The Atlantic rejects the red pill
May 10, 2021
In a recent article, The Atlantic scoffs at the mainstream usage of a conservative term – “red pill.”
“A classic meme about being radicalized is now so absurd that it means almost nothing at all,” the article’s subheading reads. To the Left, the red pill is now almost meaningless precisely because of liberals like herself who have slandered its mainstream proponents.
The same goes for the term “alt-right,” as in the story’s headline, “The Alt-Right Has Lost Control of Redpill.” “Alt-right” has also lost meaning because of the numerous mainstream conservatives the left has defamed with the pejorative.
The writer lumps in unobjectionable public figures like Ivanka Trump and Elon Musk with the “alt-right.” Musk has clearly stated he’s not a conservative.
“About eight years ago,” the article says, “boys who were spending too much time on the internet — usually on 4chan or Reddit — began to use taking the red pill as code for ‘choosing to realize that feminism is destroying society and my life.’ The phrase was adopted by other far-right political subcultures and slowly came to mean that a person had been radicalized in some way.”
Even accepting the author’s definition of “far-right,” there’s still a problem with her use of “radicalized.”
Whatever its origins, “taking the red pill” now refers to a political awakening to mainstream conservative values. It comes from a scene in The Matrix in which the protagonist chooses between taking a red or blue pill. The former opens his eyes to an ugly reality while the latter leaves him in a state of blissful ignorance.
Unaware of the pervasiveness of liberal mainstream media, the writer acts as if the Left has been forcibly exposed to red-pill views online. She cites a source who says that “[t]hese years of dealing with online radicalization traumatized a lot of Americans.”
Says the author: “The Matrix is not actually a metaphor for waking up to the supposed rationality of misogyny, but an allegory of gender dysphoria, as its creators have repeatedly said. The guys who used it as a serious self-identifier for so long were so wrong, and isn’t that funny?”