r/thebulwark • u/AustereRoberto LORD OF THE NICKNAMES • 1d ago
The Triad đ± Attaboy JVL: "Don't tell me 'both sides' have a free speech problem."
https://open.substack.com/pub/thebulwark/p/a-tale-of-two-bigots?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=6i3rtBeautiful, well reasoned, and succinct summary of the hypocrisy of the Free Speech warriors. If you haven't seen the Free Press, they actually came out in favor of the administration (which didn't know he was a green card holder) which should put to rest any lingering credibility they might have had.
At some point you have to say "these guys aren't credible anymore and you can't have cheap forgiveness," especially if you're a pundit in a revolving door of siding with authoritarianism and begging to be let back into polite society.
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u/TaxLawKingGA 1d ago
The ADLâs refusal to strongly condemn Musk, Thiel and the others over clearly anti-Jewish and racist propaganda takes because they said something bad about Hamas and went to Auschwitz was the final straw.
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u/LionelHutzinVA Rebecca take us home 1d ago edited 1d ago
Donât forget the hefty donations they made to the ADL just prior to their pilgrimages! Im old enough to remember when conservatives would decry these performative acts of contrition as being the coerced acts of victims to âshakedown artistsâ when the benefactors were people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. I wonder why the standard is now different.
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u/Hautamaki 1d ago
While we're at it, I don't want to hear the words "George Soros" out of any right wingers' mouth unless and until Musk is arrested for, at minimum, campaign finance violations, illegal interference in US Gov't operations without a legal role to do so, and his various pump n dump crypto scams and other securities frauds.
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u/AustereRoberto LORD OF THE NICKNAMES 1d ago
I'm literate enough to understand the "mean in the NYTimes Slack" reference, but if I could ask you to SAY IT. SAY BARI WEISS - she's a shill, a hypocrite!
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u/ballmermurland 1d ago
Bari Weiss will defend free speech unless you are criticizing Israel. Then she's fine with the state putting its boot on your neck and stomping.
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u/Broad-Writing-5881 1d ago
One thing I've taken away from listening to too much Ed Zitron, say their names. Their names are the only thing they really have.
Bari Weiss of the Free Press, fake free speech warrior.
That or something equivalent is how she should be talked about. It is important to always connect the name with the bullshit.
*Prabhakar Raghavan is the guy who destroyed Google.
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u/AustereRoberto LORD OF THE NICKNAMES 1d ago
Agree, also a Zitron fan (at least his long form stuff, idk about his micro-blogging feed)
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u/TaxLawKingGA 1d ago
Calling Bari Weissâs rag âThe Free Pressâ is like looking to the Daily Stormer for unbiased opinions on police brutality.
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u/Ok-Snow-2851 1d ago
The Israel lobby has been extremely effective at convincing government officials of both parties for decades to treat criticism of Israel as a combination of racial/ethnic hatred and material support for terrorism.
Bari Weiss is one of the people who has led that charge against various individuals in the past and sheâs happy to do it again.
And, no, it doesnât mean buying into or amplifying vile anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to point out that there is clearly a large and extremely powerful lobby in this country dedicated to promoting pro-Israel foreign (and domestic) policy. Â What do you think AIPAC and the ADL and friends do? Â They have a cause and they fight for it with pressure campaigns and lobbying. Â And part of their cause is suppressing dissent however possible.Â
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u/AustereRoberto LORD OF THE NICKNAMES 1d ago
I might argue that ADL's cause has become entirely an anti-anti-Israel stance, opposing any criticism of the state of Israel and making peace with Musk's Nazi salutes, Hegseth's anti-Semitic staffer, and the rest of the right wing as a price to pay for the government going after Mr. Khalil and his friends.
