The Anti-Dissent League
How the ADL employ selective outrage to censor dissent
Badlands Media will always put out our content for free, but you can support us by becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter. Help our collective of citizen journalists take back the narrative from the MSM. We are the news now.
In 2023, acts of extreme irony and hypocrisy have become so commonplace in the context of American politics that they are met with little to no shock and are hardly even considered newsworthy.
But every now and then, there are examples so palpable and glaring that they penetrate the reinforced barrier of apathy that’s built up in the public mind. That is exactly what happened last week when Elon Musk responded to harassment from the centuries-old Anti-Defamation League (ADL) by threatening none other than a defamation lawsuit against the organization.
The ADL’s Partisan Shift
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was created as a civil rights advocacy group by a lawyer named Sigmund Livingston in 1913, and was formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. The organization’s primary historical focus has been fighting anti-Semitism.
In recent years, however, under the leadership of former Obama administration staffer Jonathan Greenblatt, the group has come under criticism for acting more as a left-leaning pressure group than a non-partisan, anti-Semitism watchdog.
Though there are those who would contest this, the ADL was historically seen as a noble organization committed to the honorable goal of opposing genuine antisemitism and speaking for the interests of the Jewish community as a whole instead of only backing those who fund and support the liberal establishment.
The Jewish columnist and political commentator Bethany Mandel would note that the ADL under Greenblatt removed the words “anti-Semitism” from its mission statement. (#) During this Greenblatt era, there has been an observable leftward mission shift that would expand the scope of the ADL to include attacking anything the political establishment deemed “hateful.”
Back in 2016, Alex VanNess, writing for the New York Post, noted that under longtime chief Abe Foxman, the ADL largely remained true to its historical priorities. VanNess also noted that under Greenblatt, the ADL has since shifted “onto a partisan course at odds with this core mission.” (#)
Additionally, the New York Post editorial board wrote that the ADL
“… has essentially become another J Street—an arm of the Democratic Party’s stable of pressure groups.” (#)
Though this assessment will undoubtedly be pigeonholed as such, criticism of the ADL isn’t inherently anti-Semitic. Isi Leibler, the former vice president and board of trustees chairman of the World Jewish Congress, criticized Greenblatt for,
“… tilting the ADL policy away from its primary mandate of combating anti-Semitism and steering it toward partisan social action issues.”
Additionally, Jewish lawyer Ron Coleman, who is often quite vocal about religious liberty and free-speech issues, recently described his take on the ADL in an Op-ed for Newsweek:
… after my encounter with ADL in 1987, I volunteered as an ADL legal intern. It was fun, and I did believe I was doing good. Everyone believed that. And it was true …
… But the ADL no longer believes this. It has become part of a great online censorship machine that is being exposed day after day as an anti-free speech enterprise.
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’s current work has very little to do with combating antisemitism; as Glenn Greenwald put it,
“that is only the marketing costume or pretext it uses to wield power.”
By 2016, the ADL had radically transformed into one of the primary enforcers of the western censorship regime that was built out in the wake of both Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidency, two historic events that spooked the deep political establishment and showcased how loose their grip on the population really is.
Today, in 2023, the true objective of the ADL could not be any clearer: to advance the interests of the Democratic Party, ensure the success of party leaders, and protect the dominant ideology that the establishment wings of both parties are devoted to, namely protecting the status quo and eliminating populist dissent by continuously labeling dissenters as either “anti-Semitic”, or using more amorphous descriptors like “extremist”.
In the deep political establishment mind, dissent equals defamation.
Whether it’s dissent from their policy views on the war in Ukraine or from dubious practices at the local elementary school, it doesn’t matter; the regime must stomp it out through character assassination, and the ADL is one of the primary tools used to do so.
The ADL/Musk Controversy
It is no great secret that the liberal establishment’s hatred of Elon Musk is only surpassed by the roiling animosity they harbor toward Donald Trump, but the gap between them is rapidly closing.
