with state-adjacent propaganda that still wears the corpse of the old craft like a skinsuit.