Enlightened Gatekeeping and Elon Musk (Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi)
The ADL says "It's Yahweh or the highway!" The Elon Ranger says "It's my way or the highway!" I say "Hi yo, Silver, away!"
I had not intended to write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict again following my related post on the broader context of war. I have several other unwieldily (what a fun word) long articles that I’d hoped to finally start rolling out in some form, but the muses have been pestering me to explore a few more tangential topics that have popped up around this issue. Plus, these tie in with my beloved Elon Musk (So dreamy!) and give me a chance to assuage my OCD and write a thrilling conclusion to my critically acclaimed Gatekeeper Trilogy.
Hold on to your butts, this one is a doozy!
I was watching Handsome Boy Glenn Greenwald’s excellent program, System Update, the other day, and he did a, well, excellent job of highlighting the hobbling of Elon Musk’s much ballyhooed free speech absolutism in order to suppress “hate speech” and “anti-Semitism.” I recommend giving this segment a view.
As my longtime readers will know, I was one of the people doing the ballyhooing of the Dogefather’s purchase of Twitter (X). The following are three whole posts I made about this topic:
My first article on gatekeeping, Elon, and Twitter (X), from before his purchase
My second article on gatekeeping, Elon, and Twitter (X), from after his purchase
My third, related article looking at the Biden Laptop & Twitter Files
If you are so inclined, please give them a read, and let me know your thoughts. I think they still hold up exceedingly well (I may be a bit biased.), in part because in a polarized world where people were rushing to condemn Musk as the new Hitler Trump Satan or just another Cookie-Cutter Capitalist, or to praise him as a Messianic Paragon of Virtue, I once again—Greek that I am—sought an Aristotelian Golden Mean, wherein I posited that Musk’s ownership would be a marked—and desperately needed—improvement over the previous ownership, but that we would need time to see how things played out. Right on both counts!
The three articles linked above explicate why I was right on the first count (i.e., Twitter is vastly improved thanks to Musk and is a beachhead for discourse), but this article gives me a chance to follow up on the second count. And a chance to call balls and strikes. For example, Musk’s hiring of the execrable Linda Yaccarino, continued banning of certain individuals (like my beloved Alex Jones. So dreamy!),1 and recent Twitter (X) censorship have been strikeouts for the ol’ Doge. Much like the ending of The Empire Strikes Back, things weren't going well for our heroes. Fear not though, loyal reader, we’ll revisit this before it is all written and done.
As Glenn Greenwald points out in the linked video, after being peppered with accusations of that Old Testament anti-Semitism by the usual suspects (like MediaMadHatters and the Anti-Definition League) and another looming exodus of advertisers, Musk went on a placation tour that has included yukking it up with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and allowing terms like “decolonization” to get you suspended from his free speech platform because it is believed by some to be synonymous with “genocide of the Jewish people.”
Keep in mind, Musk has said that he was a free speech absolutist and that the bounds of free speech on Twitter should be basically demarcated by applicable laws. Banning phrases like “from the river to the sea” for U.S. citizens—however much one may dislike the slogan or have a particular interpretation of its implications—is not in keeping with his two, self-proclaimed principles.
Why not? Well, in the United States we have the Brandenberg Test for determining if speech can be restricted for the intent to advocate illegal action. This test is named for the 1969 Supreme Court case, Brandenberg v. Ohio, where a Ku Klux Klan officer, the titular Clarence Brandenberg, had been convicted of violating Ohio’s Criminal Syndicalism law while giving an almost comically unhinged racist tirade, where he managed to use the made-up words “revengent” and “revengence” in the same sentence. That actually should be illegal.
Anyway, on appeal, the Supreme Court overruled the lower court, correctly finding Clarence innocent, and in the process establishing the Brandenberg Test, which holds that a state may not forbid speech advocating the use of force or unlawful conduct unless:
this advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action
ANDthis advocacy is likely to incite or produce such action
Full disclosure: I love the Brandenberg Test. I. Love. It. I love it. I mean, ladies, find yourself a man who looks at you the way I look at the Brandenberg Test. I think it is an absolutely brilliant piece of judicial writing that carves out the bare minimum exception by which egregiously dangerous, intolerable speech can be regulated while ensuring maximum protection of expression as enshrined in the United States’ Bill of Rights. It was an exquisite improvement over the “clear and present danger” litmus test of Schenk v. United States (1919).
While we’re on the topic of Schenk, allow me to interrupt this program for an important public service announcement.
For the love of God, please, stop shouting that “shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater” is an example of legally prohibited speech and a rationale for censoring people. It is not. That phrase traces back to a dictum Oliver Wendell Holmes issued in Schenk, and it has zero legal relevance today, despite the deluge of people—either willfully or woefully ignorant—who still regurgitate it whenever they want to shut up their opposition or sound smart. This 2012 article in The Atlantic does a great job of explaining this issue (I can’t believe I just praised The Atlantic.), as does this essay here, but I’ll summarize a couple of salient points below.
First off, that phrase is, again, regarded as a dictum [emphasis mine]:
Dictum is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase "obiter dictum." As a legal term, a dictum is any statement or opinion made by a judge that is not required as part of the legal reasoning to make a judgment in a case. Although dictum may be mentioned in legal arguments, it does not have the legal precedent's binding power, which means that other courts are not obligated to adopt it.
So, the thought experiment itself was never legally binding.
Second off, even though the actual ruling of Schenk (i.e., the “clear and present danger” test) was the law of the land once, it is now largely regarded as bad law and was completely superseded by Brandenberg, taking with it the cursed “shouting fire” dictum.
Schenck and the Holmesian approach vanished for good with Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969.
So, Schenk is no longer law.
It is galling and appalling that we still see so many people in positions of power, from legislators like Amy Klobuchar to Supreme Court members like Justice Samuel Alito, erroneously invoking this long-dispelled notion. Remember kids: don’t be like Amy Klobuchar!
