Ever since the testimony before Congress one week ago the Ivy League Presidents and the compliant press of this country have had a tough go of things. Liz Magill, of the University of Pennsylvania, has already stepped down from her position, as the school is seeing significant amounts of endowment money being pulled. Now Harvard’s President Claudine Gay is the next to find herself in the crosshairs. It has not been pretty.
As the nation recoils at her flippant defense of antisemitism speech and calls for violence against Jews seen on her campus things are swirling downward. The school is now incurring wrath for supporting Gay to this point, and it is being revealed this is a systemic virus at Harvard. Reports of the president plagiarizing elements from a growing number of her works are coming out, and now the New York Post reveals they were looking into her writings in October, and after notifying Harvard of the allegations the school defended her and lashed out legally.
But what is an underlying, and ultimately disqualifying, detail is that while many in the press are willing to allow Gay her position that she is all about free speech, and thus could not condemn the antisemitic displays seen on her campus, this completely contradicts previous outcries seen from the media the past few months.Ironically, her adhering to an open expression standard so rigid almost makes her sound like a free speech absolutist, does it not? Well who does that particular phrase generally apply to of late?
In truth, what the press is willing to forgive with Gay is completely confounding when we look at the reactions to their preferred target of late – Elon Musk.
For much of this year what has the press been intoning regarding Musk and his social media platform, X-itter? That his allowing banned people people back on his site who had aggressive and intolerant language was going to be the downfall of the site and lead to all manner of calamitous results. Specifically, what has been the most invoked danger? That antisemitic speech - irony of ironies - was proliferating on the site. But there is one distinct discrepancy in these examples.
More than hypocrisy at play, by condemning antisemitic speech on X-itter and then excusing mobs on Harvard’s quad doing the same, it ignores another more pernicious component. The protestors are more than voicing opposition and expressing themselves; we have seen and heard the calls for outright violence to be enforced against Jews. Chants are made for their elimination, speeches have been made - some by professors - calling for the termination of Israel, and other acts of outright aggression have been witnessed.
What is notable about this is that on X-itter this kind of language is NOT tolerated. If you directly threaten another account, or call for them to incur any type of harm you find yourself digitally gagged in some fashion. Your account can be locked down, you will be directed to take down the offending post, and might even face an account suspension. This can occur even when making a comment that is tangential to self-harm. (“Delete your account, and then yourself, could be enough to draw a reprisal.)
Yet when we see mobs on campus calling for the elimination of an entire demographic it is waved off as merely free expression at play. This proves that the trembling outrage set in the media are not serious people. Consider that for years one of the clarions heard across colleges has been the need for students to feel “safe”; not from violence, but from those people expressing an opinion that may not align with others. All that was needed was for students to declare that a speaker coming to give a lecture meant they were “made to feel unsafe”, and that speaker’s visit would be thrown into question.
But today genocidal threats are simply people expressing themselves. It is all a sham of outrage, meant to control speech patterns and get approved narratives brought online. When you say that a person typing out words is “actual violence”, but crowds gathering with direct threats towards a select group are excused away, your claims of concern are exposed as pure balloon juice, and nothing more.
