Which in this country would be the right. We don’t have a true left voice in this country. We have “right light” such as MSNBC that’s full of former republicans and CNN that also is full of right wingers in order to “argue” their “side” but just shout talking points and outright lies so fast they can’t be challenged.
Bernie and AOC are closest to the left as America has, but they (especially AOC) are characterized in our media as EXTREMISTS. Elizabeth W has to go on CNN and proclaim to be a capitalist. Heaven forbid she get called a socialist because she wants everyone to have fair access to healthcare. The horror! Those poor insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, etc wouldn’t be able to be billionaires off our backs! Again, the horror!!
I totally agree! We need to remove Citizens United ! I also wish Biden or Obama had added 3 scotus to our Supreme Court. In Abe Lincoln’s day, we had 9 scotus and a tenth of the population! @35 million then and @350 million now, and still 9! If my memory serves me well, he even had 10 for a bit…
Obama and Biden played by the rules and let Mitch undermine them. We didn’t get anything close to what they wanted to achieve so Trump took further advantage and convinced enough people that Dems were to blame for all their problems. A patient of mine once told me he was voting for T bc republicans never got their agenda passed bc Democrats always stopped them. I wondered but didn’t say, can you recognize that that works both ways? None of us get what we want except for the rich and corporations. They win every time.
I find myself to be center middle, however extremist progressives are moving me right centered and msnbc and cnn are so left, as is NPR that I can’t listen to their drivel and refuse to support their sponsors. I am not a supporter of magats and trump’s admin either.
That’s perspective. Do you think they’re centered or conservative? Progressive? I think it depends on whose show it is. I used to love GPS with Fareed Zachariah, however like all of CNN and BBC, so called journalists are using Hammas’s, a terrorist group’s numbers, prior to doing their own research and checks.
I think they’re corporate. Money rules them and if spouting truly liberal ideas made them $$$ without pissing in big pharma’s cornflakes (or whomever is advertising) they would say liberal things. Yelling that the media is liberal is one of the best ideas the far right ever came up with bc ppl in our country do not see how thoroughly $$$ controls all our media.
What a ludicrous thing to say 😂 with the exception of her support of Israel, BW's positions on immigration, trans, DEI etc are clearly closer to the global mainstream than yours. Maybe get out of LA and check out the rest of the world
Bigotry, misogyny, and xenophobia may be the “median voter position,” but that doesn’t make them a majority position held by voters. Whatever this centrism is, only an extreme minority of people want it. It’s a mistake to conflate some median position with that which is actually popular.
We need more zionists! A democracy Netanyahu is attempting to destroy, however with almost 25% Arabs!!! Have you been to Israel? Or any countries in the Middle East? Prior to commenting, all who do should visit first. Their comments would then be credible!
The enemy within the mainstream media. The enemy within the purported liberal wing of the broad spectrum of the American political commentariat. Weiss is an opponent of truth and objectivity, which she claims to champion. And an opponent of core liberal values, which she claims to hold. I believe these are not honest mistakes or naivety, I believe they are deliberate and self-aware mischaracterizations of her actual motives and values. I hope that clears it up.
What a bunch of crap. Bari Weiss began as a lone voice pushing back against the far left’s cancel culture and its relentless, undisguised blaming of Jews and Israel. Then, like a moment of clarity in a crowd, support began to build and The Free Press was born. Today it’s a platform that features a range of opinions, but refuses to promote the dogmas of anti-Zionism, radical gender ideology, open borders, anarchistic BLM rhetoric, or the deeply flawed DEI agenda.
The real threat to the United States comes from within—those intersectional activists who demand equal outcomes instead of equal opportunity and vilify any group that manages to succeed. It always seems to be a self-hating Jew who steps up to defend the very movements that want to erase him. Apparently, this author is eager to join the disgusting ranks of Peter Beinart and Max Blumenthal.
Excellent retort! Thank you for articulating what my brain was screaming! Why are brilliant people who build worthwhile projects get pulled down by commoners? Is it professional or life envy?
The new one. Nobody pulled/s this off better than Tony Perkkkins and his Opie Cunningham schtick. TERF’s use this model as well. Without knowing this person before reading this essay however, she appears to be echoing the Campus Crusades for Christ which makes sense as it all rolls back into The Fellowship and their dominionist manifesto. And dominionism is just naziism in bible drag.
Lots of sniping here. Usually won't engage but Bari Weiss came up in conversation and then while meandering around substack. I believe in the salad bar approach to most things in life and not getting entrenched in dogma. I'm a center left leaning voter no longer in any camp. It's clear there is work to be done on both sides. Common ground is as hard to come by akin to the shrinking island nations of the pacific. The one thing as a man who is secular but was raised Jewish by an Israeli father is that as Jews we are now more unsafe than ever. I park that at the feet of the Netanyahu government. The government embraces the ideas of Meir Kahane. 70% of Israelis do not support the Netanyahu government but just like here it's been hijacked by fucking nutty religious ideas. October 7th was a horrible atrocity but the killing of over 30,000 Palestinians is not justified. Every Jew that died in the holocaust and my immediate family suffered in the hundreds would never use this as a justification. Their memory cannot be used as a justification.
I agree with most of what you say…. However there were good Germans who risked their lives for Jews during WWll… Gaza’s hid hostages in tunnels under their homes, hospitals and schools near the ammo sites.
Are you saying conservatively 45,000 people-men, women and children are complicit specifically Palestinian men women and children? Few...not all
Sure there were Germans that helped Jews during WW2 and prior, Few not nearly enough.