We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.
Musk’s recent prohibition of certain terms and slogans surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a mistake and goes against some of his earlier, professed principles. And lest I be accused of American Exceptionalism here (Perish the thought!), I will point out that just this year a Dutch appeals court also upheld the right of its citizens to use the slogan “from the river to the sea.” Thomas Hofland had been arrested there for incitement while using that slogan in a speech, but the court stated that such phrases “are subject to various interpretations” and “relate to the state of Israel and possibly to people with Israeli citizenship, but do not relate to Jews because of their race or religion.”
Willem Jebbink, Hofland’s lawyer, said that the court had been “crystal clear: the phrase ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free’ is not anti-Semitic… It is elementary that we in our society can sharply criticize Israel’s policies without the risk of criminalization.”
Whether or not you wish to criticize or proselytize Israel’s policies, Jebbink’s sentiment is correct.
Let us pause here for a moment to reflect on an extraordinary juxtaposition. Only last year—back when the media and NPCs were “Slava Ukraining” all over themselves—we had major social media networks, like Facebook and Twitter, going out of their way to publicize rescinding their own “hate speech” policies to allow for death threats against Russian military and certain leaders, like Vladmir “Puddin’” Putin and Belarusian President Alexander “Lucky” Lukashenko.
As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as 'death to the Russian invaders.' We still won't allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians.
— Meta (Facebook) spokesperson
Of course, the first person to avail himself of this opportunity (in my mind, at least) was Lindsey Graham, jubilantly tweeting: “The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.” Fucking Lindsey Graham… the man who never met a war he didn’t want someone else’s kids to die in. (I stole that line from Owen Shroyer.) But, I digress.
Facebook had done something similar in 2021 with regard to death threats against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei.
All very… interesting policy decisions, especially when viewed in totality. For these people, there are no principles only prevailing political winds.
Which brings us to the dreaded “hate speech.” We’ve already explored the legal framework for incitement, what about “hate speech?” After all, anti-Semitic remarks sure are hateful!
Well, first of all, as eloquently expressed by the Dutch courts, criticism of Israel or its policies, or even the call for the dissolution of the state of Israel as currently constituted, is not ipso facto anti-Semitism or “hate speech.”2
Second of all, legally in the United States, it does not matter anyway. Hate speech is legal. Hate speech is free speech.
“That’s why I’m a true believer in the First Amendment. I am an anti-authoritarian. And I know that the government has historically wielded its raw power to silence those who speak truth to power.”
— Lee Rowland, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) policy director
This warrants repetition. Hate speech is free speech.
Unfortunately, this is not true in some countries, and many Americans also either think hate speech is illegal in the U.S., or that it should be.
”It’s becoming more common to call for lower legal protections for speech—specifically, that we should criminalize ‘hate speech.’ I hear this from the left a lot,” said then-ACLU attorney (now ACLU policy director) Lee Rowland during her 2018 TedX Reno talk.
”I think many on the left would love a world where Mr. Kaepernick [failed NFL quarterback turned opportunistic race grifter] could take a knee without any worry the government would force the NFL to fire him, but where a government school would still have the power to expel Mr. Cytanovic [failed human being wielding tiki torch at the Unite the Right rally]. This is a dangerous proposition,” she continued. [Note: the parenthetical character bios are my satirical opinions, not Rowland’s.]
Rowland would elaborate later. ”Your idea of ‘hate speech’ may not be the government’s idea of ‘hate speech.’ I know mine isn’t. But even if you agree with [then-president] Trump—are you sure our next president will agree with your worldview? You shouldn’t be.
“That’s why I’m a true believer in the First Amendment. I am an anti-authoritarian. And I know that the government has historically wielded its raw power to silence those who speak truth to power.”
100% correct. Morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably correct.
And that is also why all of us who value liberty, regardless of other political views, should also be true believers. Trying to carve out exceptions for “hate speech” is indeed “a dangerous proposition,” and this without really delving into the enormous problem that even defining “hate speech” (much like inane “assault weapon” designations) is bound to yield overly vague and protean results (characteristics authoritarians prize for the power it affords them).
We should all be ever-vigilant in our opposition to onerous, nebulous “hate speech” laws.
Hate speech may be offensive and hurtful; however, it is generally protected by the First Amendment. One common definition of hate speech is “any form of expression through which speakers intend to vilify, humiliate or incite hatred against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, religion, skin color, sexual identity, gender identity, ethnicity, disability or national origin.” Courts have ruled that restrictions on hate speech would conflict with the First Amendment’s protection of the freedom of expression.”
— University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee website
I grew up in a bygone era that was ravaged by the rapturous cultural crusades of “the Right.” (Yes, we can certainly argue over the role of Lefties in that previous purge. Looking at you, Tipper!) Righteous Righties waved crooked fingers and well-worn Bibles at us during the so-called “Satanic Panic,” and threatened to take away my Ozzy Osbourne albums, my Dungeons & Dragons manuals, and my copy of Mortal Kombat… all for my own good, of course.
Nay… for the greater good! Or so the sermon went. For the salvation of our very souls, my brothers and sisters, we have to exorcise ourselves of the demonic influence of Harry Potter and Pikachu, can I get an amen, and liberate ourselves to embrace the rote repetition of a missionary-position lifestyle, freed to resign ourselves to quiet contemplation on EWTN, Pat Boon, and Parcheesi where the only acts we know are the Acts of the Apostles, my brothers and sisters, and the sweet salvation of The Lord’s Capitalism and Foreign Wars, are you with us or against us, verily I ask you: can I get an amen!?
It was quite the cultural “Crucible,” to coin a phrase.
Following the conformist demands of Satanic Panic in the 1980s, and the Family Values sermons of the 1990s, we were treated to the pièce de résistance in the 2000s with Monkey King George W. Bush’s “War on Concepts” and his political pulpit proclamation that “you’re either with us, or you’re with the turrrists.” Cue the Patriot Act: because the turrrists can’t hate you for your freedoms, if you ain’t free. *wink*
Not a fan.
