Jason D. Greenblatt
In the age of the social-media dunk and viral clip, there’s no room for disagreement.
You may want to learn and debate by interacting with people who disagree with you. But the mobs that pile on when you threaten a sacred cow, especially one precious to the online left, have no interest in debate. They only want to destroy you.
I learned this firsthand when I made what should have been an uncontroversial point on social media — that those screaming “genocide” at Israel might want to direct their outrage toward Hamas, the terrorist organization primarily responsible for Gazans’ suffering. Hamas has maintained an iron grip on the Strip for nearly two decades through theft, violence and repression. They dehumanize their own population as a matter of strategy, using civilian deaths as a military and diplomatic strategy. They are the evil actors responsible for the tragedy in the coastal enclave. Common sense, right? Not in today’s digital hellscape.
An “independent journalist” obsessed with demonizing Israel called me a “maniac.” Her hundreds of thousands of followers jumped into action. Within hours, my mentions became a sewer of vitriolic attacks. The responses didn’t try to address what I had argued. And they weren’t just angry; they were templated, clearly coordinated, almost copy-pasted in their talking points. “Shill.” “Genocide denier.” “Baby killer.” Those who came to my defense received the same treatment. The antisemitism was often not disguised at all. These weren’t organic reactions from outraged individuals. This was organized warfare.
The playbook was clear: Flood the zone with vicious personal attacks, deploy anti-Jewish tropes, force reasonable people to rebut wild conspiracy theories and make the cost of speaking up so high that reasonable people simply shut up. I won’t, but many others will reasonably conclude that dissent is not worth inviting abuse. This creates an illusion of false consensus. Support for Israel begins to look like a fringe position held by condemnable people.
Ironically, when I speak and write in the Arab world, this rarely happens. I come candidly to Israel’s defense, and no matter how much my audience disagrees, they do so substantively and respectfully.
In other words, there is something more to this phenomenon than impassioned disagreement. Vitriol has become a tactic. Taking cues from left-wing podcasters who have made the edgy rejection of norms their brand, progressive activists have weaponized social media.
Just ask former New York Gov. David Paterson’s wife, Michele Paige Paterson, who received threatening phone calls after her husband dared to criticize Zohran Mamdani, the online left’s current darling and the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor. Think about that: A governor’s family is getting threats because he dared to disagree with a progressive politician. This is where we are now.
Nastiness isn’t exclusively the province of the left. The terminally online right, with its own pied podcasters leading the way, is trying to build a movement on smears, too. Tucker Carlson has recently suggested that not only was pedophilic criminal Jeffrey Epstein an Israeli agent, but that Americans who serve in the Israel Defense Forces should lose their American citizenship. These aren’t arguments. They are slurs, bullying.
Carlson’s use of an anti-Israel obsession as an organizing tool only highlights how the nastier elements of left and right are merging. Organizing hatred against Jews has been a political weapon for as long as Jews have existed. But antisemitism is rarely the whole story. Behind such hatred is always some broader social sickness.
The answer is not complicated. First, it works. When facing a mob feels like stepping into a blender, most people choose silence. The far left — and increasingly the right mimicking it — has discovered that they can win debates not through better arguments but by making the cost of opposition unbearable. It’s the social-media equivalent of taking over campus buildings or chanting threatening slogans. It’s a legal form of intimidation. Those who want to intimidate rather than persuade use it strategically.
Second, it serves broader authoritarian impulses. Neither conspiratorial “independent journalists” nor Carlson fanboys are interested in pluralistic coexistence. They want ideological compliance. The online left knows that dissent corrodes a socialist regime. And its right-wing mirror image thinks everyone who isn’t like them is a traitor.
We need to stop pretending these are good-faith actors who have simply gotten carried away. This is deliberate intimidation designed to shut down debate and enforce conformity.
Once we recognize organized bullying as a tactic rather than a side effect, we can start treating it as the pitiful behavior it is. It’s a sign of weakness, not strength. Bullying is what you do when you’re insecure. And these people are insecure. With good reason, too. Their positions are houses of cards, and many support anti-Western terrorist regimes.
Those of us on the receiving end of their abuse should feel encouraged when they come after us. We are hitting them where it hurts. That’s a sign to keep pushing and make sure that the bullying never works.
Jason D. Greenblatt was the White House Middle East envoy in the first Trump administration and the founder of Abraham Venture LLC.
