 We've entered a new era of McCarthyism in the United States where people who use their platforms to speak out on behalf of Palestinian human rights are facing serious repercussions for doing so. For example, actress Melissa Barrera, who starred in Scream 6, has been dropped from the movie Scream 7 after posting this on social media. Quote, Gaza is currently being treated like a concentration camp she wrote in one post on Instagram Stories, cornering everyone together with nowhere to go, no electricity, no water. People have learned nothing from our histories, and just like our histories, people are still silently watching it all happen. This is genocide and ethnic cleansing. Now the Hollywood Reporter adds Spyglass, the company behind the Scream franchise, had no comment. So her condemning genocide and ethnic cleansing, which is generally a good thing, I thought, got her fired from this movie, which she was the star of. It's just so absurd. But she's not alone. This isn't the only high-profile example of this happening this week, in fact, the same day. Deadline reported that legendary actress Susan Sarandon was punished as well. Quote, After making controversial remarks at a recent pro-Palestinian rally in New York City, Susan Sarandon has been dropped by UTA as a client, a spokesman from the agency confirmed. The former Oscar winner has been present at several pro-Palestinian rallies where she made several remarks that included, quote, There are a lot of people afraid of being Jewish at this time and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country. She also went on to repost on X, a pro-Palestinian post from Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, who has been criticized over the years for his anti-Semitic remarks. Now I want to parse this out a little bit because when I first read that quote from her, it didn't really sit that well with me because it seemed to me like she was inadvertently minimizing the history of persecution against Jewish people in this country. But I know that that's not what she was intending to do because I'm familiar with her positions, her politics and her activism. So I assumed that this was one of those instances where she just didn't articulate herself very well. But when you actually listen to the full quote from her and you get the full context, it's clear what she's trying to say and it is not controversial. There are a lot of people that are afraid of being Jewish at this time and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country so often subjected to violence. It's important to listen. It's important to have facts. Try to take a breath before you answer. And if it's possible, have a conversation. You don't have to go through the entire history of that region. You could just show the babies that have been dying in incubators, the family and the love that people have for their loved ones when they're blown to pieces. Those images are enough to show you that something is drastically wrong. In other words, Jewish Americans and Muslim Americans are both experiencing a surge in bigotry as a result of what's happening right now. Therefore, it's important to talk to each other, to understand the mutual fear that both communities are currently experiencing since they can both relate to the influx of bigotry that's proliferating in this country right now. So when you see her comments in full context, you get a sense of what she's actually trying to say. Yes, she could have and should have worded this better, especially that beginning part. But overall, what she's trying to say is that you should talk to people. Now, deadline implied that part of the reason why she was fired as well was because of her retweet of Roger Waters from Pink Floyd. Now, I have my criticisms of Roger Waters, but I looked at the tweet in particular that she shared, and it was this five minute long video that he shared where he simply calls for a ceasefire of both sides, by the way, and starts the video by condemning Hamas's 10-7 attack on Israel. Absolutely nothing that he said in this video was objectionable at all. And if you really wanted to go out of your way to defame Susan Sarandon with this guilt by association strategy, you could have pointed to her retweets of Jackson Hinkle or Jake Shields, both of whom are fascists that happen to be performatively pro-Palestine for clicks. But first of all, that would be bad to do that to her because it's disingenuous. And I don't think that she's as terminally online as the rest of us to know that she's retweeting people who are bad people. She just sees viral posts that they're also sharing and she agrees with them. So she's retweeting them. And second of all, I've made the same mistake as she did, right? I unwittingly boosted a conservative who shared a pro-Palestinian post that I happen to agree with. I mean, we're all not perfect and there's a lot of stuff online that you see. And you don't necessarily think about the implications. You just hit retweet. It's a very small action that doesn't take much thinking. So I think that trying to suggest that she is a bad person because of a retweet of a particular person is a very dangerous game because by that standard, everyone who has a Twitter account is probably a bad person and has at some point retweeted somebody who's bad. But we shouldn't be combing through Susan Sarandon's Twitter profile with a fine tooth comb to try to find some crumb of controversy to justify her getting dropped by this talent agency. It's completely absurd to do this to her when she has a very clear message. Genocide is wrong. I stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people. But talent agencies aren't just dropping pro-Palestinian clients. CAA, another massive Hollywood agency, was this close to dropping one of their own agents over a pro-Palestine Instagram post until Tom Cruise stepped in and saved her. Variety explains, Maha Dakhil, one of CAA's top agents, had ignited a firestorm with her Instagram posts, including one that said, what's more heartbreaking than witnessing genocide, witnessing the denial genocide is happening. In response, Dakhil was removed of her duties as co-chief of the Motion Pictures Department, though she was allowed to remain an agent. It didn't hurt that her most important client, Tom Cruise, made it known to CAA that he was backing her. Cruise met with Dakhil at her CAA office on November 15th. A knowledgeable source says he took the rare step of going in person to show support for his embattled agent. So we're