Then, the 2010s hit and, as the ACLU’s Lee Rowland rightly observed above, calls for censorship were largely coming from the Loony Left. (And, yes, we can certainly argue over what, exactly, currently defines “the Left”—or any of the political terms brazenly and blithely bandied about nowadays—but this article is already turning into another novel-length behemoth!3) By the time Rowland gave her talk in 2018, Leftoids were completely subsumed in the frenzied ecstasy of cancel culture. Their online, torch-toting lynch mobs were sweeping over the cultural landscape like locusts, swarming through the dusty, digital archives of total strangers infidels in the hopes unearthing some errant joke or photo that would empower them to devour the dreams of their hapless victims. Any attempt to criticize this hive-mind plague was met with a wuthering wall of buzzing invectives with their venomous stingers of “-ists” and “-phobes.”
Not a fan.
“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “The Gulag Archipelago”
The sinister, authoritarian urge lurks inside the hearts of all men. I endeavor to oppose censors whether they are waving a holy book or a rainbow flag, and I am happy to find common cause with other liberty-loving people whether they are carrying a holy book or a rainbow flag.
I am forever grateful to my pals on the right4 for the acceptance and goodwill they showed this cantankerous contrarian after he had been demonized, denounced, and excommunicated from the Ever-Enlightened Church of Loving Liberalism for having the audacity to question if we were really sure that race hustlers, warmongers, and Big Pharma had our best interests at heart… and if men could spontaneously become women like a Jurassic Park T-Rex.
And that is why I must say, as a friend, I see the Right getting that gleam in its eye again when it comes to this Israel-Palestine thing.
Many of the same people who rightly railed against Leftoids wielding the Ring of Sauron to brand all opposition dangerous, phoberific, racist, hate speechers that must be fired, expelled, canceled, and preferably tossed in the gulag, now find themselves within reach of the Ring again… and the temptation is great. Whispering the magic word “anti-Semitism” lets them wield that terrible power for their own ends.
Of course, of course, it’s justified this time. It’s justified when we use the Ring. After all, you’re either with us, or you’re with the turrrrrists! Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
We’ve seen FOX News celebrate a law professor petitioning a legal firms to not hire his own “anti-Semitic” students, the right-wing host praising the message to stop hiring those who “don’t condemn terrorism.” How very reminiscent of the Leftoids’ “Silence is violence” mantra that was appropriately mocked by the Right for years. The comment section of the FOX News page is loaded with Republicans triumphantly typing the same platitudes paraded out by Democrats during their orgiastic cancel sprees:
hoosiertransplant898: “Publicly name those involved.”
bonacci: “We need a website that has a catalog of all these students; they're dangerous.”
noyb1: “You have a freedom to speech. You do NOT have freedom to run from the consequences!”
wilchas761: “Forget hiring; they shouldn't be allowed to take the bar exam. The conduct is sufficient to support this consequence.”
Liberalrater655: “Time to cancel them back. 😂”
We’ve seen the House of Representatives approve legislation, proposed by Republican Rep. Mike Lawler (N.Y.), that would bar institutions of higher learning from using related funds for “any event promoting antisemitism.” The major problem being that the legally binding amendment employs an overly broad definition of “antisemitism” that even its creator, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA), states is a “non-legally binding working definition.”
As the excellent free speech organization FIRE stated in their letter opposing this measure:
Statements supportive of Hamas or against the state of Israel, while heinous to many, do not intrinsically constitute material support for terrorism, incitement, discriminatory harassment, or true threats. If speech falls outside those narrow exceptions to the First Amendment as defined by the Supreme Court, government actors — including public universities — cannot burden, censor, or punish it. Private universities that promise students and faculty freedom of expression, as do the majority of private institutions nationwide, are likewise bound to honor their commitments to free speech.
We’ve seen that same vague IHRA definition (again, vagueness being a trait prized by authoritarians and ripe for abuse) used in House Resolution 894—proposed by a pair of Jewish Republicans, Reps. David Kustoff (Tenn.) and Max Miller (Ohio)—that flatly declares: “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.”
We’ve seen any number of cases where the Republican Right has once more succumb to the siren song of censorship, wielding fear and feelings to seize power and push agendas.
Speaking of feelings, most heartbreaking of all, is the freefall into madness of my beloved Ben Shapiro. (So dreamy!) Despite the Neocon pundit extraordinaire assuring me at every opportunity that “facts don’t care about my feelings,” he has spent nearly every waking moment since October 7th rapidly reciting feeling-fueling diatribes and rushing out specious stories in defense of killing Palestinian civilians. The only time he took a break was to attend a swanky dinner in his Love Boat cosplay where he… OK, he once again launched into a feeling-fueled diatribe, but this time it was to bash his fellow Daily Wire political commentator, Candace Owens, for asking questions and, apparently, for her “absolutely disgraceful” insistence that “there is no justification for a genocide.”
With heavy heart, I must join my old friend Tucker Carlson in humbly suggesting that it may be time for Ben to consider finding a new slogan.
In fact, some people have even accused Ben of posting fake, A.I. generated images of charred babies in his mad rush to “own the anti-Semites with facts and logic!” Others have defended him, saying the images are real. These types of debates are growing increasingly common.
I am not saying that particular image is real or not. I am not denying for an instant that real atrocities are being committed with real human victims. Of course, that reality is sickening and heartbreaking.
I am saying that this is where we are. Ghoulish online debates about whether pictures of smoldering babies are real. This tragedy was not lost on comedian Tim Dillon, one of the greatest minds, bodies, and real estate investors of our age. (Time-stamped links may not work, so the referenced bit is at 23:00 in case it doesn’t load automatically.)