I have no issue with Israel going after October 7th perpetrators that was an atrocity. There is no there, there in this issue presently though. I side with humanity.
Remember, at some point in the future long after we're dead someone somewhere will take revenge for all of this. Bibi has made Jews everywhere less safe for generations.
I side with humanity as well, however their Koran dictates their actions and women and gays are stoned for loving the same gender or showing their ankles and hair. If there were more innocents, why haven’t Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Dubai, EAE, Saudi Arabians taken them in as Europeans took Ukrainians?
Jill, these are non starters you can't say your for humanity and destroy the innocent. Its not Jordan's issue, Its not Egypts issue or any other country. Two state solution end of story. My grandfathers friend was Bialik as I'm told. My grandmother stated the first Kindergarten in Tel Aviv. There's so much baggage to this story but Jews and Arabs have occupied these lands for millennia right. This is Israel's problem to solve and destroying a people is not the answer as is not killing the innocent. If we can't get by that there is no discussion further. By the way I'm 50% Ukrainian and my birth mothers family has been in the us since at least 1849. Europeans specifically the new rt wing Polish Government might very wells send the Ukrainians packing..........
As may trump. My maternal grandparents are Ukrainian and polish as well and came to Ellis Island post WWl with 5 children. My paternal ones came in the mid 1800’s running from Czar Nicholas of Russia and Wilhelm in Germany or before that Prussia.
I used to think there were innocents and not stereotype, however what happened Oct 7 turned my head around…. Especially when the peaceniks were kidnapped, raped, baked and mutilated babies to the elderly. These were people who worked for a two state solution, had these subhumans over for dinner, took them for medical Appointments, etc. These “innocents” drew maps and details of who, what and where they could mutilate and murder. Not the Samarian or Judean encroachers not that anyone deserved the heartache and death these “ innocents” brought on, but the kibbutzim peaceniks. Why does Egypt have barbed wire on their border with Gaza? And why is it not Jordan’s problem? It’s was only the political agreement Hussein’s grandfather made with the British (Mountbatten) that enabled Jordan (which as you know was over 90% Palestinian in the 1940’s) to not be Palestine. How often can a two state solution be offered? How can Israelis be assured of security? When one repeats the same thing over and over and achieves the same results, isn’t that insanity? As Golda Meir so aptly put it, “ If they put down their weapons, there will be peace, if Israel does, there will be no Israel.”
Here's a friendly tip to you and others in your band of the horseshoe: drop cancel from your repertoire.
Blast away (with words, not bullets) at any idea-enemy, but you're going to keep feeding the monster with cancel culture. From the purple seats in the arena, entertain us while demonstrating you're the true keepers of American (or at least USA) Values and MAGAX are traitors to them.
You brought the word cancel to the conversation, not me. So I engaged with your claim in good faith, and showed you the nuance of my position. But you seem bent on lambasting a position that I don’t even have.
I’m meeting you on your terms, engaging respectfully, and you’re just being condescending and casting aspersions. Sincerely, thank you for your comments. They reveal a lot.
The word 'cancel' appears all over your essay and near the end you say "If we care about justice, if we care about a future where ideas matter, then it’s time to stop supporting these scumbags". I think most readers would equate a call to "stop supporting" with a call to cancel.
You're getting emotional with your accusations of "lambasting", "condescending" and "casting aspersions". I did none of those things. I gave you an alternative perspective from the middle that the hard left needs to drop many of its self-defeating habits if it wants to beat Trump at the ballot box. The margins in all three of the last election have been razor thin, ten basis points in the same three states, all decided by Independents.
Start with the concept of canceling, regardless of which words you use. You and your fellows reinforce the argument from MAGAX that the Democratic Party has been captured by wacky wokies who hate free speech specifically and the USA more generally. It hurts the cause.
Agree to disagree on pretty much all of that. I suspect that we may simply have different goals, values, views and baseline opinions. At a raw epistemological level, this means that (at best) you’re not going to be able to honor the substantive logic and concerns in my post. At worst, it results in dismissive reactions like “you’re just being emotional.”
While I appreciate your good-faith engagement with my post, at this point you’re just being disrespectful and no longer contributing anything of value. That’s enough, thank you. I’ll see you in the primaries ✌️
A little hysterical, no? You may not agree with the prevailing editorial slant of The Free Press, I get that. It's a mistake of the Left broadly, though, to run to the cancel culture playbook every time an opinion hits the feed that is outside its orthodoxy. Most of the limbic issues (Gaza, trans, migration, DEI, ...) have positions that command super-majority support. They're just not the ones favored by the hard left:
Gaza: Hamas are the bad guys and terrorists that have to go, Israel over-reacted, Zionism is kinda sketchy, Gazans are voluntary civilian shields, ethnic cleansing should be a bridge too far for friends of Israel
Trans: sex is binary (with a little asterisk), gender is fluid, no irreversible changes for kids, no XY in XX sports
Migration: welcome all who contribute more than they extract, labor arbitrage is bad, you have to obey the laws and stand in line, the system has been widely abused for decades, the reds see cheap labor, the blues see cheap votes
DEI: diversity is kinda good, quotas are zero-sum, racism is not solely a white thing, reparations in Dixie might make sense, in California or any other Union state they're absurd
I understand the passion of the hard left and its tilt toward revolution as the answer. That it has Tea Party/MAGA envy and wants to capture the Democratic Party from its position as the minority faction. As a purple spectator, though, whose blue vote in the last three POTUS elections has been a rental, I recommend that everyone who doesn't want oligarchy hang together. Unless someone openly and repeatedly plumps for Trump, they're a friend.
