Katherine Maher
Covert Member of the Progressive Elite Vanguard
The fascinating implications of Katherine Maher’s public statements and secret plans
From Katherine Maher Is Not a Liberal, photo from Web Summit Qatar 2024
“We fulfill our mission best when we look and sound like the country we serve.”
-Katherine Maher, as she oversaw a drastic progressive organizational shift, and a move to the richest and whitest NPR audience of any time in its history
Katherine Maher is the CEO of NPR and former CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation (and has also had executive positions in the Signal Foundation and Web Summit, plus alleged ties to the CIA). She appeared before Congress on Wednesday.
During her appearance she tried to walk a very fine line, by acknowledging the overwhelmingly progressive nature of NPR, without admitting that it might be biased. She also had to account for a slew of vitriolic and anti-American tweets about race and patriotism and history and power and looting. She mostly claimed ignorance, or said that her views had changed (without explaining how) or asserted implausible interpretations of explicit statements. Example: ‘reparations’, in the context of black America being owed things by white America (and in connection with a book about financial reparations) doesn’t refer to financial reparations. She was talking about what each of us owes to the past. Sure.
You can find the clips of her testimony at your leisure (I enjoyed the Undercurrents feature below). I found that her philosophy and political program are perfect encapsulations of some very notable current trends...
Trends
The Nonprofit Vanguard-
There is a rarely acknowledged college-nonprofit-agency-corporate axis which is firmly under institutional progressive control. Katherine Maher is an almost-too perfect example of a creature from ‘the nonprofit world’. In this strange and status-heavy twilit space (a kind of control and directional node for the Blob) intelligence agencies and financial power and credentials and secret NGO connections merge into one thing. I’ve almost never seen a legacy media article about this world, which is how you know there’s something important there.
Example: Maher worked for Signal, a messaging app with possible connections to George Soros, which was then recommended by the FBI (for some reason):
Signal received funding from the Open Technology Fund (OTF), a U.S. government-sponsored organization focused on advancing global internet freedom, and the Knight Foundation, which has ties to government entities. While these grants are ostensibly for promoting secure communication, they also suggest that Signal operates with implicit government approval or support, potentially creating backchannels for influence.
Despite its claims of being a non-profit, Signal does not fully disclose its funding sources or detailed financial information. This opacity makes it challenging to verify its independence and raises suspicions about hidden government ties or influence.
Signal has publicly refused to weaken encryption despite government requests. However, critics suggest this refusal might be a strategic posture, allowing the app to maintain credibility among privacy advocates while still operating under government tolerances.
The appointment of Katherine Maher, former CEO of NPR, to Signal’s board has fueled speculation about indirect government influence. NPR, as a publicly funded broadcaster, maintains close ties to U.S. federal agencies, which could create potential conflicts of interest.
Elite Egalitarianism-
Maher made $750,000 per year while at Wikimedia and earned at $600,000 severance package. She probably makes at least $500,00 per year at NPR. Her entire worldview is ostensibly about financial and political egalitarianism… yet her entire professional existence has been a series of lucrative credentials and connections (George Soros foremost among them), and she isn’t sacrificing any of her financial or cultural privilege, even to the people within her own organizations. She is a wonderful example of the new trend of people becoming rich and powerful by parroting the rhetoric of social justice. She wants to radically remake society, but she wants to be the one to remake it, and the changes she authors will never disadvantage people in her own class. A Maher revolution would be a dissolution of the institutions of society with maximum social and financial power vested in her, and people like her. We’ve seen this kind of thing play out in history many times before.
Her promotion of social justice and equity and intersectionality coincidentally all help her achieve professional success and make people like her much more important and respected… and powerful. What would happen if those ideas were no longer the routes to awesome power? I think we’re finding out. Professionals are quickly separating themselves from this rhetoric across the cultural landscape, which indicates that, for many, these ideas are as much about advantage and status as they are about making real change. As I’ve said: if you’re not personally willing to sacrifice for political goals then they’re not political goals.
