For conservatives, the definition of “racism” encompasses a narrower range of thought and behavior than it does for leftists or progressives. Conservatives see racism as an endorsement of one’s own racial group’s superiority, a belief about another racial group’s inferiority, or harmful behavior directed at someone specifically because of their race. Conservatives often require a higher standard of proof, relying on explicit evidence rather than implicit assumptions to charge someone with racist behavior.On the other hand, progressives define racism as not necessarily being limited to conscious intent, but as encompassing unconscious bias fundamental to everyone’s cultural upbringing and reaffirmed through systemic structures designed to support white people. They perceive racism as built into people’s way of being or seeing in the world. Therefore, progressives may charge someone with racism without explicit evidence the behavior or remarks of the accused were based on race, due to their belief that racism can operate as unconscious bias. Because progressives perceive many fundamental societal structures as built on systemic racism — meaning certain groups have more power than others — they view racism as linked to power, holding the belief that disadvantaged groups cannot be racist toward groups that have power.In the case of Trump’s tweets, the right sees a lack of explicit proof that Trump views the Squad as inferior due to their race, or denies that he criticized them based solely on their race and not their ideas. Progressives, on the other hand, perceive Trumps’s attempts to curb illegal immigration and the “go back” remarks as evidence of unconscious bias against immigrants and people of color.
Julie Mastrine is the Director of Marketing at AllSides. She has a Center bias.
This piece was reviewed by Samantha Shireman, Information Architect at AllSides, who has a Lean Left bias. It was also reviewed by AllSides Daily News Editor Henry Brechter, who has a Center bias.
Call a spade a spade. Hamas, Pro Hamas Rioters, and White and Black Progressive Supremacists have the same goals. For my Liberal readers, let me explain before you try to do a doxing on me the way Progressives do. This is my pointing out of white progressive and black progressive supremacists.
The two groups have the same goals. They don’t allow debate. Only one view is allowed, and they dox whenever they get the chance. They will also go after moderates and liberals who disagree with them.
They claim that they’re not antisemitic, but they don’t condemn the rioters or openly support Israel in the October attack. They also will say something like I don’t support the government, but I support the people. Never do you see them in rallies in support of the people. They only show up in these rallies for a river to the sea cleansing of Jews.
So, when you see me connect progressives with Hamas, KKK, Confederates, Jim Crow laws, and other signs of hate, you will know of whom I speak.
Dr. Maha Almasri was fired from her position as a math tutor for her posts supporting Palestinians. - CNN
Story by By Alaa Elassar, CNN (Arab/Muslim, per CNN)
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has requested the US Department of Education investigate the expulsion of a Palestinian American high school student over pro-Palestinian content his mother posted on social media.
Jad Abuhamda, 15, was expelled on November 19 from the Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His mother, Dr. Maha Almasri, was fired from her position as a math tutor at the school after she made posts criticizing Israel’s “collective brutality” against Palestinian civilians and children in Gaza during the ongoing war, CAIR said in a Wednesday news release.
The private school issued a statement saying they considered Almasri’s social media posts to be “hateful and incendiary,” which Almasri has denied. “We viewed some of this individual’s posts — including, for example, an image of a soldier pointing a machine gun at an infant inside of an incubator and an image with commentary suggesting that some wanted to roast babies in an oven — as having the possibility of inciting hatred and creating a climate of fear,” Pine Crest School said. “Her behavior was also such that the School believed it could increase the risk of violence in our community and compromise the safety of our students, employees, and families.”
Almasri told CNN her posts were taken out of context and her son has been subjected to wrongful treatment.
CAIR Florida managing attorney Omar Saleh said during a Thursday news conference they have not received a response from the school to their letters requesting more information on why Jad was expelled. The school responded to CNN’s request for comment with a link to its news release.
“For these reasons, the Student Handbook and enrollment agreement make clear that if a parent engages in behavior that is ‘disruptive, intimidating, or overly aggressive’ or ‘interferes … with the School’s … safety procedures, responsibilities, or the accomplishment of its educational purpose or program,’ the School may take the action that it deems necessary to address the situation,” the school statement said.
CNN has independently viewed the social media posts, which discussed the mounting death toll of children in Gaza, the number of explosives dropped on Gaza, and the history of Palestinians who were “violently expelled from Palestine in 1948 to form the state of Israel.”
