A closer look at Bari Weiss’ resignation suggests she omitted critical details about her toxic presence at the paper, and may have staged her resignation to publicize her next move, write Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton.
The New York Times Building in Manhattan. (Adam Jones on Flickr)
By Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton
The Grayzone
Neoconservative New York Times columnist Bari Weiss quit the newspaper on July 14. In a resignation letter published on her personal website, the pundit lamented a supposed “illiberal environment” at the publication in which Weiss’ colleagues mocked her right-wing views, supposedly called her “a Nazi and a racist,” and branded her a “liar and a bigot.”
Weiss’ unexpected departure came days after the hawkish columnist signed a letter in Harper’s Magazine lamenting an “intolerance of opposing views” and demanding an “open debate” in the U.S. media.
The signatories complaining of a “censoriousness” environment included architects of disastrous U.S. military interventions, anti-Palestinian fanatics, and some of the most powerful people in the media, including many who have spent decades censoring anyone to the left of them – and even attempting to cancel entire countries.
But there may have been more to Weiss’ dramatic resignation than her revulsion with the “illiberal” culture of a paper that had recruited her and several neocon allies. A closer look at the events surrounding her departure suggests she likely omitted some critical details about her toxic presence inside the paper, and may have staged her resignation to drum up publicity for her next move.
Neocon Network Rises at the Times
Weiss (From her Twitter page).
Back on June 3, neoconservative Sen. Tom Cotton published an op-ed in The New York Times calling for the U.S. military to crack down on Americans protesting lethal police violence. The decision to publish the editorial touched off outrage among Times staff, with many demanding to know how such a fascistic piece made it into print.
It turned out that the staffer who edited the piece, Adam Rubenstein, was a card-carrying neocon hired by the Times in early 2019. Rubenstein was a former editor for the now-defunct Weekly Standard founded by William Kristol – the neocon leader responsible for rustling up pro-Israel money to support Cotton’s electoral ambitions.
New York Times staff claimed that the Cotton op-ed “was edited” by Rubenstein and other staffers “had not been aware of the article before it was published.”
The editorial disaster prompted the dismissal of op-ed page editor James Bennet, who had initially defended running Cotton’s screed.
Before joining the Weekly Standard, Rubenstein was a pro-Israel activist at Kenyon College who once attempted to cancel an appearance by the Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi on the grounds that Kanazi was “part of a focus-grouped and incubated hatred.”
Rubenstein’s hiring by the Times complimented its hiring of Bari Weiss and fellow anti-Palestinian bigot Bret Stephens in 2017. In her resignation letter, Weiss acknowledged, “I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in [the Times’] pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives.”
In 2018, Weiss and Stephens responded to a critic who had called them “Zionist fanatics of near-unhinged proportions.” The two retorted: “The word ‘near’ should not have been a part of the sentence. Otherwise, we happily plead guilty as charged.”
When Rubenstein joined them at the paper, he became Weiss’s personal editor. Both Weiss and Stephens had risen to prominence at the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal, where Rubenstein had also worked as a Robert Bartley Fellow.
All hail my editor!
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 5, 2019
In August 2019, Stephens provoked embarrassment for himself and his employers when he fired off an angry email to the employer of a George Washington University professor, David Karpf, who had compared him on Twitter to a bedbug. As Twitter users bombarded Stephens with a wave of ridicule, The New York Times apparently compelled Stephens to delete his Twitter account – but not before he staged a public meltdown in which he compared Karpf to “totalitarian regimes” and Nazis seeking to exterminate Jews.
When the Cotton column calling for a military crackdown on Black Lives Matter ran less than a year later, the Times’ neocon problem finally came to a head.
This June 5, as 300 non-editorial staffers planned a virtual walkout, Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger convened an all-hands meeting. During the question-and-answer session, according to a report by Vice, employees demanded to know “whether Opinion staff editor and writer Bari Weiss would be fired for ‘openly bad mouth[ing] younger news colleagues on a platform where they, because of strict company policy, could not defend themselves’; whether the opinion section had suggested the topic of the op-ed to Cotton; and what the Times would do to help retain and support Black employees.”
Times staff seemed to be pointing a finger at Weiss and her neocon network for soliciting the Cotton op-ed.
When Weiss resigned on July 14, she complained that colleagues “have called me a Nazi and a racist… Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers.” Yet she failed to acknowledge her apparent role in the Cotton op-ed affair, which was clearly the source of her colleagues’ outrage, painting herself instead as a blameless victim of “illiberal” cancel culture.