I suppose now, in retrospect, it seems inevitable that the ADL would be engaged in a very public confrontation with Musk; he did buy up one of the primary tools used to weed out dissenting voices and turned it into a (mostly) free-speech platform. He also likened billionaire and deep political activist George Soros to the X-Men supervillain Magneto, leading the ADL to accuse Musk of “dangerous” speech back in May of this year.
The current ADL/Musk beef made headlines earlier this month after the organization all but demanded the power to dictate to Twitter (now known as “X”) what political views should and should not be allowed to be expressed on the platform.
It started with this tweet by Greenblatt:
Reading between the lines, what Greenblatt’s saying here is the equivalent of an extortive threat.
The unspoken threat is that the ADL will pronounce X as a detestable vector of hate speech, thereby making it radioactive to potential advertisers. Of course, it is made clear that, should Elon and company "address hate effectively," the ADL and Greenblatt himself will be the first to pat them on the back.
There are two significant hurdles here, assuming, hypothetically, that Musk even wanted to appease Greenblatt: First, it’s impossible to run a true free-speech platform while censoring anything that could be construed as hateful. Secondly, we’ve seen all manner of legitimate concerns reframed as "hateful", and it is all but obvious that what the ADL is seeking to do here is stamp out populist dissent and anti-establishment rhetoric.
Fortunately for free-speech enjoyers in the West, Musk did not seem willing to back down. He astutely discerned the veiled threat in Greenblatt’s tweet and has since not been shy about expressing his opinions on the matter.
In response to a Tweet from Eva Vlaardingerbroek, where she mentioned that #BanTheADL was trending and criticized the tired censorship tactic often employed by these types of organizations, Elon Musk floated the idea of running a poll to gauge public sentiment toward the organization.
The ADL responded to calls for a ban by saying it is:
“unsurprised yet undeterred that anti-Semites, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and other trolls have launched a coordinated attack on our organization. This type of thing is nothing new.” (#)
So to reiterate, if you harbor anything but a glowing critique of the Anti-Defamation League, then you must be either a white supremacist, a conspiracy theorist, or some kind of deplorable troll, because the ADL’s honor, virtue, and integrity are self-evident, and only society’s undesirables would believe otherwise.
Do you see what they are doing here? It’s psychological bullying, and it happens to be extremely effective when used on the uninformed.
The beef goes on …
On September 4th of this year, Elon Musk tweeted the following:
So the state of this ongoing drama is that Elon Musk is ostensibly considering a defamation suit, though it is unclear whether or not he plans to go through with it.
In a recent interview with the host of the "All-In Podcast," Musk commented on the state of the spat with the ADL and divulged that the organization was instrumental in getting President Donald Trump removed from the platform. (#)
To anyone who would dismiss our critique of the ADL as alarmist, I would point you to the fact that the organization successfully campaigned to censor a duly elected president.
And their power doesn’t end with boycotts and character assassination; they also employ a form of financial attack.
In 2021, well after the ADL had been reconfigured to go after opponents of the democrat establishment, Reuters ran an article titled “PayPal to research transactions that fund hate groups, extremists,” where they wrote:
PayPal Holdings Inc (PYPL.O) is partnering with non-profit organization the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to investigate how extremist and hate movements in the United States take advantage of financial platforms to fund their criminal activities.
The initiative will be led through ADL's Center on Extremism, and will focus on uncovering and disrupting the financial flows supporting white supremacist and anti-government organizations …
… The information collected through the initiatives will be shared with other firms in the financial industry, law enforcement and policymakers, PayPal said …
“We have a unique opportunity to further understand how hate spreads and develop key insights that will inform the efforts of the financial industry, law enforcement, and our communities in mitigating extremist threats," said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL's CEO.
To the undiscerning, this probably sounds both stunning and brave, but reading between the lines, it is clear to see that all the posturing of ‘combating the spread of this-and-that’ is merely creating a pretext to go after any and all dissenters of establishment dogma.
