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Is it the Atlantic that first published his identity and ethnicity? There seems to be a trend of mainstream legacy media outting public personalities that publish under a pen name. BAP, Libsoftictock, Scott. They clearly have an axe to grind here, even though they hide behind the some notion of journalism and a fig leaf of newsworthiness. What is there to be done? Nothing. Its asymetrical. Add it the list of reasons I find journalists lower than lawyers and slightly higher than pedophiles. I hope to one day be introduced to a journalist so that I can laugh in their face when they tell me their profession.
The name has been public for a while. Pseudonyms and revealing their authors has been a thing for centuries, every side does it. It's only asymmetrical in that the center has moved very far to the left relative to the past, so there are more attacks from the left, but the methods aren't at all different.
Yes, I'd say the primary difference is that in the West, there is pretty much zero need for a radically leftist author to write under a pseudonym. They may still do so for privacy reasons, but it's not to protect them from cancellation.
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I understand that perspective, and I agree that some journalists can be pretty nasty about it, going over the top with it and using it exclusively to destroy an adversary, but that's the game man. You don't start writing under a pseudonym because you are a paranoid schizophrenic who is autistic about privacy, you do it because you want to say things you know will upset the establishment. It's part of the trade off you make when you take on a professional pen name - the price of anonymity is trust, the more anonymous you are the less you can be trusted.
You give up the chance to be a household name, your ability to network is hampered dramatically, and even the outfits that will publish pseudonymous works are cautious about it, as they should be. But in return for forfeiting your legacy, you get held to the public's standards of journalist ethics, which can be gamed much more easily than any media organisation's. You get to write however you like, and cater your material to the audience you want, instead of what the outfit wants. And you get to speak the truth as you see it, any and every truth, no matter what anyone else thinks. It's a good trade off I think, as a former pseudonymous journalist (feel free to laugh in my face, if I met younger me I would too.)
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