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Comment by jazzyk | Hacker News Reader

I had been a subscriber for almost 30 years. Loved their cheeky style and erudite, but clear writing.

In 2015, the publishing house Pearson sold their majority stake to a bunch of globalists: the Agnelli family, the Rotschilds, Cadbury, etc.[1]

I was not aware of this at the time, but noticed the change of direction a year or so later. Cancelled my subscription - sadly there are few real journalists left.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist

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Pearson sold their majority stake of the B shares to the Agnelli family. They have no control over how the paper is run. The A shares are owned by the “globalists” and have been for as long as the paper has really existed. Furthermore, nobody is allowed to sell shares without the approval of an independent board who is able to veto any sale or purchase.

There’s been no change in editorial control or voice in the paper. It’s all you.

Many people (even on this board, in other threads over the past couple of years) made similar observations. So no, it is not "just me".

Given The Economist's neoliberal bent, why would the sale to "globalists" change their values?

Also, I'm not sure if it was intentional or not - but using the word "Globalists" as a pejorative for the Rothschilds is a very common anti-semitic tactic.

I think you are being paranoid - what has globalism got to do with anti-semitism? There are plenty of globalists of varying nationalities/religions.

Globalist is a commonly used dog-whistle to talk about Jews which itself lacks a clear and useful definition.

Neoliberal has a clear definition. "Top 1% of the 1%" has a clear meaning. "Globalist" does not. "Globalism" isn't an ideology so far so I understand it.

For that reason I understand it to be a word that signals something about the writer more so than it describes something about the subject. But I could be overfitting this curve.

If you are in a card game and you don't know who the patsy is, it's you.

To me globalists - the top 0.1%, with their business interests spread over the world, completely unaccountable to any government (in fact, increasingly influencing/corrupting governments around the world with their money).

And attempting to sprinkle anti-semitism into it is just a (typical) attempt to make the word "globalist" socially unacceptable. Nothing to do with Jews, but hey, nice try.

You are correct in your view of who the globalists are. The only racist idea here is that all of those people are Jews. The idea that saying “globalist” is an anti-Semitic pejorative is just an idea being installed by Globalist Propagandists and their (witting or not) repeaters, to make it socially risky for anyone to discuss their nefarious deeds when labeled in a way that promotes pattern recognition by readers.

I mean, it's not "just" propaganda; but that is a possibility that certainty muddies the waters and would benefit people wanting the topic underdiscussed.

Though generally I just refer to these people as Reptilians.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/the-ori...

What is your definition of "globalist"?

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