CPAC speaker Alex Berenson: What to know about former NY Times reporter, COVID-19 lockdown critic

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Former Oklahoma GOP House Speaker T.W. Shannon and former Clinton adviser Richard Goodstein weigh in.

Author and former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson is among the featured speakers to give a talk at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Fla.

Berenson, 48, made national headlines last year for his criticism of the strict lockdown policies that came in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. More recently, he has focused his criticism on Big Tech’s censorship and cancel culture – which he has compared to the blacklisting of "Communist sympathizers in Hollywood in the 1950s."

Former NYT reporter Alex Berenson.  (FOX)

"The left seems frantic to stop any debate – about how to handle COVID, global warming, whether ‘trans’ women should be allowed to compete in women’s sports," Berenson wrote in an op-ed earlier this month. "Worse, it is no longer content to try to shout down views it does not like. It wants to punish the people who hold them."

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Berenson worked at The Times from 1999 until 2010, becoming a full-time novelist. He also published nonfiction, including a controversial 2019 book that argued against the legalization of marijuana. 

Berenson said his critique of lockdowns and cancel culture has begun to negatively impact his work as a writer. He noted that 12 of his previous novels were best-sellers and received attention from mainstream news outlets. But he has "not received a single review aside from a couple of trade publications" for his upcoming novel, "The Power Couple."

At CPAC, Berenson is expected to speak on what happens when you don’t toe the party line and how anyone can be a target of cancel culture – not just conservatives.

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CPAC kicked off Friday at the Hyatt Regency in Orlando. It will feature a roster of familiar conservative heavyweights, culminating in former President Donald Trump, who has flirted with the possibility of running again to retake the White House in 2024.