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Bari Weiss is taking on as editor-in-chief CBS Information after promoting The Free Press to David Ellison’s Paramount for a reported $150 million in money and inventory.

This is only one piece within the Ellisons’ new media empire which has been assembled quickly with the backing of his father Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. They’ve additionally taken over an enormous piece of TikTok and are reported to be after Warner Bros. Discovery which incorporates CNN.

Bari Weiss’ position at CBS can be considerably analogous to that of Biden administration and IDF veteran Erica Mindel’s at TikTok:

Mindel beforehand labored with the U.S. State Division beneath Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the Biden Administration’s Particular Envoy to Monitor and Fight Antisemitism, in line with Sada Social, a physique that displays and paperwork digital violations in opposition to Palestinian content material.

Mindel beforehand served as an teacher within the Israeli military’s Spokesperson’s Unit…

It said that in her new position, Mindel “can be tasked with formulating TikTok’s hate speech insurance policies, shaping related legislative and regulatory frameworks, and monitoring developments—significantly these associated to antisemitic content material.”

The Ellison Media Empire is Simply A part of Israel’s eighth Entrance

The Ellison’s neo-media empire is, in flip, a part of an expanded hasbara marketing campaign by Israel and its allies that appears a bit determined within the wake of plummeting American assist amongst Democrats, the younger of each events, and even American Jews.

This unbelievable X.com thread by GenXGirl lays out “a timeline of a complicated, well-funded and intentionally opaque affect operation carried out by Israel and its allies throughout the US to focus on conservatives. Polling knowledge exhibits Israel has completely misplaced the American left and they’re shedding the American proper, significantly younger conservatives. Israel’s marketing campaign seeks to recast criticism of a international nation’s coverage as a type of bigotry, weaponize religion, and co-opt American establishments, all whereas systematically evading the legal guidelines designed to guard the American public from such international propaganda.”

Weiss’ mission at CBS Information should be seen as a part of this broader effort which Caitlin Johnstone has characterised as an try to “Propagandize The World Into Liking Israel Once more:”

It’s cute how the Zionists suppose they’ll be capable to manipulate and propagandize the world into liking Israel once more.

Yeah, saturate all on-line platforms with weird-faced influencers telling us Israel is superior. That’ll make us neglect these years of genocidal atrocities.

Positive, purchase up the social media platforms that younger persons are utilizing so you’ll be able to censor criticism of Israel. That’ll persuade them that Zionism is cool.

Go on, take management of CBS and make Bari Weiss the boss. That’ll make us neglect all these movies of mutilated Palestinian youngsters.
…
Propaganda is an efficient software of mass-scale psychological manipulation, nevertheless it isn’t magic. It isn’t going to miraculously erase what individuals know of their bones to be true.
…
It gained’t work, although. Even when propaganda might persuade us that we haven’t seen what we’ve seen and don’t know what we all know, propaganda solely works should you don’t understand it’s taking place to you. These previous two years have made even comparatively apolitical members of the general public acutely conscious that there’s an aggressive marketing campaign to control their notion of the state of Israel, and that anybody pushing them to assist that state is untrustworthy. No person’s going to purchase into the propaganda in the event that they don’t belief the supply.
…
The world’s eyes are open to what Israel is, and they’re by no means going to shut once more. You’ll be able to’t take off the Mickey Mouse masks, present the children the snarling Freddy Krueger face beneath it, after which put the masks on and hope they begin calling you Mickey once more. No person’s going to neglect what you confirmed them.

The Constructing of Bari Weiss’ Anti-Establisment Billionaire-Pleasant Model

I’ve quoted this paragraph from Yasha Levine in a earlier piece, however I have to repost it as a result of it introduces her so properly. I’ve additionally added many hyperlinks to again up his references:

Bari is an actual operator and a genius suck as much as energy. She got here from an prosperous suburb, her dad and mom personal the upscale Weisshouse furnishings retailer. Bari first got here to public consideration whereas a pupil in Columbia, the place she led a marketing campaign to cancel academics important of Israel and tried to get Joseph Massad, a Palestinian professor, fired. She then went on to rapidly rise by the ranks of zionist activist journalism — first beginning out at Jewish shops like Pill, then writing op-eds and reviewing books for the Wall Road Journal, the place she labored straight beneath Bret Stephens, the arch-neoconservative now identified merely as “bedbug,” after which getting beamed as much as the New York Occasions op-ed division. Her Occasions job was what you’d name a Trump first time period DEI rent. She was picked as much as generate controversy and serve up conservative opinion to the libs. Whereas on the Occasions, she continually received glowing profiles from her liberal colleagues — and even received dressed for a photoshoot by Vainness Truthful. Individuals who know Bari say that she has actual charisma — and she or he’s used that reward to ingratiate herself to energy. And she or he appears to have a particular method with billionaires. “She doesn’t simply converse to the 1 %. She speaks to the one-hundredth of 1 %. And so they’ll pay attention,” Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, defined the Bari Technique to the New York Occasions’ Matt Flegenheimer.

