The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received over two-hundred complaints from American troops that their commanders used the Book of Revelation to frame the Iran War as a “Holy War” in which President Donald Trump was chosen to ignite “The End Times” as part of “God’s divine plan.” When I decided to make this series about the “Four Horsemen of New Zionism,” I meant it purely metaphorically. It seems some of our top brass have a more literal interpretation (welcome to the End Times). The Horseman, or rather Horsewoman, we will be spotlighting in this article is none other than the Empress of Identity, the Herald of Cancellation, Bari Weiss.
Bari Weiss has had an axe to grind against anti-Israel professors since her undergrad years at Columbia which included demanding the termination of certain professors. As we have analyzed previously, there is indeed academia rhetoric that crosses serious lines. Still, one can observe that identity driven experiences from Weiss’s formative years tragically put her on a trajectory of overzealous commentary devoid of nuance. Weiss maintains a willful blindness to evidence that doesn’t support her pro-Israel narrative.
Despite her viral resignation from The New York Times in 2020 over its identitarian groupthink tendencies, she now is one of the most pivotal figures in media where she serves as a shill for the Israeli government and creeping authoritarianism in America. Weiss’s hypocrisy is truly breathtaking. She will rail against identity politics while simultaneously embracing her Jewish identity and leveraging it to mercilessly cancel critics of Israel and smear them as antisemites. She catapulted herself to the stratosphere by riding a wave of backlash to wokeness, then weaponized those same woke tactics and identity politics to serve a foreign country and vindictively assist our government in criminalizing views she deemed wrongthink, such as the BDS movement. She might cosplay as a free speech warrior or classical liberal, but she runs CBS like a McCarthyite.
Weiss’s seminal work, her 2019 book How to Fight Antisemitism, identifies three distinct strands of antisemitism: far-right antisemitism, Islamist antisemitism, and far-left antisemitism. Interestingly, Christian Zionist antisemitism, where Jews are paradoxically both venerated and viewed as objects made for sacrifice to unleash the apocalypse, doesn’t quite make the cut for Weiss. A doomsday cult can bend American foreign policy in an effort to use Jewish people as pawns and this doesn’t warrant Weiss’s attention. Why? Because like this doomsday cult, Weiss essentially worships the Israeli government. This can be seen in the degree of effort she exerts in whitewashing the abuses of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, such as the prime minister’s softball interview on CBS where he is never asked about fanatical supremacists in his own cabinet or seriously challenged on actions of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) in Gaza.
When Weiss is so quick to label those who disagree with her regarding actions of the Israeli government as bigots, it has the effect of devaluing the term antisemitism. What is worse, it encourages the public to associate American Jews with the government of Israel (an association that government is eager to embrace), rather than treating them like individual citizens who may not even have a favorable view of that government in the first place. Consider this Washington Post poll showing significant erosion of support for Israel among American Jews. 61% of American Jews said Israel has committed war crimes during the Gaza War, and 39% contend that Israel has committed genocide. When the Israeli government commits atrocities and helps start wars with American tax dollars and people associate those things with their Jewish neighbors, as Weiss encourages them to, antisemitism inevitably spreads.
There is a very serious and alarming rise in antisemitism in the United States, and sadly the servile relationship our government has to Israel alongside the identity politics of prominent people like Bari Weiss is part of that problem. In what is truly sinister, the Israeli government will cynically exploit the rise in antisemitism that it helps to create to further its own narratives. In a vicious cycle, destruction fuels hate and hate fuels more destruction. By acting as a diplomatic shield and ATM for the IDF, Israel’s military feels emboldened to take more escalatory actions.
The ironically named “Free Press” is led by one of the most censorious figures in American media. One ought to applaud the organization for its mission statement’s commitment to independence, if only they could live up to it. Weiss made many valid critiques of the excesses of the woke left. For example, “In practice, intersectionality functions as a kind of caste system, in which people are judged according to how much their particular caste has suffered throughout history.” Weiss once remarked that the American left was “careering us toward a wan existence in which we are all forced to remain in the ethnic and racial lanes assigned to us by accident of our birth.” This correct critique is simply irreconcilable with Weiss’s hyper-fixation with her own Jewish identity and the notion that all Jewish identity necessitates an allegiance with the Israeli government, which would make criticism of Israeli policy inherently bigoted. This disposition clearly aligns Weiss more with identitarianism than social libertarianism. It is almost as if Weiss is the Ibram X. Kendi of Judaism.
Furthermore, her constant need to reassure the American people that academic wokeness is the most serious threat to freedom and those who think otherwise must be infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome like she used to be, while our society rapidly descends into authoritarian madness and our foreign policy is hijacked by Israel, is simply pathetic. Just ignore American citizens being gunned down in the streets by Trump’s masked goon squad. Ignore the fact that the Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and “Viceroy of Venezuela” Marco Rubio said that the United States went to war with Iran because the Israeli government was determined to start the war. The real problem is that an obscure Columbia University professor called Netanyahu a war criminal.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were said to be the Antichrist, war, famine, and death. Given the abhorrent and grotesque “reporting” of The Free Press denying the starvation tactics of the IDF in Gaza and their tragic consequences, we can dub Bari Weiss “famine” in our analogy. Writers for The Free Press argued that concerns about starvation in Gaza were unfounded because some of the images of starving children in Gaza included children who had other health conditions like rickets, ignoring the obvious fact that it is precisely these sorts of individuals who will be the first to suffer from lack of nourishment. We all know the consequences of Israel illegally blocking U.S. humanitarian aid while accepting U.S. military aid. It is an insult to the intelligence of The Free Press’s audience it assert otherwise.
Ever since Weiss’s conquest of CBS, this horsewoman is now omnipresent in the American political consciousness. She is not just a columnist, but a gatekeeper shaping discourse itself. This gargantuan level of influence can be observed in the distorted coverage of the current Iran War from outlets under Weiss’s purview. Given the circumstances surrounding American entrance into the Iran War, one wishes voices heeding Washington’s caution against entangling alliances were among the allegedly diverse opinions Weiss claims to seek to cultivate.
In conclusion, Bari Weiss would do well to drop this charade and at least be honest with us. Honesty is after all a stated value of The Free Press. Weiss can either be a thoughtful voice for America or she can be a puppet for Israel, but she can’t be both. Weiss can be a free speech warrior or a censorious agent of cancel culture, but she can’t be both. Weiss can promote classical liberalism or wield the war hammer of identity politics, but she can’t do both. The elite, aka the Epstein Class, has vested a great deal of power in Bari Weiss, and she should use it to serve the American people. Real journalistic leadership isn’t settling $16 million lawsuits with a petulant litigious manchild or trying to get comedy shows canceled, it’s holding people accountable when they starve people to death and start illegal wars, even when it’s politically inconvenient.
