The Anti-Defamation League Defames Substack
The ADL calls for Substack to be deplatformed from Twitter, and then four days later, Substack is magically deplatformed from Twitter
Disclaimer: my Jewish friend Max gave me permission to write this article.
I am writing this article because four days ago the ADL published a 3,700-word screed attacking Substack. I take this very personally because I write on Substack and I care deeply about free speech, and presumably you do too, dear reader. by virtue of reading this Substack. I currently have 4,318 readers and the vast majority of those are self-selected free speech zealots.
Basically, the ADL is angry that Substack won’t censor whoever the ADL tells them to censor. They hate anyone in any industry/media who makes substantial money and/or gains substantial influence while flouting their censorship rules.
The ghostwriter (no author is listed on the byline) who wrote the ADL’s poorly written hitpiece kicks it off by singling out Father Calvin Robinson, a British deacon who “writes frequently on his Substack about what he finds problematic in ‘liberalism,’ including gay marriage and being transgender … He goes on to challenge readers to ‘stop conceding ground’ to the ‘delusion’ of transgenderism.”
The ADL is very angry that Father Robinson has the gall to complain on his Substack about a “genderqueer” reverend serving in the Church of England.
Welcome to 2023, where if you don’t support a nonbinary vicar leading your church, you need to be deplatformed.
I emailed Father Robinson and asked how he felt about being smeared by the ADL. He provided me with this response. I will let it speak for itself.
At first I thought this was unhinged. ADL start their list of 'Antisemitism, False Information and Hate Speech' with me, I am not antisemtitic, I do not spread false information, nor do I engage in hate speech. I then realised this content is worse than unhinged, it is dangerous. The ADL is attempting to paint particular worldviews as intolerable; certain opinions and beliefs as beyond the pale. This is a tactic of totalitarian bigots - it is the methodology of hateful fascists.
The examples provided are that I do not believe in gay marriage, I do no believe people can transition gender, race or age, and I believe the natural conclusion of unrestrained liberalism without boundaries is paedophilia and that is not a good thing.
Notice I said I believe, because these are my beliefs, informed by my Christian faith. I do not perceive them to be 'hate speech', I perceive them to be truthful statements, as believed by Christians for 2,000 years and Jews for much longer.
Marriage in a Christian context is between one man and one woman. The idea is that in a liberal progressive society grown adults cannot do whatever they want as long as they're not causing anybody harm - that is a liberal ideology I do not subscribe to. Two grown men or two grown women may live together as a partnership or a civil union, but as a Christian, I would not recognise that as marriage. It is not 'hate speech' to insist words have meanings. If anything, it is hate speech that the ADL is peddling, by proscribing mainstream Judeo-Christian beliefs as 'EXTREMISM & HATE SPEECH'.
I happen to believe God loves us, and he made us in his image. God loved us before we were born, and he made us male and female. Therefore, there are two genders, and whilst they are equal in dignity and worth, they are different in many other ways. Men tend to be faster and stronger, whilst women tend to be more nurturing and emotionally mature. These differences are complimentary, but also biological. Men are born with XY chromosomes, women with XX. Our sex is imprinted in ever strand of our being, in our DNA. Women are born with the ability to bear children, men are not. These are clear and important differences which should be respected. No surgical or chemical mutilation can make a man into a woman or vice-versa. That is not hate speech, that is biological and spiritual truth. If anything, it is hate speech to deny that. Hate against God and science.
You'll notice the ADL editorialised my statement in order to suit their political agenda, adding works I did not say. ADL says 'he writes, adding that “the natural conclusion [of a society that accepts trans people] is paedophilia.”' Now, I did not say a society that accepts trans people, my statement was clearly about unrestricted liberalism without boundaries - if someone can transition their sex and their race, why not their age? That is an important question we should be asking, because the results of which could be damaging to young people, whom it is our duty as adults - as it is in any civilised society - to protect.
