Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg continues to miss the mark when it comes to controlling political speech on the giant social media platform, former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos told CNBC on Wednesday.

Facebook should not be concerned about whether it is censoring the flow of information, whether right or wrong, from elected officials, but about the amplification of misinformation, said Stamos, now director of the Stanford Internet Observatory at Stanford University.

Zuckerberg has been under intense scrutiny over Facebook's approach to regulating free speech and the kind of content, particularly political ads, that can be posted to the website since his speech on free expression at Georgetown University last fall.

The issue is "what kind of capability does Facebook provide people to amplify their speech well beyond what would have been possible 5, 10 years ago before everybody was on social media," Stamos said on "Power Lunch." "If [Zuckerberg] changed his view on that and applied a little more of a subtle model to this, I think he could do a lot better."

In the October speech in the nation's capital, Zuckerberg argued that social media has become a "fifth estate," alongside the fourth estate of traditional news media, that lets the public air their thoughts and ideas without relying on gatekeepers. The event was his response to pressure from politicians on both sides of the aisle looking to address how Facebook and other social media regulate speech online, especially with the 2020 election getting closer.

Zuckerberg, the chief executive and controlling shareholder of Facebook, decided that the company would not fact-check ads by political candidates, though he admitted to considering banning political ads altogether.

"We think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying," he said in the speech. "I don't think it's right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy."

Twitter, Facebook's smaller rival that has banned political ads, set a standard on this front, Stamos said. The short message platform is a favorite of President Donald Trump.

"And to be honest, this is actually a really hard problem," explained Stamos, who also serves as an advisor to Zoom Video Communications. "There is a reason why in our country we don't have laws around this, because we have decided that more political speech is generally better and that it's very dangerous to allow centralized powerful organizations to control that speech."

The two social platforms also took polarized approaches to the president's racist "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" posts. Zuckerberg ruled that it did not violate policies, while Twitter warned users of "violent rhetoric" in the tweet.

Twitter also moved to attach warning labels to two Trump tweets about mail-in voting in May.

While the company would find it hard to "deplatform" someone like Trump from its website whenever rules are broken, Twitter now limits how much election disinformation can spread by labeling misleading information, Stamos said.

"They will use their own First Amendment right to say 'we don't agree with this' and 'we don't think this is true,' and they will limit the spread of that message" via a "middle way," Stamos explained. "I think that's the kind of middle way that, if Mark had adopted it a couple months ago, Facebook would be in way better shape right now."

Stamos, who departed the company more than two years ago due to disagreements over its handling of disinformation in the 2016 election, said he thinks Facebook will continue to face challenges moving forward as long as Zuckerberg stands his ground on these issues.

As of late, Facebook is back in the news because of an advertising boycott against hate speech being led by multiple civil rights groups. Additionally, a two-year auditcommissioned by Facebook and released Wednesday concluded that some newly installed policies led to "significant setbacks for civil rights."

"Because there's really no legal framework here, this is up to Facebook themselves, and they are kind of vacillating back and forth as the political wind shifts and making these decisions, it seems, in a pretty little bit of a haphazard manner," Stamos said.

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Facebook would be in 'way better shape' adopting Twitter's disinformation response, ex-Facebook security chief says - CNBC

Anti-Racism July 7, 2020 Larry Haiven

When hockey broadcaster Sportsnet fired Canadian media personality Don Cherry in November 2019 for his bigoted remarks on Coachs Corner, we heard the usual right-wing complaint chorus about the suppression of free speech by the liberal/left. A favoured method of censor/censure nowadays is said to be de-platforming, i.e., denying those you disagree with a platform to speak. This is also called cancel culture.

But on the left, this is really, at best, a marginal activity. The left still believes in reasoned debate and, whats more, it lacks a secret powerful ingredient weaponized accusations of antisemitism.

This essay refers to the experience in Canada, but it has its counterpart in many other countries as well.

If we want to see real masters of Cancel Culture in action, we need to follow the modus operandi of the institutional pro-Israel bully-boys-and-girls, like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), Bnai Brith Canada (BBC), the Simon Wiesenthal Centre (SWC) and other organizations on the Jewish right. They can teach us a thing or two about how to kill free speech, indeed, to stop an utterance before it is even uttered.

Presumably, the reason to nip an Israel-critical event in the bud is that if it goes forward people might attend and learn something, especially from a rigorous debate. Even a picket-line outside the event or a disruption inside might draw attention to whats being said. And, for the avid intellectual protectors of Israel, that must be stopped at all costs.

A spate of examples will follow, but first, to summarize, here are what might be called the rules of engagement for the pro-Israel de-platformers. The minute you hear about an event featuring a critique of Israel, employ the following formula:

While pro-Israel Cancel Culture goes back a long way, the following are more than two dozen fairly recent examples of the playbook-in-action, taken from several Canadian cities.

The following are real examples of the playbook in action. They are taken mostly from published reports, but a few are taken from accounts by people involved.

In 2016, anti-Israeli-occupation activists were slated for a panel at a Simon Fraser University (SFU) conference on genocide. One presenter would argue that what had been done to the Palestinians constituted genocide. (The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide definition involves any of the following: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and/or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.)

Bnai Brith reached out to SFU to have the panel cancelled. Organizers pushed back, reaching out to a range of supporters at SFU. The panel and conference went ahead.

Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek is the leading and highly-respected voice of the Palestinian liberation theology movement. Co-founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre, he is a former Canon of St. Georges Anglican Cathedral in Jerusalem. For three decades Rev. Ateek has inspired readers and audiences (including several times in Canada) with his ideas about justice and understanding in the Holy Land.

In April 2018, as he toured Canada, representatives of Bnai Brith contacted Canadian universities who were hosting him and demanded that they cancel his appearances. Bnai Brith concocted an accusation that Ateek had called for the killing of Jews.

What evidence was Bnai Brith using to denigrate Rev. Ateek? At a meeting in Winnipeg, a Bnai Brith operative in the audience photographed a single frame in Ateeks slideshow. In it, Ateek was pointing out that some prominent Israeli rabbis had justified the murder of Palestinians by referring to Halakha (Jewish religious law). These outrages are well-documented in the Israeli media and have been roundly condemned by Israelis, Palestinians and political leaders around the world, as well as some Jewish organizations. To our knowledge, Bnai Brith Canada is NOT one of the organizations that has ever condemned those rabbis statements.

