The Blacklist, the Nixon enemies list and now those who want a ceasefire and who defend Palestine.
I got an email the other day from a reader (not a subscriber) named Edward Opper calling me a 21st century Nazi.
Why?
Because I have joined with hundreds of thousands around the world calling for a ceasefire in the Israeli war on Gaza.
Nazis are not usually associated with cease fires, but these are tough times.
I have lost a few other subscribers even as the number of subscribers to to this site has jumped in recent weeks.
Losing a few subscribers over the issue of a ceasefire is no big deal to me.
Others have paid a much higher price.
It’s the latest in a long history of attacks on American freedom of thought and speech.
In the fifties we endured the Red Scare. Publications like Red Channels would publish the names of communists, Leftists and progressive artists some of whom did nothing more than sign a petition.
When Richard Nixon was president he created an enemies list.
Now, as critics of Israel are smeared as anti-Semites, we have groups like Canary Mission that dox those who even dare to sign a petition calling for peace and a ceasefire.
David Velasco has been fired as editor of Artforum for publishing a statement calling for a ceasefire.
Martin Eisenberg, a high-profile collector and inheritor of the now-bankrupt Bed Bath & Beyond fortune, began contacting famous art world figures on the list whose work he had championed to express his objections to the letter.
Harvard students who have protested Israeli policies toward Palestine have been threatened by Harvard donors who promise to put them on a do not hire list.
When Molly* first heard that a truck was driving around her campus showing the faces and names of her friends and calling them “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites,” she felt a flood of emotion: fear, disgust, devastation. She watched as her friends appeared, one by one, on a large digital screen on the side of the truck, and she knew it was just a matter of time until her face was there too.
“In a sense, there was almost like a twisted relief when I finally heard that I was on the face of the truck because at least I knew what the threat was,” she tells Teen Vogue about the time she spent wondering whether she’d eventually appear on the screen. Molly, an Arab Muslim Harvard undergraduate student, wraps herself in a pashmina while speaking in an empty Harvard classroom; she has asked that her real name be withheld for safety reasons. (Teen Vogue)
Still, the anti-war movement grows.
Including among American Jews, who this past week filled Grand Central Station in New York with thousands of anti-war protesters under the auspices of Jewish Voice for Peace.
