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<\/a>The problem is the normalization of hate, not cancel culture<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\nJonathan S. Tobin<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n For many readers of\u00a0The Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0who care about the normalization of antisemitism, it was a case of good riddance. Karen Attiah was named the newspaper\u2019s first Global Opinions editor in 2016 and has been a columnist since 2021. This week, she claimed that she was\u00a0fired<\/a>\u00a0over what the newspaper said was a series of posts about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, which the paper said were \u201cunacceptable,\u201d and constituted \u201cgross misconduct\u201d and \u201cendangering the physical safety of colleagues.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Are her posts about Kirk\u2019s murder reason enough to lose her job?<\/span><\/p>\n Her publishers\u2019 excuses and disingenuous \u201csafety\u201d language notwithstanding, the real issue with Attiah or any other similar situation isn\u2019t really about cancel culture.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s what it says about the\u00a0Post<\/em>,\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0and other corporate media institutions that employ many people like her. That they thought placing radical hate-mongers like Attiah in charge of influential platforms was a good idea in the first place is the problem.<\/span><\/p>\n We should be extremely wary of engaging in a culture war in which the goal is to silence, shame and even hound out of the public square people with whom we disagree. The question we should be asking in the wake of this latest example of political violence is not about how best to punish those who use their social-media accounts to say terrible things. It\u2019s why we have allowed institutions that should be the bulwark of democracy, like journalism, to be so corrupted as to normalize the sort of public discourse from people like Attiah, whose goal is to tear down the foundations of the American republic and Western civilization.<\/span><\/p>\n Attiah has every right to say what she likes. And the same goes for anyone else who unfairly and insensitively defamed Kirk after his death. The same applies to those extremists on the far right who sought to exploit the assassination to promote their own brand of conspiracy theories, whether it was the libelous claim that Israel was responsible or other antisemitic insinuations about the crime.<\/span><\/p>\n No one should interfere with the ability of those who behave in this fashion to post on social media (so long as they are not directly advocating violence), stand on street corners or march in the streets while spouting their lies, whether about Kirk, other conservatives, or Israel and the Jews. Still, that doesn\u2019t entitle them to a job at the top newspapers in the country, a tenured professorship at an Ivy League university or a position at a private company whose owners want no part of such madness. And it ought not to grant immunity from criticism or legal action when they violate the law or help fund radical groups like Antifa or Students for Justice in Palestine, both of which promote violence and hate.<\/span><\/p>\n What we want is not a nation that chills speech. We crave a culture of political discourse that doesn\u2019t normalize hate and toxic extremist ideas\u2014that doesn\u2019t exacerbate racial divisions and promote antisemitism. Just as important, we should be actively discouraging a belief that political violence\u2014whether against conservative activists, insurance company executives or politicians disliked by fashionable opinion on the left\u2014is acceptable discourse.<\/span><\/p>\n Our challenge isn\u2019t how best to silence or punish ideologues who ran to TikTok to cheer for Kirk\u2019s murderer or to mock those who mourned him. It\u2019s recreating a political culture where such people are relegated to the fever swamps of the far left and right, where they belong, rather than featuring them in the mainstream media or allowing them to dominate our educational system.<\/span><\/p>\n Attiah was one among many being held up for opprobrium, even sometimes losing their jobs for their insensitive reactions to an act of political violence. But for those who have followed her career, her broadsides aimed at Kirk following his death were typical of her brand of journalism. She\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0that she was fired for \u201cspeaking out against political violence, racial double standards and America\u2019s apathy toward guns.\u201d The truth is that she is a typical of those self-styled progressives who have no problem with political violence so long as it is directed against people and groups that she thinks have no rights worthy of respect\u2014for example, Israelis and Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n The columnist has\u00a0written<\/a>\u00a0explicitly of her belief that the State of Israel had no right to exist. She falsely labels it a European-style colonial project, rather than an expression of Jewish self-determination in their ancient homeland. Even before the Oct. 7 Hamas-led Palestinian attacks on Israeli communities, she was cheerleading for the effort to defend the genocidal terrorists in Gaza from the consequences of their crimes, and delegitimizing Israel and its right of self-defense.