Biden is ‘Fighting’ Hamas for Biden’s Interests

by Victoria White Berger at American Thinker 

The history of radical Muslim envy and hatred towards the Jews and the Christians is too lengthy to recount here. However, we can start with Obama and his enduring predilections for the terrorist radical Muslim regimes in the Middle East and Africa. Biden worked for Obama. Remember all the fawning photos of Biden grinning at the Boss?

Not many American presidents would have picked a vice president with such a long history of venality and stupidity in D.C., but Obama picked Biden. It probably was a marriage made in Hell: Biden would do as he was told, and Obama would keep the intelligence receipts on Biden’s family enterprises and international pay-to-play treachery locked safely away.

Obama armed Iran. Obama released known terrorists from Gitmo. Obama is now very rich. Biden smiled through it all. Obama’s vicious persecution of the Little Sisters of the Poor is telling:

And yet, despite the fact that nothing says “ideological extremism” more than forcing nuns to entangle with abortion and nothing says “blind to the political environment” like refusing to back off, the Obama administration is refusing to back off.

Good Catholic Vice President Biden kept smiling at the Boss.

The Judeo-Christian tradition founded America, like it or not; Biden is a ‘not’ -- that is clear from his dealings with Christian persecution:

Open Doors releases its annual World Watch List 2023 confirming that one out of every seven Christians in the world suffers high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.

Christians have been martyred and driven out of the Middle East -- few are left. Biden’s crocodile tears for the plight of Christian refugees is attested in the current pathetic numbers of Christian refugees admitted into the U.S. Biden prefers that terrorists come here illegally, rather than allow Christian refugees, driven from their homes and countries, legal admittance into our country:

In 2021, President Biden set the refugee ceiling at 15,000 -- the lowest since the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act, which sets the parameters for the current refugee resettlement system. That ceiling was later raised to 65,000 after faith groups protested.

This past year, the ceiling was set at 125,000 -- however, the U.S. only resettled about 60,000 refugees in fiscal year 2023, according to the “Closed Doors” report.

As Biden treats his brother and sister Christians with the same distain recognized so often in his old boss, then what hope do we have for his treatment of the Jews?

Israel is not only fighting Hamas. Israel is fighting for the future of Western culture and values, according to MK Sharren Haskel.

The chair of the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus and a prominent international advocate for Israel, Haskel, last week led a small delegation of Knesset members and ambassadors on a visit to southern Israel. Her purpose extended beyond showcasing the harrowing destruction in Israel's kibbutzim; it was to engage in a crucial discussion about the potential consequences should Israel not emerge victorious in its war against Hamas.

"We are preventing an international intifada," Haskel told The Jerusalem Post. "In America, Paris, Barcelona, they [extremist Muslims] are chanting for the massacre and murder of people who do not believe in Islam but believe in Western values.

“"The Christians were the most persecuted minority in the Middle East," she continued. "They are almost done with the Christians. Obviously, the Jews are next."

Biden’s nod and wink towards the recent violent demonstrations in D.C. and elsewhere, notably in areas of larger Muslim populations, in support of the “Palestinians,” is what we should have expected; we can expect a good deal more.

What has Biden done to get the Israeli hostages released? Well, what has he done to get the Americans trapped in Gaza home? He has proposed “pauses” in the war to complete these tasks. Hamas will not pause. If there is anything strategic in that notion, it is a strategy to benefit Hamas.

Why did the Biden administration call for a ceasefire? The retraction of the call is trivial; but not as trivial as the rationale: a ceasefire to get the hostages released? How many times have we seen this movie? Terrorists do not negotiate, even a child would understand the essential irony of that position.

Biden held ‘listening sessions’ for the White House staff -- really, soft protests against Israel -- on October 13, not even two weeks after the Hamas massacre:

“The White House meetings come as the administration is facing pushback from Arab-American leaders and many Arab- and Muslim-Americans at the State Department are unhappy with the U.S. approach to the war. JOSH PAUL, a director at State’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, resigned over the administration’s handling of the conflict.”

The Biden White House is not lacking in Obama holdovers and/or radical Muslim sympathizers.