I appreciate your take, I really do. Respectfully though, you’ve put a straw man here that needs to be put down: you claim the left “runs to cancel culture every time an opinion hits the feed that is outside its orthodoxy.”
This is simply not true. Not even close. I attack bari Weiss because she’s one of the biggest and impactful long term purveyors of problematic discourse. Do I want her cancelled? Hell yeah. But that is not the same as wanting to cancel everyone who might have a centrist or right wing opinion.
The claim that you’ve perpetuated here about the censorious left is precisely the kind of dangerous thing we’ve been hearing from Weiss for a long time. I don’t think you should be cancelled for believing it. I think she should be cancelled for feeding you the lie.
Scott Galloway claims his privilege, then proceeds to double down on it. He will talk about sexism, then say a raft of sexist and misogynistic things. Galloway is not as transparent a bad actor as Weiss, his harm is more subtle and nuanced. But it is there, and it’s consistent.
I think you’re getting very hung up on the word “cancel” and the associations *you* are bringing to it. how is she being or how could she possibly be cancelled? she has multiple billionaire backers who fund The Free Press and allow her to make a living by arguing that anti-Zionist Jews, Palestinian college students, and trans people should be censored by our educational and political institutions—now *that’s* cancel culture!
you’re implying that to challenge her, to reveal her, as Evan does, to be nothing more than a grifter, a right-wing grievance-monger, and a stooge, is to somehow engage in “cancel culture.” dude, she fucking sucks! she’s a bad writer, a shoddy thinker, and a deeply unlikeable person who launders far-right ideas for a supposedly “heterodox” audience. no one is suggesting that she should be censored by the government or the cultural sphere, just that she should not be given a pass to peddle her grift without being challenged on her ideas & positions.
You get it! This other guy doesn’t. You’re also engaging in good faith, from a left wing perspective. This other guy isn’t. “Centrist” extremism on full display 🤷♂️
I don't know why you're defending Evan when he agreed in the comment thread above he's trying to cancel Bari.
Y'all need to cut that shit out. It was a big part of what led to the return of Trump, as we purples warned it would, going back to 2020.
As for the rest of your long list of ad hominems against her, doesn't really help your cause either, just makes you come across as histrionic. You don't defeat an argument by spewing out insults.
Get smarter wokies: MAGA is running rings around you and laughing it up each time you hyperventilate when they troll you.
I subscribed to TFP almost 1 year ago today, because I was attracted to the promise of balanced coverage and perspective (and note of the Fox News variety). Some of their content was really interesting, and kept me coming back. But as I continued paying attention, I began to see the bias. Sure, they throw some red meat content out for the libs (tofu perhaps?) But I began to see a distinct and specific alt right bias, whose presence was perhaps softened but Weiss’ own identity as gay, female and Jewish, but ultimately apologetic to the creep of the worst elements of the right coming into the mainstream.
Spending time in the comments section on TFP articles really cemented the view that this was a right wing apologist publication, draped in a thin veneer of centrist perspective. While I’ve encountered some intelligent perspectives in the comments, I mostly encountered people ranging from typical Fox News viewers, to essentially proto-Nazi provocateurs.
I’ve since cancelled my subscription, and blocked their stuff from my feed. In the time since, I’ve realized just how much great content is out here on Substack that is truly independent, with a diversity of perspective. I no longer believe in paying Weiss for the privilege of reading her pre-packaged version of fair and balanced, supported by the billionaires with whom she hobnobs. She is, and continues to be a part of the actual elites in this country… building an alt-media empire in service of the destruction of liberal democracy.
Everyone who reads this will get it. You hate Bari Weiss because she is successful, smart, and Jewish. We understand your frustration. There is no substance to your diatribe and I also don’t see you gunning for oh say Fox News, Tucker Carlson, MSNBC, and so many others who are truly as biased as you.
Evan did an excellent job replying, and I sincerely +1 his response... but just to add a few points:
1) I never expressed "hate"... simply a desire to no longer recommend or support the output of this person, whom I believe to be disingenuous at best.
2) Being smart, successful and Jewish (as individual or as combined traits if you're into the whole intersectionality thing) in no way implies that someone is fair or morally consistent. I know plenty of people who share all of those traits, but also have traits such as kindness, compassion, humor, fairness, warmth, humility, etc.
Please take your thinly veiled accusation of antisemitism elsewhere.
I have lots of qualms with Fox “news” and Mr. Carlson, trust me. Many volumes have already been written about their malign influence; I can point you to some that reflect my views if you’re genuinely curious. As for MSNBC, I generally find it to be honest and accurate in its reporting, which is much more than I could ever say about fox. Still, I do have critiques. Perhaps I should write about them, so thanks for that, uh, suggestion?
If you peruse my pieces you will see that I have plenty of contempt for women AND men, for Jews AND gentiles, and I also shower praise across the spectrum of gender and religious affiliation.
I have no problem with successful people. My problem is with bootlicking grifters. There is quite a bit of substantive argument to that point in the piece, you just disagree.
And that’s okay. But your disagreement with my analysis doesn’t make it unfounded, poorly expressed, or biased. It’s just a disagreement, which you are welcome to have.