One of the photos the school alluded to is a cartoon graphic depicting an Israeli soldier pointing a gun at a baby in an incubator, a metaphorical reference to the premature babies at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, whose incubators stopped working when Israeli airstrikes cut off the generator powering the incubators. At least three of the babies died, according to previous CNN reporting.
Almasri says her posts were referring to the mounting humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where in response to Hamas’ October 7 attack that killed 1,200 people, Israel has launched a siege and war that has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, 70% of whom are women and children, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza.
“None of my posts were inciting violence, they were merely shedding light on what was happening, the humanitarian crisis that was happening in Gaza,” Almasri said during a CAIR news conference Thursday. “It didn’t call for hate or violence or any of that. I feel that, again, criticizing a government or a set of people should not lead to any retaliation against that person who’s trying to express that and also take it upon themselves to also punish her child.”
Saleh said the group’s call for an investigation is about the expulsion of Jad, who Saleh says did not say or do anything to warrant the expulsion, as well as what CAIR described as inaccurate accusations regarding Almasri’s social media posts.
Jad, who is in 10th grade, has been unable to attend classes since November 19. The expulsion has interrupted his studies and college preparation, his mother told CNN, adding they now have to find a new school.
“He gets very depressed and withdrawn. He doesn’t know what to do with all this time,” Almasri told CNN. “He misses his friends a lot, he misses the school corridors, he misses everything. He’s trying to be strong, but he feels betrayed. At the end of the day, this is about expelling Jad for nothing he did.”
‘It’s almost like a weight lifted off my chest’ Jad, who was born and raised in Florida and grew up at the school, said he had always hidden his Palestinian identity until he was expelled as a result of his mother’s social media posts.
“Most people at Pine Crest had no idea that I was Palestinian, because I never felt safe to say that I was Palestinian at Pine Crest School,” Jad said. “Now that it’s out, it’s almost like a weight lifted off my chest … Now I feel that I can finally come out as who I am, which is a Palestinian kid who was wrongfully expelled by Pine Crest School.”
“Pine Crest School was my home, is a place where I was very comfortable, since 1st grade, since I was six years old,” Jad said during the news conference as he stood next to his mother.
“The friends I made there became family, even the people who I am not as close with there are still my community. They are the people I’ve seen every day of my life for the past 10 years. To have that taken away from me, for no reason at all, is heartbreaking,” he added. “I didn’t do anything at all.”
A petition started by an anonymous person calling for the school to reinstate Jad garnered more than 31,000 signatures in over two weeks and the family has received “overwhelming” support from community members, Almasri said.
“Think about the other Jads in that school and around,” said Abdullah Jaber, executive director of CAIR-Florida. “Our main concern is suppressing the right of Americans to express what they feel within their heart is to be decent human rights.”
The treatment of pro-Palestinians who speak up, Saleh said, is dangerously “one-sided” and the same discipline is not applied to those who post or make pro-Israeli commentary.
Both CAIR representatives and Almasri denied accusations her social media content condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza incited hatred or violence and instead advocated for the rights of Palestinians.
CAIR has recorded more than 2,171 requests for help and reports of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias in the nine weeks since October 7, including students and faculty being targeted for supporting Palestinian rights.
In Maryland, the advocacy group filed a discrimination complaint on behalf of a Black Muslim, Arab American teacher who was placed on administrative leave for her email signature, which included “from the river to the sea,” a controversial phrase supporting Palestinian rights.
By requesting a DOE investigation into Jad’s expulsion and the accusations made against Almasri based on her posts, CAIR said it hopes to protect other Arabs, Muslims, and pro-Palestinian people from receiving unfair punishment for condemning Israel’s actions.
CNN has reached out to the Department of Education for comment on the request.
“We have to get real. Speech because it’s sympathetic to Palestinians or because it’s critical to Israeli military or because it evokes a sense of conscience for humanity, it doesn’t make it antisemitic, it doesn’t make it anti-Jewish, it’s not disruptive and it’s not inciteful,” Saleh said. “You can wish peace to Israel and say free Palestine at the same time.”
REBUTTAL:
Screenshot from footage taken in Gaza NICU showing a stashed gun hidden in an incubator.
Hospital workers admit: Weapons hidden in NICU incubators intended to treat premature babies.