<\/span><\/p>\n Her work illustrated how toxic left-wing myths like critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism are a method to normalize antisemitism. Indeed, as an alumnus of one of those institutions that have been a bastion of such terrible ideas\u2014Attiah graduated from Columbia University\u2019s School of International Affairs\u2014there is no better example of the way the academy manufactures and then spreads Jew-hatred.<\/span><\/p>\n Many on the political left, like Attiah, thought the aftermath of Kirk\u2019s murder was a license to not only vent their anger at his views, but to post misleading, if not downright false, information about the late activist. They now say that retribution for this is no different from something that the right has long decried: cancel culture.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s not a charge that can be dismissed out of hand. And it\u2019s one that is also related to the assertions that President Donald Trump\u2019s efforts to roll back the tide of woke antisemitism at colleges and universities are an infringement on free speech, academic freedom and a form of cancel culture.<\/span><\/p>\n Is the backlash against those who mocked Kirk\u2019s death different from the moral panic about race that swept across the United States during the Black Lives Matter summer of 2020? That moment of peak progressive conquest of America\u2019s media and culture led to cancellations of those who were deemed insufficiently sympathetic to BLM or otherwise denounced as \u201cracists.\u201d Most educational institutions, arts organizations, celebrities and even many corporations quavered in the face of this Jacobin-like attempt to purge conservatives or even moderates who wouldn\u2019t bend their knees to BLM lies about race from the public square.<\/span><\/p>\n Left-wingers who were happy to join the cancel culture mobs in 2020 or to cheer on the efforts of pro-Hamas activists to target Jews since Oct. 7 have suddenly discovered that being ostracized in this way isn\u2019t a good thing. They assert that those who disagreed with Kirk\u2014like Attiah and the countless others who have been attacking the victim of an assassination as someone who got what he deserved\u2014are being unfairly punished.<\/span><\/p>\n As we saw in 2020, the impulse to persecute those who contradict the conventional wisdom of the moment and to seek to deprive them of their livelihoods is antithetical to how a free republic operates.<\/span><\/p>\n The real sickness afflicting American democracy is not primarily the fault of extreme speech that breeds angry arguments, but the unwillingness of so many people to engage with views differing from their own. The bifurcated political culture, in which much of the country reads, listens and watches two entirely different sets of media outlets, has created an almost unbridgeable gap between left and right. That has made many people uncomfortable with opinions or even facts that contradict their assumptions and prejudices. It also encourages them to engage in radical speech that demonizes their political foes.<\/span><\/p>\n Thus, it wasn\u2019t enough for many people to state their disagreements with Kirk\u2019s views about Trump, abortion, immigration, gun rights, gender ideology and even Israel (he was a strong and vocal supporter of the Jewish state). They also felt compelled to damn him as a racist, hate-monger, fascist or Nazi, and to double down on the same smears of Trump and his supporters.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s bad enough under normal circumstances. But those who did so after the object of their intemperate invective was murdered for exercising his right to free speech are understandably being criticized for what is, at best, insensitive behavior and, at worst, exactly the sort of hate speech that encourages more political violence.<\/span><\/p>\n So, what should our response be to this sort of speech? Should those who do so be held up to public outrage by being \u201cratioed\u201d with a flood of critical comments on their social-media feeds\u2014the 21st-century-version of the Medieval punishment of being put in the stocks in the public square for passersby to jeer at? Should they lose their livelihoods and be run out of town?<\/span><\/p>\n The answer to that question most often depends on whether the offending poster is situated on your side of the political aisle. We tend to be more forgiving of allies who misbehave online and demand the scalps of those whose opinions contradict our own.<\/span><\/p>\n Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, some basic truths need to be acknowledged. If you\u2019re going to express opinions that are nasty, insensitive or extreme, then you don\u2019t have standing to play the victim if other people who are offended respond in the same way. That doesn\u2019t excuse foul language or threats, which platform providers have every right to moderate.<\/span><\/p>\n Yet we need to draw some distinctions here. Espousing opinions on a wide range of political issues, about which those who believe in democracy are compelled to agree to disagree, is not something that should be treated as a reason for shunning.<\/span><\/p>\n Supporting political violence, however, is not the same as backing a particular political candidate on the right or the left. Nor should we treat open racism\u2014whether in the form of white nationalism or fashionable left-wing \u201canti-racism,\u201d or antisemitism in all of its forms\u2014as the same thing as just having a position on the best way to achieve racial harmony or how to bring about peace in the Middle East. What we\u2019ve seen on the left is the growth of what can only be termed \u201cassassination culture,\u201d as some people laud those who murder their political foes or the terrorists of Hamas. Those who are part of this trend shouldn\u2019t complain if their fellow citizens or their employers want nothing to do with them.