Category Archives: Censorship

CensorPhoto: Magnolia Pictures

Long ago, before the internet, it was easy to be shocked, dazzled, and surprised by some random nightmare that you or your family brought home to watch behind closed doors. Even the best advertising campaigns couldnt rival the word of mouth passing across playgrounds and campfires, the whispers of something wicked you could rent down the street. Legendary among these home-viewing horrors were the so-called video nasties, a loose aggregation of weird and extreme genre films whose content (and accessibility) so incensed the status quo that they were eventually banned in the U.K. by the British Board Of Film Classification. You could go to jail for carrying them.

A subtle (until it defiantly isnt) British mood piece, Censor makes horror films, and the emotions they evoke, feel dangerous againmaybe as dangerous as they felt during that era of moral panic. The film, directed and co-written by Prano Bailey-Bond, is set in 1985, at the height of the video nasty hysteria. It follows Enid Baines (Naimh Algar), one of the most motivated and meticulous censors at the BBFC. Enid has a visceral antagonism towards splatter thats linked to a childhood tragedy the film thankfully discloses up front. The mysterious loss of her sister has left her sensitive to the why of the content she snips and bans, and every step she takes through life winds the spring tighter. Algar, best known perhaps for her regular role on Raised By Wolves, is staggeringly good here, whether wielding a notepad or an axe. She has the best horror movie hair since Greta Gerwig in The House Of The Devil: disciplined, but with meticulous unruly strands that imply repression and a shift in power dynamics.

B+

Prano Bailey-Bond

Niamh Algar, Sophia La Porta, Adrian Schiller, Michael Smiley

Select theaters June 11; VOD June 18

Professional drive as a primary character trait is a regular trope of the kind of films that Enid, a workaholic herself, makes a living evaluating. Its a dark comic irony that colors much of the films first half. Enid cant see those patterns in the movies she studies; shes capable only of expounding in great detail on the many atrocities depicted, which she does at one point when trying to infiltrate an underground video store. Reducing horror only to acts committed, she has the tunnel vision of The Wicker Mans Sergeant Howie. Its not for entertainment, she tells her mother. I do it to protect people. Of course, to modern viewers, for whom actual snuff is but a few clicks away online, the BBFCs infamous efforts to shield the public from B-movies can seem rather quaint and nave.

The opening credits, a tightly constructed tour of Enids workplace and the films shes tasked with cutting, have an echo of Dario Argentos The Stendhal Syndrome, a similarly upsetting take on the process of metabolizing trauma. Both films feature heralded works of art as a continuum in which their own stories will unfold. Whether its Renaissance portraiture, Abel Ferraras Driller Killer, or todays most immediate meme, what we watch breaks out of the background to touch the lives and the art surrounding it; it plants unseen seeds. And for Enid, these gory films become the engine driving a quest to find her long-lost sister, and she enters the horror industry as an investigative subject instead of distanced adjudicator. Every bootleg banned tape is a clue to the family-wrecking question mark that plagues the Bainses. The path of destiny aligns with the narratives of a renegade cult director, Frederic North (Adrian Schiller), whose work Enid first encounters on the job.

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Horror fans will get the most out of this film, though its no formalist homage or Mad Libs pastiche. Censor is about the emotional situation that horror brings about in its characters and viewers, and its refusal to pile on specific references or indulge in any nostalgia whatsoever may keep audiences at arms length. But it gets at the patronizing, reactionary malice of Thatcherism without underlining that subtext, and demonstrates how trauma is absorbed and weaponized by conservatism in a fashion that will fuel grad school theses for the foreseeable future. Censors meticulous, insidious structure sticks to the subconscious; this is an auspicious debut in modern genre cinema.

Continued here:
Censor goes back to the cult 80s, and makes horror feel dangerous again - The A.V. Club

Niamh Algar in CensorPhoto: Maria Lax (Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing via Ginsberg Libby)

The climactic scene of Prano Bailey-Bonds new horror film Censor features an image that will be familiar even to filmgoers who watch horror movies with their hands clasped over their eye: a bloodied young woman running through the woods. But the way said character, Censor protagonist Enid (Niamh Algar), gets there is unlike any previous filmEnid is a film censor in mid-80s England whose work is starting to merge with her reality in hallucinogenic proportions. Not only does Censor provide a unique take on meta-horror, its uncommonly thorough in its excavation of its protagonists psychology.

Theres a language in horror that the audience understands, Bailey-Bond told Jezebel this week from London via Zoom. With the hardcore fans, you can have another conversation going on within the horror genre that youre referencing. I really enjoy that. But also creating female characters that maybe feel a little bit more real to me...you want to kind of update these things and keep them fresh.

For the record, Bailey-Bond, who co-wrote Censor with Anthony Fletcher, is a horror fan whos loved the type of movies that her protagonist is on a mission to protect the public from. Censor takes place in Thatchers England during the era of the video nasties, a uniquely U.K. cultural moment in which violent and gory exploitation films of the 70s and 80s were being bandied about in the press as cause for specific crimes and, more generally, societys ills. This led to the cutting and (in most cases, temporary) banning of several films, including well-known genre entries like The Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave. The list of the 72 films that were prosecuted (or for which prosecution was attempted) became an infamous trove for horror fans. The closest United States counterpart is the grindhouse flick, but those were largely available on this side of the Atlantic uncut.

Personally, I dont think that film is going to make someone throw their moral compass out of the window and go and do something really horrible to someone else, said Bailey-Bond. If somebody does that its because theyre unbalanced. We need mental health support. I think its about looking at how we look after those people who need help. Its an easy fix and easy blame to say that a movie or a type of music or video game is going to make somebody do something horrible to someone else. I just think its more complicated than that.