On the day that Weiss staged her dramatic self-expulsion, Andrew Sullivan – a center-right political ally of Weiss who has vigorously supported her – resigned from New York Magazine.
This will be my last week at New York Magazine.
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) July 14, 2020
Sullivan eventually revealed that he was moving to another publication, and possibly one that had not yet launched.
The underlying reasons for the split are pretty self-evident, and I’ll be discussing the broader questions involved in my last column this Friday.
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) July 14, 2020
While Sullivan does not share the Likudnik politics of Weiss, he enjoys some notable institutional and personal links to her political network. As the former editor of The New Republic, Sullivan worked under the direction of the magazine’s fanatically pro-Israel former publisher, Marty Peretz, who has since relocated to Tel Aviv. Peretz’s daughter, Evgenia, published a fawning profile of Weiss in Vanity Fair in April 2019, portraying her as an inspiring new talent who was “genuinely fueled by curiosity, the desire to connect, to cross boundaries and try out new things.”
During the time Sullivan and Peretz ran The New Republic, the magazine was funded by the pro-Israel businessman Roger Hertog. Hertog also plowed his fortune into the Shalem Center to launch a training institute for young pro-Israel pundits in 2002.
Among the first interns to pass through the Shalem training school was a Columbia University student named Bari Weiss. (Weiss’ editor at the Times, Rubenstein, had also been involved in the Hertog Foundation).
Whether or not Weiss plans to join Sullivan at a new outlet for disgruntled anti-SJW [social justice warrior] centrists, the circumstances surrounding her self-expulsion reveal her resignation letter as an insincere whitewash.
Besides the possibility that Weiss’ departure was a PR stunt, there is the fact that she has spent a large portion of her adult life working to cancel Palestinian academics and left-wing politicians while howling about the rise of a totalitarian “cancel culture.”
Self-Styled Free Thinker Campaigns to Silence Left-Wing Dissenters
Before Bari Weiss branded herself as an avatar of free thought, she established herself as the queen of a particular kind of cancel culture. The 36-year-old pundit has dedicated a significant portion of her adult life to destroying the careers of critics of Israel, tarring them as anti-Semites, and carrying out the kind of defamation campaigns that would result in her targets losing their jobs.
The pundit has shown a particular obsession with Palestinian-American scholar Joseph Massad and the New York City-based Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour. Other targets have included Keith Ellison, the Minnesota Attorney General who was the first Muslim elected to Congress, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, an ardent opponent of U.S. regime change wars.
There is also ample evidence that while at Columbia University, Weiss helped bring down the dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, Lisa Anderson, for inviting Iran’s then-President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad to speak on campus. Anderson’s son has pointed to Weiss as a key factor in her resignation:
of its own cruel military occupation so routinely that their army calls it “mowing the lawn,” it’s so rich that Bari Weiss was on the forefront of the practice of shutting down campus speech she disagreed with and collecting scalps because of some intellectual heresy. 10/
— Mas (@finds_you_well) March 8, 2018
In her resignation letter, Weiss found space to castigate the Times for publishing an interview with renowned African-American author Alice Walker, whom she casually defamed as “a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati.”
Weiss also flexed her bona fides as a proud neoconservative activist, saying she was “honored” to have given the world’s most prestigious media platform to a slew of regime-change activists from countries targeted by the U.S. national security for overthrow, including Venezuela, Iran, and Hong Kong, along with notorious Islamophobe Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Chloe Valdary – a fellow Israel lobby product who previously worked as an intern for Bret Stephens.
In her three-year career as an editor of the opinion section of the newspaper of record, Weiss devoted a significant chunk of her columns to attacking her left-wing critics, while complaining endlessly of the haters in her Twitter mentions (which is risible given her lamentation in her resignation letter that “Twitter has become [the Times’] ultimate editor”).
In her 2019 book, Weiss condemned the pro-Palestine left as a whole. She insisted the idea that Zionism is a colonialist and racist movement is an anti-Semitic “Soviet conspiracy;” that the UK Labour Party under leader Jeremy Corbyn was a “hub of Jew hatred,” and that “leftist anti-Semites” are “more insidious and perhaps existentially dangerous” than far-right “Hitlerian anti-Semites.”
It is worth reviewing this historical record to show how Cancel Queen Bari Weiss’ apparent change of heart on cancel culture might more appropriately be described as an opportunist career choice.
