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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.
For more context, the Florida law is reaction to charming antics of group called "Goyim Defense League".
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-732553
https://twitter.com/BaruchSandhaus/status/1628429760622743553
(we all know most such groups in the past were found to be thick with feds, but this is not a reason to look suspiciously at these brave patriots)
I give it 45% feds, 45% leftist radicals "raising awareness", 8% 4chan trolls bored out of their minds, and maybe 2% genuine hateful idiots.
Not to dox myself, but as someone who has lived in Florida (including but not only Tampa) for a good chunk of my life, I would lower the fed slightly, lower the leftist radicals a decent chunk and up the trolls and hateful idiots. Maybe like 40% / 25%/ 20% / 15%.
Unless the radicals are dedicated enough to LARPing that they also go out to bars dressed normally and talk about this stuff to really sell the act (though I guess those could also be feds trying to infiltrate? I just know a lot of drunk dudes at the bars here start getting into politics and the Jews do come up). I will add that I would not take it turning out that these folks were actually recent moves from New York or California as meaning they were actually disguised leftists. The people (well, young people, not retirees) who have moved to Florida from New York and California in past couple years seem both more outspoken in their politics and more right wing than the average pre-covid Floridian (once again, ruling out truly dedicated LARPing that extends to work and bars).
Guessing a lot of them are kind of "cutting loose" after being in cities where being vocally conservative was asking to be a pariah.
I think there's a distance between drunkenly ranting about Joos in a bar and soberly dressing up into a Nazi garb, grabbing a swastika flag and standing in public for hours screaming Nazi slogans and harassing the passer-bys. A random low-IQ asshole is much more likely to do the former than the latter. A troll would rather do the latter, obviously.
"Cutting loose" sounds plausible, but there's a huge distance between being openly conservative and waving a swastika flag. It looks much more like LARPing "Conservatives are Nazis" meme than actual Nazis. Most genuine anti-Semites do not march with swastika flags, they are much more likely to do "I am not an anti-Semite, but..." than openly prance and scream "heil hitler". Of course, given it's like four people, among millions there would be exceptions to any rule, but in general that's what it looks like.
Agreed on broad strokes, hence keeping the order of likelihood if not the %s, mostly felt the need to bring it up because my %s would've looked more like yours if this had happened 2015-2019 (prior to that up the feds and lower the leftists) and only differ now due to personal experiences in Florida over the last couple years.
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