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27 March 2023

Numerous presenters have their own video channels on Rumble

A supporter of Donald Trump made headlines last year when he said: "We are uncancellable by big tech."

The defiant claim came from Devin Nunes, who is the chief executive of Trump Media and Technology Group, the firm set up by Mr Trump in 2021 to run his social media app Truth Social.

His defiance is not based on the technology of Truth Social, rather it relies on a relatively unknown Canadian internet company called Rumble.

Rumble started out in 2013 as a video-streaming website. While that is still its main focus, in recent years it has branched into web-hosting - offering computing services for companies like Truth Social.

Rumble's main website is based around short videos, very much in the same style of YouTube

Aiming one day to rival the likes of Google and Facebook, what makes Rumble controversial is its pledge to rally against censorship, and allow freedom of speech as much as possible.

As a result of this, Rumble has become the home to a great many video channels - more often politically conservative - where people can say things that might get them kicked off other social media sites, like YouTube and Twitter.

A US-Canadian comedian and political commentator called Steven Crowder is a case in point. He is now predominantly to be found on Rumble after YouTube temporarily suspended him in 2021 for breaking its rules on "hate speech". This followed comments he made on transgender issues.

Rumble is now at the forefront of so-called "alt-tech" - internet service providers and social media sites that critics say are popular with conspiracy theorists and the alt-right.

But for Rumble's supporters, such as Mr Nunes, who moved Truth Social across to Rumble's infrastructure last year, it means "we are not relying on any tech tyrants".

Mr Nunes is on one side of a debate about how social media should be managed.

In one camp there are those who advocate for greater content moderation. They say that sites like Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube need to make a greater effort to tackle hate speech and misinformation on their platforms.

On the other side are the people who argue this has become too politicised, and see it as censorship.

For years, the battle has largely been played out on the big social media websites. Now, companies like Rumble are trying to change that.

In a note on its website, Rumble chief executive Chris Pavlovski wrote: "Rumble is creating the rails to a new infrastructure that will not be bullied by cancel culture."

In this vision of the future, there would be a rival, alternative internet, making its own rules. Yet at the same time, Rumble denies that it only attracts users with right-wing viewpoints.

It described itself to the BBC as a "neutral platform that welcomes a wide variety of views". For example, Rumble is now home to left-leaning UK comedian turned political commentator Russell Brand.

What is undeniable is that Rumble's user numbers have risen sharply in recent years, at the same time as its bigger rivals have raised their content moderation efforts. For example, in 2020, YouTube removed more than 34 million videos around the world. These included videos deemed to be harassment, incitement to violence, hate speech or misinformation.

"People get kicked off the major platforms, and they don't disappear," says Evelyn Douek, assistant professor at Stanford Law School, and an expert on the regulation of online speech. "They look for a new home."

Image source, Evelyn Douek

Prof Douek says Rumble will likely face legislation that forces it to censor more

There was a market opportunity and Rumble took it, emphasising its commitment to "free speech". Its monthly active user count reportedly jumped from 1.6 million in mid-2020 to 33 million at the start of 2021.

Prof Douek says that the events of 6 January 2021, when thousands of demonstrators stormed the US Capitol Building, gave Rumble and its plans for an independent internet a boost. She says the aftermath was "one of the radicalising moments for alt-tech".

She points in particular to Parler - a twitter-like platform popular with Trump supporters - being removed from the Apple and Google app stores. Parler's website was also dropped by Amazon, upon whose cloud-based Amazon Web Services servers it had been based.

"Losing access to the cloud and losing access to these app stores can really hamstring a platform," says Prof Douek. She adds that the episode showed people in the alt-tech space that their apps and websites couldn't rely on mainstream internet providers.

So, Rumble has been building its own infrastructure, which also includes its own advertising and payments-processing technology. To help fund all this, the firm raised $400m last year when it floated on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York.

British comedian Russell Brand, left, moved to Rumble from YouTube a year ago

However, Prof Douek says there are big challenges ahead for Rumble. Perhaps most pressingly, while it might not want to censor content, governments may legislate to force it to.