Campaigns to Cancel Massad, Sarsour & Ellison
In her 2019 book “How to Fight Anti-Semitism,” Weiss revived her condemnations of Massad, whom she first targeted at Columbia University after interning at the Hertog-funded Shalem Center.
Weiss also argued that New York University (NYU) was rife with anti-Semitism. Her proof? An individual student was told some stupid anti-Semitic comments, and — much more disconcertingly for Weiss – “In December 2018, the student government successfully passed a BDS resolution,” and “NYU gave the President’s Service Award, the school’s highest honor, to Students for Justice in Palestine.”
Massad was hardly the only victim of Bari Weiss’ compulsive cancel culture campaigns. The neoconservative pundit wrote an entire New York Times column in 2017 dedicated to trying to cancel Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour.
Rapping progressives over the knuckles for purportedly “embracing hate,” Weiss characterized Sarsour as an unhinged anti-Semite because of her criticism of the colonialist Zionist movement, and worked to disrupt the Women’s March, which Sarsour helped to found.
Then in a tag-team cancel campaign with feverishly pro-war CNN host Jake Tapper (who has his own questionable history with racial issues), they portrayed Sarsour as an extremist for expressing support for former Black Panther leader Assata Shakur, whom they jointly demonized as a “cop-killer fugitive in Cuba.”
Next, Weiss turned her sights on the Democratic Attorney General of Minnesota Keith Ellison, claiming in a 2017 column that he had a “long history of defending and working with anti-Semites.”
Attempts to Cancel Tulsi Gabbard
Bari Weiss’ cancelation rampage continued without a moment of self-reflection.
In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan in January 2019, the pundit tried to cancel Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard because of her work advocating against the international proxy war on Syria.
When Rogan mentioned Gabbard’s name, Weiss scoffed that the congresswoman is “monstrous,” smearing her an “Assad toady,” in reference to the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. Confused, Rogan asked Weiss what exactly that meant. The bumbling New York Times pundit could not answer, unable to define or even spell the insult.
This hilarious video exemplifies how stupid and infantile discourse on Syria is:
If you oppose regime change and arming of fascist contra "rebels," a braindead neocon with a sinecure in the corporate media smears you as an Assad apologist using insults they can't spell or define pic.twitter.com/m0MLaHFPiX
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 22, 2019
Claims ‘Leftist Anti-Semitism’ Worse Than ‘Hitlerian Anti-Semitism’
Bari Weiss’ most extreme views on Israel-Palestine and the left can be seen in her 2019 book How to Fight Anti-Semitism. In this tome, the neoconservative writer set out to cancel the pro-Palestinian anti-racist left as a whole by arguing that supposed “leftist anti-Semitism” is more dangerous than “Hitlerian anti-Semitism.”
Weiss wrote:
“Hitlerian anti-Semitism announces its intentions unequivocally. But leftist anti-Semitism, like communism itself, pretends to be the opposition of what it actually is.
Because of the easy way it can be smuggled into the mainstream and manipulate us – who doesn’t seek justice and progress? who doesn’t want a universal brotherhood of man? – anti-Semitism that originates on the political left is more insidious and perhaps existentially dangerous [than on the right].”
When she says “leftist anti-Semitism,” Weiss almost invariably means progressive criticism of Israeli apartheid, racism, and brutality against the indigenous Palestinian population.
If that wasn’t already obvious, Weiss spelled it out:
“If you want to see the stakes, just look across the pond, where Jeremy Corbyn, an anti-Semite, has successfully transformed one of the country’s great parties into a hub of Jew hatred.
Corbynism is not confined to the U.K. Right now in America, leftists who share Corbyn’s worldview are building grassroots movements and establishing factions with the Democratic Party that are suspiciously unskeptical of genocidal terrorist groups like Hamas and actively hostile to Jewish power and the state of Israel.”
In her book, Weiss insisted the idea that Zionism is a colonialist and racist movement is the product of a “Soviet conspiracy” spread by USSR in order to destroy Israel. She expressly ignored the words of the father of Zionism himself, Theodor Herzl, who wrote that Zionism “is a colonial idea” and requested help from British colonialists, including colonial master Cecil Rhodes.
“Progressives have, knowingly or unknowingly, embraced the Soviet lie that Israel is a colonialist outpost that should be opposed,” Weiss lamented.
“In the most elite spaces across the country, people declare, unthinkingly, that Israel is a racist state and that Zionism is racism, without realizing that they are participating in a Soviet conspiracy, without realizing that they are aligning themselves with the greatest mass murderers in modern history,” she bemoaned.
