Leaked audio posted online shows the head of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, discussing a planned major censorship campaign coming from pressure put on the government to police speech and perceived threats to the nation’s Jewish populations.
Last month another, different, donor call was leaked from the ADL, which a Jewish outlet described as part of the internal struggle within the organization, noting that it was a “special meeting to pacify internal critics signifies that the organization’s vocal opposition to the anti-Zionist left is controversial even within an organization that has long been committed to Israel advocacy.”
The ADL has embraced far-left politicians for many years and unfairly harassed the political right, and that decision has been hurting the organization due to the left’s splintering of support for Israel and Jewish policy since the October terror attacks by Hamas in Israel. The New York Times recently referred to this split in an op-ed headline as “The Great Rupture.”
The ADL has long taken a hard-left political stance, even though polls consistently show most of Israel’s political support in America comes from the political right. Polls show Jewish antipathy towards Christian denominations, even though Christian groups reliably rate Jews positively.
In the leaked presentation, Greenblatt equates Anti-Zionism to Anti-Semitism, meaning that any criticism of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians are enabling terror attacks. Most surprisingly, Greenblatt mentions the plan to bring in even more government censorship online. In his speech, Greenblatt mentions the CDA 230 immunity from liability that tech companies enjoy, limiting online companies from liability for content posted on their sites posted by others. Meaning that, currently Facebook can’t be sued for libel if someone posts libelous content on their platform.
The audio of Greenblatt says he is going to work to change online platform’s civil immunity, so that social media companies are liable for statements made online by their members, virtually ensuring a further social media clampdown on free speech.
Greenblatt said: “I know many of you probably feel the New York Times is the problem. Your kids and grandkids aren’t reading the New York Times, they’re reading their Instagram feed, they’re looking at TikTok videos, and so we have to fight the New York Times battle, but we also go to where the frontline really is. So we got a lot of computer scientists, software engineers at ADL working on these problems. It’s not going to happen easily. I ultimately came to the conclusion that we need government to come in and regulate. Basically if you publish something in the Miami Herald that’s libelous, you could be sued. If you post on Facebook? Nothing. There’s a loophole in the law which exempt the companies from liability. Change that rule, and we can change outcomes. So we’re really working on it.”
Greenblatt brags about close ADL working relationships with major big tech companies, including: Amazon, Apple, Meta, X, TikTok, Zoom, Snap, Google. Big Tech has been notoriously censor-happy for many years. Only in recent years has the connection between Big Tech censorship and the government’s mandates and directives to push that censorship, become known. That Military-Industrial Censorship Complex is on review with the Supreme Court as part of the Missouri v. Biden litigation where the Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft is the lead Plaintiff.
Greenblatt denounced “Extremist groups” on the political right and left without defining the terms further.
Greenblatt also explained a program developed with law firms, Gibson Dunn, Morgan Lewis, and Latham Watkins and 300 associated attorneys, to bring Title VI lawsuits against universities if the Jewish students attending those colleges felt threatened. The argument being that creating a hostile environment for Jewish college students is a form of discrimination, and therefore a violation of their federal civil rights. Greenblatt made clear that the goal is to use financial pressure through this lawfare to force the universities to police anti-Zionist criticism and speech.
“If that happens, their federal funds stop. They’ll forfeit their current funds, and all future ones,” Greenblatt says in the leaked audio.
Polls show opinions among college students almost evenly split as it relates to the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This situation was unacceptable to Greenblatt. “If the only nationalism you’re opposed to is Jewish nationalism, then you’re an Anti-Semite,” Greenblatt said to applause. Greenblatt then pointed out that even Jews who were critical of Israel were enabling another “10/7” referencing the October 7th, 2023 Hamas attack upon Israel and Jewish citizens that resulted in 1,200 dead.
“Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism, period.”
Greenblatt said that the ‘net’ of social media is bad, and referred to it as a ‘superspreader’ of Anti-Semitism. Greenblatt referenced the ADL as having set up the “Center for Technology in Society”, to study Anti-Semitism and “work with companies” without clarifying what that work is. It was implied that those individuals were helping to work with social media companies to police speech online and track those who were critical of Israel.
The Anti-Defamation League has a $103 million annual budget, with $230 million a year in revenues.
Benjamin Wetmore
Source link
