One thing The Free Press has always been against is bullies.
When we began, the most powerful bullies were on the left. They came after some of the most courageous, independent minds in America—people like Abigail Shrier and Amy Chua, who were demonized for simply describing the world as they see it—as well as doctors who were just trying to do their jobs, and authors who happened to be Jewish.
But bullying is not an inherently left-wing activity. It’s a human one. There will always be bullies, on both sides of the political fence, because when people gain power, they find themselves tempted to use it to control and undermine and attack anything they don’t like. Especially if they’re feeling vengeful.
So one of the reasons we were so critical of the far-left mob was that we knew eventually it would empower a far-right one. That moment has now come, and as our reporter River Page argues in the important essay below, it’s most obvious on the internet. Twitter used to be a place where the far-left would viciously attack someone for saying sex is real; it has become a platform where far-right trolls can say someone is “not an Anglo Saxon and therefore should be ignored.”
Or, as Bari put it in her speech at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship on Monday, “just as the left defaced and desecrated statues of Churchill, the vandals on the right desecrate his name and his memory.” (Read the full speech here.)
At The Free Press, our belief is simple: America is no place for mob rule. And when we see it, we won’t just point it out. We’ll resist it. —The Editors
Yesterday morning, like I do every morning, I woke up and immediately opened Twitter (a.k.a. X), where the first thing I saw was Elon Musk reacting positively to a post alleging that actor Tom Hanks is a pedophile. Then I saw that Lord Miles—a conservative travel influencer best known for visiting Afghanistan during the Taliban’s reconquista in 2021—has come to believe that another right-wing influencer, this one anonymous, is “not an Anglo Saxon and therefore should be ignored.” When I scrolled on, I saw someone telling the self-described misogynist and accused human trafficker Andrew Tate, whose father was black, that he’s a “mongrel half breed.” Then, my coffee was done!
For those of you who are offline, it is important you understand how bad things have gotten on X. Since Trump’s win in November, the extreme right has completely taken over the platform, and every day they’re getting high on their own supply, expressing opinions that the average American, including Trump voters, would find alienating, insane, or offensive.