Jewish Influence at the Twitter Trust & Safety Council 2016 to 2022
Between when its creation was officially announced on 9th February 2016 and Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter on 26th October 2022 Twitter's 'Trust & Safety Council' came in for a lot of criticism.
This was particularly focused on the inclusion of feminist groups (in particular the presence of Anita Sarkeesian) and the Orwellian language, which boiled down to claiming that 'free speech' requires censoring 'hate speech'.
This saw thousands of prominent 'politically incorrect' Twitter users, such as Robert Stacey McCain, being suspended for no apparent reason. (1) That this was hardly surprising could be seen in fact that - as Robby Soave pointed out - that whole 'Trust & Safety Council' was filled with organizations that wanted to ban free speech.
I disagree slightly with Soave's claim that the 'Trust & Safety Council' was filled with people who want to ban free speech. (2) I say that because I actually went through the list of organizations and did some research to see what I could find about them and their views.
A more nuanced view is both more helpful and accurate I think. Since while I agree there was no strong anti-censorship voice on the 'Trust & Safety Council' between 2016 and 2022. There were a few fairly neutral organizations that don't deserve to be tarred with the same brush as the Anti-Defamation League and Anita Sarkeesian.
Aside from that: why write yet another article on Twitter's 'Trust & Safety Council'?
Well for one thing I think we need to recognize that the most ominous groups on the 'Trust & Safety Council' between 2016 and 2022 weren't Feminist Frequency or Hollaback, but rather established groups with large budgets and significant political clout as well as a proven desire to destroy the lives of their opponents and critics. The Anti-Defamation League (hereafter ADL) and Ligue Internationale Contra le Racisme et l'Antisemitisme (hereafter LICRA) are the two that really stand out.
The ADL was - and is - notorious for its attempts to brand any criticism of jews or Israel as anti-Semitism, (3) its decades long refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide occurred (4) as well as its demand that the Ukrainian Holodomor not enjoy the same sort of recognition as the 'Holocaust'. (5) In addition according to publicly-available FBI documentation the ADL has long been suspected of espionage on behalf of the state of Israel. (6)
It also has a budget in the tens of millions. (7) Not exactly the sort of extremely partisan organization you want on or even lurking around a 'Trust & Safety Council'.
LICRA has been aptly characterized by Guillaume Durocher as:
'A masterpiece of branding and networking. An incredible panoply of political and media figures across the spectrum are or have been members of the group (a common technique being inviting senior figures to become members of the honorary committee), including presidents (François Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac), senior ministers (Alain Juppé, Laurent Fabius, Lionel Jospin, André Malraux, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Jacques Delors, Philippe Séguin, Bernard Kouchner, Jacques Lang, etc.), business leaders, media figures and pundits (advertising giant Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, Alain Finkielkraut, Jacques Attali, Bernard-Henri Lévy, etc.). Kling notes that the LICRA has a “strong osmosis with the world of the media, who played a decisive role.” LICRA is nothing if not ensconced among French elites.' (8)
It also happens to be an explicitly jewish organization, (9) in receipt of half a million Euros per annum in subsidies from the French government (10) and – effectively – the French version of the ADL.
Again not exactly the sort of well-funded extremely partisan organization you want involved in or hanging around a 'Trust & Safety Council' or at least one that inspires or values any kind of trust or safety.
Besides these two particularly nasty and powerful jewish organizations; we can split the members of the 'Trust & Safety Council' between 2016 and 2022 four ways.
These are:
Category A:
Members with an overt political/ideological agenda to promote and support censoring 'hate speech'.
Category B:
Members with no overt political/ideological agenda to promote, but support censoring 'hate speech'.
Category C:
Members with no overt political/ideological agenda to promote, but who do not want to censor 'hate speech'.
Category D:
Members who want to protect freedom of speech.
When we split the members (including the ADL and LICRA) of the 'Trust & Safety Council' between 2016 and 2022 this way. They stack up as follows:
Category A:
Anti-Defamation League (ADL)
Circleof6 (11)
ConnectSafely (12)
Cyber Civil Rights Intiative (13)
Dangerous Speech Project (14)
Feminist Frequency (15)
GLAAD (16)
Hollaback! (17)
Jugendschutz (18)
Ligue Internationale Contra le Racisme et l'Antisemitisme (LICRA)
SaferNet (19)
The Wahid Institute (20)
Category B:
Anti-Bullying Pro (21)
ChildNet (22)
CrisisTextLine (23)
The Cybersmile Foundation (24)
E-Enfance (25)
European Schoolnet (26)
iCanHelp (27)
iKeepSafe (28)
Internet Watch Foundation (29)
NetSafe (30)
Project Rockit (31)
South West Grid for Learning (32)
Spunout (33)
UK Safer Internet Centre (34)
INACH (35)
Category C:
Betterinternetforkids (BIK)
BeyondBlue (36)
Bravehearts
EU Kids Online
Family Online Safety Institute
Love146
National Cyber Security Alliance
National Domestic Violence Hotline
National Network to End Domestic Violence
Pantallas Amigas
Professor Dacher Keltner
Professor Marc Brackett
ReachOut
Red de Padres y Madres
Samaritans
The Alannah and Madeline Foundation
Thorn
Without My Consent (37)
Category D:
Center for Democracy and Technology
La Fundacion para la Libertad de Prensa (Foundation for Press Freedom)
ICT Watch
Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales
The only member I have been unable to classify is the Yakin Project, which seems to have ceased to exist.