Not mincing her words, Weiss concluded, “When anti-Zionism becomes a normative political position, active anti-Semitism becomes the norm.”
With these passages, it became clear that her How to Fight Anti-Semitism was a book-length attempt to cancel anti-Zionists as a whole, by conflating their opposition to Israeli apartheid as anti-Semitism.
Anyone who disputes that Israel is “a political and historical miracle” is secretly a Jew hater, Weiss has argued. She effused, “That I can walk the streets of Tel Aviv today as a feminist woman in a tank top,” she marveled, “that it is a free and liberated society in the middle of the Middle East, is an achievement so great that it is often hard for many people to grasp.”
As with much of the content Weiss produces, her gushing praise for Israel’s supposedly “liberated society” could have been lifted from a propaganda pamphlet distributed on campus by a pro-Israel lobbying outfit. But it was never quality writing or original ideas that won Weiss the attention she sought, and which has virtually ensured she will be “cancelled” into a new, high-profile position in the mainstream commentariat.
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling “Republican Gomorrah,” “Goliath,” “The Fifty One Day War,” and “The Management of Savagery.” He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including “Killing Gaza.” Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the “Moderate Rebels” podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Please Contribute to Consortium
News on its 25th Anniversary
Donate securely with 
PayPal here.
Or securely by credit card or check by clicking the red button:
I’ve a suspicion Weiss has neverlived in Israel, not outside a tourist hotel!
Never held a job, dealt hypercritical sabra colleagues, low wages, high taxes, sexual harrassment, military service every year, etc, etc. It’s not Yiddish USA!
Re:
“Back on June 3, neoconservative Sen. Tom Cotton published an op-ed in The New York Times calling for the U.S. military to crack down on Americans protesting lethal police violence.”
This is a barefaced lie. Cotton never advocated using military on protesters, buy rioers, looters.
last phrase should read “rioters, looters.
New york Times they are a changing.
Yes! You are Crazy Bari! You don’t know how words work and your brain doesn’t work either!
I have watched Jimmy Dore’s video of Joe Rogan dismantling her more than a half-dozen times because it is so funny.
Hello, Ms. Weiss. Please go walking in Israel in a tank top. You will discover that orthodox and ultra orthodox Jews take the same stance on women as Muslims.
When the bus is crowded, and a woman comes in, any Muslim will stand and offer her his seat, not like the orthodox Jews, who restricts their women to sit in the back seats of the bus, and if the bus is crowded and a man gets in, and if there’s only one seated women in the bus,she should stand up and give him her seat, if not, otherwise she’ll be forced to comply.
Well Sascha Baron Cohen did it in a G-string – although to be fair I think he was nearly crucified (those Hasidics are much faster than they look)
Exactly, JH, exactly.
Visit Bnei Bram or Mea Shearim in tank top, ms Weiss!
NB, everyone! About half of Israelis stem from Mediterranean and Middle East countries, nostly the former Ottoman Empire. They are, in effect, Judaeoarabs. That’s Israel is not really a western country
excellent analytical report on a situation/journalist I know nothing about. But Weiss is damned with her own writings and illogical victimization of Israel. Not only that, but she commits the classic con, by trying to put the square block of anti-Jewism into the round hole of anti-Israelism; that is conflating anti-semitism with anti-zionism. Jews are a remarkable quasi-religious tribe, spread around the world, often extremely bright and charitable; Zionists are the scum of the earth and, ironically, similar to the Nazis.
Just so, Don.
I would only add that I find it incomprehensible that being pro-Palestinian, supportive of Palestinians while being anti-Zionist (but NOT anti-Jewish) equals anti-semitism. Palestinians *are* Semites – indeed have a far longer pedigree of being so than have the majority of Israel’s (Occupier of All Palestine’s) Zionist population who are of Ashkenaz (i.e. eastern and south eastern European) origin.
“This article should be looked back on by historians as an example of the state to which discourse in 2020 has dissolved beyond even a veneer of open intellectual exchange.”
So what happened in 2020, if I may ask? For decades there exist a well funded movement that places its member in critical spots in media, think tanks, “educates” lawmakers etc., aiming at ostracizing, blacklisting and criminalizing opposition to “sensible preposition” that Jewish Israelis should be allowed to do whatever they want within the lines that they control militarily and beyond — regular bombings, murders, and at times invasions (that is “outside”, inside they have different favored behaviors). When the most obnoxious individuals from that movement are frowned upon, they sob about “illiberalism” — a bit weird because they do not like liberalism a tiny bit, as shown by helping Senator in presenting another “sensible preposition”, namely that armed forces, preferably airborne, are best suited for pacifying unruly spots in the home country.