A cautionary summary for both Jews and Christians is here, from Gil Troy in The Jerusalem Post:

Diaspora Jews need a five-part battle plan:

The occupation preoccupation still has many American Jews seeing Hamas’s massacre through West Bank prisms. But Israel withdrew completely from Gaza in 2005 – and Gazans decided to try destroying our state, not build theirs. That’s why Hamas raided Israeli villages within the Green Line, the 1949 armistice lines. That provides moral clarity – especially because no one deserves to suffer what Israel’s civilians endured.

Biden’s responses to Hamas might be called trite if they were not clearly appeasement. If Christians and Jews dismiss the writing on the wall, we may soon taste and see a personal share of the violent tragedies and injustices that radical Muslim hatred levels at any creed except its own.

X22, And we Know, and more- November 12

 

The Federal Government Is an Ever-Growing, Out-of-Control Monster

posted by Jeff Davidson at Townhall 

Believe it or not, the federal debt during the time of President Ronald Reagan was $1 trillion. By 2020, it had grown to $30 trillion. Then, in less than three years, Joe Biden has increased the debt by another $2.5 trillion.

Our total debt is now more than 75 times that of 1920. As the government grows irrevocably, our individual liberties suffer. More legislation and regulation, and more of everything, hampers the ability of citizens to live their lives freely. The far-Left Biden Administration is well aware of this.

Self-regarded Elites

Unimaginably, a staggering 500 federal agencies currently operate with almost no oversight. They procure items that our nation cannot afford, launch studies that are marginal at best, and manipulate the government in ways that the Founding Fathers could not have foreseen. 

These government agencies, headed by self-regarded elites, hire contractors in ever-burgeoning numbers. Since Biden took office, federal contracts that fall outside the regulations have made quantum leaps. Biden and company cannot issue them fast enough. Government Accountability Office (GAO) data shows that even before the useless expenditures to contain COVID-19, the Federal Government spent $665 billion on contracts, a $70 billion increase from the year before.

Does this wave of contractors fulfill needs? Not often. With sleight-of-hand maneuvers, many contractors fail to resolve issues and add to them. Worse, many contractors are awarded sums that do not remain within the bounds of the federal acquisition regulations.

Massive Debt is Not Pretty

What about the debt on these expenditures and the rising federal deficit itself? Accumulating debt costs money, and federal debt interest is paid to countries such as China and Japan. Since Biden was installed, the nation's annual interest on our accumulated debt now stands at $663 billion, projected to rise to $745 billion in 2024 and $1.4 trillion in 2033. This is not mere fiscal irresponsibility; it is insanity. 

Our finances are now a house of cards. Not only are we vulnerable to countries that would prefer to see us destroyed, but the Federal Reserve also cannot manage effectively. Combined with the utterly foolish Biden Administration policy of reducing our domestic energy production, inflation has nowhere to go but dramatically upward.

Conversations in typical households across America are about the rising prices in supermarkets. Our Federal Government spends far more money than it collects via taxes, so it is forced to print money not backed by anything. Thus, the value of the dollar incessantly diminishes with the passage of time.

In 1940, federal employment hovered at around 700,000 people, and federal contracting was minimal. By 2014, federal civilian employment had grown to 2 million people, 2.85 million by 2020, and around 3 million today. Growth in the number of federal employees, in and of itself, speaks volumes. All of those workers, many of whom contribute little or nothing to our economy, are paid wages and benefits and then, in retirement, continue to feed at the government trough for decades. 

A Branch of Government unto Themselves

President Harry Truman once said, "You can't get rich in politics unless you're a crook." That might have been true at the time. Today, federal employees and elected officials are well off and becoming more so as we speak. We already know the vast wealth accumulated by those elected to Congress and how much more they can gain once they leave Congress and work for lobbying firms, big pharma, and big energy.

From an employment standpoint, the federal government is so out of control that we are approaching one federal employee for every 100 citizens as if anybody in the 50 states ever needed such bureaucracy. And those figures do not include government contractors.

Many of these employees are lifers with well-established agendas that might or might not coincide with the government's executive, legislative, and judicial branches. In essence, they are a branch of government unto themselves, stifling policies that they don't like and advocating and promulgating those that they do without your vote. 

They operate as if they alone know what’s best for society. Much of what they do is simply best for them. So, it's unsurprising that six of the most affluent counties in America circle Washington DC.

