On Substack, Rohan Ghostwind responds to a recent New York Times opinion from Michelle Goldberg pretending not to understand why “the right” is against Affluent White Female Liberals (AWFLs):
Michelle Goldberg recently wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times called “The Right Is Furious With Liberal White Women”
Specifically, she talks about the rising contempt for the AWFL: Affluent white female liberal.
The first part of the opinion piece is a play-by-play of the Renee Good situation, pointing out that the right is freaking out about roving bands of Karens.
The part I find interesting is in the final paragraph:
It wasn’t long ago that casual contempt for white women was the domain of the left, at least that part of the left that took books like “White Fragility” seriously. So it’s striking how easily conservatives, who’ve been stewing over insults to white people for at least five years, have singled out a group of white women as the enemy.
Here’s the interesting part: throughout the course of her opinion piece, she touches on White Female Liberal part. Conspicuously missing is the first part of the acronym: affluent.
This is par for the course for an NYT Opinion piece: play into the identity politics aspect while simultaneously downplaying class. This is, of course, a big reason why the Democrats lost ground with working class people during the 2024 election.
[…]
Rob Henderson popularized the term luxury beliefs …
And if it was ever one group of people who embody the most luxury beliefs per capita it would be the AWFL’s.
What makes them uniquely annoying is their persistent refusal to acknowledge how sanctimonious they come across to the rest of the world. As far as they’re concerned, they are the only intelligent and moral group of people, and they will eventually get what they want by scolding everybody else into submission.
People hate this, because people would actually prefer bigotry to infantilization — but the affluent white woman, by virtue of being affluent, never has to reality test her beliefs against the real world.
