Escape from Vermont

Is there a chronically-online identitarian cult lurking in the Green Mountains?  Let's investigate.

I am so outraged at the Steering Committee of Jewish Voice for Peace Vermont that I have to either hit someone or write an essay, so after a long and hard consideration of the available options, I have decided to do the latter. 

Portlandia is thoroughly entrenched in Vermont.  No surprise there.  Like Oregon, Vermont is overwhelmingly white.  White people left to their own devices tend towards the formation of identitarian cults, as evidenced by places like the Pacific Northwest, Minnesota, and Vermont, to take three very prominent examples of places that are full of this sort of thing.

The cults start on the internet, generally, and then have a way of spreading into certain parts of the US -- especially parts that are isolated from the realities of major urban areas, and lack diversity.  These conditions seem to make a lot of white people more susceptible to the online trolls and algorithms which seem to supersede their capacity for critical thought.

Given these sorts of dynamics in especially online sectors of US society, it's no wonder that an entity like a JVP steering committee would be especially vulnerable to them, since JVP, like the overwhelming majority of US Jews, is overwhelmingly white.

Whether any of my hypothesizing here is accurate or not doesn't matter.  I'm just thinking aloud about what drives people to engage in cancellation campaigning and other related toxic endeavors.  Why are so many people on what remains of the US left so ready to act like absolute caricatures that could have easily appeared in one of the more outrageous episodes of Portlandia, or in a Fox News hit piece?

Before I share with you the written version of the Vermont Steering Committee's cancellation efforts, a little more context seems appropriate.

They accuse me of making transphobic comments without specifying what any of them supposedly were.  They accuse me of defending Nazis.  Their evidence for these accusations is a hyperlink to a blog post of mine where I talk about the circular firing squad that they are participating in.  They don't even provide us with out-of-context quotes that supposedly illustrate my transphobia or defense of Nazis.

These are the most outrageous sorts of accusations anyone can make against someone like me, and these sorts of outlandish accusations made by the steering committee of an organization call for a response by the accused.

The reality, for anyone who has attended a random selection of my shows in any of the countries I've toured in over the past many years, is obvious and fairly visible.  At most any of my shows, my audiences are unmistakably disproportionately trans and Jewish, sometimes both at the same time.  At least 10% of any given audience I play for in places like the US or England or Denmark is likely to be trans, and the trans audience members are often some of my biggest fans, who sing along the most to songs like "I'm A Better Anarchist Than You."  By the same token, in any region with a significant Jewish population, and even in countries with a very small Jewish population, my audiences are likely to be vastly disproportionately Jewish, often much more than 10%, and in the New York or London regions, often much more than that.

Why is such a disproportionate percentage of my audience trans and Jewish?  Why is everyone who comes to any of my shows anywhere always against fascism, and often very deeply opposed to it?

Here are the answers:

The trans community everywhere, from my vast experience, is overwhelmingly leftwing.  This, and the fact that I have written songs supporting trans people that many trans people cherish, is why a disproportionate percentage of my audience is trans.

A disproportionate percentage of my audience is Jewish because the left is disproportionately Jewish, and I'm a leftwing person of Jewish lineage singing songs against fascism, today and historically.  Also lots of Jews are especially motivated by opposition to Israeli fascism, and I sing about that a lot.

My audience is, by the same token, overwhelmingly antifascist and even anticapitalist, and definitely anti-imperialist, because I am, and that's what my body of a thousand or so songs are all about.

The Steering Committee of Vermont JVP obviously wouldn't know about any of this, and apparently they don't need to, before embarking on a cancellation campaign against a Jewish antifascist musician with a large trans following for being a transphobic Nazi sympathizer.

Sounds crazy?  That's because it is.  The internet does this sort of thing to people, it's not their fault for being this way.  There are active trolls out there working for the FBI/Antifa spreading all kinds of angry lies about me, along with lots of Zionist trolls doing the same thing, though generally far less effectively than the backstabbers of the FBI/Antifa dumpster-burning and backstabbing brigades.  When people in a sleepy little town in Vermont suddenly get inundated with bile from Portlandia or Washington, DC or Tel Aviv or wherever it's coming from, they naturally feel like they're being ganged up on by a bunch of people with very strong opinions about me, whether real or manufactured, because that's exactly what they're experiencing.

From my again vast experience with this sort of thing, when people get attacked online like that, and themselves threatened with cancellation of all kinds, as I'm sure would have been the case with various actors in this instance, there is the option of telling the trolls to fuck off, unequivocally, which I've noticed actually often makes them go away, or at least change their tactics.  But there is a strong tendency to buckle under this pressure and agree with everything the trolls say, hoping they'll then leave you alone.

And then there are those who are already in what the hosts of the podcast, Fucking Canceled call "the nexus," who already are adherents to the puritanical cult of cancellation-campaigning and safety and security culture and vetting everyone for their potential past misdeeds whenever the opportunity arises.  And the trolls make sure it arises!

Whatever turned JVP's Vermont steering committee into a profoundly dysfunctional identitarian cult of cancellation-campaigning, I can only wonder (which is partially what I'm doing here with this missive).

But here's what the steering committee wrote, and what a steering committee member shared with JVP's public discussion list.

Jewish Voice for Peace Vermont-New Hampshire stands unequivocally with the Trans community.  For those who do not know, members of JVP VT-NH had organized a benefit concert for Middle East Children’s Alliance featuring folk artist, David Rovics.  When the concert was planned, organizers were unaware of Rovics’ extensive history of making transphobic statements.  To learn more, please visit https://davidrovics.substack.com/p/the-social-engineering-of-the-circular (TW: transphobia and defense of nazis). 

