Bari Weiss: Brought To You By Billionaires™

When you see The Free Press, you know it's some billionaire mess.

Dec 19, 2024

Brought To You By Billionaires™ is a series from Public Enlightenment exposing the people who inject toxic bullshit into our public conversation on behalf of billionaire sponsors. These bullshit artists trick Americans into voting for anti-freedom billionaire agendas. Share these widely to save America from billionaire rot.

Bari Weiss is the founder of the media company The Free Press and hosts a podcast called Honestly. She was an op-ed staff writer for The New York Times from 2017-2020 and has been a columnist for the conservative German daily newspaper Die Welt since 2021. In 2021 she founded the “anti-woke” organization F.A.I.R. and the University of Austin with money from reactionary billionaires. She now uses The Free Press to spread propaganda on their behalf.

Jonathan M. Katz wrote an exceptional article for his site The Racket that perfectly captures Weiss’ bullshit. He attended a Weiss-led talk meant to honor the legacy of student protest at Berkeley in the 60s. Those Berkeley students were decidedly “woke” in their time and “anti-woke” Weiss would have performed her same schtick against them then. No one in the audience seemed to notice or care about the hypocrisy. I’m ok if you stop reading this and click the link above because Katz’s article is a perfect microcosm of Weiss’ grift—saying things old, wealthy, often racist dudes want to hear no matter how illogical or hypocritical.

Katz provides an explanation of Weiss’ utility to billionaires:

She started her public life trying to get her professors fired for their views on Palestine and Israel—under the guise of fighting for “academic freedom.” She wrote a book on antisemitism but professionally ignores the surging antisemitism on the global right. She poses as a disappointed liberal but came up through conservative media. Hired as an editor by the New York Times opinion desk at the behest of her mentor, Bret Stephens, she tried to get fired for being “anti-woke,” failed, then quit anyway.
Weiss bankrolled her self-cancellation into a series of grifts…a multimillion-dollar Substack newsroom called The Free Press…and a reactionary, as-yet-unaccredited liberal arts college with fewer than one hundred students called the “University of Austin,” funded by the fascist tech mogul Peter Thiel, GOP megadonor Jeff Yass, and Harlan Crow, the conservative activist famous for having effectively purchased Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas…
…Weiss is an important node in American political life: a pseudo-liberal who launders billionaires’ money into a project painting universities and the “radical left” as the greatest threats to democracy, weakening liberal resolve and providing cover for crackdowns by the fascist right.

Weiss likely started to draw the attention of her eventual billionaire backers while at The New York Times, where she wrote some truly wacky stuff. One of her columns was entitled “Three Cheers For Cultural Appropriation.” Eric McAdams wrote a critique for Paste Magazine:

…It’s easy to support cultural appropriation when you somehow think that the abolition of slavery falls into that category. No, seriously: “Britain beat us to the abolition of slavery; the Isle of Man, New Zealand and Finland all decided to give women the vote well before the United States. Eventually, we got smart and borrowed these egalitarian innovations.” That’s part of the article. Weiss thinks it’s fair to say that the United States appropriated the idea of abolition of slavery from British culture.
She also says that Martin Luther King Jr. committed cultural appropriation by speaking “a mostly Latinate language,” as though his ancestors weren’t enslaved and then forced to learn that language.
You’ll notice that Weiss makes sure to consistently highlight people of color “appropriating” other cultures—people of color that she thinks should get more backlash because she doesn’t understand cultural appropriation.

At the Times Weiss continued to deliver red meat for reactionary billionaire types with columns like 2018’s "We're All Fascists Now" which peddled the reassuring-to-fascists idea that the left are actually the intolerant ones (Weiss backer, Peter Thiel, famously wrote that it was a mistake for women to be allowed to vote and that he does not “believe freedom and democracy are compatible.”). Bari was caught citing an obviously fake Twitter account as an example of left wing intolerance. Prior to Weiss’ use of the fake account, multiple sources had reported on it “as a right-wing masquerade aimed at discrediting the left-wing protest movement.” She used it anyway.

After years of signaling that she was ready to make shit up in service to their pet grievances, the billionaires began to shower her with money.