Victims Of Erasing Sex Distinctions Lead Growing Coalition Against Trans Mutilation

From detransitioners to parental rights activists, the Genspect conference featured a who’s who of those fighting gender ideology.

Jennifer Lahl reporting for The Federalist

Last week in Denver, several hundred people gathered in person for the Genspect conference, “The Bigger Picture,” while many more from all over the world joined online. Genspect’s founder, Stella O’Malley, has the intentional strategy of hosting their annual conference at the same time and in the same location as the annual World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) meeting. 

Last year they gathered in Killarney, Ireland, when WPATH met there, and next year they will host their gathering in Lisbon, Portugal, piggybacking off of the WPATH dates and location. It’s an interesting strategy offering WPATH attendees to come to Genspect’s sessions for free whereby they can engage with a different perspective, as well as putting WPATH on notice that there is a growing movement of those who want to offer a “healthy approach to sex and gender.”

I was unable to attend their gathering last year in Ireland, but when O’Malley invited me to speak at the Denver conference, I was happy to accept. The speaker’s list was a who’s who of those fighting gender ideology, some for many years.

On the Front Lines of the Gender Wars

Michael Shellenberger opened the conference with a bold claim that time is up for WPATH and that soon he would release his “WPATH files” on his Substack, where he will show the receipts he has on the pseudoscientific standards of care and practices of WPATH. Amid robust applauses, attendees were encouraged to post on X using #TimesUpWPATH. A lifelong member of the Democrat Party, he lamented how far the left has fallen from the principles that drew him to that party.

Highlights for me were hearing from the brilliant Leor Sapir on “Institutional Capture (How gender ideology has been embedded within America).” Sapir chronicled Obama’s 2010 anti-bullying initiative, which was at first sex-based directed, and then expanded in 2011 to include gender language in the antibullying initiative.

Following this was the 2015 letter from James Ferg Cadima in the Office of Civil Rights, stating, “The Department’s Title IX regulations permit schools to provide sex-segregated restrooms, locker rooms, shower facilities, housing, athletic teams, and single-sex classes under certain circumstances. When a school elects to separate or treat students differently on the basis of sex in those situations, a school generally must treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity.”

Wonder how America got to this place? Perhaps a well-intentioned initiative to combat bullying quickly led us down the path where boys can have access to spaces that were once protected for girls.

Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright and scientist Heather Heying did an excellent job, patiently and thoroughly stating the obvious, that there remain only two sexes no matter what others assert. They marveled at the fact that even once-trusted scientific journals are now claiming that “The idea of two sexes is overly simplistic.”

Two mothers, January Littlejohn and Erin Friday, gave impassioned speeches about their daughters who believed the lie that they were born in the wrong body. Littlejohn spoke about her daughter’s middle school working behind their back to encourage this idea and talked about her decision to bring forth a lawsuit, restoring rights and protections to parents over their own children.

Friday, an attorney by training who works with Our Duty, had many in tears using Hans Christian Anderson’s story of “The Snow Queen” to parallel her own efforts to save her daughter from the evils of gender ideology. She is a force in the state of California, fighting laws passed by Gov. Gavin Newsom while trying to raise funds to get initiatives on the ballot to put before voters which will protect children and parental rights. She appealed to the audience that if the transing of children can be stopped in California this will have an enormous positive effect across the whole country.

Stories of Destransitioning and Whistleblowers

Any conference like the one hosted by Genspect naturally needs to include the voices of those most harmed by “gender affirmation therapy,” those who transitioned and have now detransitioned once they realized their decision to transition didn’t fix any of their mental health issues, and as is often the case, made things worse. Chloe Cole and Prisha Mosley both spoke about their deeply personal experiences. Many other detransitioners attended the conference as well. It was wonderful to see how their tragic stories have brought them together in the spirit of camaraderie. 

And who doesn’t love a good whistleblower story like Jamie Reed? Reed blew up the internet back in February with her expose, “I thought I was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle.”

Since 2018, Reed served as a case manager at Washington University, in their Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, until she came to the realization that she could no longer condone the treatment children were receiving. Her remarks at Genspect were a rallying cry for the political left to wake up and stop harming children. As a lifelong leftist, she implored the audience not to give up on the left, but to help them return to principles.