It doesn’t stop at PayPal: groups like the ADL have also gotten fundraising platforms like GoFundMe, Patreon and others to freeze funds of reader-funded news outlets, the most recent example being GoFundMe’s freeze on the Grayzone.
Our friends at Media Matters will undoubtedly try once again to pigeonhole us as “anti-Semitic” for even entertaining the idea that the ADL is anything less than an altruistic organization, singlehandedly holding back a flood of hatred, but the truth is that the ADL is increasingly seen as doing more harm than good in the fight against antisemitism.
I am not denying that hateful groups and bigoted individuals exist; I just do not believe they are as pervasive or influential as they are made out to be.
The ADL and other organizations want you to believe that neo-Nazis are hiding in every shadow and that your right-leaning neighbor secretly worships at the alter of Hitler. The truth is that, even though it does still exist, Antisemitism isn’t nearly as rampant as it might have been in the early to mid-1900s. I'm, of course, speaking of genuine antisemitism, and not the hollow term bandied about thoughtlessly by virtue-signaling liberals.
What the current generation of leadership at ADL have done is completely undo the work of the preceding generations by trivializing the term “anti-Semitic”. The perfect example is George Soros; if you so much as acknowledge that George Soros even exists, you run the risk of being labeled an anti-Semite. Contrarily, if you were to directly criticize Sheldon Adelson, a rightwing Jewish political donor, the ADL would turn a blind eye, as it has done many times in the past.
In modern times, the prevailing instances of visible antisemitism are largely relegated to either detestable fringe message boards like the Daily Stormer, bot-infested comment sections across the internet, or proxy groups like “Blood Tribe,” all of which are highlighted to make you believe that neo-Nazis lurk around every corner, thereby giving the ADL a reason to exist and to wield considerable power.
Additionally, NPR ran an article back in 2018 claiming that roughly 30% of all anti-Semitic “attacks” are coming from bot accounts. (#) I’m sure that the true percentage today is much higher.
There was a time when the ADL, at least outwardly, held a more noble purpose in the effort to combat real antisemitism. A dear friend of mine—one who is now uncompromisingly America First—worked for the ADL in the 1970s, and according to her, the ADL of today is far removed from what it was in the past.
Of course, there is a legion of big-brained individuals who truly believe that anyone born a Jew is somehow in on a vast conspiracy to enslave the Goyim, but I have no interest in opening that can of worms here, or anywhere for that matter.
Author’s Note: For a comprehensive work on the purported infiltration and subversion of Judaism by clandestine forces, consider Rabbi Marvin Antleman’s ‘To Eliminate the Opiate.’
The ADL wields considerable power; when they make threats, companies tend to listen and obey. The current “pause” or boycott of X is causing the company to experience a significant dip in western advertising, this is the purpose of the ADL in the current political paradigm. The same goes for the ACLU, the NAACP, the Human Rights Campaign and the SPLC; all of which have been politically weaponized.
We need to continue to call out these institutions, no matter how many times they brand you as anti-Semitic, racist, xenophobic, or extremist. We need to continue standing up to these organizations that have acted as the arbiters of speech, deciding who should and shouldn’t be allowed to have a voice in the public square.
Now is not the time to be a shrinking violet.
I mean, you don’t want to get out classed by Elon Musk. do you?
Badlands Media articles and features represent the opinions of the contributing authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Badlands Media itself.
If you enjoyed this contribution to Badlands Media, please consider checking out more of my work for free at Underground Newswire.
Nicely done. I’ve read the ADL was busted for organizing a white supremacy rally in the 1980’s. Dope, Inc. from 1978 said B’nai B’rith was instrumental in starting and progressing the KKK. And let’s not forget the year the ADL started, 1913. I did a Badlands piece on the decade of the 1910’s and how it was the decade the Deep State took control of America.
Funny... 1913 is the year they started the financial thievery scam on Americans known as the Federal Reserve. The ADL is also a Rothchild-baby, along with "purchasing" Israel with our money lifted from the Federal Reserve, aka our pockets.