Thread by @aaronsibarium

THREAD: Certain people on this website keep claiming that the anti-woke movement—and in particular anti-woke Jews—have abandoned their commitment to free speech and are now demanding DEI-style censorship of views they find offensive.

The truth is almost the opposite.🧵

Today the editors of Tablet Magazine—a Jewish, Zionist, and vociferously anti-woke publication—put out an editorial lambasting efforts to police speech in the name of protecting Jews.

The editorial is literally titled, "Not In Our Name."

tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

Tablet's editors attack a bipartisan bill that would allow the Department of Education to impose “third-party antisemitism monitors" on any federally-funded university.

"This is lunacy," they write. "No one should support it."

Doesn't sound very pro-censorship to me.

What about Bari Weiss, the subject of so many (bad faith) accusations of hypocrisy? Writing for Tablet in November, she urged Jews to reject the entire DEI apparatus.

Don't "beg for a higher ranking in the new ladder of victimhood," she wrote.

tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

What about Bari Weiss's anti-woke publication, the Free Press? By my count it has published at least three articles since Oct. 7 defending the free speech rights of anti-Semites and pushing back against demands for censorship.

The first piece, by Pamela Paresky and former ACLU president Nadine Strossen, was titled, "Even Antisemites Deserve Free Speech." It noted that Weimar Germany's hate speech laws did not arrest, and arguably helped facilitate, the rise of the Third Reich. thefp.com/p/even-antisem…

The second piece, by the Manhattan Institute's Ilya Shapiro, noted that even calls for genocide are protected by the First Amendment and stated outright: "We shouldn’t weaken speech protections."

thefp.com/p/where-free-s…

And the third piece, by Jenin Younes and Christopher Rufo—yes, that Chris Rufo, the consigliere to Ron DeSantis who helped mastermind all the anti-DEI legislation—slammed the Antisemitism Awareness Act as a "profoundly misguided" extension of DEI.

thefp.com/p/dont-expand-…

Rufo also criticized an executive order from Texas Governor Greg Abbot—who has signed many of Rufo's signature initiatives into law—that instructs universities to "update" their free speech policies to ban "antisemitic speech."

https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1773093380047929718

What about anti-woke billionaires like Bill Ackman who went after their alma maters in the wake of October 7?

Here's Ackman opposing the new antisemitism act on free speech grounds.

"We should not impair free speech. We should simply enforce the law."

https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1785987016896696703

Ackman is endorsing a tweet by Batya Ungar-Sargon—a staunch defender of Israel and fierce critic of recent campus protests—who also opposes the act.

"This congressional bill to expand the definition of antisemitism is bad for the U.S. and bad for Jews."

https://twitter.com/bungarsargon/status/1785815861254594802

And what about Elon Musk, the richest and maybe the most outspoken billionaire in the world?

Here he is raising concerns about the Antisemitism Awareness Act.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1786270266529554720

Musk is retweeting a monologue by Matt Walsh—a columnist at the staunchly Zionist Daily Wire, which some people say fired Candace Owens because she was "critical of Israel" (lol)—attacking the Antisemitism Awareness Act.

https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1786129023879262494

All of which is to say: If Bari Weiss, Bill Ackman, Chris Rufo, Elon Musk, Nadine Strossen, Matt Walsh, Ilya Shaprio, Batya Ungar-Sargon, and the editors of Tablet Magazine all oppose something, it is simply an abuse of language to claim that the anti-woke movement supports it.

There are of course many people opposed to wokeness, and not all of them share the same view of, say, the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. (Tablet supports this aspect of the Antisemitism Awareness Act; Rufo and Younes oppose it.)

But as a general matter, the most prominent critics of wokeness have not succumbed to the censorship temptation—at least nowhere near to the same degree as the woke themselves.

Other consistent voices include Jason Willick, Robby Soave, and Greg Lukianoff, to name just a few.

By contrast, the protests on college campuses since October 7 have repeatedly violated OTHERS' rights to speak and listen.

At Columbia and Stanford, for example, several protests derailed classes and university events even before the more disruptive encampments got underway.

And the protesters—let's be honest—do not by and large believe in free speech. How many members of the tentifada oppose Biden's new Title IX regulations, which will effectively ban "misgendering" on college campuses, for example?

How many of them oppose the University of Pennsylvania's efforts to sanction Amy Wax, a tenured law professor, for her controversial remarks about race and immigration? How many of them oppose the Biden administration's efforts to censor "disinformation"?

How many of them know, much less care, that the Biden administration sent a man to jail for making memes? tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

You can of course find plenty of hypocrites in the anti-woke crowd. But the idea that the protesters' critics are more hypocritical—or bigger threats to free speech—than the protesters themselves, is hard to square with the available evidence.