They throw enough interesting stories that seem progressive, and it gets to be a trap under the name of their feeling of superiority and “enlightened” centrism.
i agree and appreciate everything about this article/post. it is all important and needs wider exposure. i too subscribed initially to her posts, wanting to remain open minded and curious. it took three posts and i was writing a letter to the editor and vociferously unsubscribing. the mask dropped had exposed the cruelty, meanness and lack of emotional maturity of the writer(s).
my only quibble with this article is the first paragraph-ish which led me to believe the author thinks there are good and bad people. a la brene brown, i choose to believe we are all humans, doing the best with what we have. and that we are all humans and capable of doing “good” or “bad” actions, but that doesn’t mean we are good or bad at heart.
this is a lifetime belief, even in the face of so much current monstrosity. i travel, a LOT, and if i can’t believe in the inherent goodness of most people i would feel lost.
wasn’t able to go back to read your article while composing a comment, sadly. because your last sentence, “At a certain point, we must stand up and assert: some people are beyond redemption and should have no place in public life.”
and i agree they should have no place in public life. yes, the more prominence a person has means greater responsibility and accountability.
and my heart can’t put her past redemption, which i believe must still be possible. even as choices have consequences.
Wrote this as a bubbled over vent in the conversation group… I’m new to Substack. Anyway posting it here too, apologies to anyone reading it twice but I’ve been keeping this inside a long time.
I went to college with her and lived in a shared dorm apartment with her sophomore year. I haven’t read any of her recent writing, because I didn’t like her then and from the random quotes I see here and there she’s gone from her college rage baiting to just utter toxicity. She was in a relationship with Kate McKinnon (of SNL fame) when I knew her, but I guess they broke up and she must have gone down an increasingly right wing path. Too bad the people who rub shoulders with her now would have turned their backs on the person she was when I first met her.
I always felt uncomfortable after a late night conversation we had where she explained to me in detail why it was so important to make sure traditional Jewish communities in Africa never were exposed to outside influences because it meant they maintained a more “pure” form of Judaism. She was utterly shocked when I said that I didn’t think it would be terrible, if they were interested, to offer young people from any culture where (for example) a cd player is banned an object from the outside, and that young people should be free to make their own decisions about whether they want to continue living in a traditional way or make other choices. That many people would gladly choose a traditional culture over a modern one, if the values it holds are strong. I grew up in a household where cultural studies and anthropology were big topics, and a major theme of my own studies has been the resilience of traditional cultures in the face of modernism and cultural supremacy/ erasure.
I just remember how what felt like an honest late night college conversation one second suddenly felt like a bizarre litmus test—the inauthenticity of her deeply shocked reaction to my open responses to her questions. It felt manipulative and weird.
I also remember the way she ran into my room to tell me the guy I was dating had a very famous and important mother, as if she was doing me a huge favour instead of just making me incredibly uncomfortable by implying that I should be happy and I could be benefiting from our association or something like that… I knew from the beginning that this was a person who cared very deeply about becoming famous and I can see how she saw a pathway to that through hate speech and racism, and why she has been rampantly and falsely accusing people of anti-Semitism when she is fully aware of how wrong she is.
She was deeply unlikeable, even in a relationship with a cool, popular actor in our college and knowing lots of interesting people, and it’s clear that she eventually realised that doubling down on her unlikeablility would be her ticket to fame. That’s what Trump is right? And Vance and all these guys? That’s their ticket—the whole “we want you to hate us, we want you to be repulsed! The people who feel hated and repulsive will eat us up!” She is culpable, for the rest of her life, of having helped write the playbook they’re following.
My last college memory of her was hearing about her instigating witch hunts against professors who didn’t agree with her increasingly right wing politics. She started her own paper (since the college ones weren’t very interested in her writing) literally just to get a more right wing vehicle for her hate speech. And that’s what she ended up using it for. Destroying careers and now, apparently, much worse.
This is a very shallow and dangerous person who has limited depth and a desire for fame that runs so deep that she doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process.
I’ve still only read a few quotes from her writing here and there and have zero interest in reading more. I’ve never written about my encounters with her in college before because we had mutual friends who spoke up on her behalf and tried to convince me she wasn’t fully responsible for her actions, that she had been brainwashed or something, but that argument only goes so far.
It’s called the Cult and she plays the game apparently but I had never heard of her this post has lit a fire and it’s easy to tell from reading the comments.
I also am new to Substack. I had heard of Bari, so I made the mistake of paid subscribing to The Free Press a few months ago because I ignorantly thought it was going to be a source for general news. Soon after joining I watched about 20 minutes of Bari’s long interview with one of her tech mogul supporters and was appalled by the conversation. I haven’t been back to the site since. My instinct was accurate it seems, after this read and your comment. Also, I made sure my account doesn’t auto pay for another Free Press year!
She (Weiss) is making complicated in order to deceive, it seems like she’s busted it’s not like she invented the technique.
Ms. Weiss, your a scum bag of the worse kind. Take your ideas, and shove them into your mouth for good measure.
She's much closer to the center than you are
The “median voter position” exactly defines the center you idiot 😂😂 half to the left, half the right
Which in this country would be the right. We don’t have a true left voice in this country. We have “right light” such as MSNBC that’s full of former republicans and CNN that also is full of right wingers in order to “argue” their “side” but just shout talking points and outright lies so fast they can’t be challenged.
You don’t think Bernie Sanders or AOC or Corrie Bush are left?
Bernie and AOC are closest to the left as America has, but they (especially AOC) are characterized in our media as EXTREMISTS. Elizabeth W has to go on CNN and proclaim to be a capitalist. Heaven forbid she get called a socialist because she wants everyone to have fair access to healthcare. The horror! Those poor insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, etc wouldn’t be able to be billionaires off our backs! Again, the horror!!