And complicate is something Censor does prodigiously. For one thing, the movie does not suggest that entertainment has no bearing on ones psychestill reeling from the childhood loss of her sister, Enid starts to fill in the fuzzy details of the disappearance when shes reminded of it in a movie shes tasked with reviewing, Dont Go in the Church. (Thats one of several convincing nasties-esque movies within the movie that Bailey-Bond dreamed up.) Its not that the character isnt influenced by what shes seeing; its that her experience is so singular and so obviously also informed by her own mental health issues that by exploring said experience, Censor is able to lay bare the ridiculousness of scapegoating art as directly responsible for peoples behavior. The aforementioned wild third act development, in which Enid breaks the film-viewer continuum and enters an alternate cinematic reality, functions as an ad absurdum argument. This is what it would look like for films to dictate peoples behavior, says Censor, as its protagonist wields an axe in a cabin in the woods. A deceptively sunny resolution that, via video glitches, calls bullshit on itself, imagines what the world would look like if the censors got their way and were right all along about art bearing all social responsibility for human behavior. It is accordingly ludicrous.

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The video nasty era is so rich, said Bailey-Bond. Its such an influential period for my generation of filmmakers. Also when you look back objectively at what happened, you can see things with a different set of goggles. You look back and go, wow, Were we all overreacting? Was this something else that was going on politically and the video nasties were a very convenient scapegoat for something else?

Elsewhere, Bailey-Bonds film suggests that not only was the moral panic illogical, it was also misplaced. Enid endures sexism and harassment at work from her fellow censors and a morally bankrupt film producer. While tabloid writers were wringing their hands about imagined movie-influenced violence, a very real exploitation was underway. To Jezebel, Bailey-Bond also pointed out that some of the video nasties, like Ruggero Deodatos infamous 1980 vomitorium Cannibal Holocaust, also depicted very real animal cruelty.

I love horror but there has to be a line in terms of the way we treat each other when were making it, the writer-director said. Nobody needs to get hurt while were making itanimals, women. Theres no need for that. So thats certainly where I draw a line. But thats doesnt have to stop the joy of watching horror and experiencing this fun, cathartic genre.

The vast majority, if not all, of the video nasties were directed by men. In contrast, along with herself, Bailey-Bonds crew featured several women in key roles (cinematographer Annika Summerson, production designer Paulina Rzeszowska, costume designer Saffron Cullane, composer Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch). This, however, was not an intentional answer to the historical male domination of the genre, according to Bailey-Bond, who says her hiring was slightly circumstantial and based on whom she thought was right for each role. Nevertheless, she says: Its nice to be able to claim something that I guess people dont necessarily naturally fit with a woman director. I like the idea that we can create [beyond] what people expect from us.

Enid works at a fictional agency thats loosely based on the British Board of Film Classification, which was responsible for the censoring and banning of video nasties. While writing their script, Bailey-Bond and Fletcher visited the BBFC (really helpful) and spoke to people who worked as censors during the time Censor takes place. One woman said the rooms were so dark and small and she didnt like horror very muchother censors I spoke to did like horrorbut she said sometimes it felt like really seedy and she was just sat in this poky dark room watching soft porn and like, you know, shed leave work and its night time and you havent seen any daylight, said Bailey-Bond. And those kinds of things really inspired me in terms of thinking about the space and the atmosphere of the censors office and this idea that it felt like a kind of underground rabbit warren. You know, down the ends corridors, youve got like the screams of people dying in horror films.

I wondered if any of the censors Bailey-Bond spoke with had regrets in line with her films reassessment goals. They didnt, but Bailey-Bond found evidence of such reconsideration nonetheless.

I remember reading the file for the Evil Dead, she said. [The BBFC] had cuts made whenever it first got reviewed and then about seven years later, they were looking at it again. There was this little note from one of the examiners whod seen originally saying, I cant believe we reacted like this because theres nothing harmful about this film but the atmosphere at the time made us all more cautious.

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Censor Cleverly Reinterprets the Impact of Exploitation Horror - Jezebel

On the outskirts of this city in a poor, mountainous province in southwestern China, men in hard hats recently put the finishing touches on a white building a quarter-mile long with few windows and a tall surrounding wall. There was little sign of its purpose, apart from the flags of Apple and China flying out front, side by side. Inside, Apple was preparing to store the personal data of its Chinese customers on computer servers run by a state-owned Chinese firm.

Tim Cook, Apples chief executive, has said the data is safe. But at the data center in Guiyang, which Apple hoped would be completed by next month, and another in the Inner Mongolia region, Apple has largely ceded control to the Chinese government. Chinese state employees physically manage the computers. Apple abandoned the encryption technology it used elsewhere after China would not allow it. And the digital keys that unlock information on those computers are stored in the data centers theyre meant to secure. Internal Apple documents reviewed by The New York Times, interviews with 17 current and former Apple employees and four security experts, and new filings made in a court case in the US last week provide rare insight into the compromises Cook has made to do business in China. Apple now assembles nearly all of its products and earns a fifth of its revenue in the China region. But just as Cook figured out how to make China work for Apple, China is making Apple work for the Chinese government.

Cook often talks about Apples commitment to civil liberties and privacy. But to stay on the right side of Chinese regulators, his company has put the data of its Chinese customers at risk and has aided government censorship in the Chinese version of its App Store.

Chinas leader, Xi Jinping, is increasing his demands on Western companies, and Cook has resisted those demands on a number of occasions. But he ultimately approved the plans to store customer data on Chinese servers and to aggressively censor apps, according to interviews with current and former Apple employees. Apple has become a cog in the censorship machine that presents a government-controlled version of the internet, said Nicholas Bequelin, Asia director for Amnesty International, the human rights group. A Times analysis found that tens of thousands of apps have disappeared from Apples Chinese App Store over the past several years, more than previously known, including foreign news outlets, gay dating services and encrypted messaging apps. It also blocked tools for organising pro-democracy protests and skirting internet restrictions, and apps about the Dalai Lama.

And in its data centers, Apples compromises have made it nearly impossible for the company to stop the Chinese government from gaining access to the emails, photos, documents, contacts and locations of millions of Chinese residents, according to the security experts and Apple engineers.

The firm said that it followed the laws in China and did everything it could to keep the data of customers safe. An Apple spokesman said that the company still controlled the keys that protect the data of its Chinese customers and that Apple used its most advanced encryption technology in China . Apple added that it removed apps only to comply with Chinese laws. These decisions are not always easy, and we may not agree with the laws that shape them, the company said.