Most of Ateeks hosts across the country refused to succumb to what amounts to Bnai Briths blood-libel-in-reverse. However, some sponsors, especially Christian organizations, balked. Waterloo Lutheran Seminary withdrew its backing from the meeting at Conrad Grebel College (a Mennonite institution), but the meeting continued. St. Michaels College at the University of Toronto also withdrew its venue for Rev. Ateek, forcing organizers to scramble for a new location.

For over 25 years, Hamilton has hosted the Gandhi Peace Festival. In 2019, Bnai Brith attempted to have two speakers kicked off the program, organized by McMaster Professor Rama Singh.

One of the speakers targeted was Azeezah Kanji, an Islamic law scholar and director of programming at the Toronto-based Noor Cultural Centre. The other was McMaster Professor Emeritus Dr. Atif Kubursi, an economist specializing in oil and the Middle East and former Acting Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. He is the recipient of the Canadian Centennial Medal for his outstanding academic contributions. Neither of them was expected to even speak about Palestine at the event, but both had made statements critical of Israel in the past and thus were accused of guilt by association. At Bnai Briths urging, the Hamilton Jewish Federation withdrew its participation. The event went on without the Federations participation but with those two speakers presenting.

Institutional Jewish organizations have tried for many years to get university presidents across the country to ban Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW). One of the more aggressive campaigns against IAW has been at McMaster University. In 2020, several groups, including the Jewish Defence League and Hillel Ontario asked McMaster University to outlaw the annual event, claiming it makes Jewish students on campus uncomfortable and unsafe.

The university declined to comply with the blanket request to shut down the activities. A spokesperson insisted that The group organizing the event in question is a student group registered with the McMaster Students Union All such groups are governed by McMasters Student Code of Conduct, which promotes the safety and security of all students and encourages respect for others.

The university also provides guidance to all event organizers, which clearly outlines the universitys commitment to free expression and lays out what behavior is deemed unacceptable.

Rehab Nazzal is a multidisciplinary artist of Palestinian origin based in Toronto, some of whose work deals with the harsh treatment of Palestinians by Israel. Nazzals 2014 exhibition Invisible at the Karsh-Masson Art Gallery on the ground floor of city hall in Ottawa was publicly condemned by Israels ambassador to Canada, and several pro-Israel groups, including Bnai Brith Canada demanded that the mayor cancel the exhibition. The mayor refused, citing freedom of expression. But the city posted a disclaimer outside. The groups also protested the fact that Nazzal had received a financial award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Nazzal later spoke to a standing-room-only crowd in Ottawa and received a standing ovation.

In 2015, an Israeli sniper shot Nazzal in the leg while she was photographing a confrontation in Bethlehem. According to the Ottawa Citizen, Israeli spokesperson Eitan Weiss commented, Its very difficult to ascertain what happens during a riot, because you have to imagine hundreds of people throwing rocks, Molotov cocktails, using live firearms,its very difficult to prove that it ever happened, and its very difficult to prove that it didnt happen.

All of the above de-platforming takes a lot of work. And it makes the pro-Israel lobby look like the bullies they are. Right now, there is altogether too much messy debate. Consequently, the lobby wants to build a better mousetrap, a mousetrap that will alleviate the need to intervene each and every time there is an event or activity criticizing Israel. How much easier if the better mousetrap operates to slam shut automatically, breaking the mouses neck without untidy arguments and recrimination.

Such a better mousetrap is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism (IHRA-WDA). As Independent Jewish Voices has pointed out, the IHRA definition is remarkably sloppy and vague. But it does contain eleven examples of antisemitism, seven of which involve criticism of Israel.

The lobby is trying to get the IHRA-WDA adopted by legislatures, city councils, non-governmental organizations, student unions, human rights bodies, police departments, universities, any forum that could possibly be in a position to shut down or sanction activity critical of Israel. We do not know whether or how the adoption of the IHRA-WDA by these bodies could actually criminalize criticism of Israel. After all, we still have freedom of expression under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

However, we have seen how the mere accusation of antisemitism, accurate and deserved or entirely bogus, has been used to hobble political and other types of careers.

We have also seen, how the IHRA-WDA has been used to punish people and organizations who have run afoul of it. The case of the University of Winnipeg cited above is one example. Claiming to have employed the IHRA-WDA definition, the universitys diversity officer declared the meeting antisemitic, and the university apologized for allowing the meeting to take place.

We have seen that Bnai Brith Canada employs the IHRA-WDA to decide which occurences should be added to their audit of antisemitic incidents.

Finally, we have seen that the increasingly open use of the term antisemite to label those who criticize Israel could encumber legitimate lawsuits for defamation by victims of that slur.

That is why defenders of Palestinian human rights and proponents of peace and justice in the Middle East need to double our vigilance to ensure that the IHRA-WDA goes no further and that freedom of expression and sanity returns.

Larry Haiven is a member of the steering committee of Independent Jewish Voices Canada, professor emeritus at Saint Marys University in Halifax and a research associate of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - Nova Scotia.

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The Real Masters of 'Cancel Culture' The Pro-Israel Lobby - The Bullet - Socialist Project

It has become increasingly common for commentators to describe Black Lives Matter as a Marxist movement. Most such characterisations have been pejorative, intended to discredit the organisation. But at the same time, one BLM co-founder was more than comfortable describing herself and her colleagues as trained Marxists.

It serves the interests of both critics and supporters of BLM to talk about it as a Marxist outfit. Critics get to dismiss BLM as part of the loony left, and supporters get to believe they are part of something genuinely revolutionary. But are they right?

Perhaps the most defining characteristic of Marxism is its explanation of class and its role in society. The Communist Manifesto famously claims that, The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. In other words, class conflict is the driving force of history. Revolutions happen when societies can no longer contain that conflict.

Marx said such revolutions can only be successful if oppressed classes become sufficiently unified to be able to outnumber and overcome those in power. Attaining class consciousness, and rejecting the artificial differences imposed upon us by our rulers as a means of keeping us at war with one another, is key to bringing about change.

Fast-forward to today and many of the so-called Marxists of BLM are virtually devoid of any analysis of class at all.

One example of this refusal properly to engage with class is the accusation of class reductionism, levelled against those arguing that class is just as important as race in explaining inequality. Adolph Reed Jr a black Marxist was recently deplatformed for his class reductionist views on race. Taking the traditional Marxist approach lands you in hot water with activists who live and die by the all-subsuming doctrine of institutional racism.

In fact, the BLM movement doesnt only ignore class analysis, it also obscures the reality of class relations. The constant focus on white privilege, for instance, has come at the expense of any recognition that lots of poor white people suffer from deprivations, police violence and prejudice, too. Racial disparities are a problem. But obsessing over white privilege stands in the way of any real attempt to draw on the common experiences of the white and black working classes, with the aim of building a cross-racial campaign for change. Instead of putting aside our differences, we are encouraged to wallow in them.

