#BanTheADL and the Fight for Free Speech
Gregory Hood
September 7, 2023
Subscribe to future audio versions of AmRen articles here.
Liberal democracy is rule by media. In theory, the people rule. In practice, the will of the people is dictated. Public opinion is not the source of government policy, but the effect.
Consider the actions of our government and allied NGOs and media organizations since 2016. Mainstream social platforms — especially YouTube, Facebook/Instagram, and Twitter (now X) — have purged a huge number of websites, organizations, and political figures. Even President Trump lost his accounts. An advertising boycott damaged Breitbart, and Fox News dismissed its most popular host after legal threats and media attacks. Its opponents celebrated. Bank accounts and website domains are vulnerable. The federal government works with “watchdogs” to censor and deplatform people. The corporate media cheer because reporters gain power if they are the only voices.
Whether the excuse is to prevent “far-right terrorism,” “foreign interference,” or medical “misinformation,” the result is the same. Media power determines what Americans see, hear, say — and therefore think. Claims of a democratic “open society” are ridiculous. Any celebrity, “influencer,” or YouTuber can be purged any time. You could say no issue is more important than the right to stay platformed.
Perhaps the most powerful censor is the Anti-Defamation League. It is supposed to protect Jews, but it is now just another liberal activist organization. Even National Review has repeatedly attacked the ADL for promoting censorship.
Still, the ADL has more credibility than the Southern Poverty Law Center. The FBI stopped working with the SPLC, but the ADL still helps train all new FBI agents. At the ADL’s December 2022 “Never is Now Summit,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said that his organization “gels very well with yours,” and bragged about hunting “Nazis,” even as violent crime plagues the country. In the 1990s, the FBI investigated the ADL’s “extensive” spy network on Americans, but the groups have since kissed and made up.
The ADL may now be in one of its worst fights ever. It began when Keith Woods, fresh from the latest American Renaissance conference, called for the ADL to be banned from X because it is trying to sabotage the company. He had tweeted about it in the past, but got far more attention this time.
The ADL’s favourite tactic is financially blackmailing social media companies into removing free speech on their platforms. They even orchestrated an advertiser boycott of Tucker Carlson.
Why should they have a platform on X to hold @elonmusk to ransom? It’s time to #BanTheADL pic.twitter.com/QdWMziIAfg
— Keith Woods (@KeithWoodsYT) September 1, 2023
Elon Musk replied, saying that the ADL would not be banned. This is a concession, because X’s new Terms of Service say that accounts can be banned for “commercial inviability,” which appears to mean harming X financially. However, Mr. Musk did say that ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt tried to destroy his business and that he might sue.
Jonathan at ADL kicked off a massive Twitter boycott campaign less than a week after the acquisition closed.
Literally nothing had changed about the site.
Our US revenue is still 60% down from that campaign, but slowly improving. pic.twitter.com/7vh5dtdDqi
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 6, 2023
To clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism, it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League … oh the irony!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2023
Advertisers avoid controversy, so all that is needed for ADL to crush our US & European ad revenue is to make unfounded accusations. They have much less power in Asia, so our ad revenue there is still strong.
This “controversy” causes advertisers to “pause”, but that pause is…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2023
Mr. Woods continues to score victories. One of the funniest came in a Spaces discussion on X, when an Israeli intelligence operative named Vivian Berovici tried to challenge him. Mr. Woods quickly exposed her. She fled the space and deleted her X account.
WATCH: the moment I exposed Israeli intelligence officer Vivian Bercovici trying to disrupt the ADL files Twitter space.
After asking her about her background working with Israeli intelligence firm Black Cube she quit the space and deactivated her account.#BanTheADL pic.twitter.com/Zj5uSneUcO
— Keith Woods (@KeithWoodsYT) September 5, 2023
However, major media are backing the ADL. “Elon Musk comes around to blaming the Jews,” wrote Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times. Talking Points Memo similarly said that Musk was just “against the Jews.” The Daily Beast insisted that “advertisers and governments must dump Elon Musk.” NBC piled on.