And trust me, it did not start in 2020. Actually, liberals do not look to well either. They (as represented by the Lords of New York Times) agree that Israel should be allowed to do what it damn please, but with some sensitivity to how it may look. Like proclaiming formal annexation. In Zionist terminology, LoBYT are classic examples of Galut thinking, too intimidated and stupid to comprehend that the whole point of Israel is to let the Jews there be more Jewish than anywhere else! Using cautious phrases to describe what to do is humiliating, and an appeasement to anti-Semites.
“That I can walk the streets of Tel Aviv today as a feminist woman in a tank top,” she marveled, “that it is a free and liberated society in the middle of the Middle East, is an achievement so great that it is often hard for many people to grasp.”
What’s hard for me to grasp is that this is the most substantive example she can offer up as evidence of Israel as a “free & liberated society.” She should try wearing that tank top in the Haredi neighborhoods. Good luck with the modesty patrols – they’re not into your freedom Bari.
Decades of debate about which is the tail and which is the dog. Somehow Ed and Noam’s treatise “Manufacturing Consent” seems like an understatement now.
Thank you CN for publishing the articles this week concerning the cancel culture open letter. Truly we are witnessing the moves of those that construct and maintain the official narrative, out in the open but not so plain to recognize. So, some high-profile influencers resign; not yet have any progressive or contrarian voices advanced to greater visibility. The authors are correct to ask “what comes next?” I’m reminded of Turd Blossom’s confident remark that (to paraphrase) ‘while we act , and consequently , you watch, pre-empted and disempowered.’
Bari, toady is not spelled “ie.”
The NYT should stick to the news and leave the bullshit to Facebook.
I have no objection and, in fact, I approve of a newspaper expressing the opinions of its editor(s) as that shows readers the paper’s biases, and that’s important to know. But aside from that, the newspaper should limit its content to real news. It should not be a platform for some idiot to vent his spleen. Op ed features are generally no more than pure opinionated bullshit. There’s plenty of real news to report and it’s not necessary to fill the pages with bullshit.
The NYT has been a propaganda tool and neocon outpost for at last 40 years. They maintain the illusion of progressivism with a generally soft stance on social issues but bang the drum loudly for war every time (WMDs!) and feature absolute lies above the fold on a daily basis (“anonymous intelligence officials said”, RussiaGate, Russian bounties on US soldiers, Russia stealing vaccines that don’t exist, etc.).
Journalism is non-existent. If the line from the CIA to the NYT was cut all that would be left is the food section.
Weiss is indeed a hypocrite, given how she has attacked critics of Israel, and undoubtedly has her next career move in mind with her noisy resignation.
That doesn’t mean that much of what she says in her letter about the Times isn’t true. Sure rings true to me.
Likewise the Harper’s letter, which the authors disparage, noting only the signers they don’t like, but not someone like Chomsky.
So, it was a conspiracy or perhaps a “cabal” ( conspiracy speak–you know) of a supporter of Israel who had an even more nefarious purpose than stay and remain a sub rosa irritant to those brave journalist at the Grey Lady who champion the victims of Zionism.
This piece is on par withe current level of discourse in the USA, from “Charlemagne the Great,” and, alas, here. At least she was not a “Putin Puppet,” well wait just a New York minute, maybe, come to think of it ……….
Would not Oxacom take his razor and find it most likely a person and an institution ultimately held incompatible views? Or perhaps she was a disgruntled, no good, very bad, terrible employee and the Times is the better for her departure (no discussion of her substantive journalistic abilities–but after all it seems to be a premise that what counts is her political view regarding Palestine and not her professional acumen).
Why must difference be drawn such as to invoke a dark conspiratorial overtone without first recognizing people may have intellectually irreconcilably views, and those differences may be sincerely felt? Why has most differences of view devolved into finding everything the product of heinousness, or the work of a dark amorphous unseen forces? You do realize the body of your article could be easily recycled by reversing names and counties, and a non progressive group could accuse nefarious Palestinian supporters of the ouster of a journalist who “dared to speak truth to those who support the elimination of Jews in their home.”
