We learned with some dismay that the Anti-Defamation League is now partnering with the PayPal company to investigate how American groups they say are extremist, and hate movements take advantage of financial platforms to fund their activities. Taking down their accounts is sure to follow. PayPal is thus continuing its recent pattern of making common cause with such social media giants as Facebook and Twitter to restrict the activities and advocacy of those with whom they disagree.
What makes this of special interest to our community is the fact that the ADL has strayed from its primary focus of combating anti-Semitism to advocate for much anything that smacks of progressive and Democrat Party notions of what is right and wrong.
Thus, for example, the ADL vociferously opposed the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh because his views on “reproductive freedom” were not as accommodating as theirs – despite that Kavanaugh’s views were hardly based on any notion of animus on his part or on the part of the millions of Americans who shared his position. Indeed, the ADL has taken to labeling as “hate speech” any notion that religious freedom supersedes gender rights claimed by the LGBT community for its members. This includes even those views based on biblical proscription. Significantly, the ADL also dismissed President Trump’s executive order banning the highly controversial Critical Race Theory from federal government training programs. Did they not believe that he had at least an arguable position?
We will be watching to see where the participants take this new partnership. But we can already see the irony in a group that was formed to fight for the right to full participation of Jews in American society should be so at the ready to work against the fullest and most robust right to participate in its pubic discourse.