I am grateful that Substack, the publishing platform, allows for longform reporting like this. If this were a mainstream media article I would need to throw away 95% of Father Robinson’s statement to fit under my wordcount limit… I would need to throw away all nuance. Substack allows for nuance, which the ADL hates.
The rest of their hitpiece consists mostly of the ADL walking through 18 other Substack writers that they disapprove of, and denouncing each of them for various reasons.
The second name on their list, after Father Robinson, is
by , who needs to be kicked off the internet because, as the ADL puts it, he “discusses the supposed secret gestures and codes used by figures such as Anthony Fauci and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to signal their affiliation with an evil “cult” of world leaders.”
I reached out to Kitze for comment:
Happy Passover!
Passover is an important Holiday (holy day) not only for Jewish peoples, it reminds everyone of the benevolence of The Creator and His protection of righteous people.
I send best wishes and greetings to my Jewish friends during this Holy Time!
Traditions are very important and this is why I write my blog and put my real name on it. My sources are not mainstream, where "dangerous ideas" get suppressed, but mainly people's own words and I carefully source everything (and make offline backups). If we don't preserve this testimony and learn from it, we are doomed.
As an example, one of my best sources for information about Ukraine is a dear friend who is an 85 year old Holocaust survivor who can't see. I read to her almost every day over the phone. She shared with me her personal experiences in Ukraine and the former Soviet Union. She knows what's really going on and shared this information with me, having lost most of her family to the Holocaust, narrowly escaping herself when she was a small child.
Evil is upon the world. The only solution is to expose it and eliminate it, including the evil that's inside every one of us.
He is then joined on the list by Roger Stone, the former Trump advisor who the ADL says “regularly publishes inflammatory articles on his Substack, where he blames the “deep state” and the ‘legacy media cabal’ for suppressing information from the public and alleges a series of conspiracies surrounding the death of JFK.’”
Okay.
Next are two genuinely hateful authors, the first describes his Substack as a “Jewish Question information archive” the second as “I write about the Stock Market and the Jewish Question“.
Both of these are nobodies --
, for example, has never received a single "like" or "comment" on any of his hundreds of articles. Zero engagement, zero audience. He is shouting into the void.Do I like what he is shouting? No, I think he is retarded. But he has the right to shout whatever he wants. The only speech that actually needs to be protected is speech you don’t like, so I will fight to the death for this retard’s right to keep shouting whatever he wants to shout into the void, and that’s the difference between me and the ADL: you either believe in free speech, or you don’t.
After these two "Jewish question" bloggers, the ADL switches back to condemning the inventor of the mRNA vaccine,
, who the ADL says needs to be censored because he "promotes conspiratorial tropes about evil, powerful forces in the government.”Are you starting to see the ADL’s underhanded tactics? By weaving in legit doctors and priests with angry schizos, they succeed in smearing everyone with mud via guilt by association.
A second Doctor they then smear is Dr. Mercola, who they allege has “written on Substack about conspiracy theories involving government agencies and election interference, stating in one article that the FBI “actively interfered in multiple elections” while pushing claims about unlawful censorship and big tech collusion with the government.”
I reached out to Dr. Mercola, here is his response:
The ADL has become the DL, where they now specialize in defamation.
I can’t respond as the ADL doesn’t specifically state any inaccurate statements, but I have been accused of spreading misinformation for being correct too soon. I clearly stated in early 2020 that this virus was engineered and leaked from the Wuhan lab.
I correctly predicted the vaccines would not prevent disease, that adverse side effects were being ignored, that masks were not effective, and that lockdowns would fail to prevent disease and only succeed in concentrating wealth and destroying lives. The Twitter Files have clearly shown the federal agencies are weaponized and engage in both election interference domestically and internationally, as well as illegal censorship collusion with big tech.
It appears ADL is just another political pawn who is ironically discriminating and persecuting those with differing opinions. How the ADL’s mission changed from stopping defamation of Jewish people and turned into a defamation specialist defending fascist narratives is beyond belief.
Strong.
Next on their list is Jordan Sather, who needs to be kicked off the internet because he blogs about freemasonry and “pedo-Satanism” in Hollywood.
