ADL Takes Aim at my Substack

And misses the mark

Please make the ADL wish it hadn’t attacked my Substack by moving up to a paid subscription if you are a non-paying subscriber, or to a “founding member” subscription if you are already a monthly or annual subscriber.

The Anti-Defamation League—an organization with an extremely dubious history—doesn’t like my Substack. That’s fine. They don’t have to subscribe to it.

But not content to merely not subscribe, the lavishly-funded defamation-loving crusaders against “defamation” (their operating budget is pushing $100 million per year) want to shut me down, along with other Substack writers they don’t approve of.

On Monday, the ADL issued its latest anti-free-speech fatwa: “Antisemitism, False Information and Hate Speech Find a Home on Substack.” I came in fourth in the list of nineteen deplorable Substacks, ahead of Dr. Mercola, Steve Kirsch, and Libs of Tik-Tok, so I guess I must be doing something right.

You might think that anyone who wanted to suppress my writing would do a pretty thorough and accurate analysis, and present a coherent argument or two, before demanding its obliteration. But in this case, at least, you would be wrong.

Here is the ADL’s case against me in its entirety:

“Kevin’s Newsletter” is a Substack run by the antisemitic and anti-Zionist conspiracy theorist Kevin Barrett, who has blamed Jews and Israel for the creation of ISIS, the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and more. In an article published November of 2022, Barrett alleges that “Jewish power” is the result of “the disproportionate presence of Jews in powerful positions in media, politics, and finance.” Later, he makes a series of anti-Zionist statements, referring to “Israel’s transformation into an admittedly genocidal entity.”

In another article, Barrett suggests that people who have a “Jewish handler” are at risk of “being institutionalized and injected,” referring to Ye’s conspiratorial rants about his former personal trainer, Harley Pasternak.

If you like unintentional comedy, that’s not too bad of a write-up. It’s a slapdash melange of name-calling, misinformation and unhinged delusion with a couple of true items thrown in just for the hell of it.

They begin by calling me defamatory names. The first specific charge against me is that I have “blamed Jews and Israel for the creation of ISIS.” That statement is not only untrue, it’s absurd. First, even if I did blame (presumably-Jewish) Mossad agents for creating ISIS, obviously that would not imply blaming all of the world’s 15 million Jews along with everyone in Israel.

But the truth is that I have blamed the US military, not Israel, for the creation of ISIS. Anyone familiar with my work knows that I have repeatedly called attention to the fact that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and friends created ISIS while they were in US custody, and that the US military has repeatedly lied in its official statements by claiming that al-Baghdadi was only held by the Americans for less than a year, when in fact it was closer to four years, according to numerous unofficial but presumably reliable sources as reported in mainstream as well as alternative outlets. My working hypothesis is that al-Baghdadi and others were manipulated, perhaps through MK-Ultra style techniques, in such a way as to deliberately facilitate the creation and rise of ISIS. (For more on the topic, check out the Progressive Press book ISIS Is US.)

Were any Israelis involved in that project? Quite possibly. We know that an Israeli with the nom de guerre “John Israel” played a key role in orchestrating the sexual torture at Abu Ghraib. It wouldn’t surprise me if John Israel or someone like him were also involved in the mind-control experiments at Abu Ghraib and Camp Bagram that facilitated the rise of ISIS. But I haven’t seen convincing evidence of that, beyond hearsay and circumstantial evidence like Israel’s treating wounded ISIS fighters.

The next ADL charge is that I have “blamed Jews and Israel for the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.” That’s a half truth. I do agree with much of what Laurent Guyénot writes in “9/11 Was an Israeli Job,” and what Ron Unz writes in “American Pravda: Seeking 9/11 Truth After Twenty Years: Who Attacked America in 2001...and Why?” But I recently argued in an email exchange with Ron Unz that people like Cheney and Rumsfeld, neither of whom is Jewish or particularly Zionist, along with other top members of the US high command, were complicit. That has been my position since 2004. In any case “blaming Jews and Israel for 9/11” is on the face of it no more hateful than “blaming Muslims and Saudi Arabia for 9/11,” which the ADL is fine with. And if they want to debate me on who really did 9/11, I will be happy to do so on my radio show.

Then the ADL actually quotes my writing: “In an article published November of 2022, Barrett alleges that ‘Jewish power’ is the result of ‘the disproportionate presence of Jews in powerful positions in media, politics, and finance.’” That’s kind of like charging me with saying that the Earth is spherical or the sun sets in the west. Obviously any ethnic group that’s disproportionately represented in powerful positions in the media, politics and finance of any nation is going to have disproportionate power in that nation. However if the ADL really believes that Jews are not disproportionately represented in those areas in the USA, and shows me convincing evidence supporting their assertion, I will be happy to retract my statement.

I also plead “guilty as charged” to the next count: That I have made “a series of anti-Zionist statements, referring to ‘Israel’s transformation into an admittedly genocidal entity.’” International law professor Francis Boyle’s argument that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians strikes me as persuasive. If the ADL disagrees, I will be happy to debate their spokesman, or invite Professor Boyle to do so, on my radio show.

The ADL’s final charge against me is risible:

In another article, Barrett suggests that people who have a “Jewish handler” are at risk of “being institutionalized and injected,” referring to Ye’s conspiratorial rants about his former personal trainer, Harley Pasternak.

Actually I wasn’t referring to Ye’s rants, but to Pasternak’s message to Ye, which threatened Ye with institutionalization, injection, and worse.

Maybe I shouldn’t have joked about those horrific threats, for which Pasternak ought to have been arrested and charged. So I plead guilty to “tasteless humor in the first degree.”

Of course it’s always possible that I’m wrong about all of the above. I would love to hear a good argument to that effect. With an annual operating budget of almost $100 million, the ADL should be able to hire a team of researchers and a skilled debater. So I hereby invite the ADL to debate their charges against me on my radio show. They can reach me through my Substack or at DrKevinBarrett(at)yahoo[dot]com.