All told the category based split totals (with their percentages) are:
Category A:
12 members (24%)
Category B:
15 members (30%)
Category C:
18 members (36%)
Category D:
4 members (8%)
Unclassified:
1 members (2%)
Total: 50 members
So in essence we have a situation where 24% of the Twitter 'Trust & Safety Council's' members between 2016 and 2022 were likely to (and almost certainly did) use their membership to advance their political or intellectual ideology as well as silence their opponents and critics. Meanwhile another 30% of the members advocate repressive actions to silence opinions and criticism they deem to be 'hate'.
36% of members didn't seem to be interested either way, while only 8% of members might have opposed attempts to limit free speech or implement bans on 'hate speech'/'online hate'.
That is frightening picture (54% wanted to ban 'hate', while 8% want to protect free speech), but is significantly more realistic than Soave's broad brush approach.
Looking at this way also allows us to point out the agendas concerned and what they may stem from.
I will analyze this in a separate article, but I did want to point that among the Category A and B members of the 'Trust & Safety Council' between 2016 and 2022. We find a significant number of jews in positions of influence and power.
Category A members:
The ADL and LICRA are obvious examples, but the less obvious are as follows:
Circleof6: created and run by Nancy Schwartzman who is both jewish (38) and seemingly a Zionist (as she was/is associated with the Hillel). (39)
ConnectSafely: created and run by Larry Magid. (40)
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative: one of its two directors (and principle lawyers) is Carrie Goldberg. (41)
Dangerous Speech Project: run by Professor Susan Benesch who doesn't seem to be jewish herself, but believes criticism of Israel should be a matter for the International Criminal Court. (42)
Category B members:
Anti-Bullying Pro: run by the Diana Award, (43) which in turn has David Cameron (who is part-jewish and wants to 'stamp out hate speech') (44) and Esther Rantzen (who is jewish) among its patrons. (45)
CrisisTextLine: created and run by Nancy Lublin. (46) Lublin is jewish (47) as is Baylee Greenberg. Who is the Chief Operating Officer (48) and – along with Lublin - the public face of the organization. (49)
Now if we tot these members up we get:
Category A:
5 out of 12 groups (42%) were created and/or are run by jews, while another is highly supportive of jewish interests (i.e., effectively 50%).
Category B:
2 out 15 groups (13%) were created and/or are run by jews.
We can then say that of the total of 50 members; some 7 members – excluding the Dangerous Speech Project - can be said to likely work for jewish interests. This equates to 14% of the total, which is hugely out of proportion to the global population (jews are 0.2% of the global population) (50) as well as that relative in the United States (2.1% of the US population). (51)
Looking at the proportions however ignores the fact that most of the members of the Twitter 'Trust & Safety Council' between 2016 and 2022 lacked multi-million dollars budgets and the infrastructure to – shall we say – get what they want. The only organizations that had both the funding and the ability to meaningfully face down Twitter if there is disagreement were the ADL, GLAAD and LICRA.
The rest of the members simply don't have the clout to do anything that Twitter isn't immediately amenable to.
Banning the opponents of Feminist Frequency certainly grabs the attention and imagination of many Twitter uses, but it also obscures the far more frightening (jewish) organizations in the background who have a track record of gathering information and then using it to vindictively destroy the lives of their opponents.
That was the true threat to freedom of speech online in the Twitter 'Trust & Safety Council' between 2016 and 2022 and it wasn't Anita Sarkeesian.
References
(1) http://www.voxday.blogspot.com/2016/02/twitter-takes-out-mccain.html; http://thedeclination.com/more-on-twitters-
purges/
(2) https://reason.com/blog/2016/02/20/did-twitters-orwellian-trust-and-safety
(3) http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/12/30/criticism-of-israel-is-not-anti-semitism/
(4) https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/06/02/podium-armenia/10nOuK8s3KzgxiOgl6QRhO/story.html
(5) http://www.ukrcdn.com/2010/02/18/yushchenko-the-only-ukrainian-president-to-advocate-the-holodomor-bullied-by-the-adl-not-to-compare-with-holocaust/
(6) http://irmep.org/adl_espionage.htm
(7) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0002_0_01146.html
(8) http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2015/05/the-culture-of-critique-in-france-a-review-of-anne-klings-books-on-jewish-influence-in-france-part-2/
(9) Ibid.