"We have seen a proliferation of legislation, bills, proposals over the last few years from governments around the world," says Prof Douek. "The big package - possibly the most consequential - is the European Digital Services Act."

This is due to fully come into force in 2024, and Prof Douek says it may mean that Rumble has to change the way it operates in the EU, including publishing more information about how it's applying the rules.

Rumble has already shown that it will fight what it sees as government overreach. When the French government told it to remove Russian state broadcasters from its platform, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Rumble refused.

New Tech Economy is a series exploring how technological innovation is set to shape the new emerging economic landscape.

Rumble is also in a legal battle with Google, which it accuses of "unfairly rigging its search algorithms" towards YouTube, which Google owns. Google counters that Rumble content is ranked as highly as it deserves on the search engine.

"This is going to be years of litigation," says Prof Douek. "There are going to be fights... and I don't know what our internet is going to look like in a few years as a result of these."

As the alt-tech space develops, some think the internet could divide further into political spheres - left and right.

"Do I think that it is a good future if we have red platforms and blue platforms?," says Prof Douek, referring to the colours of the two main political parties in the US. "I don't think that that is necessarily how we want public debate to play out."

Katerina Eva Matsa, an associate director at the Pew Research Centre think tank in New York, says that while people with different politics "are living in very different media worlds", there is also "overlap".

Pew recently conducted a study into alternative social media sites, including Rumble and six of its peers - BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Parler, Telegram, and Truth Social. It found that nearly three quarters of Americans who consume news on these sites also get news from YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter.

"So they haven't completely abandoned the larger sites," says Ms Matsa.

This raises questions about how separate a potential future alternative internet ecosystem would be, if its user base straddles both alt-tech and the mainstream.

"I think it's a very difficult space to pinpoint whether we're going into further polarisation or less," Ms Matsa adds. "We honestly don't know the outcome."

Read the original:
The web firm that wants to stop you getting 'cancelled' - BBC

Is every Dutch farmer an elected official now? Not quite, but the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) secured a massive victory in last weeks provincial elections in the Netherlands. Despite the countrys farmers only making up around 1 percent of the population, it is now the largest party in every provincial legislature. These newly elected provincial legislators will in turn elect the upper chamber in May and make the BBB the largest party there, with around 17 of 75 seats.

These results represent yet another convulsion on the right of the Dutch political spectrum. It is a remarkable debut for a party that is not currently represented in the Senate, and the second time in a row that a new party has become the largest party in the Dutch Senate after the radical-right Forum for Democracys surprise win in 2019. BBB leader Caroline van der Plasher first name pronounced as one would in English, which in the Netherlands is a marker of coming from the non-elite classesfounded the BBB that year in cooperation with a marketing agency for the agricultural industry. Van der Plas was the partys sole elected official at the start of this week, having won a seat in Parliament in the 2021 general election. The party has presented itself as the voice of the forgotten man, as one does, in particular if that man (or woman) resides outside the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-The Hague-Utrecht megapolis known as the Randstad.

The partys signature policy issue is opposition to planned curbs on nitrogen emissions. This may sound like a niche issue, but last summer was marked by widespread farmer protests against the restrictions that could count on the sympathy of significant numbers of voters, especially outside the Randstad. The urban-rural cleavage is easily visible in Wednesdays election results. For example, the BBB finished in eighth position in the city of Utrecht, in the urban core, with 5.2 percent of the vote, while still winning the province. In contrast, the largely rural province of Overijssel gave it 31.3 percent of the vote, almost four times the vote share of its closest competitor. To be clear, there are significant numbers of voters who care passionately about environmental policy on the other side of the issue as well. While the GreenLeft and the Party for the Animals may have secured only 11.1 percent of the vote in Overijssel, they were the options selected by 31 percent of voters in Utrecht.

While most of the attention will go to the newcomers dramatic victory, the results have important implications for long-standing Prime Minister Mark Rutte, in office since 2010, and his centrist government as well. His coalition consists of the prime ministers center-right Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the once-almighty Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), the social liberals of Democrats 66 (D66), and the do-gooder Protestants of the increasingly diverse Christian Union.