It would seem that that “paragon” of Journalism (insert LMAO meme here), CNN, is on the same side as this woman. This isn’t surprising; after all, the reporter is also a Muslim. An Egyptian -Palestinian, to be exact.
I couldn’t find the actual cartoons — for some strange reason, nobody has reposted them. Yet, there are at least four major listings for this story.
And isn’t it strange how this arrogant woman thought she could get away with posting libelous cartoons in a conservative state with a large Jewish population? And isn’t it also strange that the boy was “afraid to admit he was Palestinian?
I also have to question the claim: “A petition started by an anonymous person calling for the school to reinstate Jad garnered more than 31,000 signatures in over two weeks…” I would love to know how many of the IP addresses associated with these “signatures” come from outside Florida and how many of them come from OUTSIDE the USA.
Israel has launched a siege and war that has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, 70% of whom are women and children, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza.
After it’s been shown that Hamas has been using hospitals as “Human Shields” for C & C centers and weapons storage, why would anyone with more than two brain cells believe anything they post?
Iranian protesters burn an Israeli flag during an anti-Israel rally at Enqelab-e Eslami (Islamic Revolution) Square. (Sobhan Farajvan via Getty Images)
Stop Progressive misinformation groups.
Alex Wong / Getty Images
Winning. Congressman Johnson gets a stop misinformation amendment in the Defense Bill. It’s been a regular practice by the Biden Administration to allow Progressive groups like Newsguard and Global Disinformation Index (GDI) to control who’s allowed to advertise with the Pentagon. This new bill stops that.
The new NDAA provision expressly prohibits any advertising agency the Defense Department contracts with from using services that engage in “determinations of misinformation.”
The new law would also require the Pentagon to inform the House and Senate Armed Services committees any time the recruitment division directly contracts with NewsGuard, GDI or a similar entity.
For time reasons, I had to cut my actual address a bit short Thursday. This statement, which began with a nod to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, is what was entered into the congressional record:
November 30, 2023
Chairman Jordan, ranking member Plaskett, members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak.
Exactly one year ago today I had my first look at the documents that came to be known as the Twitter Files. One of the first things Michael, Bari Weiss and I found was this image, showing that Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya had been placed on a “trends blacklist”:
This was not because he was suspected of terrorism or incitement or of being a Russian spy or a bad citizen in any way. Dr. Bhattacharya’s crime was doing a peer-reviewed study that became the 55th-most read scientific paper of all time, which showed the WHO initially overstated Covid-19 infection fatality rates by a factor of 17. This was legitimate scientific opinion and should have been an important part of the public debate, but Bhattacharya and several of his colleagues instead became some of the most suppressed people in America in 2020 and 2021.
That’s because by then, even true speech that undermined confidence in government policies had begun to be considered a form of disinformation, precisely the situation the First Amendment was designed to avoid.
When Michael and I testified before the good people of this Committee in March we mentioned this classically Orwellian concept of “malinformation” — material that is somehow both true and wrong — as one of many reasons everyone should be concerned about these digital censorship programs.
But there’s a more subtle reason people across the spectrum should care about this issue.
Former Executive Director of the ACLU Ira Glasser once explained to a group of students why he didn’t support hate speech codes on campuses. The problem, he said, was “who gets to decide what’s hateful… who gets to decide what to ban,” because “most of the time, it ain’t you.”
The story that came out in the Twitter Files, and for which more evidence surfaced in both the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit and this Committee’s Facebook Files releases, speaks directly to Glasser’s concerns.
There’s been a dramatic shift in attitudes about speech, and many politicians now clearly believe the bulk of Americans can’t be trusted to digest information. This mindset imagines that if we see one clip from RT we’ll stop being patriots, that once exposed to hate speech we’ll become bigots ourselves, that if we read even one Donald Trump tweet we’ll become insurrectionists.
Having come to this conclusion, the kind of people who do “anti-disinformation” work have taken upon themselves the paternalistic responsibility to sort out for us what is and is not safe. While they see great danger in allowing anyone else to read controversial material, it’s taken for granted that they’ll be immune to the dangers of speech.