Talk of white fragility, a term coined by Robin DiAngelo and discussed in her best-selling book of the same name, is an example of this trend. It undermines cross-racial unity by focusing on difference and by insisting that all whites are inherently racist. As Luke Gittos has pointed out on spiked: By fixating on whiteness as the root of all the problems facing black Americans, DiAngelo discounts the possibility that solidarity in the face of common problems can be more powerful than racial identity. The same is true for BLM more broadly.

Indeed, how can the workers unite across racial lines if todays anti-racist movement is right that the lived experiences of black and white people are so totally different? And if white workers are inherently racist, why would black workers want to join with them?

Modern identity politics wrongly views society as a split between a white ruling class and a non-white mass proletariat. It refuses to engage with the reality that Marx identified that workers can be equally exploited regardless of their origins, and that the key to progressive change lies in building bridges between hitherto distinct communities rather than in setting them apart. In this regard Black Lives Matter clearly stands in opposition to Marxism.

Other woke campaigns have similarly been described (or dismissed) as an offshoot of Marxism. Right-wing critics of things like identity politics, political correctness and the trans movement say we are witnessing the rise of Cultural Marxism. But these movements are often more reactionary than revolutionary. We have only to look at how quick multinational corporations have been to endorse the woke worldview to see how utterly un-radical it is.

Every big firm from McDonalds to Apple has doffed its cap to Black Lives Matter. Even members of the royal family the epitome of inherited power and privilege have backed BLM. When you have the backing of these sorts of people, you know you are not about to turn the world upside down in favour of workers revolution. The fashion today is less for champagne socialism and more for iPhone identitarianism, it seems.

The Marxist appellation is not simply false, though. It is also both counter-productive and dangerous. George Orwell warned about the political implications of using meaningless words in his great essay, Politics and the English Language. Bemoaning the abuse and overuse of the word fascism, in words that ring truer today than ever, he said that word now had no meaning except insofar as it signifies something not desirable.

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of this desire to brand all political opponents as extremists, without much serious consideration of the terminology deployed. Such hollowing-out of language inevitably leads to confusion and misunderstanding. But it also inadvertently eats away at independent thought and expression.

Orwell said that, rather than pick the words that best and most clearly convey our meaning, many people often choose the easier route of letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. If you do this, you allow these phrases to construct your sentences for you, and even to think your thoughts for you. Ultimately, this can lead to partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.

This is one of the ways we end up with commentators and politicians attacking their enemies by using little-thought-out terms which they cannot ultimately justify. This is how parts of the modern left are able to brand everyone and everything they disagree with as racist. But it is also how people can use the word Marxist in a similar way, in place of proper analysis or critique. If we are fairly to reject accusations of racism made against anyone who does not take the knee for BLM, we must lead by example. We have to make sure that the words we use have meaning, and that we understand what that meaning is.

Paddy Hannam is a spiked intern.

To enquire about republishing spikeds content, a right to reply or to request a correction, please contact the managing editor, Viv Regan.

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Theres nothing Marxist about Black Lives Matter - Spiked

This week, in a matter of just 48 hours, several social media companies made major changes to how their platforms are and can be used. Reddit deleted a group, or subreddit, called The Donald that was known for encouraging targeted harassment and hate speech. YouTube banned videos from white supremacists like David Duke and Richard Spencer. And Facebook cracked down on a wide swath of dangerous content, including groups devoted to the boogaloo movement, which hopes to spark a race war in the United States.

These developments signal a significant shift in how these companies see their role and responsibility in the world. Until extremely recently their leaders repeatedly declared that free speech was their primary value, and trumped other values like safety, dignity and democracy.

Now, without declaring they had been wrong all along, these companies seem to have all decided it was time to declare a different way of dealing with dangerous, extremist content at least on the surface. Why all this action, and why now?

The first half of 2020 was a perfect storm of factors that made many of these companies reconsider how they want to represent themselves to the world and how they want to treat their users. The flood of misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic endangered lives. The bold movements for social justice that rose up in the wake of the martyrdom of George Floyd heightened sensitivity and awareness of the dangers of white supremacy in the US like nothing else in recent years. And the re-election effort of Donald Trump has grown increasingly dangerous, with the president and his followers frequently deriding public health efforts and celebrating state and vigilante violence against Black people and their allies.

In this environment, corporate leaders at Google, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and other companies had to take much more seriously the question of how they influence the world. Of course, social media scholars have been calling for this level of attention for almost a decade. Since around 2017, many journalists have, as well. But it took more than scholarship and journalism to make a difference.

Companies as rich, powerful, and ubiquitous as Facebook and Google only have two real soft spots. One is labor. Both Google, which owns YouTube, and Facebook face a constant shortage of highly qualified and experienced workers. Many people who work for these companies have other employment options in ways that most American workers will never enjoy. Technology workers command high salaries and have unusual flexibility in their career plans and life choices. They are also in constant communication with each other, meaning that Silicon Valley workers, when they choose to, have a lot of power in terms of collective message-making. Recent months have seen growing expressions of disgust among workers at major tech companies who are frustrated at their companies refusal to respond more assertively to problems with how their platforms are used. The CEOs and COOs of these companies are now, belatedly, realizing they have to take these concerns seriously.

The other soft spot is advertising. Advertisers have even more power than workers. This week several major global advertisers, apparently led by Unilever, announced that they are suspending advertising on Facebook until the company has stronger protocols against the use of its platform for hate speech and disinformation.

Unilever may be one of the few institutions on earth that Facebook needs more than it needs Facebook. In fact, the consumer products conglomerate has a fairly strong record on matters of social responsibility. Yet its been somewhat surprising when companies beyond the usual list of do-gooders step up to make a stand against racism and fascism. Advertisers as powerful and diverse as Clorox, Ford, HP and Adidas have decided that they do not want their products and logos associated with racism, calls to violence, or other trappings of emerging fascism in the United States. The number of boycotting companies has grown to more than 300, and even Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were reportedly phoning their corporate friends to encourage them to stop advertising on Facebook.

Why did it take so long, however, to get major tech companies to change their tune? Why werent the leaders of Reddit, YouTube and Facebook willing to take such steps in the aftermath of the 2017 genocide of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar? Why didnt they act in 2016, when Facebook actively supported the Trump campaign as the failed businessman pledged to build a wall to keep Mexicans out of the US and ban Muslim immigration? Why did it take the visual evidence of the killing of George Floyd and all of the fallout within just one country, the US, to move advertisers, labor and management to take such action? Didnt all the algorithmically stoked violence in Sri Lanka, India, Kenya, Myanmar and the Philippines matter?