Leaders of several organizations tell @NBCNews they’re gearing up for a long fight with Elon Musk over his management of X as he loosens the rules around hate speech. https://t.co/RXLEBE5IM7
— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 6, 2023
Rolling Stone, once a magazine about music, was aghast.
Elon Musk shows support for hashtag campaign against the ADL, a civil rights group that combats hate speechhttps://t.co/6OBstRtWJf
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) September 1, 2023
The Atlantic chimed in:
“The conceit that Jews cause themselves to be persecuted is not limited to Musk. Indeed, the fallacy transcends political allegiances and is as old as anti-Jewish bigotry itself,” @Yair_Rosenberg writes: https://t.co/NjFz8YsfFp
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) September 6, 2023
Vox said Elon Musk was in a “strange new feud,” with what it laughably called a “Jewish anti-hate group.” Pure faux-naivete. Author Zack Beauchamp, who has a long history of anti-white commentary, was scandalized that Mr. Musk interacted with a user who had elsewhere said he respected Jared Taylor. No mention that Jared Taylor is still not back on the platform, which is the true scandal.
This is the problem: Journalists want to hide information, “civil rights” groups want to end free speech, and the “defenders of democracy” don’t trust the people. Still, Mr. Musk is getting support from Jews, notably Stephen Miller, Ashley St. Clair, and Chaya Raichik (of LibsofTikTok). It’s not true that Elon Musk is attacking “the Jews” or that “the Jews” oppose him. Of course, that’s what the ADL and its friends claim.
Speaking as a Jew, Stephen Miller (@StephenM) blasts the Anti-Defamation League (@ADL), says it is not a Jewish organization but rather an ultra-left activist entity.
He wrote, “Speaking as a Jew: ADL is NOT a Jewish organization. It is an ultra-left activist organization that… pic.twitter.com/pbWhuyWhch
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) September 6, 2023
In case you were skeptical of the ADL’s grift, they’re now sending letters out to Jewish leaders & fundraising off of Elon Musk being “anti-semitic” for calling out their mafia-style pressure campaigns https://t.co/HRuDxQb8Gl
— Ashley St. Clair (@stclairashley) September 6, 2023
BTW- the @ADL weren’t the only ones who requested Twitter to ban and silence me. @Harvard @glaad @HRC and other organizations did as well. Don’t think I forgot! This is tortious interference and we will not let them get away with it! pic.twitter.com/QrrEfzhbio
— Chaya Raichik (@ChayaRaichik10) September 7, 2023
The ADL also put out a fundraising appeal, linking Mr. Musk to a “highly toxic, antisemitic campaign” before complaining about “a surge of bomb threats and swatting attacks of Jewish synagogues,” in addition to “dramatic levels of antisemitic propaganda.” Documentation, please?
AMAZING! ADL/Greenblatt just sent out a letter to Jewish leaders asking for donations because of X/Twitter; inferring that @elonmusk is “an unrepentant bigot”, and that those who oppose them are “white supremacists, Christian nationalists, conspiracy theorists”. Disgusting! pic.twitter.com/vzYHymK5XZ
— Rabbi Michael Barclay (@Rabbi_Barclay) September 6, 2023
Censorship advocates will say there would have been no problem if X had just banned more people, but the ADL dug this hole for itself. It started pressuring advertisers as soon as Mr. Musk took over and before he had changed anything.
In an interview on Squawk Box, Andrew Ross Sorkin, a Jewish man, asked Jonathan Greenblatt if he had asked for a donation from Twitter or a monitoring role at the company. Mr. Greenblatt called that an “anti-Semitic trope.”
Because the answer is “Yes!” regarding seeking donations, hence JG’s refusal to answer the question.
JG instead went on the attack, implying that Sorkin, despite being Jewish, is somehow an anti-Semite just for asking a basic conflict-of-interest question! 🤣
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 6, 2023
Mr. Musk is blasting other ADL claims.
