And she’s fine with it.
Bari Weiss has now rocketed to the top of the anti-cancel culture warrior charts, rapidly moving from anti-woke seances with Bill Maher to Chief Javert of Musk’s “Twitter Files” effort to retrofit “legacy” Twitter into a sinister den of anti-right censorship. She is not merely a hypocrite. She is a fraud who bizarrely twists facts and logic to fit her one true agenda:
Liberals are Evil.
I. Rushdie, the Ayatollah and Charlie Hebdo
Bari’s Twitter ascension coincided with the latest episode of If Books Could Kill, a great new podcast with Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri, whose purpose is to expose highly successful “Airport Newsstand” books, which misuse data, rely on anecdotes and distort logic to disseminate dangerous, often right wing, and racist ideas. (Episode 1: Freakonomics.)
The latest episode features writing by Weiss and others on her Substack, including an article from last August following the brutal attack on writer Salman Rushdie in upstate New York.
Who was to blame?
Obviously, for Bari, liberals.
Why?
In 2015, after the horrific Islamist attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, the writers’ group PEN gave the magazine an award. About two hundred members dissented, arguing in a letter that the material provoking the attack “intensifies the anti-Islamic, anti-Maghreb, anti-Arab sentiments already prevalent in the Western world.” Plus, they argued Charlie Hebdo’s work wasn’t worthy of the award independent of its victimization in the attack. Other writers who risked or lost their lives were more deserving, the letter said.* In response, Rushdie himself strongly supported the award, calling the objectors “pussies,” and saying “If PEN as a free speech organization can’t defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organization is not worth the name.”
And for Weiss, the PEN-dissenting “pussies” led straight to the guy who stabbed Rushdie in August, because the left has made words into violence. In other words, ‘It was cancel culture stabbed the writer.”
II. Fauci, Musk and Twitter
But now, Bari is right there with Elon Musk as he engages in dangerous Stochastic terrorism, tweeting “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” — a twofer to incite both anti-Trans and anti-Fauci crazies. As Hunter wrote yesterday: Musk aligns himself with the far-right, and Twitter is now dangerously unsafe.
At issue here is “What speech are we talking about?”
Back in 1989, there were two speech actions:
1. Publication of Rushdie’s book, The Satanic Verses, considered blasphemous by certain Muslims, followed by:
2. Issuance of a Fatwah by Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s Supreme Leader, calling for Rushdie’s death.
We generally agree books and other publications should be protected speech under universal principles, including our First Amendment. This includes The Satanic Verses or a Charlie Hebdo cartoon. A writer should not be physically threatened or assaulted because of what they write.
But what about No. 2? Wasn’t the Ayatollah exercising his right to speak? “Well, that’s different,” Weiss would say. “The Fatwa calls for believers to kill someone. We can’t protect speech like that.”
Enter the age of Internet speech that can incite violence, such as oh, let’s say, “Prosecute/Fauci.”
“Oh no,” Bari would say. “That’s different. Elon is not calling for Fauci’s death.”
You can forgive Dr. Fauci for thinking otherwise because he has been subject to multiple death threats ever since the right launched its jihad against him during COVID. Bari and Elon, deep divers into Twitter that they are, are well aware the doctor’s life has been threatened for years and he now has a security detail assigned to him. This knowledge makes the Prosecute/Fauci tweet premeditated recklessness endangerment.
So how much of a difference is there between the Ayatollah’s Fatwa and “Prosecute/Fauci?” Bari falsely excoriates liberals for tolerating or even encouraging the former, while she and Elon promote the latter and vow to fight to the last tweet to protect Elon’s right to say it. And not only Elon, but the menagerie of far right goons he is letting back onto the platform.
“Well, Fauci is just one example,” BarElon might say. “Otherwise, those liberals are muzzling protected speech all over the place.” So you mean unmuzzled speech like:
I could go on.
Well, just one more from a guy Elon just invited back on Twitter:
The right’s speech “positions” are incoherent and a grotesque example of what Kagro X refers to as glibertarianism, a/k/a IOKYAR — “We can incite crazy people to violence, but CRT must be cleansed from our libraries and schools.”
But hypocrisy is the least of it.
As in the Rushdie case, there are two speech actions:
1. Dr. Fauci telling us to wear masks, social distance and get vaccinated, followed by:
2. A ceaseless barrage of violent rhetoric toward Dr. Fauci, up to and including Musk’s “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.”
Sorry, Bari. If you’re looking for Ayatollahs, don’t look at us. Look at your boss.
* In one of the many ironies and absurdities around these issues, one alternative recipient of the award was . . . . wait for it . . . Glenn Greenwald, who also criticized giving the award to Charlie Hebdo back in the day. I look forward to Glenn explaining this to Bari on a very special episode of Tucker Carlson. Maybe Dave Chappelle and Elon can also join.
** Including GOP Caucus kingmaker Marjorie Taylor Green calling for her execution.