But what have you done in the way of redistributing wealth to black America? YOU? YOUR wealth?
Woke Agency Penetration-
It seems pretty obvious that vanguard elements of the progressive movement have infiltrated District Attorney offices and mayoral roles and the Democratic Party… and our intelligence services. This is an opaque world, full of secrets and misdirection, but CIA recruiting videos and the NSA gender and sexual chat logs and allegations of anti-Trump activity in these organizations have emerged. Personal, long-time colleagues of Ms. Maher have alleged that she is a CIA asset.
It doesn’t really matter if she is or is not. The CIA (and the FBI and the NSA and the DHS) are parts of the Blob. Of course, they are allying with ideologies and figures that will expand their own power and fighting those that would limit it. The left would give the CIA resources and links to zealous ideologues and extensive organizations all over the world and the ability to limit and direct and suppress speech and expression. USAID is and has been a known nexus of intelligence and nonprofit activity overlap. So are Ivy League schools. It makes sense that the CIA would be infected by progressivism (despite its anti-institutional rhetoric) for progressivism is now the institutional program of the Blob, and the radical ideas are just values and trappings. The real program is about controlling information and amassing power.
:According to a report in City Journal, [Maher] worked for US government-backed NGOs that advanced regime change campaigns in the Middle East and North Africa. A former cabinet minister in the Tunisian transitional government publicly accused [her] of working with the CIA.
I’ll let you decide what to believe.
Elastic Ideology-
Katherine Maher stated (tweeted, mostly) many, many things in the heady days of 2020 and 2021, when her kind was ascendant. These beliefs (“America is addicted to white supremacy”, radical feminism is an institutional imperative, the 1st Amendment is merely an obstacle to her program, DEI is a kind of religious commandment which can partially cleanse its agents from their original sin of “whiteness”) are her beliefs and she was unusually enthusiastic and explicit in proclaiming them.
Now she must pretend that she doesn’t believe those things. This is a familiar pattern among progressives. They have radical goals, but they usually understand that their ideas aren’t popular in the mainstream, so they use motte and bailey constructions to covertly call for radical change, while hiding behind claims of basic decency and common sense.
It’s very simple to expose their agenda (unless they simply lie, which they often do): just ask them: “What do you want to happen? What changes would you like to see made? Would you like our organization to hire many more black and queer people and control speech and focus on educating children, etc.?” In every case you will find that what they desire isn’t in accord with the popular will. It’s abstract and utopian and uncompromising and it conflicts with data and tradition. The believers reconcile this disparity between their goals and popular attitudes by lying, lecturing, and deliberately vague communication.
Their proposals will be good for us (in their minds)-we just can’t see it yet. It’ll be better for everyone if they’re given the power, even if it violates institutional norms and democratic processes.
Insiders & Whistleblowers-
Uri Berliner published an expose in The Free Press last year in which he called out his organizations bias and politically toxic atmosphere.
Insiders and whistleblowers (at gender clinics, for example, or at universities) are particularly hated by the Blob because they discredit operations faster than almost anything else. Objections from outsiders can be spun as prejudice or attention-seeking, but people who’ve been in an organization for decades know that organization and they are often among the most courageous and admired members. Berliner certainly seems to fit that description.
Towards the end of his piece last year he made some encouraging statements about the newly-hired CEO and invited her to speak with him. She tweeted immediately announcing his separation from the company and dismissing his claims, calling them “hurtful.”
On Wednesday she apparently forgot all of this (the biggest PR scandal for NPR in decades) and said that she would’ve liked to speak with Berliner.
