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In late January, Americans saw one of the most jarring cases of cancel culture yet when literary agent Colleen Oefelein was fired just for joining social media sites Parler and Gab. NTC launched a campaign to stand up for her, and over 3,000 of you have taken action. We caught up with her to get the full story of what happened, how she’s doing now, and what message she wants to share with you.  What Happened? Colleen’s Story  Colleen started working at the Jennifer de Chiara Literary Agency in February of 2018. “I always felt welcome,” she explained. “Sometimes the others would start to talk politics, but I always stayed quiet during those conversations.”  De Chiara encouraged her literary agents to use social media to find new authors, so when Colleen heard that a number of authors had joined Parler, she joined too. Colleen says she posted the same things to Parler that she posted on Twitter – primarily writing tips and animal memes. Her most controversial posts focused on the correct use of apostrophes.   When Parler shut down, she followed some authors to Gab, where she continued to stick with publishing-related content. Out of the blue, she received an email from De Chiara saying that she was fired just for joining those platforms.  “Perplexing” is the word Colleen used several times to describe her firing. She wasn’t engaging in controversial topics. She was just using social media to do her job.  How Is She Doing Now?  When asked how she’s doing now, Collen said “I have a really good support system. I’m mostly worried about my authors I represent and making sure I’m taking good care of them, making sure they don’t suffer any consequences they don’t deserve.” She has had other job offers and is optimistic about the future as she weighs her options.   Toxic YA Hate  Colleen is no stranger to cancel culture and weaponized tolerance. She explained that social media is full of what one of her writers calls “toxic YA hate,” referring to the swift and merciless condemnation writers of young adult fiction experience if they run afoul of the self-appointed inclusion gatekeepers.  Collen says that many of her authors are afraid to publicly express their faith or their political views. “They’re just dead scared that someone is going to find out and blacklist them, and their dreams of being a published author will just go ‘poof.’”  Colleen kept her social media posts limited to avoid this very trap, but it found her anyway.  Her Message to You  “A big thanks and a big debt of gratitude for all of the support. It really it is uplifting.”   She continued, “I hope that I can get the word out about the climate of the American publishing industry. And exposing some of these hypocritical things. Maybe somebody else won’t see their dreams evaporate because somebody gets offended for a stupid reason.”  Moving Forward  Colleen saw firsthand how people are terrified of standing up for their beliefs, whether that be supporting people in situations like hers or just sharing an opinion about current events. That needs to change. It’s time to be bold and find healthy ways to fight back to stop more stories like Colleen’s from happening.  If you haven’t already, please sign the petition!  And if you want to support Colleen in a more literary fashion, check out her paranormal romance novel Eerie.  

This week started with MLK Day, when the internet overflows with wonderful quotes from Dr. King about justice, equality, activism, and character. These quotes provide a stark contrast to what we’ve witnessed in our nation over the last year, and especially the last two weeks.  We are nowhere near achieving MLK’s dream. While some things have improved dramatically for our nation, other problems have just changed shape, and new technology has ushered in brand new ways for us to discriminate, bully, and divide. It is a new year, and starting today, we have a new president, but neither of those things will make this nation’s underlying problems go away.  As we move into this next chapter of our nation’s history, the New Tolerance Campaign has pledged to keep a close eye on three big issues: Big Tech Censorship This problem has been simmering for years as social media and search engines try to walk the line between promoting free expression and stopping things like bullying, bigotry, and promotion of violence. No doubt it’s a tough job, but almost all of the major tech companies have systematically failed at anything resembling fair enforcement of clear policies. This has never been more apparent than this past couple of weeks when Trump and many of his supporters were banned from many platforms while other accounts that routinely promote violence and even gross human rights abuses remain untouched. We recognize that these tech companies are private entities that are not bound by the First Amendment, but they have immense power to control the public’s access to information, and it is our duty as citizens to demand that they set fair, transparent rules and abide by them. The American Response to Uyghur Oppression in China American companies like Apple, Nike, the NBA, and Disney love to tell us how much they care about social justice with flashy ads and not-so-subtle messaging. But they only hop on bandwagons that are already popular and don’t cost them anything. Meanwhile, they are completely silent on the extreme human rights abuses happening in China, even while they take advantage of its lucrative consumer market and cheap labor. American government officials have been stepping up in some ways. In the last month alone, outgoing Sec. of State Mike Pompeo boldly accused China of ‘genocide,’ and the Biden campaign returned a donation from a lobbyist with Chinese ties.  This is progress, but it’s not enough. As influencers of social norms, major American companies must act responsibly, which at the very least means acting consistently. They should stop the use of hypocritical slogans and marketing campaigns that encourage poisonous phony tolerance. Anti-Semitism  While the fight against racism makes headlines every day, there has been a baffling amount of anti-Semitism that doesn’t seem to concern mainstream media, advocacy groups, civic leaders, and many public figures. If we mean it when we say as a country that we must end racism in America, that means fighting anti-Semitism just as earnestly as other forms of racism. Yet, some racial justice fighters have been allowed to spout anti-Semitism in the course of condemning other forms of racism. This must end. We have a biased tolerance problem in this country. A phony tolerance problem. We have forgotten how to address our problems in healthy ways. Acts of violence, shouting matches, canceling, and deplatforming – digital or in-person – make our problems worse. Let’s work together to call out biased tolerance in healthy ways so that understanding, compromise, and respect can prevail. If you haven’t checked out our campaigns page in a while, please do. Sign the petitions and send the messages that matter to you, and together we can make a real difference.