The new composition of the Senate may complicate the governments ability to secure majorities for its legislative initiatives there, especially in areas like immigration and environmental policy. At the same time, ironically, it solidifies Ruttes indispensable position at the heart of Dutch politics. It is harder than ever to see how anyone but him will be able to cobble together a majority in Parliament, the dominant lower chamber of the States General, in the foreseeable future. From todays vantage point, the longest-serving prime minister in Dutch history looks like he could remain prime minister for another decade if he chooses to. After all, at only 56 years old he would be one of the younger U.S. senators.

Wednesdays results were a shock to the political system, but not a surprise. BBB had been polling well and van der Plas is omnipresent in the Dutch media. At the same time, the most prominent representative of the previous (and third, since the turn of the century) wave of populism on the Dutch right imploded after its 2019 victories. Opposition to an association agreement between the European Union and Ukraine brought Thierry Baudet and his Forum for Democracy (FvD) party into the limelight in the marquee national conservative year of 2016 and eventual big wins in 2019 in both provincial and Senate elections.

Since 2019, the FvD has experienced constant turmoil triggered by Baudets stances on vaccines (opposed) and Putin (not so much), and by widespread antisemitism and white nationalism within the party. In just three years, 11 of its 12 senators, as well as almost half of its MPs and all of its elected MEPs, have left the FvD, leaving space for new entrants on the right. The Farmer-Citizen Movement has filled much of that space for now, and then seats, representing the most heavily online denizens of the alt-right, with obsessions not that different from their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. The earlier second wave of Dutch right-wing populism, driven by anti-immigrant and anti-Islam sentiment, has not gone away, either: Geert Wilderss Party for Freedom (PVV) held on to four seats in the Senate this week, speaking for voters whose personality is that they dislike Muslims.

And even the first wave retains a presence: An FvD spinoff called JA-21 will occupy three Senate seats. Its leader in Parliament was first elected in 2002 on the List Pim Fortuyn ticket, shortly after Pim Fortuyn himself was assassinated by an animal rights activist. The List Pim Fortuyn was similar in some ways to the BBB, playing off general discontent with the functioning of the public sector without alienating the center-right entirely, though it lacked the BBBs rural orientation. JA-21 is perhaps best characterized as a party for folks who enjoy all the right-wing populist stuff, but only if served with a side of respectability politics. All these different niche flavors of right-wing populism add up, and these three parties combined will occupy nine seats in the new Dutch Senate. Add in the BBB and you are at 25, a third of the total, all to the governments right.

The governing coalition has been reduced to 22 Senate seats. All but three of the remaining senators are to the coalitions left. To pass legislation, the government will need to be able to count on the support of at least 16 senators in addition to their own. That is not necessarily a problemin his 13 years as prime minister, Rutte has had a Senate majority for just two years. There are two natural paths for passing legislation in the new Senate. One is to convince the Labour Party and the GreenLeft, who will caucus together, plus one additional senator from the number of parties present under the Dutch system of proportional representation. The other one is to appeal to BBB. How much use will be made of the latter route remains to be seen and will depend on the new partys internal stability and whether it manages or even strives to become a serious governing partner. The BBB route will be difficult if not impossible in key areas such as environmental policy or immigration.

Regardless, the results represent a further narrowing down of the broad center that has long dominated Dutch politics and a rightward drift. And that is what really drives Ruttes strong, in fact strengthened, position. With the CDA decimated and D66 (let Labour, the GreenLeft, the Party for the Animals, the left-neoliberals of Volt or the anti-racists of Bij1) unwilling to govern with parties to the VVDs right, there is no future coalition in sight that gets anywhere near a majority in Parliament without Rutte and the VVD. (Unless Rutte becomes secretary-general of NATO, in which case all bets are off.)

Now, to be fair, Rutte does not have an immense amount of choice in the matter, either. If this weeks results or something close to them were to materialize in the next general election, he would have to cobble together a coalition of six or so parties, and beggars cant be choosers.