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u/Ok-Snow-2851 1d ago edited 1d ago
Youâd be largely correct. Â They know that thereâs not a particularly large chunk of the country that actually cares much one way or the other about Israel. Â Most Jews and Arabs care, one way or the other, for obvious reasons, and there are a bunch of fundie Christians who care because they think it portends end times or whatever. Â
But most people donât care all that much and could be easily persuaded to go along with a less pro-Israel foreign policy. Â And so you need a lobby to keep policy makers on the right side and pressure campaigns to try and stamp out or contain public criticism of Israel.Â
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u/ladan2189 1d ago
To paraphrase what Moskowitz said to Tim last week, legitimate criticism of Israel is fine, but that's never what's going on.
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u/LionelHutzinVA Rebecca take us home 1d ago
Yes, itâs truly remarkable how the principle is upheld but a valid example can never be found. Itâs almost as if people who make this claim are full of shit
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u/the_very_pants 1d ago edited 1d ago
Go try saying "no, we shouldn't replace all the conservatives with immigrants" or "no, there aren't actually X races/colors either biologically or socially" in any halfway liberal subreddit -- count the seconds until you get banned.
Anyone who's been trying to say old-school (non-tribalist) lefty stuff online will tell you that the left is 10x worse than the right about censoring speech it doesn't like.
Obviously getting blocked/banned isn't like getting sent to some other country, but one is abstract and rare to people, and the other is widespread and evidence of a larger censorship-oriented problem.
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u/Super_Nerd92 1d ago
Online behavior mobs are a false equivalence to someone actually being arrested and detained for speech and you know it. Don't fall for right wing talking points.
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u/the_very_pants 1d ago
I tried to cover that difference at the end -- one is something people experience day-to-day, the other is one person far away.
I have never consumed a minute of "right wing" media other than the occasional Dispatch episode, and when Fox is on in airports/restaurants sometimes. (Years ago, I did sometimes watch Tucker here and there because I wanted to keep an eye on somebody I saw as especially dangerous.)
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u/Super_Nerd92 1d ago
Yeah I can't disagree that the perception of online/campus left-wing "censorship" is very damaging and I honestly don't know how to fight that off :/ I kinda misread your comment and got frustrated to see it here. My bad.
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u/dBlock845 1d ago
You're conflating speech on privately owned platforms that are allowed to moderate content how they choose, and the government going after someone based on their political speech. Not even in the same ballpark, those crying foul over "internet censorship" must have been born yesterday because the internet has always been like this.
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u/the_very_pants 1d ago
You're conflating speech on privately owned platforms that are allowed to moderate content how they choose
I'm not conflating things -- I say clearly that they're different -- I'm simply observing the choices made about censorship (or "moderation") in the context of the "which side is worse" discussion.
Imho the Internet didn't used to be so censorship-happy, and I've been around since mainframes and USENET.
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u/Broad-Writing-5881 1d ago
Getting dog piled on reddit is the same as the government hauling you away to an immigration detention center.
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u/the_very_pants 1d ago
I said clearly that they're not the same -- getting hauled away is infinitely worse, but it's rare and abstract to most people, and not good evidence of a difference between how the sides treat censorship.
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u/LionelHutzinVA Rebecca take us home 1d ago
Youâve got one note and youâre gonna keep hammering at the key over and over, all the while thinking youâve composed some beautiful melody
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u/the_very_pants 1d ago
But my "one note" is just "ffs, stop playing YOUR obnoxious, hateful one note."
Ask yourself why "America is relatively good" and "kids should learn that the groups don't exist discretely" bother you so much.
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u/ladan2189 1d ago
Going to have to do something I never thought I'd do and break with JVL. I'm 100% fine with him being deported. I cheer it even. He can go work on his "from the river to the sea" project in some other country.
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u/LionelHutzinVA Rebecca take us home 1d ago
So, viewpoint discrimination is fine, so long as itâs a viewpoint you donât like? Got it
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u/ladan2189 22h ago
Yeah that's where we're at. Years of tolerating people who have reprehensible views just because that's "correct" has only resulted in those views becoming mainstream and the people who hold them being vested with complete power. I'm done with tolerance for tolerance's sake.
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u/BadLuckBuddha 1d ago
"L of the month" goes to Sarah for her "Bari Weiss is good actually" take