We shouldnt celebrate this moment. Lets mark it, instead, as a potential turning point in the history of Silicon Valley and its relationship with movements for global social justice, and try to understand its limitations. We still dont know to what extent these recent moves to de-platform extremism will make a difference over time.

Its likely these advertisers will return to Facebook still the best advertising platform ever created after the US election in November. There is also a very good chance that the extremist actors who are pushing for violence and racism will just find a way to re-platform themselves under new aliases. Other social media services might help these movements promote themselves and generate not only wider audience participation, but also the sense of victimhood and indignation that is one of the chief drivers of fascism.

So these moves could backfire or yield only marginal results over time. Nonetheless we should review the Great Deplatforming of 2020 as a potentially positive shift in the awareness of powerful people about the plight of the powerless and the rising forces of fascism in the United States.

If only these companies, and the democracies they operate in, took the global threats more seriously. We still have much work to do.

Excerpt from:

Why did it take so long for Reddit and Facebook to block racist groups? - The Guardian

Maybe a Parler logo on your screen next?Denis Charlet/Getty Images This article is part of the Free Speech Project, a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the ways technology is influencing how we think about speech.

The basic idea of Parler is an awful lot like Twitter. But instead of tweets, users post Parleys; instead of retweets, there are echoes. And upon registering, the suggested accounts to follow include Breitbart, the Epoch Times, and the Daily Caller, as well as Rand Paul, Mark Levin, and Team Trump.

In June, right-wing users started flocking to this alt-Twitter, whose main selling point is that it vows to champion free speech. As mainstream platforms banned more far-right accounts, removed hate speech with newfound vigor, and attached warning labels to a few of President Donald Trumps tweets, Parler became, for many, an attractive solution to Twitters supposed ills. Now, its the second most popular app in the App Store, and last week it was estimated to have reached more than 1.5 million daily users, snagging somehigh-profile newbies: Sen. Ted Cruz, Rep. Elise Stefanik, Rep. Jim Jordan, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump. What led to Parlers founding in August 2018 was, predictably, disillusionment with the likes of the Silicon Valley giants. Henderson, Nevadabased software engineers Jared Thomson and John Matze created the platform, according to Parlers website, [a]fter being exhausted with a lack of transparency in big tech, ideological suppresssion [sic] and privacy abuse.

Yet while the platform is being billed as the big free speech alternative to Twitter, it isnt exactly unique. Nor is it as uncensored as it claims to be. Parler is just the latest in a long line of rival social networks that have appeared (and, often, disappeared) in the past decade as alternatives to Big Tech. And, if the past is any indicator, its unlikely that Parler will become anything more than a fringe platform in the near future.

Some of the platforms to emerge as alternatives to the major social networks have taken a hard line on data privacy. Ello, for example, was founded in 2014 as an ad-free network that promised never to sell user data to advertisers. (After being dubbed a Facebook killer, the site was overwhelmed with new users and crashed frequently; it could never scale up and instead became a community for digital artists.) MeWe, another Facebook rival, offers the industrys first Privacy Bill of Rights. (It also takes a laissez-faire approach to content moderation.) And while its 8 million users are dwarfed by Facebooks 2.6 billion, MeWe is one of the few successful alternative networks in that its continued to grow since its founding in 2016.

Matze, Parlers CEO who counts Ayn Rand and conservative economist Thomas Sowell among his influences, fancies his platform a sort of free-speech utopia: Were a community town square, an open town square, with no censorship, Matze told CNBC. If you can say it on the street of New York, you can say it on Parler. And while Parler says it is unbiasedMatze is offering a $20,000 progressive bounty for a popular liberal pundit to joinits evidently become an unofficial home to the far right, which has long claimed to be mistreated by mainstream platforms. When alt-right celebrities, such as Milo Yiannopoulos and Laura Loomer, are banned from Twitter, Parler is their next step. (Loomer announced last week that she has become the first person whose Parler following572,000exceeds her pre-ban Twitter following.)

In this regard, Parler is most similar to Gab, the free speechdriven platform launched in 2017 thats known as a haven for extremists. [F]ar angrier and uglier than Parler, Gab quickly became a breeding ground for anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism, where posts calling for terrorist attacks and violence against minorities circulate. Gabs fate, however, represents one iteration of the circle of life for platforms of its ilk: After it was connected to an instance of terrorism in 2018, when the suspect in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting posted about his intentions to act just before he killed 11 people, Gab never quite recovered. Its server, GoDaddy, dropped it, and though it eventually found another home online, its popularity waned following the shooting and the period offline. In 2019, a software engineer for Gabs web hosting company said that the platform probably had a few tens of thousands of users at mostrather than the 835,000 that Gab claimedthough the hosting company later denied that.

But Parler doesnt quite have Gabs teeth. (Andrew Torba, Gabs founder, has referred to Parler as a network for Z-list Maga celebrities.) While even Gab has limits to free speech, since its content policy purports to ban extremism, Parler is stricter. It goes far beyond what you might expect from a platform whose entire ethos is freedom of expression. Matze listed a few of the basic rules in a Parley on Tuesday:

As the top Twitter comment points out, Twitter allows four of the five things that Parler censors. Parlers thorough community guidelines also prohibit spam, terrorist activity, defamation, fighting words, and obscenity, among other kinds of speech. And Parlers user agreement includes clauses that may seem antithetical to its mission. The platform may remove any content and terminate your access to the Services at any time and for any reason or no reason, it states. But perhaps most surprising is this:

17. You agree to defend and indemnify Parler, as well as any of its officers, directors, employees, and agents, from and against any and all claims, actions, damages, obligations, losses, liabilities, costs or debt, and expenses (including but not limited to all attorneys fees) arising from or relating to your access to and use of the Services. Parler will have the right to conduct its own defense, at your expense, in any action or proceeding covered by this indemnity.

The indemnity provision means that if Parler faces a lawsuit for something you post, you pay. Basically, youre free to say whatever you wantas long as it falls within the community guidelines, and as long as youre willing to take the risk.