The title of my own talk — “Transgender Assisted Reproduction: where is this going?” — was a convergence on my years of work in assisted reproductive technology and how this technology will most likely be needed by trans-identifying people, especially children who are fast-tracked to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries. 

When I first found out that children were being offered fertility preservation procedures, knowing that “gender affirmation care” harms natural and normal fertility, I began speaking up and producing documentary films about the lack of medical ethics and evidence-based medicine supporting these practices. Pre-puberty, children are offered to cryopreserve their ovarian or testicular tissue because their gametes, (ova and sperm) are not yet mature. Post-puberty, the child will have mature ova and sperm, so they are offered to freeze and bank their gametes. 

The data is clear. Most assisted reproductive technology cycles fail. Data is coming out about the harms and risks to children being created by these technologies. The maxim, “First, Do No Harm” is being ignored in offering hope of future children, when in fact this is considered an experimental procedure with no data on this population. From the audience’s reactions and comments, it was clear that this is a whole new level of doubling down on harming children to advance an ideology that ignores biological reality, evidence-based medicine, and medical ethics.

Times up, WPATH.

Pentagon UFO Chief Not Ruling Out Aliens 'in Our Backyard'

Ward Clark reporting for RedState 

A major Pentagon figure has a dire warning for the United States: There may be aliens in our backyard. Or a super-secret Chinese spy craft. Or a super-secret Russian spy craft. Or something. 

This week, the director of the U.S. government’s UFO analysis office stated that there is “evidence” of concerning unidentified flying object activity “in our backyard.” According to physicist Seán Kirkpatrick, who heads the congressionally-mandated All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, this alarming UFO activity can be attributed to one of two extraordinary sources: either a foreign power or “aliens.” 

To be sure, the ramifications of either would be significant. But Kirkpatrick’s comments, which come as he is about to retire after a 27-year defense and intelligence-focused career, are more intriguing because he also says that “none” of the hundreds of military UFO reports analyzed by his office recently “have been positively attributed to foreign activities.”  

Well, I guess that leaves aliens. Goldie Hawn will be relieved to know she didn't just imagine the whole thing. But take a look at the somewhat dodgy wording of that Pentagon statement; it is as though Mr. Kirkpatrick (does he wear a black suit and dark glasses while on the job?) is saying, in effect, "I'm not saying it's aliens, but... It's aliens."

At the same time, Kirkpatrick and senior defense officials have ruled out the possibility that secret U.S. programs or experimental aircraft explain the phenomena. 

While suspicious UFO cases will “continue to be investigated” for foreign links, the facts at hand appear to support Kirkpatrick’s more startling explanation for the UFO activity in America’s backyard: “aliens.”

Uh-huh.

One has to ask (for what seems like the 10,000 time), why would our solar system and our planet draw any particular alien attention? There's nothing here on Earth that they couldn't get much more easily somewhere else. Water, oxygen, and other volatiles? Forget the asteroid belt; they don't need to come that far into the Sun's gravity well. The Oort Cloud is loaded with chunks of ice, laced with all matter of other substances. Methane for fuel, or other hydrocarbons? Saturn's moon Titan literally has oceans of liquid hydrocarbons (Don't tell the Doom Pixie, or she'll be picketing Saturn next.) And why is the Pentagon getting involved in this? Presumably, this is more in NASA's wheelhouse.

It just doesn't make any logical sense, especially when you consider the solar system's Galactic Yelp rating; only one star.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. We're not talking about President Trump in a Swedish steak proof, we're talking about something more substantial. If alien spacecraft had visited Earth, they would have come from a civilization that is thousands, maybe millions of years more advanced than us. There would be no reason for them to be stealthy. They wouldn’t bother to hide from us. We would very likely be of no more consequence to them than an ant-bed is to us. Their presence would almost certainly be obvious and probably wouldn’t end too well for us humans. And in these modern times, when almost everyone carries around a device with a high-resolution camera built in -- and when plenty of folks never seem to pry their faces away from the damn things -- still, to this day, nobody has ever produced a clear, unambiguous photograph of an alien or an alien spaceship.

Grading Elon Musk’s First Year At Twitter: 4 Major Wins But Much Room For Improvement

There’s much work to do, but Musk has taken several positive steps in line with his commitment to restore free speech.

by Jeremy Tedesco for The Federalist

It’s been just over a year since Elon Musk tweeted a picture of himself holding a sink in the Silicon Valley headquarters of the world’s most influential social media platform.