None of this is particularly helpful either for those looking for electoral competition or political accountability. Ruttes previous government fell over a scandal at the tax agency involving the relentless hounding, partially on ethnic grounds, of low-income families that in many cases were permanently torn apart. With no alternative in sight, the same prime minister, leading the same coalition, was back in the saddle soon enough.

Earlier this week on a podcast about that sleeping giant of Dutch soccer, NAC Breda, one of the hosts insulted the players, was reprimanded by his co-host, and immediately apologized. Just like Rutte, was the response. As a friend joked on Election Day: The only thing Rutte hasnt apologized for is his apology for the Dutch role in the slave trade.

That does not change the fact that this seeming inevitability is convenient to the Netherlands allies and partners overseas. Just as it is hard to see an alternative to Rutte, it is difficult to imagine a move away from the current strong Dutch support for strengthening the EU, for preserving the transatlantic alliance, for arming and supporting Ukraine, for LGBT rights, for the climate transition, and for international law (such as it is). The waves of populism continue to lap at the shores, but the coastline remains the same.

Original post:
Dutch Elections Produce Another Popular Wave But the Same Prime ... - Foreign Policy

The images appeared on Twitter in late 2016 just as the presidential campaign was entering its final stretch. Some featured the message vote for Hillaryand thephrases avoid the line and vote from home.

Aimed at Democratic voters, and sometimes singling out Black people, the messages were actually intended to help Donald J. Trump, not Hillary Clinton. The goal, federal prosecutors said, was to suppress votes for Mrs.Clinton by persuading her supporters to falsely believe they could cast presidential ballots by text message.

The misinformation campaign was carried out by a group of conspirators, prosecutors said, including a man in his 20s who called himself Ricky Vaughn. On Monday he went on trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn under his real name, Douglass Mackey, after being charged with conspiring to spread misinformation designed to deprive others of their right to vote.

The defendant, Douglass Mackey, tried to steal peoples right to vote, a prosecutor, Turner Buford, told jurors Monday morning during his opening statement. He did it by spreading a fraud.

A few minutes later, a defense lawyer, Andrew J. Frisch, said that Mr. Mackey, a staunch political conservative, would testify in his own defense. Mr. Frisch added that his client had been trying only to attract attention to himself by posting memes, not carry out a clandestine conspiracy.

Mr. Mackey did not share these memes as some sort of grand plan, he said, adding that it was not a crime to vigorously support your candidate of choice.

Prosecutors have said that Mr. Mackey, who went to Middlebury College in Vermont and said helived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, used hashtags and memes as part of his deception and outlined his strategies publicly on Twitter and with co-conspirators in private Twitter group chats.

Obviously we can win Pennsylvania, Mr. Mackey said on Twitter, using one of his pseudonymous accounts less than a week before the election, according to a complaint and affidavit. The key is to drive up turnout with non-college whites, and limit black turnout.

That tweet, court papers said, came a day after Mr. Mackey tweeted an image showing a Black woman in front of a sign supporting Mrs. Clinton. That tweet told viewers they could vote for Mrs. Clinton by text message.

Prosecutors said nearly 5,000 people texted the number shown in the deceptive images, adding that the images stated they had been paid for by the Clinton campaign and had been viewed by people in the New York City area.

On the trials first day of testimony, prosecutors presented several witnesses.

One, Jess Morales Rocketto, said she was working for the Clinton campaign when the deceptive images urging viewers to vote by text began circulating in late 2016. She testified that those images had used a hashtag from the campaign as well as a logo that closely resembled the campaigns own logo.

Its a very sneaky graphic, she said. Its definitely designed to look very close to a legitimate ad.

Mr. Mackeys trial is expected to provide a window into a small part of what the authorities have described as broad efforts to sway the 2016 election through lies and disinformation. While some of those attempts were orchestrated by Russian security services, others were said to have emanated from American internet trolls.

