If Books Could Kill – Episode Summary

Thomas Chatterton Williams’ "Summer of Our Discontent"
Hosts: Michael Hobbes & Peter Shamshiri
Date: September 11, 2025
Theme: Revisiting the reactionary “airport bestseller” which claims 2020’s social justice movements were a moral panic, and dissecting its arguments, logic, and writing.

Episode Overview

This episode takes a critical, at times exasperated dive into Thomas Chatterton Williams' “Summer of Our Discontent.” Williams’ book, the hosts explain, comes from the tradition of “reactionary centrism” and seeks to frame the upheavals of 2020—COVID, Black Lives Matter, MeToo, and the reckonings around policing and protest—as driven by irrational left-wing moral panic. Hobbes and Shamshiri interrogate Williams’ core thesis, fact-check his anecdotes, revel in the book’s overwrought prose, and contextualize both Williams’ career trajectory and the larger discourse around “cancel culture,” “wokeness,” and the politics of 2020 and beyond.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Williams Persona & His Influence

• Influence Disproportionate to Talent: Williams is described as “disproportionately influential to his talent” (01:12), largely because he’s “a person of color who doesn’t think we should be talking about race so much” (01:42). This makes him appealing to certain media gatekeepers.
• Anti-Coates Rivalry: Williams positions himself as a counterweight to Ta-Nehisi Coates (02:22), appealing to publishers seeking ideological “balance.”
• History & Memoirs: Williams has written two memoirs:
  • Losing My Cool (2010): Attributes his adolescent violence to hip hop culture (02:56).
  • Self Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race (2019): Argues race is neither biologically nor (entirely) socially real, and focuses on transcending race at a personal level (03:21).

2. Williams’ Argument in ‘Summer of Our Discontent’

• 2020 as Lens: The book centers on the cultural and political tumult of 2020, filtered through Williams’ argument that society’s focus on race and “wokeness” became irrational, illiberal, and alienating (04:23).
• Reactionary Centrist Playbook: The hosts note that this thesis is now a genre unto itself: the left, by overreaching on race and identity, alienates regular people and provokes right-wing backlash (04:50).

3. Williams' Bizarre Writing & Anecdotal Reasoning

• Painful Prose: Williams’ style is a recurring source of comedic exhaustion for the hosts. His passages are “long and winding,” full of “unnecessary adjectives and metaphors,” and “EM dashes to a crazy degree” (09:31).

  • Notable Excerpt (NYT block quote) [10:55]:

    “Even though the mixed race population has become the fastest growing segment … the death of Trayvon Martin, followed by Michael Brown … thwarted any self congratulatory sense of inevitability of social progress…”

  • Host Reaction: “That was one sentence… try to avoid being too critical of writing, but…” (11:52).

• Examples of Overwrought Metaphor [13:15]:

  “As America began to wake up… as the nation’s grief and fury began to concentrate around a Midwestern Golgotha, the Christ like dimensions of that horizontal crucifixion started to take root in the subconscious.”

  Michael: "Oh my God, dude, it's unreal." (13:40)

• Summary of Writing Issues: The hosts repeatedly pause to marvel at how Williams’ prose inhibits clarity, coherence, and substantive debate about the issues supposedly at stake.

4. Critique of Williams’ Historical Analysis

• Obama Era and Race (19:04):

  • Williams argues the promise of a “post-racial” America collapsed, blaming activists (especially Coates), segments of the media, and even Obama himself.
  • Example: Obama’s nuanced statement on Henry Louis Gates and Trayvon Martin is, in Williams’ telling, a divisive mistake—ignoring the broader reality that Obama was notably cautious (20:18).

• False Equivalences & Fact Checks:

  • Contextualization: Hosts challenge Williams’ claim that presidents never commented on racially charged local incidents, noting that both Clinton and Bush Sr. did so with Rodney King and Amadou Diallo (22:02).
  • Attribution of Backlash: Williams blames the left’s tone for right-wing rage, absolving the right of accountability (28:35).