We apologize to everyone harmed by our partnership with him. Now that we know about his transphobia, the steering committee no longer endorses the concert and recommends cancellation.  If the concert happens, the steering committee would like an announcement stating the concert is not endorsed by JVP VT/NH to be read before the performance. We will not be the first to cancel one of his shows for this exact reason, so there is precedent for such action. 

Because the concert is so soon, October 25, it is highly unlikely we can book another artist, but we are open to planning a new concert in the future with stronger vetting practices. 

The concert was a benefit for the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA).  If you choose not to go to the show (or if it gets canceled) donations to MECA are strongly encouraged. 

But wait, it gets better.

After the steering committee circulated this missive, my old friend who had initially undertaken to organize a gig for me during this ongoing visit to the northeastern US was intent on organizing the gig anyway, without the sponsorship of JVP.

That's when someone initiated an effort to pressure the venue to cancel the event, and pull the rug out from under the organizer.

This is exactly the same thing the group, UK Lawyers for Israel, has done to try to shut down my gigs in England.  Pressure venues to shut down gigs and not host antisemitic performers.  Though the Vermont steering committee doesn't call this Jew an antisemite -- just pro-Nazi.  With no explanation.  At least UK Lawyers for Israel provide an explanation, in the form of the titles to all of the songs on my first album about the Gaza genocide -- the one which Israel continues to carry out, as the JVP steering committee tries to get a benefit for Gaza canceled.

The organizer saved the event from being canceled, in a sense, but not in a sense that made any sense at all to me.

To speak in the language that identitarians love to use, I am a victim of abusers.  Cancellation campaigning, trolling, spreading false rumors and lies, these are all forms of bullying, which is a form of abuse.  They are also McCarthyite forms of abuse, intended to rob a person of both their reputations and their livelihoods.  The behavior is despicable, abhorrent, and a prime example of why the left is shrinking so rapidly for so long in this country.

The abusers then present themselves as victims, or allies of victims.  But I am not any of the things they baselessly claim I am.  I am a victim of their McCarthyite abuse.

As an abuse victim well aware that I am an abuse victim, and seething with appropriate levels of rage as a result of being a victim of the JVP Vermont steering committee's abusive behavior, I was flabbergasted when my old friend, the original organizer of the gig, explained to me in an email that the reason why the venue hadn't canceled on him was because he was promising there would be dialogue between me and my accusers.

I am a big supporter of dialogue.  Ironically, it is my support for dialogue that is the origin of the false allegations about me being a Nazi sympathizer.  In the eyes of Rose City Antifa, the accelerationist wackos of IGD ("It's Going Down"), and apparently also the JVP Vermont steering committee's puritanical end of the left, I made the terrible error of talking to a couple of people they all consider to be members of the right or antisemites, and I did so publicly, on my YouTube channel.  The interviews are still there, you're welcome to watch them, but you won't find any of the accusations against me substantiated if you do.  You will, however, find dialogue of a sort that might make some people uncomfortable -- and of a sort that I and most sane people I know agree is vitally important to be having right now.

But dialogue with people who have actively been trying to get my gig canceled?  Dialogue with people who are only having this dialogue because they failed to get the gig canceled?  Dialogue with my abusers, who have just finished punching me in the face, and then punching me in the gut afterwards?  No.  I'm not Gandhi.  That kind of dialogue is for someone else.  The only dialogue I'm interested in with people who make such accusations against me is the kind involving apologizing to me, and explaining to me why their behavior was abhorrent.  When I discovered that my friend's plan was to sort of ambush me with this phony effort at dialogue with my abusers, it was I who canceled the gig.  No thanks.

If you do watch the interviews I've done with people Antifa/IGD thinks should never be "platformed," then you'll start to see the massive conundrum I'm in, as a victim of the abusive behavior of the cancellation-happy organizations or networks characterized by Antifa, IGD, and the Vermont JVP steering committee.

That is, how many hours of my interviews with other people do you need to put yourself through before determining that all of the accusations against me are baseless?  And how many of my hundreds of essays do you need to read to figure out the same (including the one they link to)?  How many of the darling of Rose City Antifa's Shane Burley's unreadable and possibly AI-generated tracts about me do you need to read before you realize that he's a cancel culture lunatic guru and not worth paying any attention to?

Figuring out why the accusations are nutty is a full-time job, and no one has time for that.  That's what makes cancellation-campaigning such an effective tactic.  The truth doesn't matter.  The tactic is all that matters.  The tactic itself creates a dark cloud around its victims, whether the people engaging in it are freelance leftwing cult members, FBI provocateurs, or working in a Mossad troll farm somewhere.

For whatever it's worth, by my observation, the extent of the insanity of the kinds of accusations floating around about me and so many of my friends who have experienced exactly the same sort of thing over the past decade especially would not be possible without the aid of active online cults, troll farms, and especially social media algorithms that drive conflict into our feeds and suppress any efforts at reasonable discourse.

If there's any hope for our society, it will begin when we all collectively abandon all of the corporate platforms.  I wish I could afford to be the first to do it, but I can't.  Quite possibly they'll cancel me first anyway, for the same sorts of baseless reasons as JVP's Vermont steering committee has sought to do.  I've already been permanently demonetized by YouTube and had albums removed from Spotify, so they are indeed in great company, and indeed aren't the first to try to cancel me, as they accurately state.

On another note, if you know my mother, Anne, and have anything you want to say to her before she dies, likely in the very near future, feel free to pass a message for her on to me.