People whose names may surface during the trial or who are expected to testify include a man who tweeted about Jews and Black people and was then disinvited from the DeploraBall, a far-right event in Washington, D.C., the night before Mr. Trumps inauguration and an obscure federal cooperator who will be allowed to testify under a code name.

As the trial has approached, people sympathetic to Mr. Mackey have cast his case as part of a political and cultural war, a depiction driven in part by precisely the sort of partisan social media-fueled effort that he is accused of engineering.

Mr. Mackeys fans have portrayed him as a harmless prankster who is being treated unfairly by the state for engaging in a form of free expression. That notion, perhaps predictably, has proliferated on Twitter, advanced by people using some of the same tools that prosecutors said Mr. Mackey used to disseminate lies. Mackey supporters have referred to him on social media as a meme martyr and spread a meme showing him wearing a red MAGA hat and accompanied by the hashtag #FreeRicky.

Some tweets about Mr. Mackey from prominent figures have included apocalyptic-sounding language. The Fox personality Tucker Carlson posted a video of himself on Twitter calling the trial the single greatest assault on free speech and human rights in this countrys modern history.

Joe Lonsdale, a founder of Palantir Technologies, retweeted an assertion that Mr. Mackey was being persecuted by the Biden DOJ for posting memes and added: This sounds concerning. Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Twitter, replied with a one word affirmation: Yeah.

Mr. Mackey is accused of participating in private direct message groups on Twitter called Fed Free Hatechat, War Room and Infowars Madman to discuss how to influence the election.

Prosecutors said people in those groups discussed sharing memes suggesting that celebrities were supporting Mr. Trump and that Mrs. Clinton would start wars and draft women to fight them.

One exchange in the Madman group centered on an image that falsely told opponents of Brexit that they could vote remain in that British referendum through Facebook or Twitter, according to investigators. One participant in the group asked whether they could make something similar for Mrs. Clinton, investigators wrote, adding that another replied: Typical that all the dopey minorities fell for it.

Last summer, defense lawyers asked that Mr. Mackeys case be dismissed, referring to Twitter as a no-holds-barred-free-for-all and saying the allegedlydeceptive memes had been protected by the First Amendmentas satirical speech.

They wrote to the court that it was highly unlikely that the memes had fooled any voters and added that any harm was in any event far outweighed by the chilling of the marketplace of ideas where consumers can assess the value of political expression as provocation, satire, commentary, or otherwise.

Prosecutors countered that illegal conduct is not protected by the First Amendment merely because it is carried out by language and added that the charge against Mr. Mackey was not based on his political viewpoint or advocacy. Rather, they wrote, it was focused on intentional spreading of false information calculated to mislead and misinform voters about how, where and when to cast a vote in a federal election.

Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis ruled that the case should continue, saying it was about conspiracy and injury, not speech and adding that Mr. Mackeys contention that his speech was protected as satire was a question of fact reserved for the jury.

The prosecutions star witness is likely to be a man known as Microchip, a shadowy online figure who spread misinformation about the 2016 election, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Microchip was a prominent player in alt-right Twitter around the time of the election, and Judge Garaufis allowed him to testify under his online handle in part because prosecutors say he is helping the F.B.I. with several other covert investigations. Sunday, the case was reassigned to U.S. District Judge Ann M. Donnelly.

In court papers filed last month, prosecutors said they intended to ask the witness to explain to the jury how Mr. Mackey and his allies used Twitter direct messaging groups to come up with deceptive images discussing the time, place, and manner of voting.

One of the people whom Microchip might mention from the stand is Anthime Gionet, better known by his Twitter name, Baked Alaska; he attended the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017. He was barred from the DeploraBall after sending a tweet that included stereotypes about Jews and Black people.

In January, Mr. Gionet was sentenced to two months in prison for his role in storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

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Trial of 2016 Twitter Troll to Test Limits of Online Speech - The New York Times

Some people just love, love, love being conned.

I hear from them all the time, folks who swallow the most preposterous nonsense and yet remain convinced that they are worldly sages, the only ones who see whats really going on.