I totally agree! We need to remove Citizens United ! I also wish Biden or Obama had added 3 scotus to our Supreme Court. In Abe Lincoln’s day, we had 9 scotus and a tenth of the population! @35 million then and @350 million now, and still 9! If my memory serves me well, he even had 10 for a bit…
Obama and Biden played by the rules and let Mitch undermine them. We didn’t get anything close to what they wanted to achieve so Trump took further advantage and convinced enough people that Dems were to blame for all their problems. A patient of mine once told me he was voting for T bc republicans never got their agenda passed bc Democrats always stopped them. I wondered but didn’t say, can you recognize that that works both ways? None of us get what we want except for the rich and corporations. They win every time.
I find myself to be center middle, however extremist progressives are moving me right centered and msnbc and cnn are so left, as is NPR that I can’t listen to their drivel and refuse to support their sponsors. I am not a supporter of magats and trump’s admin either.
I’m guessing we have a different idea of what “left” means if you think cnn or msnbc are left. That’s hilarious.
That’s perspective. Do you think they’re centered or conservative? Progressive? I think it depends on whose show it is. I used to love GPS with Fareed Zachariah, however like all of CNN and BBC, so called journalists are using Hammas’s, a terrorist group’s numbers, prior to doing their own research and checks.
I think they’re corporate. Money rules them and if spouting truly liberal ideas made them $$$ without pissing in big pharma’s cornflakes (or whomever is advertising) they would say liberal things. Yelling that the media is liberal is one of the best ideas the far right ever came up with bc ppl in our country do not see how thoroughly $$$ controls all our media.
That doesn’t make it popular. Don’t call me an idiot.
“The center” in the US is hard right.
What a ludicrous thing to say 😂 with the exception of her support of Israel, BW's positions on immigration, trans, DEI etc are clearly closer to the global mainstream than yours. Maybe get out of LA and check out the rest of the world
Bigotry, misogyny, and xenophobia may be the “median voter position,” but that doesn’t make them a majority position held by voters. Whatever this centrism is, only an extreme minority of people want it. It’s a mistake to conflate some median position with that which is actually popular.
She’s a Zionist plant.
We need more zionists! A democracy Netanyahu is attempting to destroy, however with almost 25% Arabs!!! Have you been to Israel? Or any countries in the Middle East? Prior to commenting, all who do should visit first. Their comments would then be credible!
Yes, I have been to Israel several times in the late 80s and 90s, and I have seen first hand how Palestinians are treated there.
It’s tricky. She’s only doing this because being the bully, the oppressor, the genocide perpetrator, is very uncomfortable and unsettling.
The enemy within what? Oh right that Zionist conspiracy you see around every corner.
The enemy within the mainstream media. The enemy within the purported liberal wing of the broad spectrum of the American political commentariat. Weiss is an opponent of truth and objectivity, which she claims to champion. And an opponent of core liberal values, which she claims to hold. I believe these are not honest mistakes or naivety, I believe they are deliberate and self-aware mischaracterizations of her actual motives and values. I hope that clears it up.
What a bunch of crap. Bari Weiss began as a lone voice pushing back against the far left’s cancel culture and its relentless, undisguised blaming of Jews and Israel. Then, like a moment of clarity in a crowd, support began to build and The Free Press was born. Today it’s a platform that features a range of opinions, but refuses to promote the dogmas of anti-Zionism, radical gender ideology, open borders, anarchistic BLM rhetoric, or the deeply flawed DEI agenda.
The real threat to the United States comes from within—those intersectional activists who demand equal outcomes instead of equal opportunity and vilify any group that manages to succeed. It always seems to be a self-hating Jew who steps up to defend the very movements that want to erase him. Apparently, this author is eager to join the disgusting ranks of Peter Beinart and Max Blumenthal.
Excellent retort! Thank you for articulating what my brain was screaming! Why are brilliant people who build worthwhile projects get pulled down by commoners? Is it professional or life envy?
A really informative article. I agree completely about Fetterman but I was surprised you put Hakeem in the same category.
The new one. Nobody pulled/s this off better than Tony Perkkkins and his Opie Cunningham schtick. TERF’s use this model as well. Without knowing this person before reading this essay however, she appears to be echoing the Campus Crusades for Christ which makes sense as it all rolls back into The Fellowship and their dominionist manifesto. And dominionism is just naziism in bible drag.
Lots of sniping here. Usually won't engage but Bari Weiss came up in conversation and then while meandering around substack. I believe in the salad bar approach to most things in life and not getting entrenched in dogma. I'm a center left leaning voter no longer in any camp. It's clear there is work to be done on both sides. Common ground is as hard to come by akin to the shrinking island nations of the pacific. The one thing as a man who is secular but was raised Jewish by an Israeli father is that as Jews we are now more unsafe than ever. I park that at the feet of the Netanyahu government. The government embraces the ideas of Meir Kahane. 70% of Israelis do not support the Netanyahu government but just like here it's been hijacked by fucking nutty religious ideas. October 7th was a horrible atrocity but the killing of over 30,000 Palestinians is not justified. Every Jew that died in the holocaust and my immediate family suffered in the hundreds would never use this as a justification. Their memory cannot be used as a justification.
I agree with most of what you say…. However there were good Germans who risked their lives for Jews during WWll… Gaza’s hid hostages in tunnels under their homes, hospitals and schools near the ammo sites.
Are you saying conservatively 45,000 people-men, women and children are complicit specifically Palestinian men women and children? Few...not all
Sure there were Germans that helped Jews during WW2 and prior, Few not nearly enough.
