{"id":862827,"date":"2025-07-16T02:12:29","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T07:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/16\/the-anti-woke-warriors-used-to-defend-free-speech-now-they-make-mccarthyism-look-progressive-arwa-mahdawi\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T02:12:29","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T07:12:29","slug":"the-anti-woke-warriors-used-to-defend-free-speech-now-they-make-mccarthyism-look-progressive-arwa-mahdawi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/16\/the-anti-woke-warriors-used-to-defend-free-speech-now-they-make-mccarthyism-look-progressive-arwa-mahdawi\/","title":{"rendered":"The anti-woke warriors used to defend free speech. Now they make McCarthyism look progressive | Arwa Mahdawi"},"content":{"rendered":"
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T<\/span>houghts and non-denominational prayers to all the anti-woke warriors out there. It may seem as though everything is going their way now Donald Trump is back with a vengeance, but the poor things have run into a bit of a branding problem. For years, the anti-woke crowd positioned themselves as fearless free thinkers taking on the intolerant left. The journalist Bari Weiss wrote a fawning New York Times piece in 2018<\/a> describing rightwing voices such as Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens as \u201crenegades of the intellectual dark web\u201d (IDW).<\/p>\n

Now, however, the people who used to position themselves as oppressed truth-tellers operating in what Weiss\u2019s article called an \u201cera of That Which Cannot Be Said\u201d, have a state-sanctioned microphone. They\u2019ve won. But in winning they\u2019ve made it difficult to continue the charade that they give a damn about \u201ccancel culture\u201d. Look around: some of these self-styled free speech warriors are doing everything they can to ruin the lives of everyone who doesn\u2019t 100% agree with them.<\/p>\n

Most conservatives don\u2019t seem to mind that their hypocrisy is now on full display. But, according to a recent piece on the news site Semafor,<\/a> a handful of people within the anti-woke media ecosystem are starting to have something of an identity crisis. \u201cOne didn\u2019t have to be especially prescient to spot those \u2018anti-woke\u2019 types who would just slowly become Maga flunkies,\u201d said the libertarian journalist Michael Moynihan, who had a short stint at Weiss\u2019s publication the Free Press before becoming disillusioned.<\/p>\n

Remember when the right railed against people losing jobs for old comments they\u2019d made? In 2018, for example, the Atlantic fired the conservative columnist Kevin Williamson after the backlash about a 2014 podcast appearance in which the 60-year-old had suggested women should face hanging for having an abortion<\/a>. Cue a million furious tweets from the \u201crenegades of the IDW\u201d about how, as Ben Shapiro put it on X, \u201cvirtually everyone is vulnerable if they run afoul of the Left\u2019s interests\u201d.<\/p>\n

Now, however, there\u2019s no denying that virtually everyone is vulnerable if they run afoul of the right\u2019s interests. Semafor\u2019s piece notes that \u201cOne [Free Press] investigation<\/a> that exposed two low-profile employees at PBS who had focused on diversity and got them fired rubbed even some of its allies the wrong way\u201d.<\/p>\n

At least the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) employees at PBS \u201conly\u201d got fired. Canary Mission<\/a> and Betar US, two pro-Israel groups<\/a>, have been compiling \u201cdeportation\u201d lists of pro-Palestinian activists on college campuses and sharing them with the Trump administration. Betar US has also warned that it is going to expand its focus<\/a> beyond immigrants to naturalised US citizens.<\/p>\n

These organisations are just a couple of cogs in a massive dissent-crushing machine. The Christian nationalist Heritage Foundation, which spearheaded Project 2025, is behind a dystopian plan called Project Esther<\/a> that cynically weaponises very real concerns about antisemitism to shut down criticism of Israel and quash pro-Palestinian activism. And you can bet these censorious projects won\u2019t end with Palestinians: at the rate we\u2019re going, pro-choice sentiment will soon be considered \u201canti-Christian\u201d and anyone espousing it will get deported. If that sounds far-fetched, let me remind you that last month the veterans affairs department<\/a> ordered staff to report their colleagues for \u201canti-Christian bias\u201d.<\/p>\n

Drunk on their power to deport and defame, some on the right have officially lost the plot. For months a number of conservative voices have been engaged on a mission to cancel Ms Rachel<\/a>, a children\u2019s entertainer whose real name is Rachel Accurso. If you have small children, Ms Rachel needs no introduction. For everyone else, she wears a pink headband and sings songs such as Icky Sticky Bubble Gum. Ms Rachel\u2019s videos have always been gently inclusive: she incorporates sign language and she has frequently had Jules Hoffman, a non-binary musician<\/a>, on her show. On her personal social media<\/a> she has also advocated for issues such as paid family leave.<\/p>\n

The right tried to cancel Ms Rachel over Hoffman\u2019s gender identity back in 2023.<\/a> Now they\u2019re trying to cancel the beloved star again \u2013 this time, for the \u201ccrime\u201d of speaking up about Palestinian kids and featuring a three-year-old double amputee from Gaza<\/a> in a video. The fact Accurso is humanising Palestinian<\/a> children is driving some rightwing voices so berserk that they\u2019re smearing her as antisemitic<\/a>, asking the US attorney general for an investigation, and spreading the ridiculous and completely baseless lie (which the New York Times bizarrely chose to amplify<\/a>) that she is being funded by Hamas.<\/p>\n

Welcome to our \u201cnew era of That Which Cannot Be Said\u201d \u2013 one that may make McCarthyism seem progressive. It would seem the new renegades of the intellectual dark web are those of us who think you shouldn\u2019t bomb starving babies in their sleep just because they are Palestinian.<\/p>\n