Accurate analysis https://t.co/RCD6blreX2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 6, 2023
While the ADL is powerful, it’s also an appealing target because of its hypocrisy. Unlike many other “civil rights” groups, the ADL doesn’t maintain universal standards; it’s explicitly Jewish and pro-Israel. This is an awkward balancing act. The ADL says a “one-state solution” or anything that undermines Israel’s Jewish majority would be a threat to Jews. The “right of return” of Palestinian refugees would mean, “in effect, the end of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.” That’s true, but The Great Replacement is a “racist conspiracy theory” when it happens to anyone else.
The ADL spent years demanding the most popular talk-show host in America be deplatformed for talking about replacement migration.
Yet they said it would be “unacceptable” to expect Israel to share a state with Palestinians or “Jews would quickly become a minority”.#BanTheADL pic.twitter.com/c9CgMIH5J3
— Keith Woods (@KeithWoodsYT) August 31, 2023
Hypocrite at best, an enemy at worst. “It’s okay to be white” is part of the ADL’s hate lexicon.
The Jewish angle is always tricky. Former ADL head Abraham Foxman once sternly lectured Ukraine not to dare compare the Holodomor with the Holocaust. In 2018, the ADL subtly threatened Iceland not to consider a ban on circumcision, suggesting an association with Nazism, “even if that association is not justified,” would cost Iceland money. Of course, the ADL could have simply sought a simple religious exemption for the country’s small Jewish community. Instead, it practically extorted an entire nation.
When Iceland was going to ban male circumcision, the ADL threatened to falsely smear Iceland, writing in a menacing letter.
“Given that 28% of Iceland’s tourists came from North America in 2016, Iceland’s standing in the U.S. should be of great concern from an economic… pic.twitter.com/CURRsLBnIN
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) September 4, 2023
The ADL honored Borat comedian Sacha Baron-Cohen in 2019 and gave him the keynote address at its conference. Mr. Baron-Cohen’s career is about racial humor: hateful jokes about Europeans, Central Asians, and white Americans. Nontheless, he had the chutzpah to call for more social media censorship because “our pluralistic democracies are on a precipice” and “the role of social media could be determinant.” The press doesn’t consider his venom “hate.” He smears groups who can’t defend themselves.
X Safety introduced ‘Freedom of Speech, Not Reach’ this comes straight from the ADL. Here’s Sacha Baron Cohen 4 years ago at the ADL’s ‘Never Is Now’ event.
Censorship is about “protecting democracy”#BanTheADL pic.twitter.com/CAH23j8Cjr
— No Chance (@MrNChance) September 5, 2023
The ADL seems to have one purpose: criticize gentiles in terms it would never tolerate against its own people. It worries about declining support for Israel among young American Jews, but when it comes to free speech, they’re on its side. While older Jews mostly favor free speech, a May 2019 study found younger Jews are overwhelmingly opposed. Maybe free speech was useful for pornography, flag burning, and pushing Communism, but no longer.
Jews used to be very supportive of free speech, but the younger generation is not. Some background to the ADL debates: https://t.co/V7mQQdTOnA pic.twitter.com/tMppzuMVbA
— True Discipline (@TruueDiscipline) September 6, 2023
Free speech is not negotiable. Even if the ADL sets Israel adrift and tries to become just another universalist propaganda shop, it doesn’t deserve a veto. No one else does, either.
Of course, Elon Musk and X have not restored free speech. Jared Taylor and American Renaissance are still banned, despite promises of amnesty. These accounts never violated the Terms of Service. Kevin MacDonald, James Edwards, Tom Sunic, and Paul Fromm — whose accounts survived into the Musk era — were banned after he took over. Mr. Musk is talking about releasing all past correspondence with the ADL. We have our suspicions about what we might find.
We’ve been critical of Elon Musk because he hasn’t lived up to his claims about free speech. That said, his fight against ADL censorship is the bravest thing a businessman has done in a long time. Protection rackets fall apart if just one victim says no. If Elon Musk beats the ADL, Americans, and people around the world, will be in his debt.