I have no issue with Israel going after October 7th perpetrators that was an atrocity. There is no there, there in this issue presently though. I side with humanity.
Remember, at some point in the future long after we're dead someone somewhere will take revenge for all of this. Bibi has made Jews everywhere less safe for generations.
I side with humanity as well, however their Koran dictates their actions and women and gays are stoned for loving the same gender or showing their ankles and hair. If there were more innocents, why haven’t Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Dubai, EAE, Saudi Arabians taken them in as Europeans took Ukrainians?
Jill, these are non starters you can't say your for humanity and destroy the innocent. Its not Jordan's issue, Its not Egypts issue or any other country. Two state solution end of story. My grandfathers friend was Bialik as I'm told. My grandmother stated the first Kindergarten in Tel Aviv. There's so much baggage to this story but Jews and Arabs have occupied these lands for millennia right. This is Israel's problem to solve and destroying a people is not the answer as is not killing the innocent. If we can't get by that there is no discussion further. By the way I'm 50% Ukrainian and my birth mothers family has been in the us since at least 1849. Europeans specifically the new rt wing Polish Government might very wells send the Ukrainians packing..........
As may trump. My maternal grandparents are Ukrainian and polish as well and came to Ellis Island post WWl with 5 children. My paternal ones came in the mid 1800’s running from Czar Nicholas of Russia and Wilhelm in Germany or before that Prussia.
I used to think there were innocents and not stereotype, however what happened Oct 7 turned my head around…. Especially when the peaceniks were kidnapped, raped, baked and mutilated babies to the elderly. These were people who worked for a two state solution, had these subhumans over for dinner, took them for medical Appointments, etc. These “innocents” drew maps and details of who, what and where they could mutilate and murder. Not the Samarian or Judean encroachers not that anyone deserved the heartache and death these “ innocents” brought on, but the kibbutzim peaceniks. Why does Egypt have barbed wire on their border with Gaza? And why is it not Jordan’s problem? It’s was only the political agreement Hussein’s grandfather made with the British (Mountbatten) that enabled Jordan (which as you know was over 90% Palestinian in the 1940’s) to not be Palestine. How often can a two state solution be offered? How can Israelis be assured of security? When one repeats the same thing over and over and achieves the same results, isn’t that insanity? As Golda Meir so aptly put it, “ If they put down their weapons, there will be peace, if Israel does, there will be no Israel.”
Here's a friendly tip to you and others in your band of the horseshoe: drop cancel from your repertoire.
Blast away (with words, not bullets) at any idea-enemy, but you're going to keep feeding the monster with cancel culture. From the purple seats in the arena, entertain us while demonstrating you're the true keepers of American (or at least USA) Values and MAGAX are traitors to them.
You brought the word cancel to the conversation, not me. So I engaged with your claim in good faith, and showed you the nuance of my position. But you seem bent on lambasting a position that I don’t even have.
I’m meeting you on your terms, engaging respectfully, and you’re just being condescending and casting aspersions. Sincerely, thank you for your comments. They reveal a lot.
The word 'cancel' appears all over your essay and near the end you say "If we care about justice, if we care about a future where ideas matter, then it’s time to stop supporting these scumbags". I think most readers would equate a call to "stop supporting" with a call to cancel.
You're getting emotional with your accusations of "lambasting", "condescending" and "casting aspersions". I did none of those things. I gave you an alternative perspective from the middle that the hard left needs to drop many of its self-defeating habits if it wants to beat Trump at the ballot box. The margins in all three of the last election have been razor thin, ten basis points in the same three states, all decided by Independents.
Start with the concept of canceling, regardless of which words you use. You and your fellows reinforce the argument from MAGAX that the Democratic Party has been captured by wacky wokies who hate free speech specifically and the USA more generally. It hurts the cause.
Agree to disagree on pretty much all of that. I suspect that we may simply have different goals, values, views and baseline opinions. At a raw epistemological level, this means that (at best) you’re not going to be able to honor the substantive logic and concerns in my post. At worst, it results in dismissive reactions like “you’re just being emotional.”
While I appreciate your good-faith engagement with my post, at this point you’re just being disrespectful and no longer contributing anything of value. That’s enough, thank you. I’ll see you in the primaries ✌️
I have one goal: get rid of Trump.
You'll see me in the general election, not the primaries. If the reds nominate someone sane, and the blues put up a wokester, I'll be voting red.
A little hysterical, no? You may not agree with the prevailing editorial slant of The Free Press, I get that. It's a mistake of the Left broadly, though, to run to the cancel culture playbook every time an opinion hits the feed that is outside its orthodoxy. Most of the limbic issues (Gaza, trans, migration, DEI, ...) have positions that command super-majority support. They're just not the ones favored by the hard left:
Gaza: Hamas are the bad guys and terrorists that have to go, Israel over-reacted, Zionism is kinda sketchy, Gazans are voluntary civilian shields, ethnic cleansing should be a bridge too far for friends of Israel
Trans: sex is binary (with a little asterisk), gender is fluid, no irreversible changes for kids, no XY in XX sports
Migration: welcome all who contribute more than they extract, labor arbitrage is bad, you have to obey the laws and stand in line, the system has been widely abused for decades, the reds see cheap labor, the blues see cheap votes
DEI: diversity is kinda good, quotas are zero-sum, racism is not solely a white thing, reparations in Dixie might make sense, in California or any other Union state they're absurd
I understand the passion of the hard left and its tilt toward revolution as the answer. That it has Tea Party/MAGA envy and wants to capture the Democratic Party from its position as the minority faction. As a purple spectator, though, whose blue vote in the last three POTUS elections has been a rental, I recommend that everyone who doesn't want oligarchy hang together. Unless someone openly and repeatedly plumps for Trump, they're a friend.