Saying a Lot While Saying Very Little-
Ms. Maher has made the circuit of conference appearances and TED talks and thinktank summits. All of the material I’ve been able to find paint her as an extremely doctrinaire acolyte of the institutional progressive/Open Society Foundation style of political activity and discourse. She is very practiced at loading her statements with buzzwords (whiteness, equity, centering, trauma, colonization, binary, discourse, systemic) while restricting everything to generalities. I call this ‘sociology speak’ and it is a fascinating Orwellian creation: all orthodoxy and signal words and repetition. The very means to disagree or question the claims are taken away through the redefinition of language. For example: black people can’t be racist because we’ve redefined racism so that it can’t apply to black people (under our worldview; black people DO have a great deal of social power in actuality). Voila - only white people evidence racism.
This is not just a smarmy technique for lying to Congress or disseminating propaganda. It’s an entire, distinct way of thinking and seeing the world, very akin (with its lenses and biases and rigid intersectional weights) to a mental illness.
(From ’s ‘Ten Questions for NPR’s Katherine Maher’)
In 2020, you wrote that “America is addicted to white supremacy” and expressed support for race-based “reparations.” Do you still believe that America is addicted to white supremacy? And do you still support wealth transfers from one race to another?
In 2016, you chastised Hillary Clinton for using the words “boy and girl,” arguing that “it’s erasing language for non-binary people.” Can you tell us what a “non-binary person” is? And can you define the word “woman” for us?
In 2021, when describing your work as CEO of Wikipedia during a presentation for the Atlantic Council, you stated that the First Amendment was “the number one challenge” for suppressing “bad information” on the internet. Do you still believe that the First Amendment is a problem and that censoring dissent is the best method of eliminating “bad information”?
In that same speech, you explicitly stated that you “took a very active approach to disinformation and misinformation” during the Covid pandemic and the 2020 election. You further explained that you censored information “through conversations with government.” With which governments did you consult about these issues and, specifically, what information did Wikipedia censor?
In 2020, when President Trump was banned from all major social media platforms, you wrote: “Must be satisfying to deplatform fascists. Even more satisfying? Not platforming them in the first place.” Do you still believe that banning the political opposition is consistent with the First Amendment and, more broadly, a culture of free speech?
Cover Stories-
Ms. Maher lied on Wednesday, dozens of times. She knows that she lied and so does everyone else. In our bureaucratic world, lying is okay and not disadvantageous, as long as the things said accord with organizational values and goals. Courage and honesty are actively discouraged. When is encouraged is for you to make the claims that the Blob wants you to make, even if they’re patently ridiculous and no one believes them. This is strategic dishonesty for the sake of appearances, ‘box check deceit.’ It’s everywhere in the professional world these days. Most people, when given the choice between integrity and professional incentives, choose the latter and Ms. Maher wouldn’t have climbed as high as she has or made as much money if she didn’t learn this long ago.
Intransigence-
Ms. Maher cannot and will not publicly state what she really believes. That alone should make anyone wary of supporting her ideology. She’s willing to lie in front of Congress, and her dishonesty won’t lose her any support among the partisans with which she’s allied. They all lie. Honesty is not a value they prioritize. Victory is more urgent, in every case.
Having people like this in institutions is toxic. Her changes have badly damaged Wikipedia financially, and they’ve decimated its reputation. These people will never be honest or earnest or kind… unless these things further their agenda. If the agenda demands that they lie and scheme and cruelly ruin their peers, they will do that. They have done that.
People this absorbed in an ideology and so disinclined to tell the truth-or to acknowledge their real worldview or goals-can’t be trusted and they can’t be changed. They will have to be rooted out of institutions, one by one. The hangers-on and the fair-weather friends are already falling off but that still leaves a considerable legion of die-hards, like Ms. Maher.
Why should anyone believe a word she says when she won’t even tell the truth about what she deeply believes?
Thanks for reading.
She's a cockroach, and the congressional appearance was like a good spray of bug killer. Now she's buzzing around on her back furiously thrashing all her limbs while everybody looks on with mild disgust waiting for it to stop.
She's finished, but just doesn't know it yet. Being the head of a media organisation who constantly spouts bullshit that is obvious to everybody in the audience leaves her nowhere to go.
"That's... weird". Typical mean girl obfuscation.