This leads to the one inescapable question about new “anti-disinformation” programs that is never discussed, but must be: who does this work? Stanford’s Election Integrity Project helpfully made a graphic showing the “external stakeholders” in their content review operation. It showed four columns: government, civil society, platforms, media:
One group is conspicuously absent from that list: people. Ordinary people! Whether America continues the informal sub rosa censorship system seen in the Twitter Files or formally adopts something like Europe’s draconian new Digital Services Act, it’s already clear who won’t be involved. There’ll be no dockworkers doing content flagging, no poor people from inner city neighborhoods, no single moms pulling multiple waitressing jobs, no immigrant store owners or Uber drivers, etc. These programs will always feature a tiny, rarefied sliver of affluent professional-class America censoring a huge and ever-expanding pool of everyone else.
Take away the high-fallutin’ talk about “countering hate” and “reducing harm” and “anti-disinformation” is just a bluntly elitist gatekeeping exercise. If you prefer to think in progressive terms, it’s class war. The math is simple. If one small demographic over here has broad control over the speech landscape, and a great big one over there does not, it follows that one group will end up with more political power than the other. Which one is the winner? To paraphrase Glasser, it probably ain’t you.
It isn’t just one side or the other that will lose if these programs are allowed to continue. It’s pretty much everyone, which is why these programs must be defunded before it’s too late.
Who will they come for next? Progressives goal to wipe out diversity and social disagreement. Have you noticed that those who claim that diversity is their goal want only those who think like they do?
The target since the Obama age was only single white males, then females, and white married couples were added. Children were the last that were added to the list. And maybe they will achieve their goal when they import the new China virus.
Ann Coulter did a take on a famous poem I’m sure you will recognize. Whites are still the main target, but only the beginning.
First they came for working class whites and I did not speak out— Because I was not a working class white.
Then they came for white police officers and I did not speak out— Because I was not a white police officer.
Then they came for white women who call the police, and I did not speak out- Because I was not a white women who calls the police.
Then they came for the white college applicants, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a white college applicant.
Then they came for statues of white male American heroes and I did not speak out— Because I was not a white male American hero.
Then they came for whites applying for jobs with the S&P 100 and I did not speak out— Because I was not a white applying for a job with the S&P 100.
You were admitted to Harvard with SAT scores that would have gotten an Asian kid disowned by his parents.
You manage to keep your show at MSNBC with ratings that would get a white person canceled.
People try harder to laugh at your excruciating jokes than they would for a male of any race.
Plus, I have it on good authority that no one at MSNBC has pestered you about touching your hair.
Your brief daytime show on MSNBC made ratings history, garnering only 38,000 viewers in the demo its first day on air — the lowest for the entire network! That inched up to 56,000 viewers two days later, the second lowest for the network. Ronan Farrow’s show debuted the same week. But while he was quickly cashiered for poor ratings, you were promoted, even though he is white and you are black. Dodged a bullet there!
You weren’t prosecuted for making a false FBI report when you claimed that right-wing saboteurs had hacked your blog, planting long, venomous threads about gay people. It seems your go-to attack for celebrities and Republicans is to accuse them of being gay. (For example, you described Dick Cheney “topping off” Sean Hannity — gay slang for oral sex — and repeatedly ran your “Top 5 ‘totally not gay celebrities of the year.'”)
Nor were you fired for your preposterous, and quickly disproved, lies about having been hacked when it was you who mocked people for being gay — including Oprah.
Your many, many blog posts sneering at gays were written just 10 years earlier, when you were an adult and a professional journalist. Meanwhile, teenagers — even white ones! — are being thrown out of college for the stupid things they said on Snapchat when they were 15. But you came through like a champ, without consequence — despite being black!
Indeed, instead of firing you, MSNBC gave you a prime-time show. This is the network that canned Chris Matthews (astonishingly, another white male) for telling girls they’re pretty. And who took the humiliated Matthews’ time slot? YOU DID! Despite the fact that he is white and you are black.
Actually, if you think about it, in a deeply racist, majority-white country, you’ve done pretty well issuing nonstop libels against white people. Here are three recent quotes:
Joy-Ann: “I’ll say it again: People on the right would trade all the tax cuts for the ability to openly say the N-word like in ‘the good old days.’”
That comment, like many made by you, seems at variance with the facts and not based in reality. But has your delusional hatred of white Americans held you back? Not so’s you’d notice.
Joy-Ann: “Your kid can’t read certain books or learn about history while their kids get Christian prayer in school and get to hurl the n-word on Twitter with no consequences.”