Timmy sneaks in a subtle point there in his guffawing gallows rant about what passes for discourse nowadays, namely the line about the Iraq War and babies in incubators.
Flashback again to those bygone days of Satanic Panic and Family Values, back to October 10, 1990. A pretty young girl with large, plaintive eyes is testifying before the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus about the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait earlier that year. She was known only by a purportedly assumed name, “Nayirah,” and the media was asked to respect this to “protect her family,” of course. Her tremulous, tearful testimony told the tragic tale of her perilous flight from Kuwait and the various atrocities she witnessed along the way. One of these horrors, in particular, would prove the scene that launched a thousand Scud missiles: Iraqi soldiers tearing babies out of incubators and leaving them “to die on the cold floor.”
This grim image took hold of the public imagination. It became a rallying cry to deploy American troops, and eventually international forces, in a clearly virtuous and necessary war against these demonic Iraqi baby murderers. Nayirah’s brave testimony would not be in vain. Within a few short months, the United States’ Congress had authorized what would come to be known as the Gulf War. Countless lives would end unmourned in blood-soaked sands. Untold profits would be amassed in luxuriously-appointed boardrooms.
There were a few scattered voices even at the time who urged caution, who had questions about the validity of this story, the identity of this girl. They were summarily dismissed as monsters and madmen. After all, who would possibly fabricate something so depraved? Why would she lie about something like that?
We wouldn’t have formal answers until two years later. But the story was fabricated. And she did lie.
It turned out that the American public relation firm Hill & Knowlton, and actors within the American government itself, would fabricate something like that as part of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait public relations campaign in conjunction with the Kuwaiti Government. And it turned out that the young Nayirah would lie about it because she was coached to do so as part of that campaign, and because her full name was revealed to be Nayirah Al-Sabah, daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, in John R. MacArthur’s 1992 New York Times article. She had said that “Kuwait is our mother and the Emir our father,” but now her less allegorical lineage was known. Her “assumed name” was indeed to “protect her family,” but not in the way people assumed; it protected them from reprisal for using their daughter as a pawn to drag the world to war.
And that is precisely what her story did. People who did not live through this event may object to pinning too much responsibility on one girl’s four-minute testimony, but history can hinge on such moments. MacArthur details just one example of the impact this testimony had in his aforementioned 1992 article:
But before the war, the incubator story seriously distorted the American debate about whether to support military action. Amnesty International believed the tale, and its ill-considered validation of the charges likely influenced the seven U.S. Senators who cited the story in speeches supporting the Jan. 12 resolution authorizing war. Since the resolution passed the Senate by only six votes, the question of how the incubator story escaped scrutiny -- when it really mattered -- is all the more important. (Amnesty International later retracted its support of the story.)
Perhaps we should not have been so quick to dismiss inquiring minds as mere monsters and madmen. The reference to Amnesty International bears highlighting. These were “the experts” of the time regarding these matters. Then, as now, useful idiots who cowered behind appeals to authority and outsourced their thinking to corrupt or incompetent elites were weaponized as a de facto gestapo to police the dissidents in their midst and allow those elites to run rampant.
Some will surely point out that there was no shortage of confirmed transgressions that the Iraqi government had indeed committed under the iron fist of the brutal Saddam Hussein.5 This sentiment fueled the rationalizations of Representative Tom Lantos, then co-chair of the Congressional Human Rights Foundation who helped coordinate the Nayirah deception, when he defended his actions by saying: “If one hypothesizes that the woman's story is fictitious from A to Z, that in no way diminishes the avalanche of human rights violations.”
But that is to deliberately obfuscate the point, as Susan B. Trento pointed out in her book The Power House: Robert Keith Gray and the Selling of Access and Influence in Washington:
In the end, the question was not whether H&K [Hill & Knowlton] effectively altered public opinion, but whether the combined efforts of America's own government, foreign interests, and private PR and lobbying campaigns drowned out decent and rational, unemotional debate.
“… drowned out decent and rational, unemotional debate.”
This the heart of the issue. Sociopaths in high places have known for a very long time that enacting their self-serving machinations is easier with the support of a malleable, emotional people.
Each situation brings new challenges. And each task requires the support of the people, which can only be gained by untiring propaganda that brings the broad masses knowledge and clarity. No area of public life can do without it. It is the never resting force behind public opinion.
— Joseph Goebbels, Nuremberg Rally (1934)
Frank Mankiewicz, then vice chairman of Hill & Knowlton, said as much himself: “We disseminated information in a void as a basis for Americans to form opinions.”
The list of false flags and psychological operations that have been used to focus the credulous masses in the designated direction is interminable. That is why they do it: because it works. Like Charlie Brown taking one more kick at the football before Lucy pulls it away, the public somehow always falls for these tricks, in large part because they use extraordinarily emotional elements in order to short circuit the logical mind and to weaponize the masses themselves against any would-be saviors among them who would dare to question the narrative, instigating the masses to ostracize and revile these individuals.
“… drowned out decent and rational, unemotional debate.”
The masses will shout that “Now is not the time, you monster! People are dead!”
This was one of the main complaints Jewish comedian Ami Kozak lodged during his recent Israel-Palestine discussion with Daily Wire’s Candace Owens, where he too joined Ben Shapiro in condemning Candace’s abhorrent denunciation of genocide.
Something like: “The bodies weren’t even cold yet. People were still burying their dead, still mourning. If you must ask such horrible questions, can’t it at least wait a while? Until the bodies are buried?”
It’s a common sentiment. It’s a reasonable sentiment. It’s a compassionate sentiment. Nefarious leaders know this. And they weaponize it against us. The time will never be right, and by the time someone does dare to ask something so terribly impolite as “What is Nayirah’s last name anyway?” our corrupt leaders will already have moved on to the next war, to the next convenient emergency. The truth will be buried long before the bodies. Time and time again. And that is why such sentimentality must be resisted. Time and time again.