The New Tolerance Campaign launched at the very end of 2019, so we’re celebrating our first full year fighting against biased tolerance. And what a year it has been! One would hope that a global pandemic and increased focus on racism in America would bring us together and help us prioritize true tolerance, but unfortunately, we’ve seen the opposite. We have our work cut out for us in 2021, but first, we want to look back at 2020 and celebrate what we’ve already accomplished together! Over 10,000 of you told members of Congress to stop congratulating the anti-Semitic CAIR, and they heard you The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has a nasty history of promoting anti-Semites, and this year’s 25th-anniversary celebration was no exception. The event’s headliner was Rep. Ilhan Omar who has repeatedly and unapologetically made anti-Semitic comments. Nevertheless, over 120 Members of Congress wrote letters of praise that were published in the event’s handout. We ran a petition for concerned Americans to express their displeasure. For every 1,000 petitions, we sent 8 select offices a Care Bear toy (Care/CAIR get it? We think we’re clever) and a note about the campaign. After receiving 10 such packages in the mail, several Congressional offices told us that they got the message! We hope to see far fewer letters of praise next year. You can still sign the petition. We’d be more than happy to send out more bears! We had three victories for free speech on college campuses While we don’t shy away from going after the big guys, smaller communities like college campuses are often the place where we can have the clearest impact. This year, we called out one campus for its politically motivated rejection of the conservative club Turning Point USA. That decision has now been reversed! We learned that another campus was rejecting nearly half of all club proposals for strange and arbitrary reasons. After NTC activists sent messages, that campus has also changed its policy and is now much more welcoming to clubs of all varieties. A third university that claimed to champion the 1st Amendment was pursuing legal action against journalists for dubious claims of trespassing when they contributed to unflattering stories about the school. NTC took action, and now those charges have now been dropped. You called out ‘woke’ companies that were turning a blind eye to Uyghur oppression in China The way the Chinese Uyghurs have been treated in China is nothing short of revolting. They’ve been corralled into literal concentration camps, forced into slave labor, and are forbidden from practicing their religious beliefs. You called out companies like Nike and Apple that use social justice campaigns at home to market their products but have not been doing nearly enough to ensure that this slave labor is not in their supply lines. Similarly, you helped us hold the NBA accountable as they put trendy social justice slogans on players’ jerseys while refusing to acknowledge the atrocities in China where much of their revenue comes from. You pledged to boycott Disney’s Mulan which was partially shot near the camps and literally thanked the government officials in charge of the region in the credits. At the start of 2020, few Americans had heard about the Uyghurs’ plight, but now it is much more common knowledge, the U.S. government has begun to intervene, and companies are facing immense pressure to ensure that no slave labor is in their supply lines. If you haven’t already, you can still join us in calling on Apple to do a better job of ensuring that there is forced labor in their supply lines. Will you join us in 2021? We have a long road ahead of us, but we’re optimistic about what we can accomplish with your help! If you want to continue to be a part of that change, would you consider a tax-deductible donation? Every dollar we receive will go directly to fighting back against biased tolerance and creating a better tomorrow for all of us!

Facebook is making a great show of educating voters and fighting back against false information and hate speech while informing and empowering voters, but once again, they’re missing the mark and arguably making the problems of polarization and misinformation worse. The latest example comes as Facebook had demonetized satire site The Babylon Bee over an article titled “Senator Hirono Demands ACB Be Weighed Against A Duck To See If She Is A Witch” because according to Facebook it “incites violence.” If you missed the reference, it’s an allusion to a particularly silly scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where villagers dress a woman up as a witch complete with a carrot tied on to her nose and then demand that she be burned, prompting the knight in charge to use bad logic to discover if she’s a witch. The satirical message of the article is that Sen. Hirono’s line of questioning during Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing was akin to an illogical witch hunt. Politically charged and controversial? Clearly. But inciting violence? Hardly. Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon shared what happened via Twitter, tweeting as part of a long thread, “In what universe does a fictional quote as part of an obvious joke constitute a genuine incitement to violence? How does context not come into play here? They’re asking us to edit the article and not speak publicly about internal content reviews. Oops, did I just tweet this?” It’s understandable that some of the words in the article may have tripped an algorithm, but according to Dillon, a manual reviewer upheld the decision. It’s also disturbing that Facebook expects people to stay silent about the way Facebook is silencing them. Facebook is way past the days when it can claim to be “just a platform.” While they are a private company and, legally speaking, they can allow or disallow whatever they want, we have a responsibility as concerned citizens to hold powerful companies like Facebook accountable when they start weaponizing policies disguised as promoting tolerance. At best, Facebook’s actions were an exceptionally dumb mistake. At worst, they are a hypocritical silencing of a particular political viewpoint. Facebook doesn’t make it easy to contact them, but maybe if we use the platform to share our displeasure with this kind of irrational censorship, they’ll get the message.