Recommended Reading: Censorship, Silence, and Genocide

NinaIllingworth April 20, 2025 antisemitism, Benjamin Netanyahu, blog, Columbia, crimes against humanity, Deborah Lipstadt, Donald Trump, Gaza, genocide, Imperialism, Israel, Joe Biden, Mahmoud Khalil, McCarthyism, Mohsen Mahdawi, Nina Illingworth, Palestine, Propaganda, Rec Reads, Recommended Reading, Rümeysa Öztürk, settler colonialism, student protests, Trump Administration

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Why We Can’t Stop Talking About Gaza in the New Trump Era

There is something altogether perverse about the fact that in using his ICE Gestapo to kidnap anti-genocide protestors legally residing in America, US President Donald Trump has simultaneously all but extinguished mainstream discussion about the actual genocide his regime is helping Israel conduct in Gaza. In writing about the Trump administration’s fascist assault on foreign student anti-genocide protestors, a lot of what we talk about right now is the domestic social costs produced by these authoritarian actions and the failure to oppose them. I don’t mean to dole out recriminations here because injustice and repression against any part of the opposition to fascism, is injustice and repression that harms us all; to say nothing of the personal costs to the students targeted for having the audacity to think conducting an ongoing genocide in an open air concentration camp is morally wrong. But if you’re asking me why I think the regime is pursuing these fascist, repressive policies however, and why the administration before them was happy to lay the groundwork that is today enabling Trump to target anti-genocide protests under the false banner of “fighting antisemitism,” I must unfortunately conclude that the answer is probably “because it’s working.”

This is not a conclusion I’ve reached lightly, but the evidence of a shift in our discourse after Trump’s sham ceasefire agreement is all around us; particularly in “polite society.” How else can you explain political and military leaders in Israel all but admitting they intend to finish off the genocide they’ve been conducting against Palestinians in Gaza without much notice in the American media environment, and amid a collapse in popular resistance to the genocide; even as public polling indicates a strong shift in American sympathies away from Israel and its crimes against humanity in Gaza?

‘Only Hellfire’: Israel Says Lifesaving Aid, Troop Withdrawal Off the Table for Gaza

“Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday that the U.S.-backed genocidal policy of blocking lifesaving humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip will continue, and that Israel Defense Forces troops will remain in the embattled Palestinian enclave indefinitely.

“Israel’s policy is clear: No humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers preventing Hamas from using it as a tool with the population,” Katz said. “No one is currently planning to allow any humanitarian aid into Gaza, and there are no preparations to enable such aid.”

I want to be clear, I’m not saying there’s no active resistance to the genocide going on in the United States; rather I’m arguing that the regime’s fascist repression is contributing to a climate of fear that’s suppressing discussion about and resistance to Israel’s crimes against humanity in the broader culture. And let’s be fair here, the still quite bipartisan nature of support for this particular application of fascist terrorism in the American ruling establishment makes opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza perhaps one of the most dangerous acts of anti-fascism a person can undertake in this political moment. Being afraid to speak out is entirely understandable, given our present circumstances.

But the fact that we understand the cause of the problem, doesn’t mean the problem isn’t real. When Trump kidnaps a Maryland father and traffics him to a torture prison in El Salvador, the oppositional political and media apparatus in this country are quick to condemn him and demand action. When Trump starts black-bagging anti-genocide student protest leaders and shipping them to nightmare jails in politically favorable court districts, that very same establishment equivocates, says nothing at all, or sometimes outright supports that repression.

Take for example former Biden administration antisemitism czar Deborah Lipstadt:

Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy

“I’m not opposed to the administration rescinding the student visas of some of the people that they’re rescinding the student visas of,” she said. “But I just think it should be done properly, according to the laws of the country.”

So uh, you folks got that right? As far as Lipstadt is concerned the fascist repression of free speech and protest rights are fine, but god-damnit there are rules here people! Please keep in mind that this woman is one of the foremost authorities in the world on The Holocaust, so we can presume she knows she’s protecting fascists to support a genocide. I also assume, but don’t know, that she holds no special place in her heart for the Klepto Kaiser; so I can only surmise that she’s just a hardcore Zionist and a big fan of bombing children and hospitals.

Look friends, I know that this is a really bad time to ask people to stick their necks out to oppose a genocide but Israel just bombed literally the last hospital in Gaza and it barely made the evening news in the United States. The regime and indeed much of the larger ruling class establishment that supports settler colonialism, and profits from the genocide by various means, wants to create an environment where speaking out against the genocide in Gaza and Israel’s settler colonial massacres is just criminal and subversive enough to stop most of us from doing it. This will then allow them to easily isolate and repress a much smaller number of people who are brave enough and otherwise able to resist the genocide directly. It is vital that we counteract this cone of silence effect by keeping the US-backed genocide in Gaza on our lips, and our outrage about crimes against humanity Israel is committing in the discourse; the regime can’t arrest us all – and Gaza, is running out time.

If you don’t think speaking out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and on behalf of the people being slaughtered there matters, then why is the Netanyahu government working so hard with multi-billion dollar social media companies like Meta to suppress pro-Palestinian speech online?

Leaked Data Reveals Massive Israeli Campaign to Remove Pro-Palestine Posts on Facebook and Instagram

“A sweeping crackdown on posts on Instagram and Facebook that are critical of Israel—or even vaguely supportive of Palestinians—was directly orchestrated by the government of Israel, according to internal Meta data obtained by Drop Site News. The data show that Meta has complied with 94% of takedown requests issued by Israel since October 7, 2023. Israel is the biggest originator of takedown requests globally by far, and Meta has followed suit—widening the net of posts it automatically removes, and creating what can be called the largest mass censorship operation in modern history.

Government requests for takedowns generally focus on posts made by citizens inside that government’s borders, Meta insiders said. What makes Israel’s campaign unique is its success in censoring speech in many countries outside of Israel. What’s more, Israel’s censorship project will echo well into the future, insiders said, as the AI program Meta is currently training how to moderate content will base future decisions on the successful takedown of content critical of Israel’s genocide.”

As I’ve noted elsewhere, it’s very clear that the pro-genocide Pig Empire establishment used the sham ceasefire Trump supposedly brokered in Gaza as an excuse to reset the discourse and resume the genocide at pace. We’ve returned to a pre-2024 corporate media environment of silence and minimization of crimes against humanity, particularly in America; and a US establishment motivated by racism and greed is working overtime to keep you from talking about, and hopefully (for genocidal monsters) even thinking about Gaza, while Israel attempts to wipe out the Palestinians there before we wake up and realize what’s going on.

The only way to fight this coordinated effort to drive Israel’s horrifying crimes against Palestinians in Gaza out of the discourse, is to keep talking about them while resisting both the genocide and the US government’s support for it. We’ve been here before and broke through the cone of silence; in fact that’s the whole reason the ruling class establishment is trying to rewind the discourse around the genocide in Gaza to a pre-2024 state. We must not let them get away with it by contributing to that cone of silence; even in a climate of fear like the one the Trump regime is actively working to create. Gaza must remain in our hearts, and on our lips until the propaganda model breaks, and even a pro-genocide American establishment is once again forced to acknowledge the horrible reality of Israel’s eliminationist actions and agenda; an agenda that would ultimately be impossible to enact without widespread American institutional support.