seeing a pattern. If you oppose genocide, you may actually face severe repercussions. But if you support genocide, there's no punishment whatsoever. For example, Sarah Silverman shared this post on Instagram, defending Israel's collective punishment against Ghazan civilians. And weeks later, she went on to guest host the Daily Show for a week. Furthermore, none of the celebrities who spoke alongside notoriously anti-Semitic pastor John Hage, yet the pro-war rally are being blacklisted. So we're seeing this double standard and it's wrong. But celebrities only represent the tip of the iceberg because there are dozens, possibly hundreds of ordinary people like journalists and students with no fame and little money who are going to feel the effects of this new McCarthyist era the most. This includes Jasmine Hughes and Jamie Lauren Keels of the New York Times, who were both forced to resign after signing a petition calling for the liberation of Palestinians. David Valesco, an editor at Artform magazine, was fired for signing the same petition. Michael Eisen, the editor-in-chief of the journal Science, who happens to be Jewish, was fired for liking a satirical tweet from the onion with the headline, dying Ghazans criticized for not using last words to condemn Hamas. Jackson Frank, a sports writer, was fired from his job at Philly Voice for tweeting solidarity with Palestine. Law students have had job offers from universities rescinded. And I think that this headline from a now deleted market watch article really says it all. Yes, you can be fired for political speech. So choose your words about Israel, Palestine, Trump and Biden very carefully. And this is by no means an exhaustive list. But those who haven't yet been penalized could be penalized soon because this McCarthyist sentiment is continuing to spread. And I want to show you one of the worst examples that I've seen of the paranoia that is being propagated. So the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, he called for the government to literally investigate students on national television because they may possibly be supporting Hamas materially. The college campuses are on fire right now. The ADLs tracked 832 incidents across the country, almost 30 a day over the month after the Gaza is the president's program enough to try to counteract that. Look, the president has been strong and supportive. We are so appreciative of that, but we need more. We need the Department of Education to take proactive action to get these universities to do something. There have been good signs, but we need more. I'll also tell you, we need the right governmental authorities like the IRS and the FBI to make sure that the national organizations aren't providing material support for Hamas, just a foreign terror organization. That needs to happen right away. So the IRS and the FBI should investigate student organizations to make sure that they're not providing material support to Hamas on grounds that they what, made pro-Palestine Instagram posts, went to a pro-Palestinian protest. I mean, what are we doing here? It's not enough that 38 states have unconstitutional BDS laws that require contractors to sign loyalty pledges to Israel to get state contracts and avoid being blacklisted. But now he's suggesting that we should use government agencies to investigate students for possible pro-Hamas material support. Have we lost our fucking minds? I mean, with this trajectory, how long until we start saying, oh, well, these same organizations that should be investigating students, they've been infiltrated by the pro-Hamas people as well. I mean, this is where McCarthyism went, right? Everyone was a communist and then also the US Army was a communist and it got so absurd that the hysteria just wasn't potent any longer. But I mean, are we all collectively OK with another round of McCarthyism? Because I, for one, do not consent to that. And in an op-ed for Newsweek, Nathan J. Robinson, who was also fired for pro-Palestinian speech from The Guardian years ago, gives us a look at the parallels between the McCarthy era and today. He writes, let's recall the McCarthy era or Second Red Scare in American politics. It's generally looked back on today as a shameful period of political persecution and its lessons should always be kept in mind. Notably during the McCarthy years, it was not just government prosecutions that created such a stifling environment of paranoia and censorship. People suspected of being communists could and did lose their jobs. In fact, as Ellen Schrecker explained in The Age of McCarthyism, job loss was much more significant as a form of repression than outright state censorship. People didn't fear going to jail nearly as much as they feared getting fired. And once again, it seems like history is repeating itself. It seems like the ghost of Joseph McCarthy has possessed a lot of people in positions of power currently, and we're just making the same mistake that we did during the Cold War, and it is really humiliating and frustrating that we never seem to learn from the mistakes that we said we would never repeat as a society. But at the end of the day, I think that these celebrities being penalized, even if they have a lot of money and a lot of power, their stories are important. Seeing these high profile examples of celebrities being penalized over pro-Palestinian speech matters because these stories help to raise awareness about the severity of the level of censorship we're seeing. If celebrities are being penalized, the people in society that we revere the most, then certainly ordinary Americans are also going to be penalized as well. But my ultimate sympathies lie with the normal folks who are losing their jobs. People who are law students who had their job offers rescinded for vocalizing support for Palestinian human rights. These people don't have fame. They don't have power. They don't have money. But here's what I want to leave you with. Nobody should ever be penalized for condemning genocide. It is good that people have the instinct to condemn genocide that shows that we still have our humanity as a society. And people shouldn't have to bite their tongues to appease their tyrannical employers, having a negative reaction to violence on this level that we're seeing in Gaza that makes you human. You're a normal person if you see that and you feel something. And to think that people are being punished for expressing human emotions over this is just downright despicable. And I think that we all should condemn it.