I appreciate your take, I really do. Respectfully though, you’ve put a straw man here that needs to be put down: you claim the left “runs to cancel culture every time an opinion hits the feed that is outside its orthodoxy.”
This is simply not true. Not even close. I attack bari Weiss because she’s one of the biggest and impactful long term purveyors of problematic discourse. Do I want her cancelled? Hell yeah. But that is not the same as wanting to cancel everyone who might have a centrist or right wing opinion.
The claim that you’ve perpetuated here about the censorious left is precisely the kind of dangerous thing we’ve been hearing from Weiss for a long time. I don’t think you should be cancelled for believing it. I think she should be cancelled for feeding you the lie.
Ok, you admit you want to cancel Bari Weiss. That was my point.
(But Scott Galloway?? Really, you want to cancel him too?)
that i was truly surprised about! Scott Galloway? huh? doesn’t compute
Scott Galloway claims his privilege, then proceeds to double down on it. He will talk about sexism, then say a raft of sexist and misogynistic things. Galloway is not as transparent a bad actor as Weiss, his harm is more subtle and nuanced. But it is there, and it’s consistent.
and no one is perfect…
i see your point on sexism and his jokes… it’s true, even though i am a feminist, i still can laugh at some 🤪
I think you’re getting very hung up on the word “cancel” and the associations *you* are bringing to it. how is she being or how could she possibly be cancelled? she has multiple billionaire backers who fund The Free Press and allow her to make a living by arguing that anti-Zionist Jews, Palestinian college students, and trans people should be censored by our educational and political institutions—now *that’s* cancel culture!
you’re implying that to challenge her, to reveal her, as Evan does, to be nothing more than a grifter, a right-wing grievance-monger, and a stooge, is to somehow engage in “cancel culture.” dude, she fucking sucks! she’s a bad writer, a shoddy thinker, and a deeply unlikeable person who launders far-right ideas for a supposedly “heterodox” audience. no one is suggesting that she should be censored by the government or the cultural sphere, just that she should not be given a pass to peddle her grift without being challenged on her ideas & positions.
You get it! This other guy doesn’t. You’re also engaging in good faith, from a left wing perspective. This other guy isn’t. “Centrist” extremism on full display 🤷♂️
I don't know why you're defending Evan when he agreed in the comment thread above he's trying to cancel Bari.
Y'all need to cut that shit out. It was a big part of what led to the return of Trump, as we purples warned it would, going back to 2020.
As for the rest of your long list of ad hominems against her, doesn't really help your cause either, just makes you come across as histrionic. You don't defeat an argument by spewing out insults.
Get smarter wokies: MAGA is running rings around you and laughing it up each time you hyperventilate when they troll you.
No, Scott Galloway can stay. I think he’s wrong a lot of the time. But Weiss is in her own league. Thank you for asking.
I subscribed to TFP almost 1 year ago today, because I was attracted to the promise of balanced coverage and perspective (and note of the Fox News variety). Some of their content was really interesting, and kept me coming back. But as I continued paying attention, I began to see the bias. Sure, they throw some red meat content out for the libs (tofu perhaps?) But I began to see a distinct and specific alt right bias, whose presence was perhaps softened but Weiss’ own identity as gay, female and Jewish, but ultimately apologetic to the creep of the worst elements of the right coming into the mainstream.
Spending time in the comments section on TFP articles really cemented the view that this was a right wing apologist publication, draped in a thin veneer of centrist perspective. While I’ve encountered some intelligent perspectives in the comments, I mostly encountered people ranging from typical Fox News viewers, to essentially proto-Nazi provocateurs.
I’ve since cancelled my subscription, and blocked their stuff from my feed. In the time since, I’ve realized just how much great content is out here on Substack that is truly independent, with a diversity of perspective. I no longer believe in paying Weiss for the privilege of reading her pre-packaged version of fair and balanced, supported by the billionaires with whom she hobnobs. She is, and continues to be a part of the actual elites in this country… building an alt-media empire in service of the destruction of liberal democracy.
i have had this feeling from Bari for a very long time…
Everyone who reads this will get it. You hate Bari Weiss because she is successful, smart, and Jewish. We understand your frustration. There is no substance to your diatribe and I also don’t see you gunning for oh say Fox News, Tucker Carlson, MSNBC, and so many others who are truly as biased as you.
Evan did an excellent job replying, and I sincerely +1 his response... but just to add a few points:
1) I never expressed "hate"... simply a desire to no longer recommend or support the output of this person, whom I believe to be disingenuous at best.
2) Being smart, successful and Jewish (as individual or as combined traits if you're into the whole intersectionality thing) in no way implies that someone is fair or morally consistent. I know plenty of people who share all of those traits, but also have traits such as kindness, compassion, humor, fairness, warmth, humility, etc.
Please take your thinly veiled accusation of antisemitism elsewhere.
I have lots of qualms with Fox “news” and Mr. Carlson, trust me. Many volumes have already been written about their malign influence; I can point you to some that reflect my views if you’re genuinely curious. As for MSNBC, I generally find it to be honest and accurate in its reporting, which is much more than I could ever say about fox. Still, I do have critiques. Perhaps I should write about them, so thanks for that, uh, suggestion?
