The monopoliser of social media finds himself caught between the dreaded ‘rock and a hard place’. And it is all because the erstwhile mogul of censorship has gone, “back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram”. Jewish groups did not take kindly to Zuck’s makeover. Their mood went from celebrating him to roundly condemning him. His Trumpian conversion came as a shock. Paul’s encounter on the road to Damascus was hardly transformative compared to that of the tech nerd’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago. Suit and red tie helped him win over the President elect to a seven-part strategy unveiled with “a methodical striptease”. First and foremost Meta has scrapped the, “Despised third-party fact-checkers” who, said Zuckerberg keeping a straight face, were “too politically biased. The operation was a protection racket, but is no longer worth the money in the age of Trump.” Crudely put, the subservient pawn of one President did a back flip to curry favour with another. Jewish groups reacted to Zuck uncorking free speech as if he had let the genie of antisemitism out the bottle. By and large they have convinced themselves – and their donors – that antisemites can be dealt with by silencing them. In this respect the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt is typical. A pro-censorship Dem who had applauded Meta for banning the word ‘Zionist’ as a codeword for ‘Jew’, Greenblatt turned on Meta for morphing into a free speech champion. He now regards Zuckerberg as a retrograde who had taken, “significant steps back in terms of addressing antisemitism, hate, misinformation and protecting vulnerable and marginalized groups online”. Greenblatt had been one of several complainants when in September 2024 Meta’s Oversight Board ruled that the slogan, “ From the river to the sea ” was neither hate speech nor incitement. “Simply removing political speech is not a solution,” said the Board. Note the disguised backhander, “political speech”. What Jewish groups considered a deadly threat, Meta laughed off as benign politics. The Jerusalem Post was so cut up it ran the headline, “From river to sea: Meta endorses a call for Israel's erasure.” So what, even if Meta did? If there was a correlation between the slogan and antisemitic occurrences, would not Greenblatt have submitted the crucial evidence? Other pro-Israel NGOs were scornful too. Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) protested that calls for the destruction of the Jewish homeland were genocidal in their intent and meaning . “Intent” – the devil is in the detail. “Wrong-think” is the Orwellian term, or “thought crime”, and under Stalin it would be good enough to banish you to the gulag. Meta stood accused of committing a thought crime. The CEO of Israeli International Legal Forum went further, accusing it of collaborating with terrorism. “There can be no equivocation that (from the river to the sea), especially in the wake of October 7, is a genocidal call for the elimination of the Jewish state. The fact that some might interpret it differently is irrelevant. It has come to mean a rallying-call for the destruction of Israel and used to incite violence against Jews abroad. Meta is essentially legitimizing calls for the destruction of Israel, and abetting violence against Jews”. Again, we look for the missing mathematical relationship between banning the slogan on the one hand and reduction in violence against Jews on the other. Has it been modelled: ‘More censorship = less hate speech = less violence?’ Simple anecdotal evidence would be nice to have. I have anecdotal evidence, though it does not support the case of Jewish groups. No celebrity has suffered more from religion-driven hate speech than the acclaimed author, Salman Rushdie who had a fatwa declared on his life for defaming Mohammed in the novel, Satanic Verses . Yet, despite being disfigured by an assault, Rushdie is no supporter of suppressing hate speech. “There's now a kind of offense industry. Offense has become an aspect of identity politics. My view is it's very easy for a book to stop offending you . You just shut it." For a different angle of the same idea: “The only valid censorship is the right of people not to listen.” Or read. Or go on social media. Trusting censorship to safeguard people can be a slippery slope, warned Rushdie. He is not wrong. Far from censorship impeding the spread of National Socialism, it handed Hitler a public relations coup . The party said Hitler was targeted for “exposing the international conspiracy to suppress “true” Germans. As one poster explained : Why is Adolf Hitler not allowed to speak? Because he is ruthless in uncovering the rulers of the German economy, etc. In a 1920s cartoon Hitler is depicted with his mouth sealed by printed tape: “Forbidden to speak. He alone of two billion people on Earth may not speak in Germany.” In a masterful book, Dangerous Ideas. A Brief History of Censorship in the West, from the Ancients to Fake News, Eric Berkowitz traces the habit of censorship to backfire. Banning information only made it more popular. Would the Jewish case to ban “From the river to the sea” be stronger if it referenced the R wandan genocide? Not according to Berkowitz: Rwandan speech was not free to begin with. Radio stations were not permitted to broadcast without government approval, and when the killing started radio was manipulated to egg it on. Rwanda, he concludes, was not an example of violence when hate speech is permitted. Incitement to genocide is in any case, “not protected in the US, or anywhere, and would be deemed a criminal conspiracy to commit mass murder.” The chance of banning the slogan, “From the river to the sea” would be minimal in a country like South Africa with ultra tolerant expression. Compared to it, slogans at political rallies left nothing to the imagination. “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer” and “One settler one bullet” tested the extreme limit of allowance. In 2022 the Equality Court ruled that the songs were not hate speech, and is worth quoting. “The broad principle of freedom of expression is tolerance of different views. Society has a duty to allow and be tolerant of both popular and unpopular views. (The songs) were used during the apartheid era when policeman abused people in black townships. The chants referred to the oppressive state in the context of struggle.” Sound familiar: From the river to the sea? Oppressive state in the context of Palestinian Arab struggle? It all boils down to the difficult fact of life that words which offend one group might not offend another. In other words, ‘One man’s meat is another man’s poison’. Sometimes a book title can be worth a thousand words. “Hate. Why We Should Resist It With Free Speech, Not Censorship.” The author’s curt thesis is that, “The most effective way to counter the negative effects of hate speech — discriminatory or hateful views on the basis of race, religion, gender, and so forth — is not through censorship, but rather through more speech. Censorship of hate speech, no matter how well-intended, has been shown around the world and throughout history to do more harm than good.” Well-intended Jewish groups take the fight to the enemy with the most convenient though bluntest weapon. Are they acknowledging that the alternative, ‘ Hasbarah’ an organized effort to educate masses about Israel’s just war etc, yielded a cost-benefit deficiency? The truth is that good intentions can be the root of much evil; one recalls the mandates imposed to beat the Covid-19 pandemic – the cure turning out worse than the virus. The title of a highly rated book captures the hazard of good intentions . “How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure” explains how the culture of safety and saving lives (and incidentally of censorship) harmed the development of a whole generation. The sum of it is that censorship can be a perfidious friend. “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” ― George Orwell “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” ― Benjamin Franklin “It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read a book or social media post. No one has the right to stop me writing it. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read.” ― Philip Pullman Steve Apfel is not just a wordsmith and prodigious author. He is an economic advisor, specialist in costing techniques, activist fighting anti-Zionism in high places. He also does travelogue writing and content or Ad creation. Contact Steve for support. smacc@mweb.co.za
