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For Immediate Release January 11, 2021 Contact: kon@newtolerance.org On January 8th, Twitter announced that it had permanently suspended @realDonaldTrump, the personal Twitter handle of President Donald Trump, “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” after they had determined three days prior that he violated their Glorification of Violence policy. New Tolerance Campaign is now mobilizing its activists to call on Twitter to apply this policy uniformly to all government handles regardless of nationality, or reinstate Mr. Trump’s account. Consistent standards of tolerance are critical to a healthy and stable society. At issue is whether Twitter will finally apply its policies in a consistent manner. While Twitter has ended Mr. Trump’s access to its platform, it continues to allow other government leaders to use Twitter even though they routinely glorify violence on Twitter in ways that fit Twitter’s assessment of Mr. Trump’s policy violation.  The prime example is the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who routinely calls for violence against the United States and Israel, and has used Twitter to issue death threats and push COVID-19 vaccination conspiracies. Ironically, the use of Twitter by Iranians is banned by the Iranian government, which has also cut off all access to the Internet within its borders as a means of squashing speech and anti-government protests. Another troubling example is the still-allowed Twitter handle for the official Chinese Embassy in D.C., which recently tweeted “Study shows that in the process of eradicating extremism, the minds of Uygur [sic] women in Xinjiang were emancipated and gender equality and reproductive health were promoted, making them no longer baby-making machines. They are more confident and independent.” This Tweet references the Chinese government’s imprisonment of over 1 million Chinese Uyghur Muslims into re-education concentration camps, actions that violate many international human rights statutes. NTC‘s mission is to push mainstream individuals, institutions, and companies like Twitter to maintain consistent standards of tolerance. Twitter’s blatant inconsistency in the application of its own policies is highly problematic as it creates and exacerbates divides in society that make people less tolerant towards each other. Twitter must act consistently, especially when it comes to the intersection between speech and violence.

For Immediate Release November 25, 2020 Contact: kon@newtolerance.org The New Tolerance Campaign (NTC) is mobilizing its activists to call on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to insist the Rev. Al Sharpton issue a public apology for inciting one of the worst anti-Semitic riots in U.S. history. NTC is a watchdog organization empowering ordinary Americans to hold accountable self-proclaimed arbiters of tolerance when they betray their own stated values. For years the ADL championed the fight against anti-Semitism and intolerance. Yet it has recently strayed from its mission to advance a political agenda, embracing Sharpton to attack immigration policies and boycott Facebook for what they deem an insufficient level of censorship. The ADL once spoke unequivocally about Sharpton. In a 1992 report in the aftermath of the Crown Heights riots, the ADL assigned Sharpton “a leading role” in the pogrom and cited him among “community activists who have promoted anti-Semitism.” The report noted that Sharpton shared office space with the anti-Semitic New Alliance Party and co-chaired an event honoring Louis Farrakhan. In 1992, Sharpton defended gross anti-Semitic comments from Professor Leonard Jeffries, declaring: “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.” Protesters led by Sharpton called Jews “bloodsuckers” and threatened to “burn and loot the Jews.” One demonstrator then did exactly that, shooting seven people. Despite this track-record of bigotry, ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has appeared on Sharpton’s MSNBC show; held a joint Capitol Hill press conference on immigration; and partnered with Sharpton to boycott Facebook. While some organizations help celebrities like Nick Cannon and Ice Cube address anti-Semitic rhetoric, the ADL has demanded nothing of Sharpton. As Tablet magazine noted, ADL CEO Greenblatt has “refused even to seek out the most minor price from Sharpton for bringing him back into the fold of acceptability – not even a simple apology that would at least telegraph a distaste for anti-Semitism to Sharpton’s many followers.” Concerned by the ADL’s failure to maintain its own basic standards of tolerance, NTC’s campaign calls upon ADL to insist Sharpton demonstrably atone for past anti-Semitic behavior. “The ADL’s embrace of Rev. Sharpton betrays its founding purpose to fight anti-Semitism,” noted NTC Advisory Board Member Nicki Neily. “By giving Sharpton a pass on his bigoted actions, ADL is undermining its core mission.” ###