<\/span><\/p>\n The problem is that the Overton window of acceptable discourse was deliberately shifted by progressives so as to treat their own extremist views about race, gender, American history, the Jews and Israel as normal, and to brand those who defended traditional values on religion, liberty and Jewish rights as hateful. Attiah is someone who despises the America to which her African parents immigrated, and who backs genocidal positions that deny Jewish history and rights. A political culture in which someone like her is treated as a respected voice rather than a marginal extremist is sick and in need of reform.<\/span><\/p>\n The same applies to someone like\u00a0Tucker Carlson<\/a>, who may have been a much-needed tribune of conservative resistance to BLM and the far left in 2020, but has since descended into an antisemitic extremist rabbit hole since being fired from his prominent position at\u00a0Fox News<\/em>. Those on the right who may disagree with him but are still treating his views as worthy of platforming\u2014unfortunately, that included\u00a0Charlie Kirk<\/a>\u2014are wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n What happened at\u00a0The Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Fox News<\/em>\u00a0was not the cancellation of independent voices. They were necessary corrections by companies that don\u2019t wish to be identified with extremism, and to that end, they cleaned house.<\/span><\/p>\n The\u00a0Post\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0billionaire owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, may be a hypocrite who shows no sign of having much in the way of principles. And he has belatedly concluded that his money-losing sinkhole of a publication is better off with its editorials and columnists\u00a0defending\u00a0<\/a>free markets and personal liberty, as opposed to partisan progressive extremism. He is trying to align himself with most Americans and actually doing something to defend the democracy that its banner warns will \u201cdie in darkness.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Fox News<\/em>\u00a0owner Rupert Murdoch likely also feels himself well rid of Carlson\u2019s particular brand of isolationism and hate for Israel, mixed in with kowtowing to tyrants in Russia and Qatar.<\/span><\/p>\n Attiah and Carlson may well prosper on Substack or podcasts on X, though they shouldn\u2019t be silenced or interfered with by the government. Still, they have no place in mainstream media or discourse. Marginalizing them and other radicals aren\u2019t examples of cancel culture to be decried. It\u2019s just common sense. It\u2019s also a sign: We need not despair that we are doomed to helplessly watch the polarization they represent send the American republic tumbling into a civil war between the left and the right.<\/span><\/p>\n Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion’68,<\/em> The problem is the normalization of hate, not cancel culture Jonathan S. Tobin Firing those who dissent is troubling. But progressive hate cheering for Hamas and the murder of Charlie Kirk, along with right-wing conspiracy theories, shouldn\u2019t be platformed. Karen Attiah, global opinions editor for \u201cThe Washington Post\u201d (left) with Alexis Okeowo, staff writer for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[33,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124280"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=124280"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124302,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124280\/revisions\/124302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=124280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=124280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=124280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFiring those who dissent is troubling. But progressive hate cheering for Hamas and the murder of Charlie Kirk, along with right-wing conspiracy theories, shouldn\u2019t be platformed.<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
![](\"https:\/\/me.jnsi.org\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Karen-Attiah-and-Alexis-Okeowo-1320x880.jpg\")
Karen Attiah, global opinions editor for \u201cThe Washington Post\u201d (left) with Alexis Okeowo, staff writer for \u201cThe New Yorker,\u201d a New America fellow and author of \u201cA Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa,\u201d Oct. 11, 2017. Credit: New America via Wikimedia Commons.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\nCorrupted institutions<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Marginalizing hate-mongers<\/strong><\/h4>\n
A failure to engage<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Moving the Overton Window<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n![](\"https:\/\/me.jnsi.org\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Jonathan-S.-Tobin-480x480.png\")
<\/span>Jonathan S. Tobin<\/strong> is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS \u201cThink Twice\u201d podcast, both the weekly video program and the \u201cJonathan Tobin Daily\u201d program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
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