The masses will shout that “I’ve seen it on TV! I saw it myself!”
Just within the last few years we have been shown select footage of what the mainstream media assured us was “a violent insurrection!” Only years later, with more footage released, do we now also see mostly peaceful protestors walking through the capitol as police placidly stand by, or even fist-bump them. Regardless of what you saw on TV or some mainstream, mockingbird media site (for either side of the Uniparty), never forget that you saw what someone wanted you to see.
Perhaps it is some small mercy that often powers-that-be can’t even do that particularly well though. For example, last year we saw the verified account of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense tweet thrilling aerial war footage of their heroic ace, dubbed the “Ghost of Kyiv,” with the caption: “MiG-29 of the Air Force of the Armed Forces destroys the 'unparalleled' Su-35 of the Russian occupiers.” Slava Ukraini!
There were, however, a couple of minor problems.
The first problem was that the footage was not only not that of a the valorous “Ghost of Kyiv”… it was not real footage at all. It was taken from a video game, Digital Combat Simulator World. And this sort of thing had already happened before even in that conflict. The second problem was that the "Ghost of Kyiv" was never real to begin with. He, too, was a total fiction.
This is why we have to be skeptical. This is why we have to ask questions. This is why we have to do our own research. And, whether you like him or not, this is why a kangaroo court fined Alex Jones an unprecedented amount of money, tantamount to the GDP of a small nation.
If you hate this fact—if you hate waking up in a world where people stare with stony skepticism at a video of a sobbing child, if you hate reading about images of mutilated bodies undergoing digital analysis to check for surreptitious editing—do not blame the ones asking, the ones checking. Do not seek to silence the skeptics. Do not strive to censor conspiracy theories. To do so is to fall prey to the trap of the conspiratorial authoritarians who wear the flayed skins of empathy and civility as an armor against their most feared weapon: truth.
“… drowned out decent and rational, unemotional debate.”
That is the terrible truth. We have to. We have to ask if the pictures of burnt babies are real. We have to ask how we know if women were really raped to death. We have to ask the most horrible, repugnant questions because the horrible, repugnant authoritarians vying for control have proven they are willing to lie about anything to get what they want. They aren’t good, decent people, but they know that good, decent people are generally:
unable to intellectually comprehend that someone could actually commit such atrocity and deception
unwilling to emotionally engage with the possibility of such atrocity and deception
They are counting on these things to control us. We must be smarter. We must be tougher.
Yet, we must not lose our humanity in this process. We must proceed peacefully, legally, following truth wherever it leads. Not everything is a conspiracy. Not everyone in power is a villain. And even false flags can still have very real victims. We must not become the monsters we oppose.6
So, do not hate the skeptics; hate the monsters who have lied, deceived, and cheated their way to power. The skeptics are being made to to do this. To do what is necessary to avoid further atrocity and manipulation.
In fact, this Machiavellian treachery is so common that it has earned its own classification: atrocity propaganda. And that is just one of the myriad types of false flags and psychological operations at the disposal of malevolent elites.
We must defend the right to offend even well-intentioned and truly aggrieved parties—and Ben Shapiro—as we need the freedom to say unpleasant things, to ask appalling questions. We need to worry more about facts than feelings.
”The question is not ‘are you a conspiracy theorist,’ but ‘are you good at it?’”
— Brett Weinstein
This article is being released into the wild only a few days after December 7, 2023. On that day, 82 years ago (It feels like I’ve writing this for about that long as well.), the Japanese bombed the American naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, precipitating the United States’ entry into World War II. Then-president Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed the “sudden and deliberate” sneak attack America marked “a date which will live in infamy.” And that would certainly prove true, in many ways.
One way way it might be viewed as “infamous” relates to the theory that key individuals in American political and military circles knew about the attack beforehand and allowed it to happen to gin up the public support Roosevelt needed to pull America into an unpopular foreign conflict.
In the video above, self-deprecating, self-proclaimed garage-dwelling, pothead comedian Jimmy Dore—who still manages to out-journalism most MSM outlets on pretty much everything from Covid to Ukraine—discusses recent revelations proving the Israeli military had foreknowledge of the October 7th attack. Only a few short weeks ago, conservative commentator Charlie Kirk dared to ask some reasonable questions concerning the shocking success of that attack, and he was roundly condemned for being an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist. Now, we know that—at the very least—the IDF knew about the plans beforehand. And they reportedly may have taken some military personnel away from their posts? On the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War? And that they reportedly may have provided erroneous information about their military response? And that they reportedly may be rushing to bury evidence vehicles?
Now, to be fair to the Israeli Defense Force, it is possible they just fucked up. Hanlon’s Razor is a fun aphorism of dubious origin that cautions us “not to attribute malice to something that is adequately explained by stupidity.” Maybe Israel, the IDF, Mossad, the Iron Dome… maybe everyone involved with some of the most sophisticated, well financed intelligence and military operations in human history just fucked up and were hoodwinked by what we’re told are backwards savages on hand gliders who flew in like Shinobi 3 kite ninjas. It happens to the best of ‘em. Truly, it could be the case. It could be that Iranian funding, savvy technological trickery, and clever planning allowed for Hamas terrorists to pull off a horrific, unprecedented surprise attack, or that there was an unfortunate lapse of due diligence on the part of the IDF.
If that is the case, then that alone is cause for serious concern and frank discussion.
However, how many times do similar “mishaps” have to occur before we are the stupid ones for blindly deferring to Hanlon’s Razor instead of facing the chilling possibility that the real reason for a parade of politically expedient failures that just seem to keep happening at opportune times and in opportune ways for certain elites may be that a certain elites are orchestrating them… maliciously.
The following is a recent episodes of
“We’re not evil, you see, we’re just dumb! But keep supporting us anyway thanks.” (In a way, this does kind of sum up the sad state of low-expectation American political campaigns: “Sure, we’re morons, but, hey, the other guy is Hitler Satan so vote for us!”)