Weiss’ subsequent sensible profession transfer was quitting the NY Occasions in July 2020. Her resignation letter was rigorously calculated to arrange her subsequent strikes:

I used to be employed with the aim of bringing in voices that may not in any other case seem in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who wouldn’t naturally consider The Occasions as their house. The rationale for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the result of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a agency grasp of the nation it covers.

I used to be honored to be a part of that effort, led by James Bennet. I’m pleased with my work as a author and as an editor. Amongst these I helped carry to our pages: the Venezuelan dissident Wuilly Arteaga; the Iranian chess champion Dorsa Derakhshani; and the Hong Kong Christian democrat Derek Lam. Additionally: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Masih Alinejad, Zaina Arafat, Elna Baker, Rachael Denhollander, Matti Friedman, Nick Gillespie, Heather Heying, Randall Kennedy, Julius Krein, Monica Lewinsky, Glenn Loury, Jesse Singal, Ali Soufan, Chloe Valdary, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Wesley Yang, and plenty of others.

However the classes that should have adopted the election—classes in regards to the significance of understanding different People, the need of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free change of concepts to a democratic society—haven’t been realized. …

Twitter will not be on the masthead of The New York Occasions. However Twitter has grow to be its final editor. Because the ethics and mores of that platform have grow to be these of the paper, the paper itself has more and more grow to be a sort of efficiency house.

My very own forays into Wrongthink have made me the topic of fixed bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They’ve referred to as me a Nazi and a racist; I’ve realized to brush off feedback about how I’m “writing in regards to the Jews once more.” A number of colleagues perceived to be pleasant with me have been badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are brazenly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels the place masthead editors usually weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I have to be rooted out if this firm is to be a very “inclusive” one, whereas others publish ax emojis subsequent to my title. Nonetheless different New York Occasions workers publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no concern that harassing me can be met with acceptable motion. They by no means are.

There are phrases for all of this: illegal discrimination, hostile work atmosphere, and constructive discharge. I’m no authorized knowledgeable. However I do know that that is improper.

Bari Weiss: Serial Entrepreneur

Bari Weiss subsequent made a sequence of strikes astonishing of their ambition. First she based the “anti-woke” group F.A.I.R.

This led The New Yorker’s Emma Inexperienced to handwring “Is It Doable to Be Each Reasonable and Anti-Woke?”

The group can be referred to as FAIR: The Basis In opposition to Intolerance & Racism. The title was an preliminary act of defiance, implicitly portray the group’s opponents, self-described “anti-racists,” as the true racists. The founders’ dream was for the group to interchange the A.C.L.U. as America’s new defender of civil liberties—a mission they believed the A.C.L.U. had deserted. The imaginative and prescient concerned a three-pronged method: authorized advocacy, through letters and lawsuits; grassroots advocacy, through a community of volunteers; and training in regards to the points, unfold by initiatives reminiscent of explainer movies and coaching packages.

Weiss and the opposite founders recruited a casual board of advisers—a mixture of podcasters, journalists, lecturers, and attorneys. Amongst them have been the media character Megyn Kelly, the author Andrew Sullivan, and the anti-critical-race-theory activist Christopher Rufo. In some circles, these persons are celebrities: Angel Eduardo, who later joined the employees because the director of messaging and editorial, described one adviser, Daryl Davis, a Black musician identified for persuading white nationalists to depart the Ku Klux Klan, as “my Obi-Wan.”

Jezebel reported on on F.A.I.R. donor, Harlan Crow who ponied up $500,000:

Crow, who collects Nazi artifacts and has a backyard full of statues of dictators, made his half 1,000,000 greenback donation in 2021, whereas a number of different donors gave $1 million every. FAIR developed its personal company diversity-training program and a free ethnic-studies curriculum for colleges, nevertheless it sounds just like the group confronted a mutiny from employees and volunteers who needed it to be extra express than it was about ideas like important race idea and to talk forcefully in opposition to “gender ideology”—aka acceptance of transgender and nonbinary individuals.