That Parler has been reportedly banning users en masse this week only further illuminates the faade of free speech on the platform; but regardless of the extent to which one can or cannot Parley whatever they want, the fact remains that the platform is becoming an important space for the American far right. Its worth considering, then, what its members might do with it. Part of the concern over polarized platforms is that they can lead to radicalization: In general, theyre seen as part of the pipeline to extremism. First, extremist movements find a foothold in mainstream platforms, where they present their norms in a slightly more palatable way, explained Jeremy Blackburn, a computer science professor at Binghamton University who researches fringe and extremist web communities. Then they gain ground in platforms like Parler that straddle the fringe and mainstream. Once you remove any question of there being an echo chamber, theres just obvious consequences, Blackburn said.

While this may be cause for concern, Amarnath Amarasingam, an extremism researcher and professor at Queens University, is skeptical that Parler will really galvanize the right. I think part of what animates the rightand the left to some extentand particularly the far right, is the ability to argue with the other, Amarasingam said. Interacting (and fighting) with the left reinforces the far rights identity, giving it meaning and purpose, he said, and from studying similar platforms like Gab, Amarasingam has found that talking to yourself in the dark corners of the internet is actually not that satisfying. And while he believes it might lead to the radicalization of certain individuals within the far right, the platform itself wont necessarily further the ideologies of extremist right-wing groups.

What Parler could do, Amarasingam believes, is serve as a kind of sounding board for the far right, a place for fringe movements to try out and refine different arguments. Essentially, it could be a factory of sorts, churning out ideas before theyre deployed into the mainstream. Maybe one day, at leastfor now, a good portion of the conversation of Parler is about how fantastic the platform is and how dumb the old tech giants are. Amarasingam acknowledged this. [W]hat that indicates to me is that they actually are just using Parler to vent their anger of being suspended from what really matters, which has been more mainstream platform, he said. And so I think theyll very much try to get back into wherever the conversation is happening.

Theres also the matter of growth. Normally, these networks just dont get that big. Theyre considered fringe platforms for a reason, and theres rarely a solid business model behind them. In Parlers case, the network was started with angel funding, and Matze hasnt devised a clear business plan since. Currently, his tentative model is to match conservative influencers with advertisers, and have Parler take a cut of the influencer fee. But given brands recent reluctance to advertise on Facebook, this plan seems far from foolproof. With only 30 employees, Parlers ability to handle more users will be tested. It might growespecially if Trump does decide to join after allbut, as Amarasingam put it, if youre not in the mainstream, youre not in the mainstream.

Generally speaking, what I expect to see in these sites is they hit a certain threshold of users, just like any other social networking platform, said Blackburn. And then for these types of platforms that are explicitly attracting these certain types of users, probably one of them will do something stupid, then they get shut down or deplatformed, and the next one pops up.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

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Whats the Deal With Parler? - Slate

Administrative or political action to deny access to a platform to express opinions

Deplatforming, also known as no-platforming, is a form of political activism or prior restraint by an individual, group, or organization with the goal of shutting down controversial speakers or speech, or denying them access to a venue in which to express their opinion. Tactics used to achieve this goal among community groups include direct action and Internet activism. It is also a method used by social media and other technology companies to selectively suspend, ban, or otherwise restrict access to their platform by users who have allegedly violated the platform's terms of service, particularly terms regarding hate speech.

Banking and financial service providers, among other companies, have also denied services to controversial activists or organizations, a practice known as financial deplatforming. The term deplatforming also refers generally to tactics, often organized using social media, for preventing controversial speakers or speech from being heard. Deplatforming tactics have included disruption of speeches, attempts to have speakers disinvited to a venue or event, and various forms of personal harassment including efforts to have an individual fired or blacklisted.

In the United States, banning of speakers on University campuses dates to the 1940s. This was carried out by policies of the universities themselves. The University of California, for example, had a policy known as the Speaker Ban codified in university regulations under President Robert Gordon Sproul, mostly, but not exclusively, targeting Communists. One rule stated that "the University assumed the right to prevent exploitation of its prestige by unqualified persons or by those who would use it as a platform for propaganda." This rule was used in 1951 to block Max Schachtman, a socialist, from speaking at the University of California at Berkeley. But it was not always used against Communists (or socialists): in 1961, Malcolm X was banned from speaking at Berkeley as a religious leader, whereas the white Protestant evangelist Billy Graham spoke the next year. In 1947, former U.S. Vice President Henry A. Wallace was banned from speaking at UCLA because of his views on U.S. cold war policy.[1]

Controversial speakers invited to appear on college campuses have faced deplatforming in the form of attempts to disinvite them or to prevent them from speaking.[2] The British National Union of Students established its No Platform policy as early as 1973.[3]

In the United States, recent examples include the March 2017 disruption by violent protestors of a public speech at Middlebury College by political scientist Charles Murray.[2] In February 2018, students at the University of Central Oklahoma rescinded a speaking invitation to creationist Ken Ham, after pressure from an LGBT student group.[4][5] In March 2018, a "small group of protesters" at Lewis & Clark Law School attempted to stop a speech by visiting lecturer Christina Hoff Sommers.[2] Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager documented their disinvitation, and others, in their 2019 film No Safe Spaces.[6] As of January 2020[update], the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a speech advocacy group, documented 440 disinvitation or disruption attempts at American campuses since 2000.[7][8]

Graduation speakers, in particular, have often been disinvited or forced to withdraw in the face of protests and other efforts to deny the opportunity to speak.[9][10] According to Inside Higher Ed, "Planned commencement speakers have been disinvited from or backed out of various talks in recent years amid pressure from campus groups usually students", as with Haverford's cancellation of a planned 2014 address by former Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau.[11] Birgeneau's replacement as speaker, former Princeton president William Bowen, responded in his own address by calling the suppression of speech "a defeat, pure and simple, for Haverford no victory for anyone who believes, as I think most of us do, in both openness to many points of view and mutual respect."[9]

In addition to Birgeneau, other notably deplatformed commencement speakers in 2014 included International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde, who withdrew after students circulated a petition at Smith College,[9] and former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at Rutgers University. After Rice was announced as commencement speaker, a student group staged a sit-in and Rutgers' faculty council passed a resolution that labeled Rice a "war criminal", causing Rice to withdraw from the ceremony.[10] In some cases, opposition to a commencement speaker arises primarily from faculty members, as with Ursinus College's 2017 disinvitation of journalist Juan Williams, a political analyst for Fox News.[11]

Deplatforming efforts have also extended to corporate invitations. On March 26, 2019, Google announced an external advisory board to consider ethical issues around its artificial intelligence projects.[12] The board's eight appointed members included Kay Coles James, president of the Heritage Foundation.[13] Within days, 1,600 Google employees had signed an open petition seeking to remove James from the board.[14] Employees had stated on Google's internal message boards that a person with James' conservative views about climate change policy, immigration, and LGBT rights "doesn't deserve a Google-legitimized platform."[13][14] On April 4, Google dissolved the advisory board, stating, "It's become clear that in the current environment, [the board] can't function as we wanted."[12]