(10) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_League_against_Racism_and_Anti-Semitism
(11) Founded to fight against 'rape culture' and advocate for women. http://www.circleof6app.com/#_what; http://gothamist.com/2004/12/15/nancy_schwartzman_filmmakeractivistheeb.php
(12) Censorship advocacy group: http://www.connectsafely.org/facebook-grapples-with-fighting-hate-speech-while-protecting-free-speech/
(13) Anti-Revenge Porn advocacy group: http://www.cybercivilrights.org/
(14) Censorship advocacy group: http://dangerousspeech.org/
(15) Feminist group: http://feministfrequency.com/about/
(16) Gay and Lesbian political advocacy group: http://www.glaad.org/about
(17) Censorship advocacy group: http://www.ihollaback.org/about/history/
(18) Censorship advocacy group: http://www.jugendschutz.net/politischer-extremismus/
(19) Censorship advocacy group: http://new.safernet.org.br/denuncie
(20) Islamic advocacy group: http://www.wahidinstitute.org/wi-id/
(21) Advocates censorship of opinions: http://www.antibullyingpro.com/parents/top-tips/?rq=hate
(22) Advocates censorship of opinions: http://www.childnet.com/blog/no-hate-speech-movement-explained
(23) Implied wish to censor opinions: http://www.jewishomaha.org/jewish-press/2012/lion-of-judah-honors-nancy-noddle/
(24) Advocates censorship of opinions: https://www.cybersmile.org/advice-help/gaming/types-of-abuse
(25) Advocates censorship of opinions: http://www.e-enfance.org/safer-internet.html
(26) Partnered with the 'No Hate Speech Movement': http://nohate.ext.coe.int/Partners-Links
(27) Wants to ban 'social media harassment': http://icanhelpline.org/about/
(28) Has created tools to report and censor content it disapproves of: http://ikeepsafe.org/educators_old/incident-response-tool/
(29) Encourages peoples to 'report hate crime': https://www.iwf.org.uk/resources/useful-links
(30) Believes ‘hate speech’ is a serious issue online: https://www.netsafe.org.nz/free-speech-or-harmful-speech-online/
(31) Its founders wish to ban 'hate speech': https://exchange.telstra.com.au/2015/03/31/creating-a-more-compassionate-facebook/
(32) It wishes to outlaw 'online hate': http://swgfl.org.uk/magazine/A-sneak-peak-behind-the-scenes-at-SIDTV
(33) It seeks to outlaw 'online hate' and is associated with the 'No Hate Speech Movement': https://spunout.ie/life/article/hate-speech-what-it-is-and-why-its-a-problem; http://spunout.ie/features/feature/no-hate-speech-movement
(34) Encourages people to report 'hate speech': http://www.saferinternet.org.uk/need-help
(35) Believes that 'online hate' should be outlawed: http://inach.net/
(36) I have given 'Beyond Blue' the benefit of the doubt, but it has increasing become a Gay and Lesbian political advocacy organization. Cf. https://www.beyondblue.org.au/who-does-it-affect/lesbian-gay-bi-trans-and-intersex-lgbti-people
(37) I have given 'Without My Consent' the benefit of the doubt, but its fundamental purpose implies censorship of some kind.
(38) http://gothamist.com/2004/12/15/nancy_schwartzman_filmmakeractivistheeb.php
(39) https://www.ohio.edu/outlook/06-07/September/35n-067.cfm
(40) http://www.connectsafely.org/about-us/staff-contributors/
(41) http://www.cybercivilrights.org/ccri_board_of_directors
(42) http://jewishresearch.org/Marcus_InFocus_Winter_2009.htm
(43) http://diana-award.org.uk/about/patrons-ambassadors-trustees/
(44) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10692757/David-Cameron-speaks-of-Jewish-ancestors-including-great-great-grandfather-and-Yiddish-novelist.html; https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/david-camerons-speech-to-the-knesset-in-israel
(45) http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/esther-rantzen-joins-two-shuls-due-to-burial-dilemma/; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2933873/As-Maureen-Lipman-threatens-quit-UK-anti-semitism-friend-ESTHER-RANTZEN-says-Sorry-Maureen-unfair-ungrateful.html
(46) http://www.crisistextline.org/who-we-are/board-of-directors/; https://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_lublin_texting_that_saves_lives
(47) Benita Baker, 2010, 'Women's Campaign honours 42 volunteers at Spring Luncheon', Ottawa Jewish Bulletin, Vol. 74, No. 14, p. 1; http://www.jewishomaha.org/jewish-press/2012/lion-of-judah-honors-nancy-noddle/
(48) http://www.crisistextline.org/who-we-are/staff/
(49) http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/09/13/crisis-text-line/
(50) http://www.jewishdatabank.org/studies/details.cfm?StudyID=776
(51) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/usjewpop.html