No Plan B

In 2014, Apple hired Doug Guthrie, the departing dean of the George Washington University business school, to help the firm navigate China, a country he had spent decades studying.

One of his first research projects was Apples Chinese supply chain. Guthrie concluded that no other country could offer the scale, skills, infrastructure and government assistance that Apple required. Chinese workers assemble nearly every iPhone, iPad and Mac. Apple brings in $55 billion a year from the region, far more than any other American company makes in China. This business model only really fits and works in China, Guthrie said. But then youre married to China. China was starting to pass laws that gave the country greater leverage over Apple, and Guthrie said he believed Xi would soon start seeking concessions. Apple, he realised, had no Plan B.

Golden Gate

In November 2016, China approved a law requiring that all personal information and important data that is collected in China be kept in China. It was bad news for Apple, which had staked its reputation on keeping customers data safe. While Apple regularly responded to court orders for access to customer data, Cook had rebuffed the FBI after it demanded Apples help breaking into an iPhone belonging to a terrorist involved in the killing of 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif. Apple encrypts customers private data in its iCloud. But for most of that information, Apple also has the digital keys to unlock that encryption. The location of the keys to the data of Chinese customers was a sticking point in talks between Apple and Chinese officials, two people close to the deliberations said. Apple wanted to keep them in the US; the Chinese officials wanted them in China. The cybersecurity law went into effect in June 2017. In an initial agreement between Apple and Chinese officials, the location of the keys was left intentionally vague, one person said.

But eight months later, the encryption keys were headed to China. It is unclear what led to the change.

Documents reviewed by The Times do not show that the Chinese government has gained access to the data. They only indicate that Apple has made compromises that make it easier for the government to do so.

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Censorship, surveillance and profits: A hard bargain for Apple in China - Business Standard

There has been a dramatic increase in the censorship of Palestinian political speech on social media over the past two weeks, during the period of intense fighting between Israel and militants in Gaza.

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have all been used by Palestinians to share information from, among a variety of areas, the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah where families face eviction.

However the report from 7amleh, The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, shared exclusively with The Independent, argues that social media companies moderation attempts and codes of conduct have resulted in numerous citizens accounts being taken down.

It comes in the context of huge criticism surrounding the Israeli governments military decisions, which include displacing 52,000 Palestinians via air strikes, causing the deaths of numerous children, bombing the Associated Press and Al Jazeera building, and, on social media, the bizarrely flippant tone of its Twitter account.

Overnight, Israel and Hamas have since entered a mutual and simultaneous truce, after Israels security cabinet agreed to put an end to heavy bombardment which has killed more than 230 Palestinians.

Twelve people have been killed In Israel, including two children and a soldier. The Israeli military said 4,340 rockets were fired at Israel by militants over the course of the 11 days of fighting.

It is unlikely, however, that this will be the last time the conflict rears its ugly head, or that social media companies moderation decisions will not exacerbate future battles in the region as seen by their long-ranging and concerning approaches to Palestinian content in the past.

7amleh documented 500 cases of what it calls the digital rights violations of Palestinians between 6 May and 18 May this year through a form shared via its social media channels with the support of partners including MPower Change, Adalah Justice, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Eyewitness Palestine. These violations include content being taken down and accounts being removed or their visibility restricted.

Half of the 500 instances were on Instagram, the report states, with 179 cases on its parent companys platform Facebook; Facebook also apparently increased geo-blocking, where social media companies target the geographical location of content to help their moderation efforts, with a number of these cases [documented] for activists from the occupied Palestinian territory.

The organisation states that 45 per cent of all reported violations on Instagram were due to deleted Stories, with users receiving no prior warning or notice. While Instagram did not respond to 7amleh about 143 of the cases submitted, it confirmed that only one case violated the community standards. Instagram admitted the removal issues on 7 May, but 7amleh says the majority of reports (68 per cent) occurred after the problem was seemingly addressed.

As well as these holistic problems with content moderation, there have been specific, dramatic cases of harmful flaws in the companys content moderation, such as Instagram removing or blocking posts with hashtags for the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in the Islamic faith, as its moderation system mistakenly deemed the religious building a terrorist organisation.

We know there have been several issues that have impacted peoples ability to share on our apps, including a technical bug that affected Stories around the world, and an error that temporarily restricted content from being viewed on the Al Aqsa hashtag page. While these have been fixed, they should never have happened in the first place, Facebook told The Independent in a statement.

Our policies are designed to give everyone a voice while keeping them safe, and we apply these policies equally, regardless of who is posting or their personal beliefs, the company added. Our dedicated team, which includes Arabic and Hebrew speakers, is closely monitoring the situation on the ground. It added that it was continuing to review 7amlehs reports.

There have also been instances of Facebook blocking the accounts of Palestinian journalists, a critique which has been also levied at Twitter on which there were 55 cases of violations of Palestinian content, 91 per cent of which were suspension of accounts, according to 7amleh.

Our automated systems took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error by an automated spam filter. We are expeditiously reversing this action to reinstate access to the affected accounts, many of which have already been reinstated, Twitter said in a statement, adding that it had an appeals process for such accounts.

Twitter also temporarily restricted the account of Palestinian-American writer Mariam Barghouti, who was reporting on Palestinians being evicted from Sheikh Jarrah. "We took enforcement action on the account you referenced in error. That has since been reversed," Twitter said in a statement, changing Barghoutis account to say that it was temporarily unavailable because it violates the Twitter Media Policy.

Twitter said that if an accounts profile or media content is not compliant with our policies, we may make it temporarily unavailable and require that the violator edit the media or information in their profile to comply with our rules. We also explain which policy their profile or media content has violated. Twitter did not explain to The Independent which policy was violated.

The issues around social media moderating content, specifically about Israels war against Palestine, are long-running. In 2016, the Israeli government announced a formal collaboration with Facebooks Tel Aviv office, that were meant to force social networks to rein in content that Israel says incites violence.