A recent example came from a correspondent who lives in Kokomo. He wrote in response to something Id written about former Vice President Mike Pences break with former President Donald Trump.

The correspondent offered two predictions in his latest missive.

The first was that Trump would be elected president again in 2024. The second was that President Joe Biden would be imprisoned for unspecified crimes.

These were but the latest in a series of predictions the email writer has offered all of them spawned by the hallucinatory atmosphere of the alt-right media biosphere. Dark fantasies spring up in that strange soil faster than weeds in an untended garden.

This same guy has predicted at different times that former President Barack Obama and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also would serve prison time, that Trump would lead Republicans to surging triumphs in 2018, 2020 and 2022, that Trump would be re-elected, that COVID would be nothing but a blip .

You get the idea.

There is no fact related to Donald Trump or the political scene these days to which this guy does not seem to have a natural immunity.

Hes typical in that way of a lot of my correspondents. They all see the world through Trump-filtered glasses, all the while accusing the rest of us of being myopic.

The reason Im focusing on him is that in all other ways he seems to be an intelligent and accomplished man. He has held positions of responsibility in his community and seems to command respect there.

Yet, when it comes to Donald Trump, his senses seem to flee him.

If the former president offered to sell him oceanfront property in Nebraska, this guy would slap his money down, set up his beach chair somewhere just west of Omaha and wait for the tide to roll in.

And, when the waves refused to lap at his toes, this same guy would buy without question or qualm Trumps explanation that someone a Democrat or a RINO (Republican in name only) had stolen the Pacific Ocean from them.

Because the fact that someone had pocketed a body of water that covers 30% of the earths surface is so much easier to believe than accepting the idea that a guy who has a well-documented history of lying might have misled him is.

In fact, its just as easy to swallow that as it is to buy the notion that someone could engineer a massive conspiracy to deny Trump the 2020 presidential election and yet somehow leave every other election in every other state untouched.

This is what puzzles me.

This guy and many others like him clearly arent dumb. They seem capable of exercising discernment and judgement in all other areas of their lives.

But they cannot process evidence when it comes to Donald Trump.

Do they not notice when things they have been promised assured, over and over again would happen do not occur?

Do they not realize, for example, that, even when Trumps party controlled the presidency, Congress and the courts, the former president still couldnt find grounds to bring charges against Obama and Clinton?

Or that, if Trump had anything on Biden, the former president wouldnt have needed to extort such dirt from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy?

This blindness goes beyond partisanship.

Partisanship can prompt a rational person to argue that Bidens inflation-reduction program is or isnt working, depending upon his or her political leanings.

It cannot persuade anyone rational, though, to contend that inflation doesnt exist. Partisanship does not provide adequate explanation or justification for denying plain facts.

But that is what Trump lovers do again and again and again.

They are so enraptured by the former presidents fantasy construct of effortless omnipotence and endless victimhood that they eat it all up, then ask for seconds and thirds. They love the taste so much they dont even notice the contradiction that someone so powerful shouldnt be so easily victimized.

Why are they so blind?

Because they want to believe they could have bought the ocean for a song if only someone hadnt taken it from them.

Some people just love, love, love being conned.

Original post:
John Krull: Waiting for the waves in Nebraska - Kokomo Tribune

The relationship between Black people and Jewish communities has been complex throughout history with moments of solidarity and collaboration and instances of tension and conflict.

Both share a history of surviving violence and oppression and have fought alongside each other during the fight for civil rights.

But, there have been conflicts between the two communities particularly related to economic and political power. Jewish business owners and landlords have been accused of extorting Black communities while Black leaders have been criticized for promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories.

That relationship was the center of a grassroots conversation Wednesday night hosted by leaders of Denvers Jewish and Black communities. The grassroots panel discussion led by Caren Press, Theo E.J. Wilson and Evan Weissman drew more than 100 people.

Its important to recognize and address these complexities and work toward building a stronger relationship based on mutual respect, understanding and solidarity, said Michelle Quattlebaum, Denver Public Schools board director, at the event.