As early as 2015, platforms such as Reddit began to enforce selective bans based, for example, on terms of service prohibiting "hate speech".[15] According to technology journalist Declan McCullagh, "Silicon Valley's efforts to pull the plug on dissenting opinions" began around 2018 with Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube denying service to selected users of their platforms, "devising excuses to suspend ideologically disfavored accounts."[16]

Law professor Glenn Reynolds dubbed 2018 the "Year of Deplatforming", in an August 2018 article in The Wall Street Journal.[17] According to Reynolds, in 2018 "the internet giants decided to slam the gates on a number of people and ideas they don't like. If you rely on someone else's platform to express unpopular ideas, especially ideas on the right, you're now at risk."[17] Reynolds cited Alex Jones, Gavin McInnes, and Dennis Prager as prominent 2018 victims of deplatforming based on their political views, noting, "Extremists and controversialists on the left have been relatively safe from deplatforming."[17]

Deplatforming has typically targeted individuals or organizations who use free accounts on social media platforms. In February 2019, McCullagh predicted that paying customers would become targets for deplatforming as well, citing protests and open letters by employees of Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Google who opposed policies of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and who reportedly sought to influence their employers to deplatform the agency and its contractors.[16]

Supporters of deplatforming have justified the action on the grounds that it produces the desired effect of reducing what they characterize as "hate speech".[15][18][19] Angelo Carusone, president of the progressive organization Media Matters for America and who had run deplatforming campaigns against conservative talk hosts Rush Limbaugh in 2012 and Glenn Beck in 2010, pointed to Twitter's 2016 ban of Milo Yiannopoulos, stating that "the result was that he lost a lot.... He lost his ability to be influential or at least to project a veneer of influence."[18]

Twitter has been described as vulnerable to manipulation by users who may coordinate in large numbers to flag politically controversial tweets as allegedly violating the platform's policies.[20] The platform has long been criticized for its failure to provide details of underlying alleged policy violations to the subjects of Twitter suspensions and bans.[21]

In July 2018, Twitter was accused of "shadow banning" prominent Republican politicians and conservative users, as a result of its implementation of a "quality filter" to hide content and users deemed "low quality" from search results and to limit the visibility of their tweets.[22][23] Twitter later acknowledged the existence of the problem and characterized it as a software bug that it was working to correct, stating that its "behavioral ranking doesn't make judgements based on political views or the substance of tweets".[24]

In February 2019, Canadian journalist Meghan Murphy filed a lawsuit against Twitter for permanently banning her in 2018 based on its policy against misgendering, which Murphy called "viewpoint-based censorship".[25][26]

On May 2, 2019, Facebook and the Facebook-owned platform Instagram announced a ban of "dangerous individuals and organizations" that included Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, along with Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones and his organization InfoWars, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, and Paul Nehlen.[27][28] Unlike the personal bans that removed the accounts of the named individuals, the ban on InfoWars as an organization extends to all users by prohibiting any content that contains or quotes material from InfoWars.[28] Facebook and Instagram stated that such content would be removed, regardless of who posts it, unless the post is made to explicitly condemn the content.[28]

Financial service providers have deplatformed controversial speakers and organizations by denying them business services such as credit card payment processing, effectively limiting their ability to raise funds, accept payments, or sell items online.

Retailers associated with the Seneca Nation of Indians and other native tribes in the state of New York were financially deplatformed during Eliot Spitzer's time as Attorney General of New York in 2006, as the state successfully ordered credit card companies and delivery services to refuse service to tobacco retailers on the Seneca Nation's reservations.[29] The deplatforming was part of a broader attempt to eliminate a price disparity between native tribes, which do not charge excise taxes on tobacco or gasoline sold by their members and have blocked state efforts to collect the taxes on their reservations (but have prosecuted non-native persons on the reservations for attempting to secure the same price protections), and the rest of the state, which charges high excise taxes, particularly on tobacco.[citation needed]

In 2018, Visa and MasterCard stopped processing donations to the David Horowitz Freedom Center at the request of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC),[30] an advocacy group which had listed the organization as a hate group.[31][32] Robert Spencer, editor-in-chief of the publication Jihad Watch, had previously been deplatformed from Patreon under pressure from MasterCard.[30]

PayPal, an online payment and funding platform, has terminated accounts of organizations that were accused of advocating racist views or promoting "hate, violence and intolerance."[33] According to The Washington Post, PayPal banned at least 34 alleged hate groups in August 2017, after more than two years of "lobbying" by the SPLC.[33] In February 2019, PayPal terminated the account of activist Laura Loomer, who stated that she had also been banned from using GoFundMe and Venmo to raise funds, and from using Uber and Lyft.[34]

In February 2018, First National Bank of Omaha became the first of several companies to cut ties with the National Rifle Association.[35] A month later, on March 22, 2018, Citigroup announced that it would turn away business customers and commercial partners based on a new Citigroup policy restricting sales of firearms, applying the policy to clients seeking to "borrow money, use banking services or raise capital through the company".[35]

Chase Bank closed the accounts of alt-right activist Enrique Tarrio in February 2019, after which Tarrio was also deplatformed by credit card payment processors First Data, Square, Stripe, and PayPal, in addition to being banned from social media platforms.[36][37]

Deplatforming tactics have also included attempts to silence controversial speakers through various forms of personal harassment, such as doxing,[38] the making of false emergency reports for purposes of swatting,[39] and complaints or petitions to third parties. In some cases, protesters have attempted to have speakers blacklisted from projects or fired from their jobs.[12]

In 2019, for example, students at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia circulated an online petition in an effort to remove Camille Paglia from the faculty.[40] Paglia, a tenured professor for over 30 years who identifies as transgender, had long been unapologetically outspoken on controversial "matters of sex, gender identity, and sexual assault".[40] According to Conor Friedersdorf, writing in The Atlantic:

It is rare for student activists to argue that a tenured faculty member at their own institution should be denied a platform. Otherwise, the protest tactics on display at UArts fit with standard practice: Activists begin with social-media callouts; they urge authority figures to impose outcomes that they favor, without regard for overall student opinion; they try to marshal antidiscrimination law to limit freedom of expression.[40]