Conjuring a dad joke worthy of a man with 11 children, Musk posted: “Entering Twitter HQ — let that sink in!”

Musk’s actions since finalizing the $44 billion acquisition have more than made up for the opening groaner. During his first year at the helm of the company now known as “X,” Musk has taken several positive steps in line with his initial commitments to restore free speech on the platform.

No doubt, there’s much work to do — including a much-needed elimination and rethink of Musk’s “freedom of speech, not reach” governing philosophy, which we’ll explore below. But it’s fitting to start with a few major highlights from Musk’s first year.

Highlight 1: Exposing Government Pressure to Censor Content

For starters, Musk’s decision to release hundreds of thousands of emails between Twitter employees and officials in the federal government via the “Twitter Files” has had perhaps the most profound effect on restoring the public’s trust.

Tabbing independent journalists like Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger as recipients of the email trove, Musk took the gamble that by doing so, he would expose some of the worst examples of the government’s pressure on social media companies to censor. Musk’s gamble paid off. Big time.

Since the first round of reporting went live in early December 2022, the American public has been privy to online censorship attempts originating from the Biden administration White House, FBI, Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC, the surgeon general, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, and more.

For years, the Biden administration has pressured Silicon Valley companies to silence views that conflict with the government’s approved talking points on issues as far-ranging as climate change, abortion, economic policy, the sexes, and Covid-19 policy.

In one instance leading up to the 2020 presidential election, an email shows Twitter (now X) executives moving to censor speech based on a single flag from Homeland Security. In another, an FBI official sent Twitter a long list of names suspected of “misinformation” — resulting in their immediate suspension.

While troubling enough, the censorship went beyond the ill-defined category of “misinformation.” In one email chain, for example, Facebook assures a White House official that it was also suppressing “often-true content” that conflicted with the government’s position.

Information divulged through the “Twitter Files” is prominently featured in a case, Murthy v. Missouri, now taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court. A ruling in that case could protect against future attempts by government entities to indirectly violate First Amendment freedoms by pressuring private companies to censor in ways the government cannot.

Even more recently, a report by the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government shed more light on the government’s coordination with Twitter and other social media giants to censor the speech of conservatives, including The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway and Sean Davis.

Highlight 2: Dissolving the Orwellian ‘Trust and Safety Council‘

While accompanied by considerably less fanfare than the “Twitter Files,” Musk’s dissolving of the company’s so-called “Trust and Safety Council” in mid-December also marked a crucial step toward restoring free speech on the platform.

Introduced in 2016, the council was the company’s purported attempt to “strike the right balance between fighting abuse and speaking truth to power.” In reality, the group comprised around 100 organizations that over the years included highly partisan groups like the highly discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, GLAAD, and the Anti-Defamation League, and it wielded unchecked authority to throttle accounts and tweets — which it regularly used to silence political opponents.

As Taibbi reported, company employees, including the council’s head, Yoel Roth, were acting in lock-step with federal agencies including the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of National Intelligence.

Simply by pulling the plug on the council, Musk made significant progress in distancing his company from its well-earned reputation as a venue policed by far-left ideologues.

Highlight 3: Rolling Back ‘Misgendering’ Policy

Pre-Elon gatekeepers posed a big enough impediment to free speech. Yet at the heart of the platform’s censorship woes is a raft of problematic policies meant to enforce far-left orthodoxy on a host of consequential issues.

Perhaps best-known (and most frequently weaponized) among these policies has been the so-called “misgendering” policy, which punished account holders who refused to toe the line on gender ideology — especially when referring to well-known public figures who identify as the opposite sex. Implemented in 2018, the policy was used to censor and suspend insufficiently compliant accounts such as the Babylon Bee, which satirically tabbed federal official Rachel Levine as its “Man of the Year” in March of 2022.

The Bee’s suspension seems to have been the last straw for Musk. Already the majority shareholder at the time, since-revealed private messages involving Musk suggest that the incident motivated him in large part to make an offer to buy the company less than a month later.

Musk leveraged his authority in November 2022 to lift the Bee’s suspension, before eliminating the “misgendering” policy in April 2023, restoring the ability of users to weigh in on perhaps the liveliest issue in today’s public discourse.

