Extremism and Censorship

Battle Over Thought Control

In the information age, censorship has vastly more consequences compared to the past. In the past, you could just stand out on the corner and hand out leaflets. You knew the difference between handing out leaflets in a dark alleyway versus handing leaflets out at the mall. Today, there is the internet and social media. You never ever have any idea what your audience actually is or how broad it is or even if your post is actually seen.

At the same time, people block each other, which actually reduces their exposure to other people, and is detrimental to open debate. The end result is any user could be stuck in an echo chamber of their own thoughts, a fishbowl with very limited access to the real world.  Such fish bowls can become crucibles for excessive extremism.

There are many who want to ban hate speech and mean words on the internet. They fail to understand. If you block unlikable people, you are pushing them into a fish bowl, which becomes a crucible for more extreme actions as they have no one to counter their thoughts. There is no debate as debate is easily blocked. The transmission of ideas is what results in moderation. This type of censorship puts people in real danger as they lose grasp of what the people around them are actually thinking.

A block away from me, a swastika was painted on a tree. Eventually, it was covered up but it did not make the news. Other such vandalism does make the news. News crews and people, by default, contact the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as it is the only Jewish organization well-known. Yet the ADL forms the thoughts of urban Jews and their immediate friends and is detached from thousands of Jewish people with contrary thoughts.

Millions of Americans will go to the ADL website and be exposed to leftist ideas assuming Jewish people are extremely liberal, but conservatives follow conservative Jewish people such as Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, David Horowitz and Trump supporter Dave Rubin. The dichotomy is odd but this goes back to how the ADL views the world. Somehow, conservative and contrarian thoughts are voided as invalid.

The problem with the ADL is it wants to be everything to everyone, instead of focusing on a clear but limited mission. This is how they ended up with a list “debunking myths’ about the organization which contains falsehoods. (https://www.adl.org/myths-facts-about-adl).

ADL claims to be nonpartisan, but Johnathan Greenblatt, ADL ceo, is a hard-partisan Democrat who has no problem going out of bounds in attacking a Trump supporter. Yes, Kanye West needed to be exposed for his anti-Semitism but people on the right were already doing this by interviewing him with highly comical results. The ADL merely needed only comment, but Greenblatt decided to mess with West's business associates (https://www.adl.org/resources/letter/adl-letter-adidas-executives-regarding-kanye-west). In my eyes, this made the ADL look like the mafia shaking a business down for fees. 

To add to the problem, they state they support the Black Lives Matter Movement, as if this had anything to do with Jewish people or was a moderate position to take.

But, my largest gripe is they have little respect for Jewish conservatives and their allies. Many good Jewish people from various backgrounds fear speaking out against the ADL’s misrepresentation of Jewish peoples. This is why I support David Horowitz’s Freedom Center and read their Front Page Magazine at (https://www.frontpagemag.com)

Greenblatt is flat-out wrong about the internet. Ideas must flow freely so bad ideas do not find a crucible to ignite in. Daryl Davis knows this. You can find many great speeches from Daryl Davis on the internet. He confronted KKK members and defused their hearts. The ADL needs to follow his example as do Jewish people. Be known and confront prejudice when you can. Be distributors of the facts.

However, the ADL does not understand most of this. and neither does X (Twitter) which is why Gab keeps growing (https://news.gab.com/2023/08/gab-emerges-as-the-true-speech-platform-contrasting-the-adls-strategy-for-x-twitter/).