This article should be looked back on by historians as an example of the state to which discourse in 2020 has dissolved beyond even a veneer of open intellectual exchange. Perhaps in a lesson where the newspaper war of the 1790’s between and Fenno and Freneau is also covered.
I agree. Its usage of “Times staff seemed to be pointing a finger at Weiss and her neocon network for soliciting the Cotton op-ed.” makes clear it involves more speculation than fact, and it doesn’t make a distinction between fact that some pro-Israel neocons are not the neoconservatives primed by Henry Jackson during the Cold War who then were anti-Communist zealots who supported the military industrial complex at every opportunity. They, following the fall of the Soviet Union, morphed into pushing for USA interventionism and now in demonizing Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela in order to maintain that budget and the industries involved in seeking a New World Order and fulfilling Neoliberal goals of a globalized world under USA hegemony.
“…Jews in their home.” Really? “Their home.” Would these be the same Jews who have broken into the house of Palestine by force because they had the power of the U.S., the United Nations (Controlled by the U.S.) behind them? I need not go into the details of yearly and daily stealing from Palestinians – their land and their goods. All that is well known. Such Jews count on the Old Testament as a claim to that land and ignorant Christians fall for it; not reading it close enough to plainly see that the taking of the land is plain theft by force even in Old Testament times.
Also, being pro Palestine does not equate to being anti-semitic except in the eyes of a bigot.
Nonsense!
You have not been paying attention.
Bari Weiss’s signing a letter bemoaning cancel culture just doesn’t pass the smell test after the time she has spent lying, distorting others’ view and words and calling for their outright banning, etc.
I am not a fan of David Brooks, but he has not, to my k nowledge, chalked up the kind of record as as the adolescent Jewish “Karen,” Bari Weiss. I recall seeing the Joe Rogan cut. Hilarious. How can anyone take such a dimwit seriously? She has zero intellect.
So, I don’t really know how you can defend her. Just because she signed a general letter also signed by Noam Chomsky does not give her Chomsky’s chops. I don’t agree witha ll of Chomsky’s positions, but he has contributed significantly to the contemporary discourse on power, the media, etc. Unlike Weiss, who has contributed nothing original and nothing even interesting. She plays to the NYT peanut gallery.
It is interesting to see how Zionists and defenders of the apartheid state of Israel use Chomsky’s name and his prominence as a genuine thinker in varoius ways to justify their own positions. For example, Fred Rozin on a recent editoin of Peter Lavelle’s CrossTalk. Rozin tried to align himself with Chomsky on some recent issue thus neutralize criticism and condemnation of Israel’s terorist agenda in the WEst Bank and Gaza. What is funny about this ad-homming is that, as noted, Chomsky’s positions are considerably less solid when it comes to the State of Israel than when he discusses, for example, East Timor or the manufacture of consent in a general context. I woiuld love hear what Chomsky has to say about the manufacture of consent in the USA concerning Israel’s crimes in the Holy Land. When push comes to shove, Chomsky is a Jewish patriot. That is simply a limitation of the man.
So, don’t drag Chomsky into a discussion of Bari Weiss. Just keep it to Bari Weiss, what she stands for, what she has written, what harm she is planning to do in the future to her ideological and thnic foes.
Honestly, makes me want to say: Don’t like the cancel culture America? Then get your a— to Israel, where the people you disapprove of are summarily shot or detained and thrown in a dungeon. Of course, Israel won’t be there in Weiss’s old age.
You completely missed the point, and your pseudo-intellectual ramblings confirm this. Weiss is a liar and hypocrite, as anyone with a modicum of sense would see.
Weiss is the public intellectual equivalent of Sarah Palin, who was sure her free speech rights were being violated because people disagreed with her and laughed at her, or, in Weiss’ case, worst of all, took her seriously when she tried to be “provocative.”
Heightened sensitivity to criticism is the hallmark of someone whose judgments are ill-conceived, ignorant of the facts and rigidly ideological in nature. Weiss fits that profile quite well.
Her self-description as a “centrist” is more damning than she realizes, since, first, she’s not a centrist, and “centrist” itself is a mask for neoliberal and neoconservative extremists to don when examination of their ideas proves them to be repulsive.
Well said.
Exactly so.
Thanks for this very thorough review of Bari Weiss’ actions. She is the quintissential “useful idiot”. Marinated in Zionism from an early age by her father, she dismisses inconvenient facts with the arrogance of an entitled princess.
A bad writer, ignorant, and a proud racist advocating genocide. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Well said.