Highlight 4: Canceling Ideological Cancelations

The Bee was just one of countless accounts restored by Musk during his first year. Just a month into his tenure, Musk indicated in a series of tweets the imminent reinstatement of accounts closed under the previous regime — with the exception of accounts that had “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.”

Previously canceled accounts included elected Republicans in the federal government, along with conservatives such as Jordan B. Peterson. And while restoring those accounts would have been a victory for free speech in and of itself, Musk has gone much further. Reacting this June to employees’ attempt to cancel the Daily Wire’s streaming of “What is a Woman?” Musk not only allowed the documentary to go live on the platform, but he shared it with his millions of followers along with the message, “Every parent should watch this.”

Musk’s decision to override his employees’ censorious instincts has helped ferret out Silicon Valley silencers at the company. It also built trust among free-speech advocates who had been skeptical of Musk after his initial jailbreak failed to reinstate accounts like Federalist Senior Editor John Daniel Davidson’s — whose account had remained blocked until late March.

More recently, Musk promised to fund legal support to those who face discrimination by employers for posts on X. That’s a hefty promise, but Musk’s track record suggests it’s one he likely intends to keep.

Opportunity 1: Expanding the Offer to Cover Cancellation Expenses

To mark the first anniversary of Musk’s purchase, my colleagues at ADF International spearheaded an open letter inviting Musk to consider covering the costs of X users targeted by government entities for their posts on the platform.

Signed by a long list that includes Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon, Rod Dreher, R.R. Reno, journalist Andy Ngo, and former ambassador for religious freedom Sam Brownback, the letter calls attention to an alarming international trend where governments are punishing X users for their speech on the platform.

Most prominent on that list — if for no other reason than the lengthy nature of her state-imposed ordeal — is longstanding Finnish parliamentarian and grandmother Päivi Räsänen, who is awaiting a verdict from a Helsinki court after being criminally charged for a 2019 post that included a Bible verse responding to her church’s sponsorship of an LGBT pride event.

Päivi’s situation is paralleled in Mexico, where two public figures, Rodrigo Iván Cortés and Gabriel Quadri, have been convicted of “gender-based political violence” and placed on an offenders’ register for Twitter posts expressing their views on the sexes. Both have been ordered to publish a court-written apology on X every day for 30 days, three times a day, in what the open letter labels “a form of public humiliation.”

While these cases proceed through their respective court systems, European Union lawmakers are pushing to make “hate speech” a crime on the same legal level as human trafficking and terrorism.

The letter sums it up well: “If X is to be a free marketplace of ideas, everyone must be able to peacefully debate the issues of our time without fear of government punishment.”

Opportunity 2: Clarifying Content Moderation Policies

As I wrote when Musk first made his bid to purchase the platform, X’s unclear terms of use set the table for the very censorship he seemingly opposes. Musk’s elimination of the “misgendering” policy was a major move toward free speech, and it should serve as his blueprint forward as he continues his efforts to make X a legitimate free-speech platform.

In particular, Musk should eliminate X’s “hateful conduct” policy, which still permits employees to censor political and religious views they disagree with in the same way as the now defunct “misgendering” policy did. Under cover of this policy in March 2023, X employees temporarily locked out the aforementioned Davis for reporting on the so-called “Trans Day of Vengeance” that was planned to take place just days after the deadly shooting by a trans-identified assailant at Covenant Christian School in Nashville.

To Musk’s credit, his company reinstated Davis’ account, at which point the platform also lifted Davidson’s year-long suspension.

Finally, while a marked improvement on the prior policies, X’s “Freedom of Speech, Not Reach” enforcement philosophy still allows for viewpoint-based censorship. Publicly introduced by Musk in November 2022, the policy adds the step of notifying users when their posts are throttled or censored. As Musk explains in his tweet, “negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter. You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.”

There’s a word for this: “shadowbanning.” The ability to speak but not be heard is self-defeating, and that’s one primary censorship tactic Twitter deployed against conservative voices in the years leading up to Musk’s purchase. Even Musk’s tweet announcing the policy gives the game away. Relying on the unspecified terminology of “hate” — and even “negative” — lends itself to the very same censorship philosophy that has long plagued the company.