Suzy Edelman, one of many million-dollar-donors, wrote in a 2022 e mail to FAIR employees: “Intercourse-based rights matter. Single intercourse areas for ladies and women should be protected. Transgenderism is a fiction designed to destroy.” Weiss was apparently involved that Edelman was airing her grievances to different donors. “I’m fairly nervous that she has gotten to the Crows, which might be actually damaging to me personally,” Weiss wrote to a FAIR cofounder in August 2022, referring to Harlan Crow. Weiss informed the New Yorker reporter: “I leaned on lots of my private relationships and friendships to assist launch this nonprofit. I used to be sick over the concept their time, belief, and cash wasn’t being correctly protected.” Hmm!

Bari Weiss tries to color herself as an impartial, centrist journalist, however it isn’t centrist to start out an anti-woke nonprofit, not to mention one funded by a GOP megadonor—a person whose relationship is so priceless to you that you simply’re involved it could possibly be broken through some emails.

Bari Weiss additionally discovered time to discovered the College of Austin which Inside Greater Ed coated in 2024:

The college, generally known as UATX, markets itself as an establishment born out of alarm over the “rising tide of illiberalism and censoriousness prevalent in America’s universities” and says it’s dedicated to “the pursuit of fact.”
…
The college will not be accredited however obtained approval from the state of Texas to grant levels, which allowed it to start accepting functions final November. College students can earn a bachelor’s diploma in liberal research with a focus in one of many fields supplied by the college’s “facilities of educational inquiry,” which embrace STEM, arts and letters, and economics, politics and historical past. The college presently employs about 20 school members, with no tenure system. Tuition is $32,000 per yr.

On convocation day, college students met with Governor Greg Abbott on the Texas state capitol.

Brian Hansbury listed a number of the funders Bari Weiss satisfied to chip in:

College of Austin obtained $200 million in seed cash from the next billionaires:

  • Joe Lonsdale, Palantir co-founder and Trump backer
  • Peter Thiel, Palantir co-founder and J.D. Vance backer
  • Harlan Crow, Supreme Court docket corrupter who additionally gives the varsity with classroom house in his buildings.
  • Len Blavatnik
  • John Arnold, criticizes labor unions and appears to have been radicalized to the Weiss trigger by the “censors” on the New York Occasions
  • Jeffrey Yass, who gave $35 million to start out UATX and deeply funds MAGA candidates

Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi and The Twitter Recordsdata
Earlier than we get to the crown jewel within the Bari Weiss empire, I need to briefly cowl her position in “The Twitter Recordsdata.”

One screengrab of a headline is value a thousand phrases:

The Insider piece is value quoting from as properly:

  • Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and others got entry to the so-called “Twitter Recordsdata” by Elon Musk.
  • Weiss and Taibbi are controversial figures who struck out alone after working for main media shops.
  • They share Musk’s anti-establishment outlook, and have been granted the within observe on a serious story.

Bari Weiss centered her Twitter Recordsdata thread on “shadowbanning” — a apply the place some content material is quietly suppressed. She mentioned screenshots of how Twitter workers making “blacklists” and limiting sure trending subjects and accounts.

Some noticed a smoking gun, proof of longstanding claims by conservatives of censorship. Others argued that what Weiss described was merely what all content material moderation seems like.

And in contrast to her colleague in that effort, Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss has managed to say on good phrases with the mercurial Elon Musk.

That hasn’t stopped Taibbi from singing her praises (and their friendship is probably going why he’s not opposing the Zionist genocide in Gaza):

I’ve had variations with Bari Weiss. I’ve disagreed together with her politics greater than as soon as and mistook her arrival on the Twitter Recordsdata mission as an indication that I might be squeezed out. I additionally wasn’t positive in regards to the determination to select the beginning of labor on the Twitter Recordsdata because the second to launch The Free Press. As a reporter with zero enterprise sense I couldn’t think about taking up one thing else at that harried second. However that is who Bari is. She combines an innate sense of viewers with uncommon entreprenurial power. Moreover she understood, in a method her spineless now-complaining former colleagues from the mainstream press world by no means did, that with the intention to survive and retain her viewers, she would want to take dangers and wager on herself.