Internally, Facebook listed globally protected vulnerable groups including homeless people, foreigners, and Zionists a person who supports the re-establishment of and support for a Jewish state in the Holy Land, currently located in Palestine - in documents revealed by The Guardian in 2017.

In January 2021, Facebook apparently proposed a revision of the term Zionist that would make it a proxy for Jew or Jewish, although the company said that no decision had been made. An anonymous Facebook moderator who spoke to The Intercept said the policy, in practise, leaves very little wiggle room for criticism ofZionism.

That decision was criticised by Rabbi Alissa Wise, Deputy Director at Jewish Voice for Peace, who said that restricting the word prevent[s] its users from holding the Israeli government accountable for harming Palestinian people.

Facebook said it understand[s] that the word Zionist is frequently used in important political debate. ... thats why we allow critical discussion of Zionists, but remove attacks against them in specific instances when context suggests the word is being used as a proxy for Jews or Israelis, both of which are protected characteristics under our hate speech policies.

It added: We always work to apply our Community Standards as accurately and consistently as possible, and dont remove content that doesnt break our rules. We have a clear process for handling requests from governments and regulators, which is the same around the world. Were public about how many pieces of content we restrict locally for breaking local law, and publish these numbers in our Transparency report twice a year.

However, much like how western news media headlines have slanted towards pro-Israeli language, reflecting the foreign policies of their national governments, many of the policies put forth by American companies are informed by US culture and norms, Jillian York, Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Independent.

She added that the US has historically been a strong supporter of Israel and has long dehumanized Palestinians, so it isnt surprising that corporate policies would align with that worldview.

For Facebook its more important to censor terrorism than it is to ensure that Palestinians can speak freely, York continued. Amidst the pandemic, this has only gotten worse, as content moderators in some countries are still stuck at home. As such, were seeing more bugs, more keyword filtering, more shadowbanning and other subtle enforcement tactics that arent simply takedowns.

It is for this reason that social media is so important in reframing the conversation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, allowing messages that may not come through traditional media to reach the general public.

Snapchats Snap Maps feature, for example, has been used to demonstrate in real-time the difference in the effects of the conflict between Tel Aviv and Gaza, as have TikTok memes.

Snapchat Maps video compares situation in Gaza and Israel

Both companies present a challenge to Facebook and Twitter but, York says, the network effect of these companies is still hard to disrupt and when it comes to bold decisions, such as banning President Trump, many follow one another.

Facebook's rules related to Israel-Palestinian have always been opaque and one-sided. Marwa Fatafta, a policy manager at Access Now, told The Independent.

It's no secret that Facebook often bows to government pressure and converts such demands into rules governing online speech. But thats only half of the story [as] social media platforms rely on algorithms to moderate speech at scale and being blind to context as they are, lots of legitimate content get flagged and taken down. Such issues stress the need for algorithmic transparency, which Fatafta says is clearly biased.

At some big technology companies, employees are very conscious of this power. This week both Jewish Google workers and Apple staff have called on their respective executives to recognise that millions of Palestinian people currently suffer under an illegal occupation,.

In affecting change, 7amleh recommends a number of practises to improve social media companies moderation in the end of its report.

These include hiring fact checkers specifically for Israeli and Palestinian content, allowing people access to geo-spatial information needed to respond to the humanitarian crises, providing transparency on voluntary takedown requests, and conducting human rights assessments that includes the impact of Israel on Palestinians in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.

Censorship and bias have been issues for years, however, and the escalation of violence over the past two weeks only scaled it up and made it more pronounced, Fatafta says.

Social media has been a life-linefor Palestinian activists deprived of access to mainstream media, and the despite of the ceasefire, the reality of occupation and oppression continues. So Palestinians will continue to use social media to organise and dissent. The main question here is: would social media companies learn their lessons this time?

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Palestinians digital rights violated by censorship on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, new report claims - The Independent

The late Village Voice journalist and civil libertarian Nat Hentoff loved telling the story about how three rabbis, gathered in a Massachusetts motel in 1982, officially excommunicated him from the Jewish people for the crime of signing a New York Times advertisement protesting Israel's invasion of Lebanon. That their clerical authority to extinguish Hentoff's Judaism was recognized by no one but themselves is a source of both comedy and anger. In matters political, even the smallest of factions can pretend that their extremism matters, but at the heart of that absurdity is the dark human desire to censor and to silence anyone deviating from the party line.

And so joining the three rabbis in this tragic comedy are the 900+ signers of what's now called the "Jewish Harper's Letter," published by the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, alleging that an undefined "social justice ideology" holds that there is "only one way to look at the problems we face, and those who disagree must be silenced." They assert that this "suppression of dissent violates the core Jewish value of open discourse" (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 5/5/21). It's called the "Jewish Harper's Letter" because it echoes and extends a letter signed by journalists and academics about censoriousness, published in Harper's (7/7/20; FAIR.org, 8/1/20).

So far the letter has received some mainstream attention (Newsweek, 5/5/21), given the prominence of some of the rabbis, academics and journalists who signed it, like New York Times columnist Bret Stephens and his former colleague Bari Weiss. The letter never says how their views have been silenced, or names a group, individual or specific school of thought that is implementing such a chilling effect. Nor do the signers, many of whom are prominent journalists associated with the Jewish right, disclose their own unease with free discourse, their own desire to suppress speech and their own extremism.

For example, Weiss (who now maintains her own newsletter at Substack) famously tried to silence critics of Israel at Columbia University (Intercept, 3/8/18). Stephens alerted an academic's boss because he called the columnist a "bedbug" on Twitter (NBC, 8/27/19). Liel Leibowitz, a signer and Tablet writer, said Jews shouldn't go to college because of the ideas they might be exposed to (Tablet, 10/28/18)or, as he put it, because college is a place where "tenured professors train like-minded fanatics, and students are punished or rewarded for their willingness to pledge allegiance to their loony dogma."

The lack of specificity in the letter isn't an accident. Defining an ideological enemy so vaguely will allow these individuals, many of whom are on the right of the political spectrum, to employ the accusation of overly censorious "social justice" talk when they deem it necessary.