A true genius, Musk possesses a remarkable ability to reconsider his positions and adjust his thinking. Further, Musk’s actions in the year since he sent that tweet show an upward trajectory in his embrace of robust discourse free from ideological throttling. Now is the time to ditch these wrongheaded policies for good.

French march against antisemitism shakes up far right and far left

 

Something unprecedented is happening this weekend in Paris, brought about by the war between Israel and Hamas and its spill-over in Europe.

For the first time ever, a major demonstration being attended by representatives of the major political parties includes the far right - but not the far left.

On Sunday afternoon thousands of people heeded a call from the Speakers of the two houses of parliament to show their support for French "Republican" values and their rejection of antisemitism - this in the face of a steep rise in antisemitic actions since 7 October.

Among the first to announce their presence were Marine Le Pen, three-time presidential candidate for the National Rally (formerly the National Front), and the party's young president, Jordan Bardella.

Almost simultaneously came a rejoinder from their counterpart on the far left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, irascible leader of France Unbowed (LFI). His party would not be attending, he tweeted, because the march was a "rendezvous for unconditional supporters of the massacre [of Gazans]".

It is hard to overestimate the symbolic significance of this switch-over.  

For decades French politics erected a bulwark against the far right, whose views - not least on Jews - were deemed "anti-Republican". The old National Front under Marine's father Jean-Marie Le Pen was seen as beyond the pale, and it was shunned.

The far left meanwhile - the Communists, the Trotskyists and the new formations like Mr Mélenchon's LFI - were certainly attacked for their views, but they were never excluded. They were part of the broad political family, in a way that the Le Pen franchise clearly wasn't.

A few years ago, for a far-left party not to have been part of a march against antisemitism would have been unthinkable. For a far-right party to have been there instead would have been unconscionable.

Such is the shake-up in the political order, which of course long predates the Gaza war and is mirrored in varying ways across other European countries.  

Today's far right, rebranded "hard right" or "national right" has - in France at least - forgotten its obsession with Jews and its claims of a "Jewish lobby". Its primary focus now is the three I's - immigration, insecurity and Islamism - issues on which it finds common cause with many Jews. 

Meanwhile the far left in France, analysing Gaza through the anti-colonial lens, sees an oppressed people hammered by a superpower proxy and shouts "Solidarity!" Having lost the support of the old working class, many of whom vote National Rally, it has a new natural base among politicised immigrants.

Thus we arrive at the novel situation where a party whose founder once called the Holocaust a "detail of history" openly embraces the cause of French Jews; and at the other end of the spectrum, a party built on ideas of human rights and equality stands accused of antisemitism for failing to call Hamas "terrorist".  

Maybe this should all be nuanced. After all, many people still think that at heart the far right, by virtue of its French-first ethos, cannot help but be anti-Jewish. They note that Jordan Bardella this week refused to explicitly call Jean-Marie Le Pen antisemitic - a faux-pas to which enemies of the National Rally (RN) have reacted with glee.

And on the far left there are signs of division around Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose prickly personality and autocratic methods are driving some colleagues to exasperation. This week one senior lieutenant, Raquel Garrido, was given a four-month suspension as party spokeswoman for challenging the leader's line - not least on Hamas.

But the fundamental point remains: the RN under Marine Le Pen is manoeuvring itself very successfully into the mainstream, while Mr Mélenchon's LFI is manoeuvring itself out. 

Opinion polls bear it out: according to IFOP last week, Marine Le Pen would trounce the opposition in the first round of a presidential election today, with up to 33% of the vote. Mr Mélenchon, at 22% in the 2022 election, is down to 14%.

This week one of the historic figures in the fight against antisemitism in France gave his views on these ironies of history and politics.

Serge Klarsfeld and his wife Beate helped bring Nazi war criminals to justice, and documented the deportations and deaths of 80,000 Jews from France exterminated in the Holocaust.

Speaking to Le Figaro newspaper, Mr Klarsfeld, now 88, said: "For me the DNA of the far right is antisemitism. So when I see a big party of the far right abandon antisemitism and negationism and move towards our Republican values, naturally I rejoice."

"The far left for its part has always had its own antisemitic tradition. So just as I am relieved to see the RN… take a stand for Jews, so I am sad to see the far left abandon its actions to combat antisemitism." 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67378893