This includes acknowledging and confronting past harms, listening and learning from one another and working together to address systemic issues that affect both communities such as racism, poverty and inequity, she said.

Attendees were invited to the school to discuss where their histories connect and diverge, so that they could heal and find ways to combat white supremacy together, said Press, a retired attorney.

The idea to host Wednesdays dialogue came after rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye, spewed a series of antisemitic tropes online and on television. His rhetoric has led to vandalism, harassment, intimidation and violence, under the Ye Is Right campaign, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League.

At the event Wednesday, Weissman, who is Jewish, and Wilson, who is Black, said they held a discussion in Montbello with Black people and Jewish people shortly after Wests remarks. Jewish attendees seemed to unanimously agree the comments were antisemitic. But that was not the case for all Black community members who attended.

In his well-known 2004 song, All Falls Down, West ironically raps, They made us hate ourself and love they wealth, referencing Americas stubborn racial divide and the growing economic wealth gap between white and Black Americans.

West seemed skeptical of white supremacy, according to the lyrics in that song, but he changed his tune when Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, Wilson said.

In 2018, West said he thought slavery was a choice, then, he wore a White Lives Matter shirt, and made antisemitic comments on the show Drink Champs, shortly before praising Adolph Hitler while wearing a ski mask.

Heres why what Kanye did was dangerous, Wilson said during the Wednesday night event. People are not grasping the power of stochastic terrorism, the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of violence against them.

The Anti-Defamation League has been tracking a progressive spike in hate crimes against Jewish people since before Trump was elected. After Trump, West and far-right groups promoted tropes about Jewish peoples power and their false belief that Jewish people control the world, for example, instances of violence against Jewish people have increased.

Stochastic terrorism was present in Nazi Germany when Jewish people were regularly called subhuman, and during the Rwanda genocide, when Hutus called Tutsis cockroaches, leading to violence against both groups, Wilson said.

When one oppressed group discriminates against another oppressed group, they often inadvertently align themselves with white supremacy, by using white supremacist tropes and arguments to defend and spew their hatred, such as by focusing on an alleged inferiority of people who are not white, Wilson said.

Wrong move, Wilson said Wednesday night. You forfeit the moral high ground that you won by overcoming oppression when you ally yourself with the forces that would commit hate crimes against that group, and you, too.

Wests problematic comments further fractured a divide already present between Black people and Jewish communities, Wilson said.

In late 2022, Black NBA player Kyrie Irving tweeted a link to the 2018 film Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America. The movie, driven by antisemitic tropes, made false and hateful claims, including the claim that the Holocaust never happened. For a week, he declined to apologize or say that he did not hold antisemitic beliefs. He was suspended indefinitely from the Brooklyn Nets and did eventually apologize.

Heres a rule of thumb: Dont be a shill for white supremacy, Wilson said.

The relationship between Jewish people and Black people becomes even more fraught and complex depending on who is spewing antisemitism, Wilson said.

There is a disparity, weve noticed, on how the Jewish community reacts to white antisemitism and Black antisemitism, he said.

For example, in 2019, white House Republican Mo Brooks of Alabama read a passage from Hitlers 1925 book, Mein Kampf, and used its contents to attack Democrats and news reporters during an investigation into the Trump campaigns ties to Russia.

Around the same time, Black rapper Nick Cannon was fired from his long-standing show Wild n Out after spewing antisemitic conspiracy theories.

(Brooks) read Mein Kampf into the Congressional Record and (he) did not receive the same kinds of consequences, Wilson said. So now we have to unpack whats going on. Perhaps is the adjacency to whiteness and the myth of Black dangerousness one of the things playing into this disperate role, and is it skewing the common ground that we all must find?

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In 2015, Wilson infiltrated the alt-right movement by creating fake white supremacist social media accounts and using the online platforms to view the same kinds of stories and videos fed to alt-right groups. The goal was to better understand the movement, he said.