As an illustration, when 1,000 of her New York Occasions friends signed a Khmer Rougian denunciation of former Editorial Web page Editor James Bennet in 2020, securing his resignation for working an editorial by Senator Tom Cotton calling for Nationwide Guard in opposition to anti-police protesters, Weiss balked. She went public, explaining the enterprise was tormented by a schism between believers in “safetyism” and civil libertarianism, then quickly after resigned from a plum job within the Occasions opinion part.

Two years after that she launched TheFP. Whereas lunatic former Occasions staff have been wanting across the workplace to see whose profession they might destroy subsequent (star well being author Donald McNeil was a subsequent mission), Bari pushed Elon Musk in methods I couldn’t and received him to bodily present us what a Twitter “P2” viewer appeared like — this was a show display screen that confirmed Belief and Security executives the historical past of Twitter consumer accounts in visible shorthand. That single second led to photos of Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya’s “developments blacklist” notation, a picture which exploded myths about shadow-banning and had far-reaching implications, resulting in a Supreme Court docket case and an unbelievable future change in NIH management.

Bari Weiss and Her $150 Million Media Property

The crown jewel of Bari Weiss new empire was The Free Press. The New York Occasions described it thus in 2024:

Bari Weiss has lengthy been blessed with two superpowers, these near her say: She is aware of how one can make helpful enemies, and she or he is aware of how one can make helpful buddies.

Because the founder, public face and heat-seeking curator of The Free Press, a brand new media firm with ambitions to overhaul the previous media, Ms. Weiss, 40, has recognized a mélange of dependable foils: the intolerant left; variety, fairness and inclusion packages; opponents of Israel; The New York Occasions, the place Ms. Weiss labored till 2020.
…
She has shared Shabbat dinner with David Mamet, the culture-warring playwright who moonlights as a Free Press cartoonist, and dazzled executives on the Solar Valley Convention, strolling sheepishly previous cordoned-off journalists she met in a earlier life.
…
She has requested “boobs or butts?” of Kim Kardashian in a buddy-buddy interview and compelled Jerry Seinfeld to schlep to look at another person discuss right into a microphone — and, for his selection, face chants of “genocide supporter!” as he left Ms. Weiss’s speech about “The State of World Jewry” in Manhattan.

She has headlined a public dialogue of antisemitism in a comfy atmosphere (“Sheryl Sandberg, welcome to my lounge,” one June podcast started) and a non-public one final yr for Hollywood dignitaries like Disney’s Robert Iger on the Bel Air house of Dan Loeb, the hedge fund titan.

And she or he held court docket final summer time on the kingly Hamptons property of Bobby Kotick, the previous chief government of Activision Blizzard, the place a smattering of billionaires and moguls listened to Ms. Weiss discuss up Vivek Ramaswamy, the previous Republican presidential candidate, and query President Biden’s psychological capability, in line with individuals accustomed to her go to.

The Free Press has actually loved success, buying over 1 million subscribers by December, 2024.

Matt Johnson took a stab at explaining the enchantment of The Free Press:

One cause for The Free Press’ recognition is that it presents mental reassurance to legions of anti-anti-Trump readers—refined conservatives who could also be uneasy about Trumpism, but need to imagine that wokeness and different left-wing excesses are the first threats to Western civilization. Trump’s commerce struggle and the following market meltdown may give them some pause, however they’re determined for mental ammunition to persuade themselves and others that the administration’s campaign in opposition to “wokeness”—and related initiatives like DEI—was needed even when it meant trampling our democratic establishments.

Ideologically sympathetic shops like The Free Press persuade a wider swath of People that the Trump administration’s culture-war agenda is justified. Exactly as a result of it pretends to be ruled by journalistic values like objectivity and equity, The Free Press helps maintain the society-wide hysteria over wokeness whereas downplaying the nation’s descent into authoritarianism.
…
If there was a Free Press pitchbot, it might hardly give you a greater headline than the one affixed to columnist Batya Ungar-Sargon’s article final week: “I Used to Hate Trump. Now I’m a MAGA Lefty.” The headline gives the look to an unfamiliar reader that Ungar-Sargon’s conversion is one thing new, when she has been a reliable Trump cheerleader for years. Most lately, she’s been claiming that Trump’s tariffs will reverse not simply America’s manufacturing but additionally, preposterously, its masculinity disaster. In her MAGA conversion piece, she describes Trump as “socially reasonable, anti-interventionist, and dedicated to America’s blue-collar staff.”

