If leftist activist groups could cook hate speech on a spoon, load it into a needle, and inject it directly into their arm, they would. It's a drug that they run on, and if it had the same effects as meth, you'd see Nancy Pelosi, Al Sharpton, Jonathan Greenblatt, and whoever is still running Black Lives Matter strung out in their offices. DC would look like a San Francisco sidewalk with every passed-out person dressed in expensive suits and bad haircuts. They'd be rushing university administrators to the hospital because they overdosed.
As RedState's Jeff Charles reported, Greenblatt's Anti-Defemation League (ADL) has been trying to break Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) financially by accusing it of openly trafficking hate speech. Musk seems to be planning to sue the ADL over this as the ADL's actions have harmed the platform.
Jonathan at ADL kicked off a massive Twitter boycott campaign less than a week after the acquisition closed.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 6, 2023
Literally nothing had changed about the site.
Our US revenue is still 60% down from that campaign, but slowly improving. pic.twitter.com/7vh5dtdDqi
The ADL likes to pretend that it has no tolerance for hate speech and that it's defending goodness and righteousness for all, not just the Jewish people. However, we all know that this is a lie.
In a Tuesday Newsweek op-ed by Ron Coleman of the Dhillon Law Group, he describes how the ADL, a group he once worked for and venerated, has completely lost its way and become a propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. Moreover, the ADL now seems oddly okay with quite a bit of hate speech, at least if it comes from the left:
The national ADL, like the ACLU, the NAACP, and other formerly "apolitical" civil rights groups, is now merely a tax-exempt cadre of the national Democratic Party. Anyone paying any kind of attention knows this. And as the Democratic Party has moved further into the fringes of Left-wing lunacy, the ADL has moved with it—whether a Jewish "antidefamation" issue is at stake or not. The party requires it.
...
The ADL has let our community down so many times that its silence is not even a letdown anymore. All but the most institutionally constrained Orthodox Jews openly reciprocate the contempt the ADL seems to harbor for traditional Judaism, its values, and its people. The widespread belief in my community is that ADL does not object to public expressions of hatred and fear of Orthodox Jews because the assimilated Jews that run the place share those sentiments themselves.
Organizations like the ADL actually have a pretty strong attachment to hate speech, or more accurately, the idea of hate speech. As Coleman wrote in his op-ed, even if no hate speech exists, the ADL will create hate speech out of thin air.
You've seen this happen a lot with other organizations. The Southern Poverty Law Center has a habit of labeling various groups purveyors of hate speech even if the speech they spout isn't hateful at all. All they have to do is be a group that troubles the Democrat Party, and much like the ADL, the SPLC will declare them as hateful villains. It's a habit that got them in trouble with dozens of groups who turned around and sued the organization.
Hate speech is very, very valuable to the left. Just the idea of it can attract donations and help with fundraising for leftist politicians and organizations. It can sell the idea that there are a myriad of hate groups and people in white hoods waiting around every corner. The idea of hate speech, not hate speech itself, is one of the sharper arrows in the Democrat Party attack machine's quiver.
The fact is, if all hate speech disappeared tomorrow, it'd be a horrible day for the Democrat Party, but they need not worry. It won't stop them from accusing innocent people of hate speech.
However, everyone else can find hate speech useful as well. The magic of free speech is that it allows hate speech to boldly stand out in the open...which is right where you want it.
Those who engage in hate speech can be seen and their words weighed and measured by the general public. It can be openly debated and hotly contested in full view of the people, who can see the argument unfold and decide for themselves where they stand on any given issue. If given the chance to freely debate hate speech without any thumbs on any scale, you'll often find that hate speech loses its potency.
Free speech and open debate are some of the biggest salves society has in curing hate.
So you have to ask yourself why leftist groups like the ADL and SPLC want free speech and debate tucked away so badly. It would almost seem like their goal isn't to stop hate, but to let it fester in the shadows.
