To be honest, with regards to the ultimate intention of the New Yorker article, I don’t know. And with regards to your question, I ultimately don’t know what Alexander intended.

I think that the domain of plausible answers to the questions you raise is pretty big and that the article doesn’t really provide enough information to give definitive answers.

We obviously each had different overall impressions of the New Yorker article and it’s authors intent.

With regards to grandiosity, well, the way grandiosity was talked about in the article and the comment was a combination of “beleaguered” and “potent”, I think.

I may have jumped the gun , but to me your comment read as though you felt a particular group that you had some degree of sympathy with was being deliberately targeted by The NY Times. Thus - beleaguered.

At the same time, that particular comment also had a lot of judgements on various things and on various people’s intentions. Judgements which to me traveled a very narrow chain of logic. Lots of either/or black and white, basically. Which I do too at times. But - Thus - potent.

Hope that’s useful information and not crossing a line to say.

Also obviously I don’t believe that The NY Times is specifically targeting anyone or a group in that way. Which isn’t to say they haven’t. And, I could be wrong. My general take is that the motivations of an org like The NY Times are more multifaceted and nuanced than how they’ve mostly been discussed in this comment thread. Same with the New Yorker

Which isn’t to say I haven’t felt a lot of anger towards their reporting at times.

And, I enjoy both those publications FWIW.

I do think there's an ideological bias to whom an NYT reporter is likely to treat favorably or unfavorably. In this thread and elsewhere, people listed comparably semi-anonymous figures that the NYT declined to name that one might, in the usual oversimplified binary view, described as left-leaning. The world isn't perfectly orderly, and maybe they just got lucky and Alexander got unlucky. I see moderately strong evidence that's not the case, though.

But I'm more concerned that this is happening than to whom. I was aware that Alexander's blog existed before these events, but I hadn't read it much, and I had no particularly favorable or unfavorable impression. I wrote my comment not out of sympathy for Alexander's views, but out of concern that reporters from mainstream outlets now seem happy to bring about or abet actions that are likely to cause people serious and unfair ("Alexander deserved to get fired for what he wrote, so good" is a perfectly consistent and honest position, but I'm actually kind of surprised that no one said that here) harm. I think Marxists are dangerously wrong, but I don't think they should be run out of their unrelated jobs for that reason.

What Alexander feared the NYT would do to him seems to me more polished and subtler than a Project Veritas article on Breitbart, but basically in the same spirit. I do think it's to the NYT's credit that (so far) they dropped the piece, and to the New Yorker's that their piece didn't use Alexander's real name--no one doubts that Breitbart would have ploughed ahead. I'm disturbed that it got that far, though.

Plus, what if the New Yorker article got something wrong (not necessarily thru negligence)?

Or what if the NY Times article changes between now and its publication (if it's published)?

What if Alexander misunderstood something? Or, what if there are circumstances which people have not chosen to publicly share for whatever reason?

I appreciate you writing back. At the end of the day, it just seems like this whole topic struck an emotional chord with a lot of people for reasons I don't understand, or, don't agree with.

To be fair, I've definitely felt an emotional response. There's a lot of fear going around in the world right now, and understandably so.

Maybe people respond in proportion to their self-assessed risk that they themselves would end up in Alexander's predicament? That probably explains some of the left/right split on this and similar topics. I just can't help thinking that those with views broadly similar to an average NYT reporter's are underestimating that personal risk, given that: (a) the boundaries of acceptable thought may change quickly and unpredictably; and (b) a much greater fraction of their personal and professional network is likely to come along with the mob, increasing the risk that public censure has consequences to their daily life. "Cancel culture" poses much less risk to a Breitbart reporter (who's already beyond the pale) than to a broadly liberal writer who misses or disregards the latest change in that boundary.