Next they target
:Who has since written a long article called "The ADL takes aim at my Substack" in which he rebuts their criticism, point by point.
If you like unintentional comedy, that’s not too bad of a write-up. It’s a slapdash melange of name-calling, misinformation and unhinged delusion with a couple of true items thrown in just for the hell of it.
I hereby invite the ADL to debate their charges against me on my radio show. They can reach me through my Substack or at DrKevinBarrett(at)yahoo[dot]com.
Kevin’s crime? The ADL says “Barrett suggests that people who have a “Jewish handler” are at risk of “being institutionalized and injected,” referring to Ye’s conspiratorial rants about his former personal trainer, Harley Pasternak.”
Another critic of Harley Pasternak is
, who tweeted this thread:
Casey was also condemned by the ADL this week.
Why is the ADL protecting Harley Pasternak?
The ADL then condemns Libs of TikTok:
The funny thing about this condemnation is that Libs of TikTok is an account run by an orthodox Jewish woman, who the ADL wants us to believe is hateful and anti-Semitic.
In fact, a huge percentage of Substack writers are Jewish (e.g.
, , , , , , ) and there even are many Rabbis (e.g. ) who make Substack their home. Jewish writers are heavily, heavily overrepresented on Substack.I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to plug an earlier article I wrote about Libs of TikTok:
Next the ADL attacks
for "promising “payback” for the actions of “authoritarian goons” such as Anthony Fauci, who he believes lied about the severity of COVID to control American citizens.”
I reached out to the author,
for comment.As always, I will let him speak for himself:
The ADL attacks 19 different Substack authors in this hit piece, and I'll note only about 4 of these accounts could be considered to be communicating very highly controversial statements about the Jewish race.
The majority of this article is spent going after people like me, @JordanSather , @libsoftiktok, @Clandestine @KanekoaTheGreat and others for being SUCCESSFUL at pushing back on the OFFICIAL PROPAGANDA.
We've been SUCCESSFULL at challenging the FALSE NARRATIVES the ADL supports.
This screed on the ADL site is a loud whining temper tantrum that nobody will CENSOR these voices on Substack.
The ground has shifted dramatically in our favor.
A few years ago the ADL could successfully get people silenced & tossed off of TV programs for attempting to wake the American public up to the nefarious actions of that WEF goon, George Soros, and his evil plan to subvert justice in this country by installing radical leftist DA's.
They did this by CALLING SOROS CRITICS ANTI-SEMITIC.
Those days are over and the ADL had better get used to it.
The ADL then turns their eye towards
, who they say "frames interracial couples as contributors to the alleged shrinking of the white race.”
Is this an accurate description of
?Not according to the writers. They told me:
This article condemning disinformation is itself disinformation, because it claims that the Red-State Secession substack “proposes a strategy to preserve white populations… segregation.” That’s false. The strategy we propose does not include any kind of segregation, not even ideological segregation. It proposes that red states and counties secede. The separation would be geographic, and no one would be forced to relocate or segregate. Communities would remain intact as is, unless some people chose to migrate voluntarily.
Our interest in National Divorce is not motivated by a desire to preserve white populations, as the ADL claims. If the ADL had taken the time to read the substack it condemns to the world, it would know our true motivations.
Next up, the ADL attacks
for for "[pushing] back against the so-called 'mainstream media' narrative."I instantly subscribed.
Next up is Culturcidal, who “posits that liberal politicians “intentionally set out to change the racial composition” of Americans – “by replacing the white population with minorities that were more likely to vote for them.”
I reached out to him for comment, and he told me:
The ADL, like the NAACP, Southern Poverty Law Center, etc, is a joke at this point. All these groups basically target conservatives for being effective and work backward from there, so it's a bit of an honor to have them go after me for telling the truth. I'd encourage any open-minded person to read the article they attacked me for, "The Left's Great Replacement Theory Gaslighting" and judge for themselves who is right and who is wrong. If you want to save time, just assume it's me and you'll be spot-on.