Given that so much of the letter aims at racial discordthe letter says that on "racial justice," Jewish organizations do not "encourage discussions that include differing perspectives," because "in some cases, Jewish leaders have even denounced Jews for expressing unpopular opinions"one can assume this is responding to Jewish Americans who have in the last several years aligned with Black Lives Matter, Abolish ICE and Antifa, which have responded to both the rise of far-right extremist groups and the state violence of border enforcement and overly militarized policing. The letter evokes the Republican hype about "cancel culture," the idea that the price of offending "social justice" activists means losing your job or media platform.

"This is not a new phenomenon," said Joshua Shanes, an associate professor of Jewish studies at the College of Charleston. "The idea that [the left] is betraying liberalism is an old trope to stop progress, going back to the '30s, and then to 'neocons' in the '70s and '80s."

The fact is that while the Jewish right claims they are being silenced or vilified in the media by the left, the Jewish right and its allies have levied harsh criticism toward liberal Jews and have in some cases attempted to deplatform them. The right-wing Zionist Organization of America blasted the Jewish immigration group HIAS for opposing the Trump administration (Jerusalem Post, 8/24/20), and the ZOA has also attempted to punish campus Jewish groups for voicing criticism of Israel (American Prospect, 1/4/07). DePaul University rejected tenure to anti-Israel scholar Norman Finkelstein, a result of his famous feud with pro-Israel legal scholar and Trump advocate Alan Dershowitz (Inside Higher Ed, 6/11/07). When New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced an executive order against the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, he didn't do so in a vacuum, but in "a speech at the Harvard Club in Manhattan to an audience including local Jewish leaders and lawmakers" (New York Times, 6/5/16).

The former US ambassador to Israel likened liberal Jewsthat is, the bulk of US Jewsto Nazi collaborators (New York, 12/16/16). Chicago-based Palestine Legal published a report on the heavily coordinated activity to silence critics of Israel across the countrya report that, unlike the JILV letter, cited specific examples, like how Florida politicians attacked the president of the Florida State student senate because of "social media posts he had made against the Israeli occupation."

The JILV "is a project of an opaque foundation connected to Republican megadonor Adam Beren," the Forward (5/6/21) reported. Lila Corwin Berman, a professor of history and Jewish studies at Temple University, told FAIR, "It is concerning when an initiative claiming to 'stand up for democratic liberal values' is far from transparent about its funding source." She added: "It seems that a basic requirement of supporting free and open debate would be to eschew cloaked or unaccountable modes of influence."

Leo Ferguson, director of strategic projects at Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, told FAIR:

The letter demonstrates a cynical, willful misunderstanding of the liberal political tradition, the meaning of free speech and dissent, and the mechanisms at work in a free marketplace of ideas. Let's be clearthe almost exclusively white signatories to this letter aren't motivated by an ironclad commitment to free political expression. On the contrary, many of these folks have led the charge to pass anti-BDS bills like the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which is about as illiberal and censorious as you can get in a country with a First Amendment. At the end of the day, the not-so-sub-text of this letter is that conservative white Jews really don't like being called racist. But just because they don't like it doesn't mean it's not true.

It's easy to laugh off academic and journalistic elites who believe that they're being censored, but the true tragedy of the letter is that the signers hold up robust Jewish debate as their guiding tradition, when what they really want is for their ideas to go unchallenged in the marketplace of ideas. These signers have every right, both in the name of free discourse and the US constitution, to say whatever they want, no matter how controversial. But that also means Jewish leftists and "social justice" activists have a right to respond in kind. The anti-woke, antisocial justice right, to quote Hentoff again, wants "free speech for me, but not for thee."

Weiss said in her resignation letter that her conservatism was under attack while at the Times because colleagues ridiculed her, and that she faced viciousness on Twitter (New York Times, 7/14/20). But the gritty world of New York City journalism is home to lots of biting editors, and sources who love to complain to reporters about their coverage.

As for online harassment, that is unfortunately the world that any journalist has to deal with in the social media age. Julie Ioffe received considerable antisemitic harassment after she wrote a critical profile of Melania Trump (GQ, 4/27/16), attacks that Trump, whose husband would later become president, blamed on Ioffe (Washington Post, 5/17/16). I was put on an alt-right hit list (Forward, 10/19/16), and was harassed by Nazis on Twitter when I defended Antifa (Ha'aretz, 6/7/20). Welcome to the club, Bari. If you don't like it here, perhaps the writing profession isn't for you.

This failed attempt to paint "social justice" as some sort of anti-free speech mob is funny only until you put it into the context of a conservative movement that is taking legal moves to ban or threaten certain ideas (such as proposed laws against boycotts against Israel), and to protect violence against protestors. I have previously written for FAIR.org (10/23/20, 2/16/21) that right-wing anger about "cancel culture" and "wokeness" are often merely projections of the right's desire to censor the left. The "Jewish Harper's Letter" is simply another chapter in this disinformation tactic by the right.

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Conservative Jewish Journalists Use False Claims of Censorship to Try to Silence Critics - Common Dreams

In the early 80s, a loophole in film classification laws allowed a series of so-called video nasties think low-budget horror and exploitation offerings like Blood Feast and The Burning to hit the market without any sort of regulation. The response to these films was swift and expected: public panic, supposed moral outrage, and eventually heightened censorship and regulation. Such is the world of Censor, a gory and clever horror feature about, well, horror films. Sort of.

Per the films official synopsis: Film censor Enid takes pride in her meticulous work, guarding unsuspecting audiences from the deleterious effects of watching the gore-filled decapitations and eye gougings she pores over. Her sense of duty to protect is amplified by guilt over her inability to recall details of the long-ago disappearance of her sister, recently declared dead in absentia. When Enid is assigned to review a disturbing film from the archive that echoes her hazy childhood memories, she begins to unravel how this eerie work might be tied to her past.

Censor stars Niamh Algar as the censor of the title, Enid, and was directed by Prano Bailey-Bond in her feature debut (she also wrote the film alongside Anthony Fletcher). The film debuted at this years Sundance Film Festival, where IndieWires Eric Kohn called it a disturbing debut steeped in 80s horror.

