Former Trump administration officials and Twitter employees tell Rolling Stone that the ... Trump administration and its allied Republicans in Congress routinely asked Twitter to take down posts they objected to — the exact behavior that they’re claiming makes President Biden, the Democrats, and Twitter complicit in an anti-free speech conspiracy to muzzle conservatives online.
....The voluminous requests often came from high-ranking political appointees working in different departments, offices, and agencies in the Trump administration. But during both the Trump and Biden presidencies, these types of moderation requests or demands were routinely sent to Twitter by the staff of influential GOP lawmakers — ones with names like Kevin McCarthy and Elise Stefanik.
I guess Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss somehow missed this during their extensive investigation into Twitter's email. I wonder how that happened?
Elmo Musk's hand-picked hacks missed things that undermined his claims and made RWNJ look bad? How could that have happened?
Yeah, but the real comparison point is this: how many Presidential requests for suppression did Twitter et al. actually honor, from Trump vs. from Biden? The RS article doesn't enlighten in this regard.
+10
The point is, Republicans now want to criminalize behavior that they themselves engaged in, all while pretending that they were the victims.
“In January, [House Oversight Committee Chairman James] Comer, along with House Energy Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and [Gym] Jordan, introduced a bill called the Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act, which would penalize federal employees if they are found to be asking social media companies to take down posts.”
They've both been zugzwanged. Either fess up that secret feelings about jackboots well up inside their breasts everytime an "assault on free speech" happens or that they performed a shoddy, half-assed investigation.
you haven't absorbed the ethos of the right-wing mediaverse. you never have to fess up or admit to a mistake. you just have to p0wn the libs in the loudest, dumbest way possible and rake in the substack bucks from the rubes.
I read a lot about how Bari Weiss is a "conservative." Maybe she is now. She's crossed the line over to troll at the very least, but I think her descent into madness is a cautionary tale about audience capture.
She was never a progressive, but her initial allergy to it had more to do with the rampant antisemitism on the left that everyone on the left gives themselves a pass for, "we believe in critical studies and intersectionality therefore we cannot be racist or hateful." That doesn't wash with Jews since we're always an exception to the rule and notwithstanding one third of us being industrially murdered less than 100 years ago and documented oppression going back thousands of years, we somehow don't fit the formula. The whole "criticism of Israel isn't criticism of Jews" is a dogwhistle just like "criticism of rap music isn't racist" is but it's the only dogwhistle progressives can't hear, apparently.
This isn't to say Bari is right about much else. But how she got there is basically what I call an allergy to progressive social politics. If it pushes a Jewish married lesbian into the arms of the troll-right, then imagine how many others it has.
As long as the social politics of "progressives" are divisive and heretic burning, we will continue to see this. A good litmus test for which you are is probably what you think of J.K. Rowling, who is by no definition a "conservative" even though she doesn't want non-transitioning self-idenitified rapists in women's prisons. What a chud!
I think the Scotland gender law is fine, but I also don't think people against it are Nazis.
When the presidency is decided by less than 100,000 votes, it's insane to do this and we won't always have Trump to glue us together.
As for Taibbi, I don't know how this Putin shill gets into the conversation, was allowed to speak for a major Presidential candidate, but you know people still think Snowden is a progressive hero too. It's just their marketing. Self-identify as a progressive and no matter your beliefs you get armor because you label your critics as "conservatives" or "nazis" or whatever.
Weiss and Taibbi are sort of flip sides of the same coin. One is an establishment centrist turned to the troll right by virtue of her identity politics, the other is a tankie who was always there by the power of the horseshoe but hid out as a progressive.
I think anti-semitism has existed for a long time in every part of our political spectrum but "criticism of Israel isn't criticism of Jews" isn't a dog whistle any more than "criticism of rap music isn't racist" is. If Bari Weiss's allergy to progressive causes springs from this then that suggests she was always allergic to progressive causes.
"the rampant antisemitism on the left that everyone on the left gives themselves a pass for"
???
Is this, like, the criticism of Israel thing? Or is it something else? I've honestly never heard of "rampant" lefty antisemitism that the left gives itself a pass for.
Yes, it's mostly a criticism of Israel thing. The charge is that a lot of criticism of Israel seems disproportionate to the criticism that could be aimed at many countries around the world and certainly at many Arab and Muslim countries and the obvious explanation for this difference is age old anti-semitism. I think this is a fair complaint sometimes but it also is a handy misdirection for some apologists for Israel's failings .
The obvious explanations for the difference are:
1. Israel is considered part of the West and is held to its standards, while Egypt is not.
2. Israel gets huge support from the US, and privileged access to the EU market and institutions, and is held to similar standards as other protégés like Saudi Arabia (more widely criticized than Israel).
3. Antisemitism, sometimes. But seldom because antisemites also tend to hate Arabs and wouldn't ordinarily care what happens on the West Bank.
You're overthinking this. People say those "facts" just like people say "facts" about crime statistics in the US. Why are they mentioning those "facts"?
Israel being part of the "west" is just an excuse to put your thumb on the scale. We don't apply the same standards to Turkey. Are they in the "west"?
The US has been sheltering Fethullah Gulen for many years; European countries host thousands of asylum-seeking Turks, to the great displeasure of the Turkish government. We have armed and aided Kurdish fighters in Syria and Iraq - fighters that Turkey officially considers terrorists. The West is hardly coddling Turkey.
It's the only dogwhistle you don't hear.
If you applied the same rules to Jews you wouldn't tolerate that. You don't care because "we're white" (even though Jews aren't all white or any race).
" rampant antisemitism on the left that everyone on the left gives themselves a pass for"
um...wut? please point out some evidence of this alleged rampant leftist antisemitism because i really have no idea what you're talking about.
Quite a bit of opposition to the current Israeli government’s policies is coming from, umm, Israelis: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/22/huge-crowds-protest-in-israel-over-rightwing-governments-judicial-reforms
You're just proving my point. You are deaf to this obvious dogwhistle. If I stated a "fact" about crime statistics you would (correctly) tell me it has to do with systematic oppression, not anything inherent in a race.
But state a "fact" about Israel and it's not because Israeli Jews are a historically oppressed people surrounded by people who want to kill them all, it's because they're right-wing colonialist white assholes. Only the "right-wing" charge has any merit whatsoever.
I know you *think* you're not being antisemitic when you say this stuff, but the current discourse doesn't care about intent, right?
I haven’t a clue what you mean by this comment. What does opposition to the proposed ‘judicial reform’ have to do with Israel’s hostile surroundings?
IOKIYAAR.
My goodness. There must be some mistake.
It almost seems as if Bari Weiss and lazier sidekick might be less that scrupulously honest investigators.
Next you'll be telling me Amy Wax may not be a reliable narrator about race and academia.
It’s always projection. Always. If Republicans accuse Democrats of something, you can bet your life that they themselves are doing the exact same stuff or worse. Which means somewhere there’s a Republican owned pizza shop with children in the basement being molested.
ugh. i never thought of it that way, but you're almost certainly correct about the pizza shop.
Confirmation bias.
not confirmation bias, intentional, paid propaganda.