Next on the ADL’s list is
for "pushing repeatedly debunked conspiracy theories and false claims about election fraud such as ballot harvesting, drop box stuffing, big tech interference and more.”
Next, the ADL attacks
who "is a left-wing Substack author and self-proclaimed "anti-disinformation activist" whose articles primarily focus on proving who was behind QAnon, which he alleges was a Russian psychological operation coordinated in part with General Michael Flynn."
He angrily tweeted in response:
Hey ADL remove my Substack from your article IMMEDIATELY. This was written by Mike Rothschild and every word of it is counterfactual or defamatory.
My grandparents were Ashkenazi Jews who came over in the pogroms, including me with antisemites is revolting.
…
This defamatory article is being weaponized by Mike Rothschild’s trolls to spread false information to anyone who knows me and to discredit my one source of income.
Next the ADL attacks
, who needs to be censored because it "incorporates a common alt-right dogwhistle into its brand and uses QAnon tropes to push conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton, George Soros and more while promising a triumphant future for the far-right.”Finally is
, another Jewish guy, lol:
What gives the ADL the right to censor these 19 Substack writers?
Nobody ever voted for the ADL.
Yet they deign to rule over you?
The ADL is the enemy of Western civilization, and they must be crushed.
After condemning these 19 Substack writers, ADL ends their hitpiece by kvetching about “Substack’s increasing popularity on Twitter” and not-so-subtly questioning whether Substack “violates Twitter’s existing content moderation policies.”
Substack’s increasing popularity on Twitter
Measuring the prevalence of Substack links on Twitter provides an important metric to determine the platform’s popularity, as authors often use Twitter to promote their newsletters to potential subscribers. Over the past few years, tweets which include external links to Substack pages, also known as outlinks, have increased demonstrably.
In 2021, the volume of Twitter mentions (including retweets) which included outlinks to Substack exceeded 6.08 million. In 2022, those mentions doubled to more than 12.6 million. In the first two months of 2023, mentions are already over 4.3 million.
This increase begs the question of whether the wealth of misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories on Substack – much of which has drawn countless paid and unpaid subscribers to the platform – violates the platform’s existing content moderation policies.
Four days after calling for Substack to be blocked from Twitter, this morning, Substack was blocked from Twitter.
While the timing is suspicious, there is no proof that Substack was blocked from Twitter because the ADL called for Substack to be blocked from Twitter.
Elon hasn’t commented on it yet.
The more likely explanation is that Elon is retaliating against Substack because a few days ago, Substack announced a new feature that is almost exactly like Twitter and would directly compete with Twitter.
Matt Taibbi, the most famous journalist on Substack, just announced that he is leaving Twitter for this new Twitter competitor.
This all happened today, and everybody is still freaking out, nobody really knows what to make of it.
This is a developing story.
To be continued.
*As a Jew* whose maternal grandparents were illegal aliens (later naturalized in an amnesty) and whose great-great uncle, his wife and four adult daughters were murdered in Uman by the Nazis, I unequivocally support free speech: vile, not vile, unvile; unhinged, totally hinged; rife with slurs, nauseatingly correct, boring, inflammatory--
--there are for me no forbidden words, no unsayable syllables, no concept that may not be framed in human language and published anywhere and everywhere.
I encounter plenty of antisemitic nonsense in comments threads and I exercise my faculty of free thinking to think that they are morons, but I neither flag them nor mind them. Morons gonna moron. Let 'em do so in peace.
And grifters gonna grift, and scumbags gonna scumbag etc.
And please, Chris--you don't need permission from any ye olde Jewish friends to write what you yourself think. Your audience, of which I am a proud early member, has brains of its own to figure out what you intend by any words you write, and if any of 'em, God forbid, should turn out to be morons themselves, in misunderstanding your intent, upon any such fool be the blame.
Good Pesach! Happy Easter! Eid Mubarak!
Thank you, ADL, for a list of Substack writers to add to my subscription list. Much obliged.