I’ve followed Heather and Brett for several years now, and I have found them to be as honest, intelligent, and courageous a couple as exist in this space. That is why I wasn’t surprised—though I was still impressed anew—when Brett dared to tactfully tackle the sordid history of Hamas and the aforementioned irregularities swirling around the October 7th attack in a candid discussion with the equally intrepid
conducted in a separate episode that can be found here. Their willingness to engage in “decent and rational, unemotional debate” should be as loudly lauded by the people as it is frantically feared by the Party.I can hear some of those Party zealots now:
“But, Apollo, all of this is just useless speculation!” they will squeal. “It’s bad. It’s… it’s… it’s dangerous and should be memory-holed immediately! After all, I hate it when Trump calls fake news ‘fake news,’ but I loooove it when my heroes call possibly, or even demonstrably, true stories ‘disinformation!’ Why don’t you just trust our benevolent overlords? Besides, it’s too soon. Give them time to bury the truth—erm, I mean, the bodies already!”
Let’s stick with the first sentence, shall we? Yes, it is just speculation. No, it is not useless. It was not until two years after Nayirah’s testimony that the mainstream press got around to asking what her last name was. How much damage had already been done at that point? And where are those “weapons of mass destruction” too, while we are at it? How different might history have been if we had paused to have that “decent and rational, unemotional debate” that Susan B. Trento longed for in her book about Hill & Knowlton’s power peddling? Seeking out the truth of a matter can take time and effort; it can lead down winding roads or even some cul-de-sacs, especially when the initial story presented to us is often a deliberate fabrication foisted on the public by highly motivated and powerful individuals invested in keep up their self-serving fiction. We have to start that tortuous journey anyway, or we’ll never arrive at truth.
Now, for a bit of levity after such heavy topics, here is a montage of authoritarians swinging Hanlon’s Sledgehammer around whenever someone points out that their “mistakes” conveniently always lead to immense personal gain for them at the expense of everyone else.
Humor can be a powerful weapon in the battle against dictators. Mel Brooks, famed comedy director, summed this up perfectly when asked about the protests surrounding his controversial, Oscar-award winning, 1967 film The Producers, a hilarious comedy about two struggling producers' unintentionally successful Hitler musical.
"Every rabbi in the world sent me a letter," Brooks, himself Jewish, recounted. “I said: ‘Listen, get on a soapbox with Hitler, you're gonna lose—he was a great orator. But if you can make fun of him, if you can have people laugh at him, you win.’”
I admire Brooks’s perspective here immensely. In fact, members of the Jewish community have long been among the most passionate and persuasive voices in defense of free speech.
Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of free speech to free men from bondage of irrational fears... Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty...
— Justice Louis Brandeis, Whitney v. California (1927)
Justice Louis Brandeis, “The People’s Lawyer,” served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939 and left behind an extraordinary legacy. Justice William O. Douglas observed:
Brandeis was a militant crusader for social justice whoever his opponent might be. He was dangerous not only because of his brilliance, his arithmetic, his courage. He was dangerous because he was incorruptible... [and] the fears of the Establishment were greater because Brandeis was the first Jew to be named to the Court.”
Though Brandeis did concur with the Schenk decision I criticized earlier, he would not only grow more staunch in his defense of free speech over time, but some credit him with pulling fellow justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in that direction as well. Legal historian Anthony Lewis said in his book Make No Law: The Sullivan case and the First Amendment that scholars claim Brandeis’s opinion in Whitney v. California (1927) was "perhaps the greatest defense of freedom of speech ever written by a member of the high court.”
“For people who today claim to be passionate about social justice to establish free speech as an enemy is suicidal.”
— Ira Glasser, former ACLU executive director
In 2018 (the same year ACLU attorney Lee Rowland—whom we discussed earlier in this article—gave her speech citing increased calls for censorship from the left), a leaked internal memo exposed the ideological rot consuming the ACLU, detailing, for example, their new policy of declining cases based on “the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values.”
”…others whose views are contrary to our values.”
The values of the ACLU used to be defending everyone’s right to express all views equally! Cherry-picking politically palatable voices to defend is contrary to the ACLU’s values. Or at least, it was.. under Mighty Ira.
Ira Glasser served as executive director of the ACLU from 1978 to 2001 and was the subject of the 2020 documentary Mighty Ira. He was a towering bulwark protecting free speech and privacy rights throughout his storied tenure, but one story in particular has come to epitomize the true commitment to the principle of free speech.
In 1977, the ACLU successfully defended a neo-Nazi group’s right to march through Skokie, Illinois (home of many Holocaust survivors) at the Supreme Court level in National Socialist Party of America (NSPA) v. Village of Skokie. The case caused a national stir, and the principled defense of the First Amendment by the ACLU and Jewish members like Ira was met with vociferous denunciation from many other Jewish organizations and individuals. Some estimates indicated 30,000 members left the ACLU in protest. However, the precedent established has helped curtail authoritarian encroachment for decades, and it is a tragedy that today Glasser doubts the ACLU has the vision and values to take such a case or to weather the withering attacks that would entail.
It has also helped demonstrate how to combat deceitful and hateful speech from pernicious organizations like the NSPA. That answer is not censorship. The people of Skokie exercised their right to march and organized counter-protests through groups like Chutzpah Jewish Liberation Collective. By the time the date of the event had drawn near, the vile Nazis had cancelled their march in Skokie.
Like many of the other legendary free speech champions highlighted throughout this article, Ira understood that the issue was not the content of the speech, but rather allowing institutions to determine who can speak, or—in his own words—“The only important question about a speech restriction is not who is being restricted but who gets to decide who is being restricted.”
”I actually think it’s in the interest of Jews to have a strong First Amendment,” Ira has noted, “because as a minority, they are more likely to be targets of government restrictions on speech than anybody.”