In her e mail asserting the Paramount acquisition right now, Bari Weiss wrote of her plans for CBS Information:

What does this imply for CBS Information? It means a redoubled dedication to nice journalism. It means constructing on a storied legacy—and bringing that historic newsroom into 2025 and past. Most of all, it means working tirelessly to ensure CBS Information is probably the most trusted information group on the planet.

We might not be doing this if we didn’t imagine in David Ellison, and the whole management crew who took over Paramount this summer time. They’re doubling down as a result of they imagine in information. As a result of they’ve braveness. As a result of they love this nation. And since they perceive, as we do, that America can’t thrive with out frequent information, frequent truths, and a standard actuality.

The Wall Road Journal celebrated The Free Press effectiveness at a automobile for Israel’s hasbara in November, 2023:

the Israel-Hamas struggle has been the breakout second for Free Press, which is interesting to readers hungry for an alternative choice to what they view as an unfair characterization of Israel in mainstream media. Amongst its current tales are “Why My Technology Hates Jews,” a chunk about polling that confirmed many younger individuals siding with Hamas within the battle; a narrative a few rich couple who’re offering monetary backing for pro-Palestinian rallies; and a chunk about individuals tearing down posters of kidnapped Israeli youngsters.
…
Weiss mentioned Free Press’s protection is resonating with individuals who really feel the mainstream media is creating “ethical confusion,” for instance through the use of phrases like insurgents to explain Hamas, as an alternative of labeling it a terrorist group.

In a single article, Weiss took the New York Occasions to activity for a headline that mentioned Israel had bombed a Gaza hospital, info it attributed to Palestinian authorities. The Occasions later up to date its reporting after Israel denied duty, as did The Wall Road Journal, and each shops finally mentioned proof pointed to a Palestinian group being accountable. The Occasions revealed an Editor’s Notice saying that its preliminary protection relied too closely on claims by Hamas.
…
Early on Oct. 7, after Weiss and her spouse, Nellie Bowles, had returned house from a Shabbat dinner, Weiss’s cellphone blew up with messages about Hamas’s assault on Israel. Weiss instantly started commissioning tales, and the subsequent day quite a lot of workers converged round her kitchen desk in Los Angeles to drum up concepts.

In her first column after the assault, Weiss wrote: “You might be about to face up to a barrage of lies in regards to the struggle that broke out right now in Israel.” She has penned columns about “Jew hate” on school campuses and examined the views of Gazans who don’t assist Hamas. Weiss interviewed an Israeli mom whose two younger sons had been taken by Hamas as hostages.

Absolutely I don’t must level out that Israel did certainly bomb that hospital and that they’ve continued to bomb it, and nearly each different hospital in Gaza.

Bari Weiss and the Murdered Martyr

I need to wrap this up by specializing in one incident within the profession of Bari Weiss: her position within the demise of Palestinian poet Dr. Refaat Alareer.

Present Affairs summarized the scenario:

Alareer was one of the essential literary voices of Palestine—a poet, essayist, and professor of English literature whose work has modified the lives of numerous individuals, each in Gaza and much past. His life was brutally reduce quick by an Israeli airstrike, which Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor describes as “surgical” and “apparently deliberate,” concentrating on his sister’s condominium “out of the whole constructing the place it’s positioned.” It was the second time Alareer had been the goal of Israeli bombs, after he and his household survived a strike on their very own house in late October 2023, and it got here after weeks of demise threats from Israeli troopers and their supporters over his on-line activism—threats spurred on by Free Press editor Bari Weiss, who painted a goal on Alareer’s again on social media.

However I’ll let Dr. Alareer’s tweet change with Bari Weiss converse for itself:

The Spanish poet Federico García Lorca was not in a position to title the fascists who murdered him, however Refaat Alareer was.

Lorca’s demise is shrouded in thriller, one thing he predicted in his poem “The Fable And Spherical of the Three Mates” (translated from the Spanish through Lithub:

Then I spotted I had been murdered.
They appeared for me in cafes, cemeteries and church buildings
…. however they didn’t discover me.
They by no means discovered me?
No. They by no means discovered me.

I’ll finish with a quote from Alareer’s 2012 poem, “I’m you”:

‏I’m simply you.
‏I’m your previous haunting
‏Your current and your future.
‏I try such as you did.
‏I struggle such as you did.
‏I resist such as you resisted
‏And for a second,
‏I’d take your tenacity
‏As a mannequin,
‏Had been you not holding
‏The barrel of the gun
‏Between my bleeding
‏Eyes.





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