What I found was this: The Jews were a favorite scapegoat of white supremacists when confronted about white supremacy and it was super weird, Wilson said. When I talked about the colonization of Africa, and when I talked about the genocide of Native Americans, for some reason, it was always the Jewish peoples fault. Some of the antisemitic tropes are exacerbated, and not alleviated, by proximity to whiteness. Theyre made worse by it.

Antisemitism has mostly affected white Jewish people through interpersonal bigotry and hatred, Weismann said.

There also has been systemic, structural and institutional ways that antisemitism has played out, he said. But, by and large, for white Jews, right now, that is not the case at the moment, and it hasnt been for quite some time.

The point is to take that, and (decide) what do you do with it? Do you use that in an empathetic way to understand who is on the receiving end of systemic oppression today? For white Jews, we have to acknowledge the power that we have. Being able to be white, being able to exist and not have to face the same systemic oppression, what do you do with that?

He encouraged, not only white Jewish people, but all attendees Wednesday, to show up in solidarity and support any group that is oppressed, all the time, and not just when the issue directly impacts them, when its convenient, or when theyre feeling a visceral reaction to a current event.

After the panel discussion, many attendees asked Wilson and Weissman to explain how Zionism plays a role in Black-Jewish relations and the ability for the two groups to stand in solidarity with one another.

Heres whats interesting about Zionism, Wilson said. Martin Luther King was a Zionist at first. In fact, Zionism was a popular perspective in Black America at first. What changed it? We know the date: June 7, 1967.

The Six-Day War in 1967 between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Syria and Jordan commenced after years of tension between Israel and its neighbors. Israel Defense Forces launched preemptive air strikes and ground offenses that crippled the opponents before seizing the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.

The war ended with a ceasefire, but significantly altered the map of the Middle East, and gave rise to lingering geopolitical tensions.

The war also created hundreds of thousands of refugees. And more than 1 million Palestinians began living in occupied territories under Israeli rule.

After that war, Israel immediately began constructing Jewish-only settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, which are declared illegal under international law and continue to cause conflicts between the two groups living there.

When Black Americans saw what happened to Palestine, they didnt necessarily see Israel defending itself, Wilson said.

Martin Luther King, who was against all violence was put off by the events in the Six Day War, Wilson said. And many Black Americans felt similarly, in general, he added.

What we saw, and what a lot of Black people see in Palestine, is Jim Crow on steroids, he said. We (Black Americans) know, like nobodys business, what it means to not have a land of your own, to be kicked out of everywhere and to be oppressed everywhere you go.

Do Jews have to pass through checkpoints run by Palestinians? Or is it the other way around? Wilson asked. So, from our lens, until we figure out how Israel can look a lot more like a place that Dr. King would probably want to lend his moral support to, its going to be difficult for us to get on board. I believe that everybody deserves a homeland, but, like this? That is the question the Black community has about Zionism and Israel.

Increasingly, younger Jewish people are fighting against Zionism or questioning it, Weissman said. And some Jewish people, depending on their age or political views, may agree with that fight, he said.

Growing up, Weismann had more Muslim Palestinian friends than Jewish friends.

His parents were Zionists, he said. And I understand it. But something about it didnt rub me right.

He would ask his family questions about Zionism, a political ideology that called for the creation of a Jewish state, and now supports the continued existence of Israel as such a state. When Weissman asked questions, he was shushed by family members, who said he was bringing more pain to the family.

I would get every single defense, and some of those defenses would make sense, and some of them were absolute garbage, Weissman said Wednesday night. Because youre seeing the repercussions, both here and in Israel, and the trope that Jews are progressive, except for in Israel, that cant always last. We have to answer those questions. To me, its clear that something needs to change within the Jewish community to realize that there was a Judaism long before there was Zionism and there can be a future where Zionism looks different or doesnt exist and where people can still be safe.

Before the panel discussion ended, attendees said they were committed to continually finding ways to band together and fight collectively against white supremacy, such as by creating educational events to study history, dispel myths and show how racism and antisemitism connect and how people can interrupt racist behavior, and tropes, when they encounter them.

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Denver's Black, Jewish communities focus on shared history of ... - The Colorado Sun