“I’m saying if you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”
— Noam Chomsky
Another Jewish free speech champion who suffered immense blowback for his principled defense of views he despised was linguist, author, and activist Noam Chomsky. Video of Noam delivering the brilliant quotation above, and several other pithy points, can be found here. His pellucidly stated position is, by his own account, essentially the same thing Voltaire famously penned in his 1770 letter to Abbot le Riche: "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write."
The greatest test of Chomsky’s dedication to that ideal came during the infamous “Faurisson Affair” that kicked off in the late 1970s.
Robert Faurisson was a literature professor at University of Lyon, France who had come under scathing criticism and legal prosecution for his assertion that there had been no Holocaust, no genocide of the Jewish people under Hitler in World War II. An essay of Chomsky’s was included as an introduction in Faurisson’s book. Despite intense pressure to join in the clamorous call to censor, ban, and even imprison Faurisson, Chomsky—himself a Jew who had previously referred to the horror of the Holocaust as "the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in human history"—doubled down on his principled defense of free speech. His spectacular 1981 essay in The Nation, “His Right to Say It,” should be read by every living person on Earth.
In fact, I contend that Chomsky’s closing line in that work is the single most savage “mic drop” on the topic of censoring anti-Semitic speech that has ever been penned:
It seems to me something of a scandal that it is even necessary to debate these issues two centuries after Voltaire defended the right of free expression for views he detested. It is a poor service to the memory of the victims of the holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of their murderers.
“It is a poor service to the memory of the victims of the holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of their murderers.”
Boom.
Voltaire would be proud.
So, when carping, caviling censors and their authoritarian overlords try to shut down discourse because “anti-Semitism,” or any other pretense, think of these proud, courageous, brilliant Jewish individuals and the countless attacks they endured in their defenses of free speech for all people.7 Their actions inform us as to the proper response to those censors and authoritarians…
“Go. Fuck. Yourself.”
Which brings us back to Elon. (You thought I forgot about him, didn’t you?)
On November 29th, not long after the Return of the Jedi Doge from his Israeli apology tour previously planned trip and his quixotic-at-best banning of certain phrases dubbed anti-Semitic from Twitter (X), Elon was back on stage at the New York Times’ poorly spaced DealBook Summit. Boy, was he back.
While there, weasel-man chimera and host Andrew Ross Sorkin was asking Elon his thoughts about the public perception that Elon had gone on an “apology tour” to placate advertisers who were reconsidering using X when a jubilantly defiant Elon cut in to chirp, “I hope they don’t,” going on to clarify amid Sorkin’s growing confusion that any advertisers, like Disney’s Bob Iger, who were trying to “blackmail” him into self-censoring or making more onerous policy changes could go fuck themselves.
”Go. Fuck. Yourself.” he reiterated for the mentally impaired, people like Sorkin and Leftoids who think Elon Musk is a Nazi.
No matter what you think of Elon, you owe him bigly for the pure comedy gold of a stunned Sorkin stammering in the crater of Elon’s F-Bomb: ”Let me ask you then… how do you th-think a-a-about the…. economics… of X…?”
Sorkin’s brain could not compute the idea that anyone would not make every single decision in their life based solely on their bank account. Like Citizen Kane whispering “Rosebud,” the one great, pure love of Sorkin’s life came unconsciously tumbling across his lips in that mind-shattered moment: “Economics.”
Handsome Boy Glenn Greenwald discusses this latest development as well here.
Hearing Greenwald recount his visceral response (Spoilers: it was “Go fuck yourself.”) to The Intercept (his Intercept) attempting to censor his article on the Hunter Biden laptop summed up why I appreciate his work so much. Glenn has that surly, contrarian, pathologically anti-authoritarian bend that makes for good reporters. Glenn also aptly describes the tension between advertisers and journalists that permeates the industry. Or used to. Or should.
I remember when I was working as reporter, back when something called newspapers existed. (They were like an internet you could smudge.) We would refer to the newsroom as “Gondor” and the advertising department (quarantined away on the far end of the building so as not to contaminate us) as “Mordor.” Affectionately, of course. But still.
One could almost forgive an entrepreneur like Musk for prioritizing ad revenue above all else, and yet, here he is, mounting the lone resistance against this unholy, fascist fusion of State actors, megacorps advertisers, and ostensibly private media and tech organizations while that same revolting apparatchik media demand even more censorship. The journalists should be the ones with a few choice words for officious corporate bullies. But they aren’t. Instead it is a single pudgy, eccentric autist who is defiantly holding the line while catching flack from all sides. Perhaps, as Greenwald speculates, taking said flack again immediately returning from an apology pilgrimage that was meant to ameliorate that situation rebooted GoFuckYourself.exe in Elon’s operating system.
”I think it is very telling and interesting that Musk got to the point were he said it,” Greenwald said, “but it think even more telling is the fact that so many journalists were horrified. We need way more journalists willing to say ‘Go fuck yourself!’ to people who try and limit what they say.”
We should all be willing to say that, while we still can. Anything less is an affront to the many great men and women who sacrificed greatly in defense of our free speech and an abandonment of the brave few still forming that phalanx.
Post-credits scene:
I happen to believe that Elon has some genuine interest in free speech and combatting the Woke Mind Virus, and I think many of the things he has achieved are praise-worthy; I respect and admire him for his accomplishments. It could be the Greek in me: our heroes were never perfect and rarely virtuous in any modern, let alone Christian, sense. They were merely extraordinary. And it is generally distasteful to me to see petty spectators, safe in the stands, hurling stones and invectives at the man in the arena (as Teddy would call him), regardless of that man’s flaws and failings. A lot of people have a ton of money and power: they still aren’t doing what Elon is doing. They are groveling before their new god, ESGsus. So, I’m rooting for Elon. I think in saner times people like him (and J.K. Rowling) would be widely celebrated instead of largely reviled by both sides. However, that is completely irrelevant.
