Blind support for Israel has muzzled Bari Weiss's Free Press
Photo byfor The Free Press
In the United States today, there are few more powerful or influential media start-ups than Bari Weiss's the Free Press. Founded in 2021 and run through Substack, the Free Press today boasts more than 750,000 subscribers, at least 100,000 of whom pay. Weiss, 41 and a former New York Times columnist, is a media mogul for the new age, and her reporters and columnists regularly publish pieces that are widely praised or reviled – either way, the work is rarely ignored. Weiss and her publication have been popular with those who resented the leftward cultural drift of the 2010s and craved a home for combative centrism.
Before Donald Trump returned to the White House, so-called heterodox intellectuals and writers were in the ascendancy, defending free expression against the excesses of the left. Weiss, their leader, denounced self-censorship and ideological conformity, and her news organisation's website vowed to uphold 'honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence'. The Free Press's site still reads: 'We always aim to highlight multiple perspectives on complicated subjects. And we don't allow ideology to stand in the way of searching for the truth.'
But that isn't true. Weiss's Free Press has one red line: Israel. The organisation is unapologetically hawkish and anti-Palestinian, and has little to say about the attacks on free expression the Trump administration has unleashed on pro-Palestinian activists. Whereas other prominent heterodox writers and publications have been willing to criticise the Trump administration and Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel, Weiss has stayed mum.
Weiss's values have been made plain – she once declared herself 'guilty as charged' to being a 'Zionist fanatic'. She seems to have little interest in rethinking a conflict that has led to the deaths of more than 50,000 Gazans. Recent evidence of the Free Press's propagandising includes a column by Michael Ames which declared war-torn Gaza wasn't at risk of a famine – though he concedes 'it was never in doubt that the Israel-Hamas war brought immense human suffering to Gaza, including from food shortages'. There is something insidious about squabbling over the definition of a 'famine' while referring to 'food shortages'. At the time, a total Israeli blockade of aid deliveries to Gaza was approaching its third month. Israel has since allowed small amounts of aid into the Strip, but distribution has been marred by chaos and shootings that have killed dozens of Palestinians.
Even centrist and conservative institutions have acknowledged the disaster that is unfolding in Gaza. Glenn Loury, the American economist who has long been a prominent voice among the heterodox elite, has come out against Israel's conduct in the war. So has Andrew Sullivan, the leading political commentator who has also railed against 'woke' (and Trump) a great deal over the last few years.
The Free Press stands apart. The greater question is how sustainable this will be. Weiss found her success speaking to disaffected liberals who believed that on cultural issues the Democratic Party had swerved too far left. The Free Press was a clearing house for readers who were anxious and aghast over the dominance of identity politics in academia, the media, and elsewhere; the audience demand was real, and business for Weiss boomed.
With the Democrats out of power and woke on the retreat, the Free Press's purpose grows less clear. It has relatively little to say about Trump's frontal assault on democratic institutions or his systematic violations of free speech. Meanwhile, its defence of the Israeli government holds little appeal for anyone who isn't a hardcore Republican or ardent Zionist. Neoconservatives have also found a home in the Free Press, which fills a niche but demonstrates how out of step the publication is with current trends. Fiscally conservative economics paired with muscular military interventions around the globe are not popular with Republicans or Democrats in America. Trump's ascension can be read, in part, as a repudiation of neoconservatism. Meanwhile, many of the Maga-curious independents who gave Trump another shot last year are drifting leftward again. The Trump chaos is too much to stomach. He has lost popularity faster than any president in modern times.
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Weiss's ideology has prevented her publication from adequately covering the failures of the new US administration. Weiss is blinded by her uncompromising support for the Israeli government. Netanyahu can do no wrong. To punish Hamas, all of Gaza must be punished, and there's seemingly no limit to the amount of suffering inflicted on civilians in retaliation for the 7 October attacks. It's hard to think of another recent war that has lacked such a sense of proportion. The ultra-religious, ethno-nationalist right wing governs Israel, and that is not going to change in the foreseeable future. Any commentator who cannot acknowledge that reality is lying to their audience or lying to themselves.
That is where Weiss and the Free Press have now gone. They cannot comprehend that Israel has abandoned all pretext of a two-state solution, that the annexation of the West Bank and ethnic cleansing in Gaza are Netanyahu's only goals, and that Israel may, in time, become a genuine pariah state – which would be disastrous for the Israelis themselves and do the Jewish diaspora, to which I belong, no favours.
Or the Free Press can comprehend all of this, and simply does not care.
[See also: Syria may be broken, but it's energised by hope]
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