If you peruse my pieces you will see that I have plenty of contempt for women AND men, for Jews AND gentiles, and I also shower praise across the spectrum of gender and religious affiliation.
I have no problem with successful people. My problem is with bootlicking grifters. There is quite a bit of substantive argument to that point in the piece, you just disagree.
And that’s okay. But your disagreement with my analysis doesn’t make it unfounded, poorly expressed, or biased. It’s just a disagreement, which you are welcome to have.
They throw enough interesting stories that seem progressive, and it gets to be a trap under the name of their feeling of superiority and “enlightened” centrism.
You get it!! 🙏💯
I would throw Andrew Sullivan onto the same trash heap as Weiss and Maher.
i agree and appreciate everything about this article/post. it is all important and needs wider exposure. i too subscribed initially to her posts, wanting to remain open minded and curious. it took three posts and i was writing a letter to the editor and vociferously unsubscribing. the mask dropped had exposed the cruelty, meanness and lack of emotional maturity of the writer(s).
my only quibble with this article is the first paragraph-ish which led me to believe the author thinks there are good and bad people. a la brene brown, i choose to believe we are all humans, doing the best with what we have. and that we are all humans and capable of doing “good” or “bad” actions, but that doesn’t mean we are good or bad at heart.
this is a lifetime belief, even in the face of so much current monstrosity. i travel, a LOT, and if i can’t believe in the inherent goodness of most people i would feel lost.
bravo for a great article. ty.
Thank you sandy. I appreciate your comments, and I definitely see what you mean in terms of the good/bad people thing. I think you may be right. 🙏
wasn’t able to go back to read your article while composing a comment, sadly. because your last sentence, “At a certain point, we must stand up and assert: some people are beyond redemption and should have no place in public life.”
and i agree they should have no place in public life. yes, the more prominence a person has means greater responsibility and accountability.
and my heart can’t put her past redemption, which i believe must still be possible. even as choices have consequences.
the nuremburg trials come to mind.
Wrote this as a bubbled over vent in the conversation group… I’m new to Substack. Anyway posting it here too, apologies to anyone reading it twice but I’ve been keeping this inside a long time.
I went to college with her and lived in a shared dorm apartment with her sophomore year. I haven’t read any of her recent writing, because I didn’t like her then and from the random quotes I see here and there she’s gone from her college rage baiting to just utter toxicity. She was in a relationship with Kate McKinnon (of SNL fame) when I knew her, but I guess they broke up and she must have gone down an increasingly right wing path. Too bad the people who rub shoulders with her now would have turned their backs on the person she was when I first met her.
I always felt uncomfortable after a late night conversation we had where she explained to me in detail why it was so important to make sure traditional Jewish communities in Africa never were exposed to outside influences because it meant they maintained a more “pure” form of Judaism. She was utterly shocked when I said that I didn’t think it would be terrible, if they were interested, to offer young people from any culture where (for example) a cd player is banned an object from the outside, and that young people should be free to make their own decisions about whether they want to continue living in a traditional way or make other choices. That many people would gladly choose a traditional culture over a modern one, if the values it holds are strong. I grew up in a household where cultural studies and anthropology were big topics, and a major theme of my own studies has been the resilience of traditional cultures in the face of modernism and cultural supremacy/ erasure.
I just remember how what felt like an honest late night college conversation one second suddenly felt like a bizarre litmus test—the inauthenticity of her deeply shocked reaction to my open responses to her questions. It felt manipulative and weird.
I also remember the way she ran into my room to tell me the guy I was dating had a very famous and important mother, as if she was doing me a huge favour instead of just making me incredibly uncomfortable by implying that I should be happy and I could be benefiting from our association or something like that… I knew from the beginning that this was a person who cared very deeply about becoming famous and I can see how she saw a pathway to that through hate speech and racism, and why she has been rampantly and falsely accusing people of anti-Semitism when she is fully aware of how wrong she is.
She was deeply unlikeable, even in a relationship with a cool, popular actor in our college and knowing lots of interesting people, and it’s clear that she eventually realised that doubling down on her unlikeablility would be her ticket to fame. That’s what Trump is right? And Vance and all these guys? That’s their ticket—the whole “we want you to hate us, we want you to be repulsed! The people who feel hated and repulsive will eat us up!” She is culpable, for the rest of her life, of having helped write the playbook they’re following.
My last college memory of her was hearing about her instigating witch hunts against professors who didn’t agree with her increasingly right wing politics. She started her own paper (since the college ones weren’t very interested in her writing) literally just to get a more right wing vehicle for her hate speech. And that’s what she ended up using it for. Destroying careers and now, apparently, much worse.
This is a very shallow and dangerous person who has limited depth and a desire for fame that runs so deep that she doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process.
I’ve still only read a few quotes from her writing here and there and have zero interest in reading more. I’ve never written about my encounters with her in college before because we had mutual friends who spoke up on her behalf and tried to convince me she wasn’t fully responsible for her actions, that she had been brainwashed or something, but that argument only goes so far.
It’s called the Cult and she plays the game apparently but I had never heard of her this post has lit a fire and it’s easy to tell from reading the comments.
I also am new to Substack. I had heard of Bari, so I made the mistake of paid subscribing to The Free Press a few months ago because I ignorantly thought it was going to be a source for general news. Soon after joining I watched about 20 minutes of Bari’s long interview with one of her tech mogul supporters and was appalled by the conversation. I haven’t been back to the site since. My instinct was accurate it seems, after this read and your comment. Also, I made sure my account doesn’t auto pay for another Free Press year!