In his review, Kohn wrote:The movie unfolds with elegant atmospheric dread, as Enid contends with a brutal, male-dominated work environment in which her opinions rarely hold weight. When a lunatic murders his family in a manner based off one of the movies she was forced with cutting down, the world turns against her. Thats when she sees a particularly unnerving exploitation movie called Dont Go in the Church, with an opening slasher bit featuring an actress that bears an unmistakable resemblance to Enids missing sibling. At least, thats what Enid thinks, as she journeys down a rabbit hole of theories and detective work that may or may not hold together.

Magnet Releasing will release Censor in theaters on June 11, with a VOD rollout to follow on June 18. Check out the first U.S. trailer and poster for the film, available exclusively on IndieWire, below.

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Read more from the original source:
Censor Trailer: Video Nasties and Real-Life Horror Meld Together in Disturbing Sundance Chiller - IndieWire

For a lot of the songs across this album, it explores love from many different angles. Did making the album teach you anything about love, how you love, how you approach love?

I think it definitely made me sort of Im a lot more aware of my own role in a relationship now. And that might just be a result of growing up and kind of not thinking that everything bad that happens to you is, its someone else and putting the blame on others which is not something I do and not something I want to do. But sometimes people have the tendency to not look within before they start judging others. Im really looking at myself on a few of these songs and kind of thats also what Ive just been doing so much this past year. Is just looking in at myself and just being, Wait, what? What did I do here? And what could I have said differently here and how can I make it up to this person? Or how can I let this person know what I feel? And kind of just being like Thinking a lot more about communication which is so key in all of our relationships, really. So I feel like thats something Ive sort of been thinking about this past year when it comes to love and just

Are you a person who communicates better through their art than in conversation?

I would say so, because I dont know. Its definitely easier writing a song. Writing a song is like talking to yourself really. As long as youre okay with saying it to yourself, its not that hard to put it out on paper either or into your notes. Its definitely easier for me to write songs instead of communicating in real life. Im aware of that and thats something I want to get better at. I want to be like, Hey, you know what? What you said there that actually made me feel really shitty, instead of going home and being left with a weird feeling and then writing about it three months later.

And sort of on that tip, has keeping a diary helped you as a musician?

Yes. I would say so. It wasnt necessarily about a feeling, but I read a diary entry from 2014 the other day and I kind of go back to it sometimes where Im like, I want to be I was 15, 16, whatever. I want to make music. I havent been making any music recently. I feel like Ive lost my ability. And I was like, Oh my God. This is 15 year old, 16 year old Marie saying the shit Im feeling right now. And I was like So even though it wasnt anything related to a love entry or anything that, but it was just really great to see that I was struggling with feeling like Im never going to write a good song again at that age. And then Ive written several albums worth of music after that and that its going to be okay and that I just got to keep making stuff. So in a way I would say a diary entry has actually helped me as a musician.

When you look back at the music that youve released under your birth name, what is some of the key differences that you hear in it, between that work and your work as girl in red?

I would say the key difference is that this music really sounds like what I want it to sound like. And this music is straight out from my head and not someone elses. The music that was under my real name, I didnt know what producing was at that point. Even when I was in the studio with the studio guy, I didnt know that his role was a producer. And I didnt know that word. And I was just like, You glued the song together. I was so beyond a rabbit hole of not knowing anything. I would just say that the biggest difference is that this is truly how I want my music to sound and its coming from me because Im a producer now and I have abilities that I didnt have. I feel like thats the biggest difference other than the fact that its Norwegian and really bad.

So have you listened to some of your older girl in red songs recently? And if so, how do you feel about them now that youre going to release your first album?

I have. I actually checked out a few ones very briefly. But I still love them, but Im also like, Whoa, this sounds different. Ive gotten so much better. And that really so Im actually I get this really cool boost when I listen to them because Im like, Ive just been working so hard to get better and Im getting better and thats really inspiring. Even though sometimes I kind of lose track of that, Im actually progressing. Im actually getting better. And I listen to my old stuff and I was like, This sounds like mud. This sounds like I love this, but it also sounds like the mix is so off. The bass tone is literally Its the wrong key. Its dissonance. But its so raw and its so straight from my heart. So you can still feel how much I met everything and I just think thats really cool.

I also read that you really like film scores and of course the final track on your album is this beautiful instrumental piece. I was wondering if you had any favorite film scores and what kinds of movies you would like to score.

Thank you by the way. I also kind of look at that as a film score. And I think it sounds really peaceful. I dont Trying to I dont really have a favorite film score that comes to mind, but I always know when I really I always really appreciate it, but Im not a film score geek. But I want to score a movie maybe at some point in my life. Maybe not all by myself, but with someone. I feel like that would be great. To be in a studio with someone and kind of compose something together for a movie would be so cool. I dont even know what movie, but probably some indie movie thats shot on film, that just feels really A movie that would be really important to me as a teenager, I want to score one of those movies so that I can have something to say in a young persons adolescence and make the soundtrack to a movie that changed their life. That would be really cool.

So have you started thinking at all about how you want your next record to sound?

Yes, actually I have. And Im kind of in the middle of making that right now and figuring that out. Yes. I got to be productive. I have the weird opportunity now to not go on tour, but then to make more music. I kind of want to make the most out of that opportunity. I want to get cracking. Im going to the studio very soon. In three weeks, Im going back to the studio and Im going to be working on an idea that Ive been producing and writing on. So Im definitely trying to figure out what I want my second album to sound like.

Was writing an album something that you always wanted to do from when you started playing music? Because for a while, at least as girl in red it seemed like you were content to just put out singles and EPs.

That is something Ive always wanted. I saw this TikTok the other day that showed you how you could read your old Instagram bios. So I went to one of my first Instagrams. And I was in my bio, it was 16 and then music emoji. And then, Im making an album, music emoji. So when I was 16 years old, thats six years ago. So that was 16. And I was already, then, I was like, Im making an album. Obviously I wasnt because I did not know what it took at that point. I was just like, Im making many songs that is equals making album, which is not the same. But I think in some ways that is something Ive always wanted to do. I just think that the reason I was putting out so many songs was because I was kind of I had figured out that I could make songs and produce songs.

