Suddenly, Facebook, where I have 5000 “friends,” would not allow me to pay them (i.e. to “boost” some articles of mine) because this work no longer met “community standards.”
What?
Who instituted the Orwellian algorithms that refused to allow me to “boost” an op-ed that I wrote and which RealClearPolitics titled: “How Multiculturalism Hijacked Feminism.” It took a long while for the algorithm to make up its mind.
Then, Facebook would not allow me to boost a review of my new book “A Politically Incorrect Feminist” which appeared in Medium and was written by a psychologist, Dr. Julie Ancis, who, ironically, specializes in diversity. Once again, the algorithm must have had to consult with Brother algorithms before rejecting my “ad.” This rejection also took time but clearly, I had fallen off the politically correct wagon.
I know that others—often significant,distinguished, and high profile others,have also reported having their pro-Israel and anti-Jihad material rejected in terms of “boosting” and were thus reduced to a smaller circulation. These days, being “anti-Jihad” is, wrongfully, considered the same as being “anti-Muslim.”
So, here’s what I just did. I titled my Rosh Hashana greeting thusly: “How Zionism Hijacks the Palestinian Narrative” and boosted it. Within two minutes, Facebook approved this.
Some Facebook friends were puzzled. Why had I, of all people, titled something in this way? Some did not know what “boosting” meant. Others cursed Facebook as “hypocritical Mamzers” and “twisted idiots,” and vowed to circulate my posts widely.
When I explained myself, most Facebook “friends” soon understood what I had done: clearly exposed the extraordinary bias at Facebook and, for that matter, at Wikipedia as well. I had tugged, ever so slightly, at the Emperor’s false beard, flung open the curtain and saw that a mere mortal was projecting himself as a monumentally larger-than-life Wizard of Oz.
The internet Players play favorites, drive chosen narratives, censor that with which they disagree, are far from objective, and seem to have become a subsidiary of the United Nations.
I—and a blessed handful of others have been writing about a new kind of censorship for quite a while. Once I published the truth about Judaism, Israel, anti-Semitism, and the fact that women’s rights are almost non-existent under Islam today, my 20th-century feminist work, once heralded in all the politically correct venues, was disappeared.
My new work, warmly welcomed at conservative sites, functioned essentially as samizdat (what Russian dissidents wrote and passed around from hand to hand during the Soviet regime). They were dangerous, endangered, and were used by left-liberals to prove that I am an Islamophobic racist and a Zionist.
I am Goldstein in Orwell’s 1984. That’s me.
However, as far as the left, “progressive,” and mainstream media and their readers were concerned, I had not spoken or written a thing. Even when I wrote about the consequences of repeated public gang-rapes in Sudan (which I termed “gender cleansing”), or the oppressive forced-choice nature of face veiling and the Burqa—many cherished feminist colleagues refused to read it because of where I had published it.
Let me be clear: Censorship exists on both sides of the aisle. Certain subjects are not welcomed by conservatives and certain subjects are far from welcome among left-liberals. This is totally tragic, but that is not the same as disappearance and rejection on a supposedly open Facebook. The death or rather the price to be paid for independent thinking is getting higher by the moment.
But here’s one thing we can do, at least on Facebook. For now, if you want to “boost” an article, just make sure that the title is pro-Palestine and anti-Israel and your work will circulate widely...
Phyllis Chesler is the author of eighteen books, including two about honor killing, a 2013 recipient of the National Jewish Book Award, and a Ginsburg-Ingerman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