It is hard to share a comment from anyone nowadays, let alone praise something someone did, without people from across the political spectrum rushing to remind you of the usually unrelated bad thing that person said or did. For the most part, I don’t care. People are complicated. People change. And as the line from Solzhenitsyn featured earlier reminds us: “The line separating good and evil passes… right through every human heart.” Myself certainly included. I am not one for purity tests in these matters.
Elon could indeed be doing this just to amuse himself. He could be doing this for downright dastardly, demonic reasons. It could all be part of some elaborate plot. He could have gone to Israel and apologized simply because he genuinely felt that was warranted, as a thinking, feeling human being. A righteous disdain for our modern struggle-session society makes it easy to forget that sometimes people really do feel remorseful or have a reasonable change of heart. Or the entire thing could have been a calculated P.R. move gone wrong. Outside of picking a manslaughter charge, intent is greatly overrated, especially when attempting to assign it to someone else.
Even in a worst-case scenario where his endgame was something nefarious, we should still celebrate and push forward any positive momentum his machinations may create along the way, use “the elites’” overconfidence against them and move the ball forward. Or if you prefer an Aikido or Judo analogy, we use their momentum against them. And this is even in a worst case scenario where Evil Elon is actively playing a part in total lockstep with the powers-that-be to fake space, implant Mark of the Beast microchips in our brains, and enslave all of mankind. It’s possible. Maybe he’s a triple agent. A quadruple agent! How would any of us know?
What we do know is that a man of his success, power, wealth, and prominence dominating the news cycle by telling even more powerful corporate egregores to “Go fuck themselves!” will have a huge impact on the milieu. You can see it in the rancor of the MSM and Uniparty types bellowing outrage with each of his latest moves. And in how they have turned the full power of the media and bureaucratic Death Star against him. Labeled him an “anti-Semite,” and every other epithet. Attempted to subject him to various manner of blackmail and struggle session.
For many living in fear under the yolk of Woke Corporate Tyranny, Elon’s words can spark a sense of hope and defiance, akin to a young me listening to Zack de la Rocha shout “FUCK YOU I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!” Is Rage Against the Machine now apparently just one more corporate sellout requiring “vaccine” cards for show-goers? Seems so. But that doesn’t undo the damage to the Party that they did instilling that righteous rebellion and independence in me.
And Musk has already done enormous, demonstrable damage to the Party in his time with Twitter (X), as I laid out in the three posts I linked at the top of this article… 82 years ago. Even Yaccarino seems oddly accepting of some free speech following Elon’s latest comment, but even I am far from optimistic there. We should be ever vigilant, wary, and critical. And never seeking to censor the skeptics.
When it comes to Musk—or any CEO, celebrity, or politician—we may do well to be less concerned with perceived traits and more concerned with their discernible actions. I support the actions of such people when I believe they are moving the ball forward. If they are not, I do not support them. Of course, this gets me blasted with “Apu Takes a Bullet” memes whenever I support Musk’s actions or peppered with TDS-laden diatribes whenever I support Trump’s policies because the people upset usually do look to such people as pals or, worse yet, either messianic Paragons of Virtue or demonic Hitler Satans. I do not… except for Hillary Clinton who is clearly an 8th-dimensional, demonic reptile lord.
I am convinced that Manichean, black-pilled purity tests or fuzzy Q-Score feelings are not helpful in making the kind of incremental gains we will need to win in the long run, nor in inspiring ourselves and others to keep our chins up and take pragmatic wins where we can get them.
Of course, you are free to think and say whatever you like as well, as we all should be.
Update: Since this article was published, Elon has indeed reinstated Alex Jones.
It should go without saying, but just in case: nothing in this article is to defend or support actual anti-Semitism or any other bigoted, idiotic ideology. Quite the opposite, it is to say that it is to be combatted with free speech: its stupidity exposed and its hatefulness denounced. Also, specious, scurrilous accusations of something diminishes the impact of those accusations when leveled justly.
One could also certainly make the case for using the term “Uniparty” to describe the unholy blob of corruption that oozes atop the political pyramid… and across the aisle.
Shoutout to my Indies and Dirtbag Lefties too!
Others yet will undoubtedly wish to discuss how much more of this “conflict” was a deep state psy-op and how many other individuals and leaders were merely playing a part, but due to the scope of that discussion I can only encourage people to avail themselves of the many great works on that topic already.
It should go without saying, but just in case: nothing in this article is to deny or diminish the unfathomable suffering of all victims of terrorism, violence, or war. Quite the opposite, it is to say that we owe it to real victims to determine the true causes of these atrocities, to hold accountable those responsible, and to not allow contrived fictions to capitalize on their anguish.
Honorable mention to the late, great Jewish comedienne and talk show host Joan Rivers for having GWAR on her show and for calling out Big Mike.
"The sinister, authoritarian urge lurks inside the hearts of all men. I endeavor to oppose censors whether they are waving a holy book or a rainbow flag, and I am happy to find common cause with other liberty-loving people whether they are carrying a holy book or a rainbow flag." I cannot tell you how much i love this sentiment. I will stand with it forever. I think a sacred space should be made for vitriol. It is not evil, it is a sign of imbalance that needs attention. censoring will make it worse. it will fester.
I am late to read this. Thank you for linking in Notes today.
If I went through point-by-point on everything I like about this essay/article/post/thingy, and also quoted back every humorous, delightful turn of phrase, my comment would be half as long as the piece on which I comment.
I will quote but one of the many quotable moments, not because it is superior to the rest, but because it was near the end, hah!
"...except for Hillary Clinton who is clearly an 8th-dimensional, demonic reptile lord." 80's me says, "Big time!" 🤣
Your skill with witty prose and well-crafted phrasing tends to make me nauseatingly gushy, and I am endeavoring to be less slobbery, so I will simply conclude with: very well done! I look forward to catching up on more that I have missed.