If all of Twitter comes crashing down under its new ownership, I’ll sleep just like I did after hearing that half the company’s workforce had been laid off — which is to say, soundly. But the news last week that a bunch of companies are halting their paid advertisements on Twitter is a big problem.
New company CEO Elon Musk himself said Friday that “activist groups” were “pressuring advertisers” against buying promotional space on Twitter. Among the companies withholding their dollars are giants like General Motors, General Mills, and pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
The leftist Anti-Defamation League and NAACP led the effort. “Today, we are joining dozens of other groups to ask advertisers to pause Twitter spending because we are profoundly concerned about antisemitism and hate on the platform,” the ADL said in a statement.
This is one of the enduring great scams perpetrated on the country — “anti-hate” groups that are nothing more than liberal slush funds with a mission to morally shake down companies and corporations that fail to fall in line with the Democrat Party message.
It’s a smashing success just about every time they do it. It’s how they duped the MLB into pulling its 2021 All-Star Game out of Georgia. It’s how they reduced the commercials during Glenn Beck’s wildly popular former Fox News program to in-house ads and, sometimes, gold stocks. It’s how they got nearly every major retail chain to drop MyPillow products.
The formula is simple. Some necrophiliac outfit like Media Matters for America gets a meeting with executives at ad-buyer X or corporation Y and tells them that they’re funding or engaging in something “hateful.” (By “hateful” I mean anything along the lines of “keeping children away from sexually explicit content” or “supporting a president who got more votes for reelection than anyone before him.”) The naive executives then say, “My gosh, we had no idea!” and cease whatever activity they’ve just been told is promoting “white supremacy” or “hate” or some other fiction.
I know this firsthand, literally. The president of Media Matters told me it’s what he does.
And it works because unlike the activist left, the vast majority of Americans don’t spend every waking hour obsessing over politics. That’s especially true of corporate executives whose sole concern is profit. If they’re told by some alien from an “anti-hate” group that what or who they’re associating with is “racist” or “anti-democratic,” they don’t know any better. They assume it’s true. After all, who would make up such an ugly lie?
Leftists would. They do. Over and over again. And more often than not, it works!
To the advertisers and corporations: You guys have got to stop falling for it. I know you think you’re putting yourself on the right side of history by showing in some way that you’re “anti-hate,” but you’re not. You’re being had by manipulative, anti-American activists, and insulting half the country along the way. Millions of people love Fox News. Millions of people love Donald Trump. Millions of people want a secure southern border, election laws that prevent fraud, and an open Twitter where they can express their honest opinions without being banned by left-wing Silicon Valley nerds.
Why is their business expendable? Their money works just as well as any. Right-wingers buy Lululemon, too.
It’s a racket that has gone on for far too long, in no small part because the right hasn’t figured out how to counter it. But corporations and advertisers need to wise up. Stop falling for the “anti-hate” scheme.