Friedersdorf pointed to evidence of a chilling effect on free speech and academic freedom. Of the faculty members he had contacted for interviews, a large majority "on both sides of the controversy insisted that their comments be kept off the record or anonymous. They feared openly participating in a debate about a major event at their institutioneven after their university president put out an uncompromising statement in support of free speech".[40]

Ravelry, a site that describes itself as a "place for knitters, crocheters, designers, spinners, weavers and dyers to keep track of their yarn, tools, project and pattern information, and look to others for ideas and inspiration", announced a ban on "support of Donald Trump and his administration" on June 23, 2019.[41] As its stated rationale for the ban, which extends to forum posts, projects, patterns, profiles, and all other content, Ravelry took the position that "Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy", and stated, "We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy."[42]

In December 2017, after learning that a French artist it had previously reviewed was a neo-Nazi, the San Francisco punk magazine Maximum Rocknroll apologized and announced that it has "a strict no-platform policy towards any bands and artists with a Nazi ideology".[43]

Link:

Deplatforming - Wikipedia

Progressives the voice of tyranny

Its time to cancel cancel culture. While many Canadians may not directly feel the effects of cancel culture at the moment, they surely will do in the near future.

The astonishing speed with which free speech platforms, websites, Youtube videos and Facebook pages that do not agree with P.C. far left/progressive woke ideology are being removed is now directly reminiscent of Soviet Russia and other similar regimes. It cant be denied now folks. Big Tech and extremists have now become the voice of tyranny.

And this is only one aspect of the problem. As most people already know, legitimate speakers have been removed from universities, intimidated and bullied by the mob into silence. Books are being banned or removed from shelves, and their promotion on Amazon and other sites prohibited. If you deviate from the accepted woke norm you can lose your job, face violence or have your family threatened. None of this even mildly resembles democracy or freedom, let alone the extension and protection of human rights we were all taught to revere. We need to wake up to the reality of what this means for us, understand its ramifications, and fight back.

While it might be tempting for some to think of this as somehow trivial it is anything but. Statues reflecting our history being pulled down, individuals being persecuted for Wrong Think and censorship as part of the deplatforming movement do not represent progress or the woke enlightenment, they represent tyranny and ideological fascism.

We need to restore the fundamental protections guaranteeing our right to disagree and be heard. In a society where there is only one right way of looking at things there can be no real justice, only the bullying tyranny of the self righteous. If there is a powerful quote that most aptly describes our sad potential future it is perhaps that of George Orwell. If you want a vision of the future imagine a boot stomping on a human face forever.

We cant let that happen. We must defend the right of people to both disagree and express themselves in the public forum. And the only way to do that is to cancel the cancel culture.

Perry Foster

Duncan

Letters

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Progressives the voice of tyranny - Cowichan Valley Citizen

The world may easily need more Dick Masterson, that is but the comedian and catchphrase (namely, that the world needs more Dick) seems to have miscalculated the sustainability and longevity of his business in the face of one behemoth payment processing entity that disagrees and it is called Mastercard.

Masterson announced that his Patreon alternative crowdsourcing project was being shuttered after 18 months due to payment processing for it now being down permanently.

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And Masterson suggested it was largely because of Mastercards dominance and resulting diktat of terms in the payment services business.

Dubbing it New Project 2, Masterson was looking for a way to let his audience directly support his work and the work of others, as opposed to going through Patreon riddled with a number of controversies accusing this leader in the crowdsourcing industrial complex of deploying censorship and stifling creators on a number of occasions while at the same time establishing itself as the go-to in this particular branch of the tech and online economy.

However, Mastersons own project did not fold because of competition he says it was the work a global credit card processing system blacklist controlled by Mastercard something known as the MATCH list.

And since New Project 2 as a business found itself on that blacklist, that also meant the site could no longer process credit cards, collect subscriptions, and consequently, keep this business model afloat.

Apparently, New Project 2 was hit with code 10 of MATCH violation of standards. And thats as bad as things get, he suggests because not even offshore banks will work with businesses affected by this rating.

Announcing the news, Masterson said that the motive behind launching the now abandoned New Project 2 had been to provide a clear view into how digital deplatforming works. But he added that he feels he has not been successful because the very nature of deplatforming in the US depends on the financial system, which in itself is not transparent.

Describing what he refers to as censorship working in reverse, Masterson describes a system rigged at all levels to get rid of any loopholes for avoiding censorship and other stumbling blocks faced by small and medium (digital) businesses.

Companies and banking partners are incentivized to censor proactively to abide by ill-defined requirements of the PATRIOT Act, left over policies of Operation Choke Point, and to protect staggering capital investments in credit card certification of questionable necessity, Masterson said on Twitter, adding:

They are held hostage. There is no customer support and no warnings given. Its guess work done in a blackbox.

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Dick Masterson says Patreon alternative New Project 2 is closing after getting blacklisted by Mastercard - Reclaim The Net

Reddits r/The_Donald has long been a thinly veiled breeding ground for racism, misogyny, homophobia, and all-around bigotry devoted to the 45th President of the United States. Today, after years of criticism, Reddit decided to take definitive action against the subreddit of 790,000 subscribers by banning it altogether.

The move is part of new policies and enforcement against hateful contentin the wake of Black Lives Matter protests that resulted in an initial ban of 2,000 communities today. Although only about 200 of these had more than 10 daily active users, other prominent subreddits banned today include r/chapotraphouse, a subreddit associated with a far-left podcast of the same name, and r/gendercritical, a subreddit for trans-exclusionary radical feminists.

Its about time.

To be clear, its not the first time Reddit has taken action against r/The_Donald. It was made an opt-in subreddit in 2019, was limited in features, and its posts were hidden from Reddits front pages. Still, the community continued to grow because ultimately it just took a couple of clicks to reach.

Reddit sites the subreddit as specifically having broken it rules 1, 2, and 8 of its newly refinedcontent policies. Number 1, specifically, reads as follows:

Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. Everyone has a right to use Reddit free ofharassment, bullying, and threats ofviolence. Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate based onidentity or vulnerabilitywill be banned.

Yeah, r/The_Donald is was well beyond that threshold. If youre lucky enough to have never come across content from the subreddit, you can read this piece by my colleague Tristan Greene on what it was like reading r/The_Donald every day (spoiler: unpleasant). The subreddit didnt just give free passes to the occasional troll or bigot, it was a community that made attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups the norm.

While some will worry that the ban will stifle free speech and diverse political opinion, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said on a call that political speech continues to be safe but all communities, including our political communities, have to abide by our policies, according to The Verge. Lets not forget Reddit used to also allow communities featuring sexually suggestive content with minorsalso in the name of freespeech.