And that was such a big wow moment for me. So I wanted to sort of explore that a little bit before I wanted And sort of learn what it meant for me as a musician and kind of who am I as a musician and what role do I have? So I wanted to really take that time to figure it out. And I feel like if I wouldve made an album earlier, it wouldnt be If I Can Make It Go Quiet, it would, it would be something completely different and it would be rushed. And I also dont want to rush music.

I think thats a good point to talk a little about the album title, If I Could Make It Go Quiet. What does that album title mean to you in the context of the record?

In the context of the record, it means that theres so much shit going on in my head and I want to make it all go away, kind of. Its all about the mental noise thats so loud and it takes up all your mind space and it sort of sits in your chest and its everywhere. And its that loud feeling of wanting to make it all sort of go away and wanting to make it go quiet and wanting to just be happy and in a quiet place, kind of. Its a metaphor. So the quiet, the noise is everything thats not okay, kind of. And the world is a lot. So I just wanted to lower that shit.

And does making music help you do that?

Ironically, yes. Making music makes me really happy and it allows me to have a lot of other noise in my head instead of my thoughts that are incredibly annoying sometimes. So I would definitely say that making music makes other stuff go quiet.

Ive also read in a couple of interviews from you that world domination is the end goal. So in your mind, how is the world changed after girl in red has dominated it?

Thats a good question. Oh my God. I honestly dont even know. I should know this. I would just say that a lot of people are happy. People are being filled with great music. That is world domination. People are listening to music and they are connecting through music. I feel like that would be awesome.

Okay, great. I think well leave it there. Thanks for joining us, girl in red.

Thank you for talking to me. I hope you have a good day.

See more here:
girl in red on writers block, self-censorship, and going cinematic - The FADER

Editor,

Judging from the May 18 letters to the editor in this publication, I must have gored a sacred cow. That all but one letter and the cartoon referenced The Big Lie as the truth and anyone who questions the official findings is a radical insurrectionist says more about their ideology than mine.

First, let me commend the editors of the News-Times for being true to their header. If more of your readers would read it, they might understand the power of honest discussion to find truth than bowing to some preconceived script.

I have always been a skeptic of mail-in voting and extended voting times. If I trusted that all people were honest, there would be no question that we had honest results, but having lived on this planet for over 70 years, I know that a few of my fellow humans cant be trusted. Lyndon Johnson was noted for delivering enough late votes in Texas to give his partys candidate a win.

This state has a history of holding recounts on close elections until the results are what the power brokers want. Dishonest? Perhaps. Provable? Probably not. But it does point to problems in trust.

That Democrats oppose in- person voting, valid IDs, and want ballot harvesting makes me cringe. And if studies are correct, mail-in voting actually decreases participation. Strange way to instill trust in the electorate.

This is, of course, my opinion and if that upsets you, I suggest you look to the bottom of the published letter and if it is from me, dont read it.

I promise I wont be offended, and I wont tell the editors not to publish yours.

Fred Wilferth

Coupeville

See the original post here:
Letter: You don't have to agree, but don't call for censorship - Whidbey News-Times

CensorScreenshot: Magnolia Pictures

Between the Satanic panic and the rise of video nasties, the 1980s were a boon for anti-horror movie sentiments. As a result, horror movies seemingly became even more depraved, sadistic, and violent. Unsurprisingly, this period, when many of todays most prominent horror directors came of age, has become the setting du jour for science fiction and horror movies inspired by David Cronenberg, Dario Argento, and John Carpenter. And thats precisely the kind of vibe that the trailer for Censor is going for.

Directed by Prano Bailey-Bond, in her first feature, Censor follows a meticulous film censor named Enid (Niamh Algar) whos grip on reality loosens when her missing sister is declared dead. Unable to discern her childhood memories from a new film shes watching for work, Enid breaks down in what appears to be a frenzy of violence and gore.

The trailer recalls many of the aforementioned directors work, particularly Cronenbergs Videodrome and the red-tinged Giallo photography of Argentos Suspiria (the music in the trailer even sounds like Goblin). Theres a lot of this type of thing going around right now, from the work of Panos Cosmatos to the more family-friendly world of Stranger Things. Though, this falls squarely in the latter. Obviously, if thats your thing, youre going to want to soak up every ounce of blood this trailer has to offer. If not, you might want to cover your eyes because this thing is creepy.

Censor tears its way into theaters on June 11 and video-on-demand on June 18.

Continued here:
The Censor trailer is here to remind us that horror movies are bad for our mental health - The A.V. Club

Almost as fast as social media posts about Israel and Gaza began multiplying, so too did complaints of censorship from both sides. Posts were identified as hate speech and taken down; influencers insisted that they had been shadow-banned a term for when a users posts are left up but the algorithm does not show them to users noting lower than usual views on posts about Israel, East Jerusalem or Gaza. There have been allegations of censorship on both sides of the political spectrum, but the issue appears to be more systemic and well-documented among those posting pro-Palestinian content.

This is not just a conspiracy theory.

Last week, Instagram posted an apology to Twitter explaining that a glitch had led to Instagram stories not posting or archived stories disappearing, resulting in reports of silencing from those advocating around events in both East Jerusalem and Colombia, where anti-government protests have resulted in bloody clashes with the police.

This is a widespread global technical issue not related to any particular topic, Instagrams communications team said in a statement on Twitter. Another, longer statement posted the next day specifically named East Jerusalem in its apology, reasserting that Instagram had no intention of suppressing voices reporting from there.

Meanwhile, Instagram was also automatically hiding or removing posts tagged with al-Aqsa, in both English and Arabic. The tag refers to the Aqsa mosque compound, Islams third-holiest site, in the Old City of Jerusalem, which is known to Jews as the Temple Mount, and was the site of intense conflict between the Israeli police and Muslim worshippers at the onset of the current escalation.