  Michael: “All of these reactionary centrists seem to believe that it’s the left’s job to do emotional babysitting for the right…That can’t be how politics is done.” (28:53)

• Racialization of Events: Williams claims using historical context “flattens” incidents like Trayvon, when, as the hosts point out, historical context actually adds needed nuance (25:31).

5. Social Media’s Role & Williams’ Fixation

• Twitter as ‘the Discourse’: The book is obsessed with social media, referencing Twitter 26 times, “tweeted” 20 times, and “Instagram” 7 times (26:27). The hosts flag this as a distortion, mistaking the online for the universal.

6. Key Event Relitigations

• Covington Catholic & Jussie Smollett (34:07):
  • Williams calls out left overreaction; hosts agree initial reactions were excessive but note this is not unique to the left. The right’s outrage factories (Libs of TikTok, etc.) are more consequential and less self-correcting.
• COVID & BLM Protests (41:09):
  • Williams criticizes the left for supporting BLM protests during COVID restrictions, but relies on “vibes” rather than data (41:16).
  • Fact Check: No COVID spike was linked to the protests; behavior shifted toward less risky activity (42:07).

7. DEI, Performative Anti-Racism, and Police Reform

• DEI Criticism: Williams targets Robin DiAngelo, Ibram Kendi, and the “performative” elements of institutional anti-racism—but doesn’t engage with internal left critiques or produce empirical evidence (47:24).
• Defund the Police: Williams points to increased violence as a reaction to anti-police rhetoric, but the hosts stress the disconnect between rhetoric and actual policy; police and unions remain extremely powerful (51:05).

8. The Tom Cotton Op-Ed & Media Moral Clarity (54:00)

• Relitigation: Williams details the NYT’s Tom Cotton op-ed controversy, again focusing on left-wing overreach rather than the substantive risks of calling for military force in US cities (55:00).
• Hosts’ Counter: Publishing an op-ed is not inherently “neutral,” and newsroom pushback is bottom-up accountability, not mob rule (56:27).

9. Cancel Culture and The Harper’s Letter (70:38)

• Williams as Co-Author: Williams spearheaded the “Harper’s Letter,” making typical arguments about a censorious left.
• Definitional Problems: His (and Ross Douthat’s) definitions of “cancellation” are either ideologically narrow or so generic as to be useless, failing to distinguish it from basic accountability (73:25).
  • Examples he gives are debunked: “There have been many, many academics who have been silenced…”—in reality, no actual silencing occurs (75:13).

10. January 6th and Blaming the Left (82:10)

• Egregious Equivalence: Williams draws a direct line from BLM/riot response to the January 6, 2021 insurrection, arguing left-wing protest and media “condoning” sparked right-wing violence.
  • Host incredulity: “January 6th is the fault of the left. Unbelievable.” (83:13)
• Consequences: The hosts highlight the timeline discrepancy: Democrats won in 2020 after activism and protest, contradicting Williams’ thesis (85:08).