You might think well, arent the same people just going to go elsewhere? Of course.Reddit will probably lose thousands ofusers over its new policies, many of whomwill likely find other grimy corners of the internet to fester in. And todays ban is neither all-encompassing there remain many subreddits that are arguably more harmful than some on the list nor likely to be without a myriad of detractors.

But hate spreads when it is normalized and given a platform, especially one as large and young-leaning as Reddit. Deplatforming hatehas been shown to be effective. The previous attempts at curbing r/The_Donalds message just werent enough. Good on Reddit for finally taking a stance, even if theres still more work to do.

Read next: How aliens could use black holes to power an intergalactic civilization

Why is queer representation so important? What's it like being trans in tech? How do I participate virtually? You can find all our Pride 2020 coverage here.

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Reddit bans r/The_Donald and 2000 other hateful subreddits because it was about time - The Next Web

This Independence Day, Disney is giving America a big-ticket birthday gift: the musical Hamilton. After handing over a head-turning $75 million, the company will stream a filmed version of the Lin-Manuel Miranda Broadway megahit on its Disney+ channel. It could be just what the doctor ordered as an antidote to the nations gloomy mood, or it could be the oppositeanother cultural touchstone swept up and spit out by the vortex of the Great Awokening.

That second scenario may sound absurd. After all, Hamilton is the beloved masterpiece of the diversity revolution, an ode to the countrys multiracial future and to immigrants [who] get the job done! Its cast was almost entirely nonwhite, with one notable exception: a campy, mincing King George III. Miranda himself, son of Puerto Rican parents, played the musicals namesake hero, Alexander Hamilton. Audiences were swept up in the mischievous chutzpah of casting black actors as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the clever rap couplets evoking the thrill of youthful revolution. Rap is the voice of the people of our generation, and of people of color, Miranda, winner of a MacArthur genius grant, has proclaimed. Hamilton won a Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy, and 16 Tony Awards. The show has grossed well over $500 million. Beyonc, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Stephen Sondheim, Jay Z, and a long list of other luminaries number among his fans. On social media, followers are counting the days and minutes until the television event. What could go wrong?

Such is the madness of this Jacobin moment that a 2015 progressive musical now looks quainteven problematic. Hamilton is a rousingly, unabashedly patriotic work; American exceptionalism [set to] hip-hop, as Terry Teachout put it in his Wall Street Journal review. Since audiences first jumped to their feet to applaud the show, the history Miranda relied on has been toppled like so many statues. The New York Times has endorsed the view that the nations birth celebrated in the play occurred not in 1776 but in 1619, with the arrival of the first African slaves on American shores. Following the curriculum now endorsed by the paper of record, educators are preparing to teach the young that the American Revolution was fought for the primary purpose of protecting slavery, and that the revolutionaries Miranda celebrates eventually signed the Constitution, whose main purpose was to codify black peoples enslavement. Can millions of teenagers and their parents continue happily to sing the name of one of the Founding Fathers in good conscience?

Equally problematic for the current moment is Mirandas embrace of the American dream. [T]he ten-dollar Founding Father without a father / Got a lot farther by working a lot harder / By being a lot smarter / By being a self-starter; the cast raps in the opening scene. But every red-blooded progressive knows that the American dream of upward mobility is a myth, designed to blame the poor for their own sorry condition. [A]nother immigrant, comin up from the bottom? Sounds like fake newsor false consciousness.

Thats the way a number of black scholars viewed the show from the beginning. Soon after the musical opened, Harvard historian Annette Gordon Reed listed its sins. Hamilton was no man of the people, she argued; he was an elitist and crypto-monarchist. Nor was he innocent of racism; he bought and sold slaves for his in-laws and, though a founder of the Manumission Society, had, at best, a tepid interest in abolition. Moreover, the musical is silent about the fact that George Washington owned slaves, an omission that even third-graders will have no trouble spotting these days.

The playwright and fellow MacArthur grant recipient Ishmael Reed has dedicated the past few years to de-platforming the musical, which he compares with the Confederate-nostalgic Gone with the Wind. He believes that the shows multiracial cast is a con to distract audiences from the brutal reality of American racism. Last year, he staged a play called The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, in which the ghosts of slaves and Native Americans come back to correct the lies of the bewildered Hamilton creator. I think the corrective would be to close the show, he has concluded.

Hamilton critics are not limited to old-timers. I cant believe Lin-Manuel Miranda convinced me that the founding fathers were good people, one young woman tweeted last week. When Miranda took his musical to Puerto Rico to raise money for the stricken country after Hurricane Maria, students and employees at the University of Puerto Rico, where the production was to be staged, rebelled. He wants to help the community of Puerto Rico as a whole? He needs to sit down and talk to us and stop coming across as a white savior, one activist scoffed. And so it is that an ur-progressive, Hispanic rap artist canand willbe accused of white privilege.

Should Hamilton attract the social-justice mobs now that it will be streamed on cable, skeptics of the woke will be tempted to take pleasure in yet another example of the revolution eating its own. That would be a mistake. Miranda is facing the tragic dilemma familiar to the intuitively moderate man caught in an extreme moment. Recently a group in favor of change for BIPOC [black, indigenous, and people of color] theatermakers has circulated a petition demanding more diversity on Broadway. It has already amassed 80,000 signatures. We have watched you [the white powers-that-be of Broadway] pretend not to see us, they write. We have watched you amplify our voices when we are heralded by the press, but refuse to defend our aesthetic when we are not, allowing our livelihoods to be destroyed by a monolithic and racist critical culture. Miranda has yet to sign. But the progressive who has spun his considerable talents into capitalist gold faces the choice of signing or losing his Black Lives Matter cred.

Miranda is a unique cultural figure, a magician who made diversity palatable to New Jersey matinee clubs and midwestern tourists, while also enlivening American history for high school kids from the Bronx. His friendly, open demeanor and mild nerdinesshe adores American musical theaterhas undoubtedly added to his crossover appeal. For years now, the auteur has been posting gmorning and gnight tweets, little pep talks for me and you as he puts it, adored by fans for their sweet quirkiness. Last year, he played Bert the Cockney chimney sweep, a role that previously belonged to the old-school actor Dick Van Dyke, in Mary Poppins Returns. Somehow, he manages to be both mensch and resolute progressive. In the days of corporate wokeness, Disney and Miranda seem made for each other.

Unless he gets canceled.

Kay S. Hymowitz is a City Journal contributing editor, the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and the author of Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys.

Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images

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Will the Social-Justice Mob Cancel Hamilton? - City Journal