For Immediate Release October 6, 2020 Contact: kon@newtolerance.org The New York Times (NYT) has violated its own standards of viewpoint tolerance in its editorial page. Republican Senator Tom Cotton’s controversial op-ed met with widespread outrage leading to the top opinion editor losing his job and an apology from The Times for not providing more context and heavier fact-checking. As if forgetting this apology, The Times has now run a straight Chinese government propaganda piece without any such measures. New Tolerance Campaign is mobilizing activists to confront The Times over this dangerously misleading hypocrisy.  On Oct 1, 2020, the NYT published an op-ed called “Hong Kong Is China, Like It or Not” by Chinese politician Regina Ip that gives mainland China’s perspective on their violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Ip misleadingly presents the pro-Democracy protestors as minority radicals and the Chinese government as the savior of peace and stability, employing all sorts of rhetorical gymnastics to downplay the government’s brutality and undermining of Hong Kong’s democracy. Take this passage for example:  To some, the new national security law is especially chilling because it seems simultaneously vague and very severe. But many laws are vague, constructively so. And this one only seems severe precisely because it fills longstanding loopholes — about subversion, secession, local terrorism, collusion with external forces. One person’s “severe” is someone else’s intended effect. To summarize in plain language: “to some, our national security law seems vague and severe. That’s because we wanted them to be vague and severe.”  Contrast this with the outcry over the Cotton NYT op-ed from June 2020, “Tom Cotton: Send in the Troops” in which a prominent U.S. Senator calls for the military to be mobilized against rioters. While this is obviously a controversial stance, as then opinion-page editor James Bennett said, “Readers who might be inclined to oppose Cotton’s position need to be fully aware of it, and reckon with it, if they hope to defeat it.” The op-ed is now preceded by a very long editor’s note saying the op-ed should not have been published without substantial revision. It lists several objections, such as “the assertion that police officers ‘bore the brunt’ of the violence is an overstatement that should have been challenged.” It claims that the headline is overly “incendiary” and the tone of the piece too harsh. The editor’s note concludes, “we failed to offer appropriate additional context — either in the text or the presentation — that could have helped readers place Senator Cotton’s views within a larger framework of debate.”  Where is this “additional context” with Ip’s op-ed? Ip makes her own dubious claims that misrepresent the situation in Hong Kong, arguably worse than those The Times stated Cotton made. And it’s hard to get much harsher than Ip’s defense of “vague and severe” crackdowns. Where is the NYT’s concern this time? This is an appalling double-standard.  The Times requests that readers email them to “report errors regarding our coverage” so NTC is mobilizing activists to do just that. They must add the context and fact-checking they promised after the Cotton op-ed to Ip’s op-ed immediately and apply their standards equally moving forward, lest they expose themselves as caring more about combating the ideas of their domestic political opponents than those of oppressive foreign regimes. ###

For Immediate Release September 9, 2020 Contact: kon@newtolerance.org Disney is hoping to make untold millions off the live-action movie Mulan, but at what cost? Along the way, it is kowtowing to the oppressive Chinese Communist Party, going out of their way to thank them in the credits despite their grotesque violations of human rights. New Tolerance Campaign is calling on its activists to pledge to boycott the movie, at least until Disney stops praising the bad guys. Disney’s animated Mulan from 1998 is about defying stereotypes, being true to yourself, honoring family, and fighting evil to protect the innocent. So why is the remake not only ignoring the plight of the Uyghur Muslims in China but thanking the very people responsible for their torment? The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) human rights abuses against the Uyghur people and other minorities are nothing short of horrifying. Chinese authorities have quietly abducted over 1 million innocent people without a word to their families and sent them to dystopian concentration camps. From there, they ship the captured people across China to be used as slave labor in factories that they cannot leave. The CCP helps themselves to everything from detainees’ hair to their vital organs. All of this is done in the name of stamping out the Uyghurs’ religion and culture and trying to make them into uniform, docile Chinese citizens – the exact opposite of everything Mulan encourages kids to be. None of this stopped Disney from filming a large portion of the new live-action Mulan in the Xinjiang region where these atrocities are primarily taking place. What’s worse, Disney thanked the Chinese Communist Party Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Committee and the Bureau of Public Security in Turpan (a city in the region) in the movie’s credits. These are the people directly responsible for this oppression and the propaganda campaigns trying to cover it up. Furthermore, in 2019 Disney CEO Bob Iger threatened to stop filming in Georgia if the state’s “heartbeat” anti-abortion bill went into effect. Uyghur women are routinely forced to have abortions by the government, but apparently that isn’t a deal-breaker for Iger. Removing a couple lines in the credits is hardly enough to make amends, but, as far as this movie goes, much of the damage has already been done. Mulan embodies values that Disney is failing to live up to itself. That’s why NTC is mobilizing its activists to pledge not to support Disney’s prioritization of profits over human rights – and lives.