Notable Quotes and Moments

• On Williams’ Appeal:
  Michael: “This is the work of a man who, for some reason, has been relatively influential among… reactionary centrists and journalists. He is, like, a person of color who doesn’t think we should be talking about race so much. Right. That’s always sort of of interest to the yapping classes.” (01:42)
• On Writing Style:
  Peter (11:52): “That was one sentence, generally speaking, try to avoid being too critical of people's writing... but that is. That is a parenthetical straight into an EM dash.”
• On Overwrought Metaphor:
  Michael (13:40): “Oh my God, dude, it’s. It is unreal.”
• On Williams’ Abstraction:
  Michael (22:39): “He is always talking in these abstractions and then he dips into material reality for a second and it's just very clear that he's not very well informed.”
• On Reactionary Centrist Mindset:
  Michael (28:53): “All of these reactionary centrists seem to believe that it's the left's job to do emotional babysitting for the right. Anytime the right gets angry, it's cause we weren't babysitting attentively enough.”
• On Williams’ COVID Analysis:
  Michael (44:08): “Every time he tries to describe material reality, he just butchers it. It’s wild.”
• On Cancel Culture Definitions:
  Peter (73:44): “Every attempt to define cancellation runs into the same problem… It's too generic. So Douthat is saying here that, like, any attempt by a collective of people to get somebody fired is cancellation and therefore bad. But there's millions of examples of groups of people trying to disqualify someone because they did something. Disqualifying.”
• On January 6th Blame:
  Michael (83:13): “January 6th is the fault of the left… He says that it is downright fantastical, quote unquote, to say that the rioting in summer 2020 and the condoning of that rioting from the media did not influence January 6th. … the machinations of the American right are invisible to him.”
• Final take on Moral High Ground:
  Williams, quoted by Peter (87:55): “A remarkable and increasing number of Americans believe themselves not only justified, but entitled to resolve political disagreements by force if they sense themselves at an impasse. Genuine liberals, as well as their moderate and center right partners, have no choice but to reclaim the abandoned moral high ground…”

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Williams and “race transcendence” origins – 01:12–03:52
• Summary of writing style problems & NYT block quote – 09:28–11:58
• Example of “horizontal crucifixion” prose – 13:15–14:08
• Defining the book’s thesis & Coates rivalry – 17:13–18:17
• Obama era & Gates/Trayvon incidents – 19:04–28:35
• Cherry-picking & statistical sleights of hand – 17:13–18:17
• DEI/White Fragility/Kendi discussion – 47:24–48:02
• Defund the Police critique – 50:05–53:36
• NYT/Tom Cotton op-ed rehash – 54:00–63:21
• Cancel Culture/Harper’s Letter segment – 70:38–79:19
• Williams blames left for January 6th – 82:10–84:03
• Hosts sum up Williams’ failures and final statement – 87:46–89:07

Tone & Podcast Dynamic

• Exasperated, irreverent, incisive—the hosts repeatedly lampoon both Williams’ prose and his central arguments, with running jokes about EM-dashes, “doughy” Rittenhouse, and overwrought allusions.
• Relentless Fact-Checking and Contextualization—rather than taking Williams’ claims at face value, the hosts dive into polling, historical precedent, media patterns, and comparative evidence.
• Fairness in Critique—the hosts acknowledge kernels of truth in Williams’ critique of institutional DEI and performativity but stress their overrepresentation in the discourse, lack of evidence, and “boomerang” function within right-wing grievance culture.

For Listeners Who Haven’t Read the Book

This episode provides a complete, skeptical overview of Williams’ main arguments and their real-world context. Listeners are left with:

• An understanding of how the “anti-woke” genre frames 2020 and “cancel culture”
• Ample examples of Williams’ fraught, distractingly elaborate writing style
• A thorough debunking of Williams’ main claims, especially around cause-and-effect in US race politics, media, and protest movements
• Lively, critical appraisal by two hosts who blend substantive engagement with biting wit and humor

Memorable Zingers

• On prose: “He really thinks that these digressions in every sentence and these overwrought, forced metaphors are useful to your understanding. And it’s like, no…” (90:50)
• On cancel culture definitions: “They cannot provide a fucking definition of them. Is that not notable? It’s wild.” (74:26)
• On Williams’ audience and privilege: “This is your job. You’re the professor who balks at the anti racist doctrine and you’re selling a couple thousand copies of each of your shit ass books. And yet you have an entire career. You never think about why maybe someone very wealthy and influential is interested in propping up your view.” (80:22)

In Sum

The episode skewers Williams’ book as an artifact of a now-formulaic centrist panic about the left—that’s heavy on social media anecdotes and abstraction, light on historical understanding or empirical rigor, and so self-serious that it’s a miracle of modern nonfiction publishing. The hosts’ exhaustive, witty analysis means listeners can skip the book, armed with both insight and amusement.

[End of Summary]