basically what's happening is that you have a bunch of ideas that have always appealed to comfortable people at the top of society - mostly white dudes - about how you should be allowed to be a little racist and homophobic and political correctness is out of control and whatnot

but over the last few years the people who became most associated with those ideas became intrinsically rather toxic among the educated set. like you can't admit to listening to ben shapiro and jordan peterson and expect to be taken seriously

so what's happening is that a bunch of moderates and liberals - who just so happen to be white dudes themselves - have started advancing suspiciously similar arguments with a liberal gloss. "this is just an argument about politics, it's not like I don't believe in racism"

and what do you know! turns out there's a big audience for this stuff. which totally probably reflects the quality of the underlying thinking, and definitely not that there's a lot of reactionary sentiment out there looking for a socially acceptable way to express itself

like let's just be blunt: what yglesias et al are doing is using their reputations as liberals to launder right-wing thinking about race and gender to a primarily white, primarily male audience who both subscribes to that thinking but wants to continue seeing itself as liberal

and, this is important: THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING SURPRISING ABOUT THE FACT THAT IT WORKS. it is not surprising that many people like this stuff and will gobble it up! but spoon-feeding it to them doesn't make you a brilliant contrarian thinker, it makes you Fancy Rush Limbaugh

this is america, you're allowed to be rush limbaugh or bill o'reilly or bill maher if you want. but it's gross, it's bad for the rest of the country, you're hurting people and making the world worse to get rich

possibly some of these guys don't even quite recognize what they're doing. after all, being white guys, the ideas probably have some intrinsic appeal to them, and they get a lot of reinforcement from similarly-situated guys they respect, so why interrogate their own success?

but in terms of scenarios in which you should feel wary of your own success, "I am a prominent proponent of ideas that are disproportionately represented among society's most powerful segments" pretty much tops the list

people will rarely be penalized, and often rewarded, for thinking up clever arguments that indulge the prejudices of the power caste.

it's still awful to do it, though