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Some here may know of Keith Woods, who is a well-known figure on the Dissident Right. He had his Twitter account unbanned a month ago. Keith is Irish, and he made a tweet about an upcoming hate speech law being considered in Ireland:
Keith was retweeted by Elon Musk who replied "This is a massive attack against freedom of speech". He was subsequently retweeted by Trump Jr. and retweeted by Jordan Peterson.
So overall Keith's brief analysis of the hate speech law reached 11 million people, and sparked debate among opposition politicians and gave the law more public visilbity than it had before.
There's a very slim chance that any of those three know who Keith is or his politics. But it's still a good demonstration of why Twitter is important, and being banned from the public square really does shift the discourse. Of course that is the entire point.
New Florida hate speech law coming out of Jerusalem
After Trump Jr. retweeted Keith, Keith made a reply that was quite strategically intended to goad Trump Jr. into attacking Ron DeSantis for his recent trip to Israel:
You see, Ron DeSantis made a secret trip to Jerusalem (!) last week where he signed a new Florida hate-speech law which "aims to crack down on antisemitic and other heritage based threats." The press release, Governor Ron DeSantis Signs Legislation in Israel Further Combatting Antisemitism provides a summary, and one of the more significant parts of the legislation is:
In tandem with Florida, a couple of weeks ago it was reported that several people from the 2017 torch-light march in Charlottesville on the UVA campus are being charged with felonies on the basis of burning an object with an intent to intimidate. So there seems to be a broader strategy of expanding the definition of "intimidation" to mean "politically incorrect protest" and ban those displays from public universities.
Another significant fact of this Florida Law which was signed in Jerusalem is that it mandates that all manner of offenses, including minor litter (i.e. flyering) are to all be reclassified as hate crimes for statistical reporting. The ADL and various Jewish organizations were recently up in arms that hate crime data did not show enough of a rise an antisemitism, so there's a significant effort to expand the reporting of "hate crime" to include all manner of things.
I am unfortunately not surprised by this affair- an American hate speech law being signed in Jersualem. It goes to show that just because a conservative plays tough on some culture war issues does not at all mean they are an ally. The conservative establishment is not an ally, it's entirely compromised. Supporting conservatism is not an option for people who oppose this sort of influence. I would support Biden over Ron DeSantis at this point- I would be genuinely afraid of what Ron would do at the behest of Israel.
It's so secret that it is featured on his official website: https://flgov.com/2023/04/27/governor-ron-desantis-delivers-keynote-address-in-jerusalem-to-commemorate-the-75th-anniversary-of-the-founding-of-israel/
Doesn't get any more secret that that. And of course, a man gearing up for a presidential campaign going on foreign relations tour and going to Israel among several other key US allies is super-nefarious - I mean, Joos(!)!11oneonme11 are involved. He surely is part of the ZOG now, it is proven.
The Representative described it as secret, Florida State Representative Randy Fine. Obviously they publicized it after the fact, but the Representative himself described the trip to Jerusalem to deliver the bill to be signed as secret:
So the Representative himself described it in even stronger terms than I did- it was a secret trip to JERUSALEM (!!!) to deliver the strongest antisemitism bill in the United States (!!!!).
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Imagine if the white house was full of staffers from Saudi arabia and they were all staunch pro Saudi, had a clear pro Saudi agenda and continuously talked about Saudi Arabia. Many openly called themselves Saudi firsters. That would be considered weird. We are supposed to forget about the extreme overrepresentation of a small minority of jews whose interests and views differ from the rest of the population.
Except nothing like that is actually is happening - nobody calls themselves "Israel firsters", nobody "continuously talks about Israel" (in fact, the current administration is pretty hostile to Israel though thankfully most of the time ignores it by now), and White House is not "full of staffers from Israel" (unless you consider anybody with Jewish blood to be "from Israel", which makes as much sense as considering anybody with Arabic blood be "from Saudi Arabia"). There are, indeed, a number of Muslim staffers, and the number of ethnically Jewish ones (most of them are not even practicing Jews, in fact, I am not sure there's one practicing Jew among top current officials). It is not "weird" in any way.
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I think you've accidentally stumbled onto a generalization; any group that holds an important resource will get preference in how our policies are shaped to please others. Arabs have oil, Israelis have Jerusalem, Iowans have swing votes.
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Could be a hold over from the days when only the federal government got the .gov suffix or perhaps its because that site is being run by DeSantis himself (or rather his campaign staff) instead of the state government proper.
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Florida be open for business, yo.
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Having some experience with non-US governmental internet management, it might be much easier to buy a .com domain than to fill in all necessary forms for setting up a .gov one and wait until the wheels finish turning. So somebody might just lose patience, buy a .com and when the .gov finally comes through just put a redirect on it. At least I've seen such things happening.
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