Instagram had flagged alaqsa as associated with violence or a terrorist association. The tag was being used during the end of Ramadan as violence erupted between Israeli police and Palestinians at the holy site, and many trying to draw attention to the violence found their posts blocked right as Israeli police stormed the grounds with rubber bullets and stun grenades, injuring 220 Palestinians.

By iStock

The tagging issue has since been resolved, thanks to employees flagging it internally, and Facebook has apologized; an internal post obtained by Buzzfeed News said that the posts were flagged because al-Aqsa is also the name of an organization sanctioned by the United States government. Both issues disproportionately impacted Palestinian posts, blocking posts in the tens of thousands.

Israeli voices have also complained of censorship, though to date there are no reports of a systemic rule with as broad an impact as the al-Aqsa issue. The writer Hen Mazzig had an infographic defending Israel removed, though it was later reinstated; Mazzigs post had been in response to a viral anti-Israel infographic that was not censored.

Another account, @the.israel.files has also posted complaints about censorship and removed posts, while several lifestyle influencers who posted pro-Israel content saw a dropoff in views, suggesting that they had been shadowbanned for posting pro-Israel content.

This week, the Israeli Defense Forces complained that one of its tweets warning of a rocket alert was not allowed to post. But as its own screenshot suggested, the tweet was likely blocked because Twitter does not allow identical posts within a short period of time.

Users across other social media platforms, including Twitter and TikTok, voiced similar complaints. Rest of World, a global nonprofit news outlet, reported that Venmo was flagging and delaying payments listed to Palestinian emergency relief fund, but payments listed with similar pro-Palestinian phrases such as Free Palestine or Palestinian Fund were processed without delay.

A Venmo spokesperson said the issues were OFAC related, referring to regulations from the U.S. Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control, which has a list of groups and organizations under U.S. sanctions, including any groups suspected of being controlled by Hamas.

Moderation during rapidly unfolding events is a nightmare for tech platforms, which find themselves the arbiters of complex questions about what counts as misinformation, hate speech or incitement during a situation in which the truth is often unclear and events are quickly changing.

News outlets across the world reported that Israeli troops had invaded Gaza late Thursday, for example, based on an inaccurate statement an IDF spokesman made to international journalists. Some analysts believe the mistake, which took more than two hours for the IDF to correct, was intentional, part of a ploy to lure Hamas fighters into underground tunnels that Israel was targeting with airstrikes and artillery.

Posts showing violence are limited, unless they are deemed to be educational or to raise awareness about a world event. Yet Palestinians report that their posts have been taken down for being too violent, and further they havecomplained of Western standards being applied to other regions and language norms where they do not make sense.

Also tricky is the question of what counts as hate speech.

Whether anti-Zionism is equivalent to antisemitism has been hotly debated throughout the Jewish community; those who believe anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitic have demanded that anti-Zionist posts be removed for hate speech, while those who believe criticism of the state of Israel is not inherently antisemitic criticize platforms discrimination if anti-Zionist posts are removed. The fact that anti-Zionism is sometimes, though not always, paired with overt antisemitism, such as using the terms Zionists and Jews interchangeably, does not help clarify the situation.

Facebooks definition of hate speech states: We define hate speech as a direct attack against people on the basis of what we call protected characteristics: race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity and serious disease. We define attacks as violent or dehumanising speech, harmful stereotypes, statements of inferiority, expressions of contempt, disgust or dismissal, cursing and calls for exclusion or segregation.

The definition also includes some protections for characteristics such as occupation, when theyre referenced along with a protected characteristic such as ethnicity or religion.

By iStock

While the definition goes into detailed examples, it is nearly impossible to identify and list every potential form of hate.

In a global event in which many protected characteristics, such as ethnicity, national origin and religion, are all the subject of discourse, it is difficult to fairly moderate conversation from users, many of whom are deeply upset and prone to vitriolic statements.

Other forbidden statements include voicing a desire to segregate or exclude a group, which also crops up in discussions about the situation in Israel and the West Bank, which often includes opinions on where borders should be drawn that would limit the movements of Palestinians or Israeli Jews.

In all of these cases, the line between controversial opinion and misinformation or hate speech is hard to determine. In a situation as loaded as that in Israel, Gaza and Jerusalem, many feel the other sides opinion is objectively misleading or hateful, flagging posts and accounts they disagree with an issue the Forwards own comments section struggles with.

Most platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, increasingly use technology and algorithms to moderate hate speech and incitement.

Facebook, which shares a moderation team with Instagram, updated their technology to help identify new forms of inflammatory speech, according to a report from May 2020. The company told the Forward that improving and increasing the use of algorithms in the moderation process helps ensure that reviewers will spend more of their time reviewing truly borderline cases.

Facebook also partners with local experts and organizations to help contextualize issues, and told the Forward that the company has over 35,000 people working on safety and security, including 15,000 content reviewers.

The company said that the team consists of native language speakers who understand local cultural context and nuances; they also said their policies are extremely prescriptive to help ensure objectivity.

When breaking news events change a situation, content is often escalated to a Risk and Response team that is better qualified to make tough calls, according to a report from Vice. In this case, Facebook said it has established a Special Operations Center, staffed by experts from across the company, including native Arabic and Hebrew speakers.

Yet any reliance on algorithms to flag and remove posts means human nuance can get lost. Even human moderators reviewing individual posts often need to be deeply embedded in a particular communitys language and discourse to have a hope of effectively understanding the weight of different terms or accusations.

These questions are relevant for any outlet platforming or taking part in any public discussion of world events, including news outlets. But while such outlets have journalists focused on the details of a breaking story, social media content moderators are often from third party firms sitting in call centers trying to follow bullet-point guidelines issued to them. While experts may make the guidelines, it is an army of individuals adjudicating individual instances. They are seeing revenge porn and animal cruelty alongside posts about Israel or Gaza, and they often lack cultural or political context to apply during the 30 seconds they spend on each post, according to an investigation by The Verge.

Given the volume of posts on social media each day, it is hard to imagine a better system for moderation. But its just as clear that this one is flawed.

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Have social media giants been censoring posts about Israel and Gaza? - Forward