A New Threat to Free Speech

There is a new threat to freedom of speech emerging, and this time it comes from Facebook, whose proprietors have not acted to stop an Islamic jihadist group from destroying the largest pro-Israel site on the increasingly popular web social network. I join in supporting the protest being organized by The David Horowitz Freedom Center. If you are a Facebook member, or an individual outraged by those who seek to curb free speech, read this:

The David Horowitz Freedom Center is calling upon all supporters of freedom of speech and of Israel to join in its protest against Facebook, the Internet social networking site.  Facebook has allowed a group of hackers who openly support the terrorist group Hizbollah to take over and destroy what was once the largest pro-Israel site on Facebook. Then Facebook added insult to injury by disabling the account of that site’s creator, 14-year-old Todd Snider.

Snider established the Facebook group called “I Wonder How Quickly I Can Find 1,000,000 People Who Support Israel,” in July 2008. By February 2009 it was Facebook’s largest pro-Israel site, with over 180,000 members.

But on February 15, 2009, On February 15, 2009, Snider’s Facebook group was hacked and destroyed by a pro-Hizballah group calling itself “Lebanese Shee’a Hackers.” The hackers completely erased the original site content and replaced it with  threatening, obscenity-laced pro-jihad, anti-Israel propaganda datelined Bint Jbeil, South Lebanon: “DEAR ADMINS, DON’T WASTE MY AND YOUR TIME , LEAVE THIS GROUP ITS BETTER FOR BOTH THIS IS THE LAST TIME ILL EDIT YOU INFO , NEXT TIME…”

Facebook allowed the hackers to destroy Snider’s site, answering his repeated entreaties for help with blandly evasive  form letters.

And now, after the appearance on March 6  of an article about the incident in FrontPageMagazine.com (“Facebook Jihad” by Robert Spencer), Facebook has taken the additional step of disabling Snider’s account altogether, capitulating to the jihadi hackers and accusing Snider himself of “misusing” Facebook’s “features.”

Facebook’s outrageous action is not only an assault on free speech and a breach of its own social networking protocols, but also appeasement of a group of hackers who have invaded Facebook’s space and who openly avow their support for the jihad terrorist group Hizballah.

We therefore urge all Facebook members to contact the site administrators through the Facebook contact form, and all others to join us in protesting against Facebook’s outrageous behavior by writing to [email protected].

David Horowitz
Robert Spencer

Take out a moment and follow their suggestion. Forcing a change in Facebook’s outrageous action is a blow for free speech, as well as a necessary repudiation of Islamic practitioners of jihad.

On another matter, I would like to single out Cathy Young’s contribution to the debate I had with Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker. Young is one of the smartest and independent minded commentators writing today. Now she has a revamped blog site, on which she has posted her own comment on the issue of socialism and fascism. Young writes that we should leave the term fascism out of the debate, since for better or worse, its historical associations and the emotional reactions it creates takes away from a rational discussion of Obama’s economic program. I know that my friend Jeffrey Herf, perhaps one of the most brilliant scholars of fascism, feels the same way. Both he and Young have a point.

I still think Michael Ledeen is correct about the validity of the relevance of the economic component of the corporate state to today’s world. But perhaps this is a losing battle. Jonah Goldberg was savaged despite the many valid insights in his book for calling his study Liberal Fascism. He has valiantly defended himself. But to his critics, it is not satisfactory. The associations of the word fascism with concentration camps, the SS and the like is just too well established to not elicit the kind of negative reaction anyone who uses it gets.