Rabbi Avi Shafran is incorrect for supporting the censorship of Alex Jones, both from a legal and Jewish standpoint. Although I most certainly don’t agree with everything that Alex Jones says, no matter which way you look at it, by censoring Alex Jones, Big Tech is breaking the law.
Here are a few examples:
1) If they are censoring the right, that means they are supporting the left. And if they are supporting the left, that means that every tweet or post from a politician on the left is being *actively* politically endorsed by these companies. So, that means you have to figure this into campaign finance. Considering that most people get their information from social media, the amount of money that this would be considered is astronomical, and Twitter is certainly breaking campaign finance laws.
2) If I slander you on the phone, the phone company is not responsible. If I slander you in the newspaper, the publisher *is* responsible, as he made an active choice to publish my slander. And if I slander you on Facebook, Facebook is not responsible, because legally Facebook is a communications company, like the phone company. But this means that Facebook is not a publisher – so they are not allowed to arbitrate who gets to publish and who doesn’t, and are breaking the law. Or, alternatively, if Facebook wants, they can consider themselves a publisher. Let’s watch them get sued every single day for slander. One billion posts a day, how many of those are slander? One thousand? Facebook will go bankrupt in no time.
3) Social media have plenty of government connections, and the “neutral” organizations that get to arbitrate who gets the freedom of speech and who doesn’t are… government, basically. Either governments themselves or partially government-funded bodies… and the collusion of course is not necessarily with “the government” of President Trump, but it is with factions within the US government and other governments, i.e. – the government(s) is (are) censoring political opinions!
4) Anti-trust laws. Time to bust the trusts!
The Sages taught not to read חרות על הלוחות charut – “the writing of God *engraved* upon the tablets”, but rather cherut – “the writing of God *is Liberty* upon the tablets”. The teachings of the Torah are the basis that John Locke used in classical liberalism, therefore we should fight for Liberty in every way. Regarding freedom of speech, specifically, we find that the best disinfectant is sunshine, and that as more and more people are feeling that they are being censored (and they are), they move onto different platforms where they form echo chambers and truly dangerous ideologies are able to fester. I personally have gone down the rabbit hole, and I can tell you that the far left and far right are uniting and growing and the glue that holds them together is the “Zionist conspiracy”. In this conspiracy, the fact that AIPAC is part of the “neutral” group censoring people does NOT help us, and of course, don’t get me started on the ADL. The fact of the matter is that by supporting censorship (which *is* what you are doing), Jews are giving true, authentic, virulent anti-antisemitism ammunition that, God forbid, will be used against Jews in the future.
Regarding Alex Jones himself,
The “Zionist conspiracy” crowd virtuously unanimously considers him to be a “Zionist” and therefore a disinformation agent, perhaps controlled by the Mossad (you can’t make this stuff up:joy:). Despite many people in his surrounding being extremely anti-Israel, and against “Israel-first politicians”, he described his position as such:
“I’m pro Israel, because then, when Israel does stuff that I don’t like, I get to criticize it, see how that works?”
“The left wants to overthrow Israel and wants to put in an Arab failed state which will threaten the entire world.”
And other similar positions, which are no longer to be found since Youtube deleted tens of thousands of his videos, but are preserved by conspiracy theorists calling him a “Zionist shill”. Of course, it was the Zionists who censored him… the irony and the pilpul to explain this have no limits.
So even if he was anti-Israel, I would fight for his free speech, but considering that his biggest opponents attack him for not cursing Israel, like Bilaam ben Beor, we should certainly support him.
Shlomo Gordon (26) is the Chairman of Jews for Freedom of Speech and is running for the Knesset on behalf of the libertarian and Jewish nationalist Zehut party.
Note: The above article was originally posted on FrumJew.com and is reprinted here in full with permission.