Did kids “hurl the n-word” at your high school, Joy-Ann? You know, the high school in Denver, Colorado, in the 1980s? My heart wants to believe you, but my head is telling me, “This woman is a lunatic fantasist.”
I’ll tell you why I say that. Just 10 years after you matriculated at Denver’s diverse Montbello High School, a Nation of Islam minister was invited to speak, whereupon he told the assembly (all boys, no girls allowed) that, while blacks were building the Egyptian pyramids, white people “ate their dead” and “slept with animals.” Even you have to admit, THAT wasn’t racist.
Joy-Ann: [Thanksgiving is] “a simplistic fairytale interpretation of a 1621 encounter between Indigenous tribes and English settlers that erases the genocide that followed.”
Wow. People who are actually descended from American slaves — Joy-Ann is not one of them — don’t hate white Americans that much. Yet, strangely, white Americans, despite being white, haven’t held that against you.
Your immigrant parents came here in the late 1960s, settling in Iowa. Perhaps you rank Iowa up there with Denver as a bastion of Jim Crow, but even you would have to concede it was a step up from Guyana and the Congo.
While having zero American slave ancestry, you have managed to elbow aside actual descendants of American slaves (DOAS), gobbling up the benefits earned by their ancestors’ suffering and intended for them. That was a good deal for you!
Finally, notwithstanding the White Power Structure, you have a job that reportedly pays millions of dollarsa year, which is more than 99.9% of Americans make — even several white ones! All in all, that doesn’t sound so bad.
I can’t indulge in homilies to Elon Musk’s X as a haven for free speech while he also continues to suppress disfavored accounts (including all Substack contributors), but the X suit at least has a chance of becoming a referendum on serious forms of media manipulation. The X allegations, which obviously need proving out, detail in microcosm a phenomenon that’s been unpleasantly familiar to Americans since about 2016. We’ve grown used to a Twilight Zone existence in which nearly every news story of consequence, from Nord Stream to Bountygate to sonic weapons in Cuba, the Dancing Syringe Panic to “Russia Trying to Help Bernie Sanders” to the pee tape have the feel of invented stories. Later, they’re often proved to be, and worse, we’ve been conditioned to forgive the institutions caught routing such fakes our way, and salute the next narratives sent up the flagpole. The method is never put on trial.
In this case, it might be. MMfA is accused of creating a news story, reporting on it, then propagandizing it to willing partners in the mainstream press. Again, the X allegations need to hold up in an adversarial process, but the company claims to have fully captured a dollhouse version of a generation’s larger media frauds, making this a fascinating case to watch.
Young Voters Flee Biden. Who Turns 81 Today. Happy Birthday Joe. My question is why they have voted for him in the first place?
The list of bad things that he and his administration have caused is so long. The Border, COVID, Crime increasing, Wars around the world, Weaponization of the courts, etc.
Among young voters (18-34 years old) — just 20% of whom view Biden favorably on Israel’s war on Hamas — Biden (42%) trails Trump (46%) by 4 points, which is outside the poll’s margin of error.
“This could be a massive sea change,” according to NBC News poll analyst Steve Kornacki, who noted Biden was plus-26 points on younger voters in 2020.
Western liberal democracies cultivate a range of fictions about their nature and function. In the myths they tell about themselves, the people are sovereign and politicians merely enact their wishes. In reality, and as in all political systems democratic or otherwise, it is the leaders who exercise power and who strive to herd the people in convenient directions. Democracy imposes various constraints on their actions, but does not meaningfully hinder the unilateral decisions of the establishment. To disguise these uncomfortable truths, democracies eagerly engage in various democratic liturgies, among them the popular protest. Leaders prefer protests which favour their prior political programme, and they sponsor these wherever possible, and with as much publicity as possible, to draw attention away from those less convenient demonstrations that they find it necessary to marginalise or even violently suppress.
Since 2021, Letzte Generation have engaged in a monotonous programme of vandalism and civil disturbance. For their trouble, activists have received mostly fines and some mild chiding from politicians. When police were caught on activists’ cameras roughly handling two climate-gluers last week, the German press collectively hyperventilated and police departments swiftly announced investigations against their own officers. The regime very clearly view Letzte Generation as important if sometimes unruly collaborators. They demonstrate on behalf of the core political goals of the Scholz government and lend substance to the fiction that climate measures are an organic, grassroots demand that flows above all from the people.