FAIR

Emma Green wrote in The New Yorker about the “anti-woke” organization, F.A.I.R., launched by Weiss and her friends to wage “ideological warfare” on what they perceived as the excesses of the left. Harlan Crow donated $500,000 to this effort.

Weiss had already been talking with a few of her friends about creating a new anti-woke organization…[her friends] had workshopped a pitch to the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, for a project to create “a modern-day Death Star” to wage “ideological warfare” on the “enemies of modernity”; their plan involved writing coördinated op-eds and promoting anti-woke content…

See? It’s all a grift. Small groups of people, like Weiss and her friends, pitch strategies to change the way Americans think to PR firms (think tanks) owned by the billionaires who want to change the way Americans think. They offer to attack pluralistic democracy on the billionaires’ behalf in exchange for loads of money. Green goes on:

The organization would be called FAIR: The Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism. The name was an initial act of defiance, implicitly painting the group’s opponents, self-described “anti-racists,” as the real racists…The vision involved a three-pronged approach: legal advocacy, via letters and lawsuits; grassroots advocacy, via a network of volunteers; and education about the issues, spread through projects such as explainer videos and training programs.
Weiss and the other founders recruited an informal board of advisers…Among them were the media personality Megyn Kelly, the writer Andrew Sullivan, and the anti-critical-race-theory activist Christopher Rufo.

Let’s not miss what’s happening here. Megyn Kelly and Christopher Rufo are racists with a racist agenda, advising Bari Weiss as she creates an astroturfed anti-anti-racism organization funded by billionaires who want the realities of inequality omitted from public conversation. That’s not a partisan take. Those are just the stone cold facts of what’s happening. If words still have meaning, Rufo and Kelly meet the definition of racism, no matter how much these mouthpieces have been paid to make murky America’s understanding of its past…and present.

The importance of Harlan Crow to Weiss’ grift is revealed in a comment she emailed to a cofounder when another F.A.I.R. benefactor was raising a stink amongst donors, angry that the group wasn’t being transphobic enough. From Jezebel:

“I am quite nervous that she has gotten to the Crows, which would be really damaging to me personally,” Weiss wrote to a FAIR cofounder in August 2022, referring to Harlan Crow…
Weiss tries to paint herself as an independent, centrist journalist, but it is not centrist to start an anti-woke nonprofit, let alone one funded by a GOP megadonor—a man whose relationship is so valuable to you that you’re concerned it could be damaged via some emails.

From a letter to the editor of a Montclair, NJ paper objecting to the new F.A.I.R. chapter in their town:

FAIR claims to be “nonpartisan,” and yet their strategy to gain influence follows a playbook that is commonly employed by the GOP: using a misleading organizational name that implies shared community values, then promoting misinformation and/or pseudoscience to confuse and mislead the public. And if Montclair’s local chapter follows the national leadership’s blueprint, we should anticipate attempts to roll back protections for marginalized students under deceptive narratives such as promoting “parental rights”…

Funding for F.A.I.R. remains opaque, but another billionaire donor is Joe Edelman and his wife Suzy. The Edelmans are also primary donors to Do No Harm, an organization behind anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and anti-DEI initiatives across the country.

The Free Press

The Free Press was started in 2021 with seed money from billionaires like Mark Andreessen (anti-consumer protections) and Howard Schultz (anti-union).

I think the best way to think of The Free Press is as a public relations firm for a hodgepodge of aggrieved billionaires—some racist, some anti-worker, some transphobic, some who don’t like that prestigious universities don’t cater to their whims, and some all four.

Below are quotes about The Free Press from an article by Matt Flegenheimer. He begins his piece by highlighting some The Free Press headlines like, “Camping Out at Columbia’s Communist Coachella” and “The Secret Service Failed. What’s That Have to Do With DEI?”

“It is a salon for the privileged laments of the powerful,” said Wajahat Ali, a writer and commentator who has encountered Ms. Weiss socially and debated her on television, “masquerading as the grievances of the oppressed.”

“She doesn’t just speak to the 1 percent,” said Frank Luntz…“She speaks to the one-hundredth of 1 percent. And they’ll listen.”

Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist behind campaigns opposing D.E.I. and critical race theory, called The Free Press “the most successful media venture in the United States if you’re measuring it on elite influence” and a “beautiful off-ramp” for the kinds of former center-leftists that he envisions pulling all the way to the right.

Hi. Hello. Chris Rufo wants to trick you into sympathizing with the racist, transphobic, anti-regulation, anti-journalism beliefs of reactionary billionaires and he believes Weiss’s media company is a great vehicle to achieve that. Here’s one weird trick Bari employs to do just that:

There is a certain formula to the opening lines of The Free Press’s signature work:
“I am a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders … ” But medical interventions for trans children have gotten out of control, and I am blowing the whistle.
“Eight years ago, I was in my mid-20s, and like many of my colleagues at NowThis News, I was completely aligned with the company’s left-wing content … ” But environmental causes are more complicated than we implied, and I am blowing the whistle.
“I’m Sarah Lawrence-educated, was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley … ” But NPR is governed by a narrow progressive ideology, and I am blowing the whistle. (The author of that piece, Uri Berliner, has since joined The Free Press.)

The Free Press is not dedicated to truth and objectivity, as Bari so often claims. It is dedicated to telling you it is dedicated to truth and objectivity to hide the reality that it is dedicated to the agendas of the people who fund Weiss.

“Just a light convo with the lying billionaire who pays me. I am objective.”

University of Austin

From Wikipedia:

After initially holding silent about the reasons for his resignation from UATX’s advisory board, Steven Pinker told The Harvard Crimson that UATX had (as the journalists put it) "confused freedom of speech with the political right"—that it had staffed itself primarily with people on the right, regardless of their position on free speech, extending to some opponents of it.

One of UATX’s founding advisors was the former president of the American Enterprise Institute. AEI is a think tank deeply funded by right wing billionaires that “advocates for lower taxes, fewer protections for consumers and the environment, and cuts to the social safety net."1

University of Austin received $200 million in seed money from the following billionaires:

Joe Lonsdale, Palantir co-founder and Trump backer
Peter Thiel, Palantir co-founder and J.D. Vance backer
Harlan Crow, Supreme Court corrupter who also provides the school with classroom space in his buildings.
Len Blavatnik
John Arnold, criticizes labor unions and seems to have been radicalized to the Weiss cause by the “censors” at the New York Times
Jeffrey Yass, who gave $35 million to start UATX and deeply funds MAGA candidates

In a report in the Wall Street Journal on the university’s donors, Harlan Crow trotted out a classic racist dog whistle:

“Much of higher ed today seems to want to reject Western accomplishments and the accomplishments of Western civilizations in their entirety,” Crow said. “Many people think that’s a bad idea.”

In my podcast interview with historian Rick Perlstein, we discussed GOP operative Lee Atwater’s infamous recorded comments about how the racist language the Republican Party used to animate its base had to become increasingly abstract. Where once the n-word was acceptable to say to get votes, nowadays white supremacists like Leonard Leo, Tucker Carlson, and Harlan Crow talk about “Western cultural tradition” as a dog whistle.

Other Stuff About Bari

Twitter Files

Weiss was one of two journalists billionaire Elon Musk handpicked to report on the “Twitter Files.” It’s not a good look when the world’s biggest disinformer chooses you to help strategically generate a fake conspiracy about a government censorship regime so he can use the fake conspiracy as an excuse to put an end to moderation policies in order to benefit his preferred presidential candidate. Read about Weiss’ role here and here.

More hypocrisy

After the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue massacre Weiss, who grew up going to Tree of Life, said of American Jews who support President Donald Trump:

I hope this week that American Jews have woken up to the price of that bargain: They have traded policies that they like for the values that have sustained the Jewish people—and frankly, this country—forever: Welcoming the stranger; dignity for all human beings; equality under the law; respect for dissent; love of truth.

Is Weiss pretending to not know the same billionaires who fund her are funding the effort deporting the stranger, denying dignity for all human beings, attacking equality under the law, crushing dissent, and habitually lying?

Weiss claims to have a problem with the rise of anti-semitic attacks that Trump inspired, but takes money from billionaires who support Trump and MAGA. Yass and Crow donate heavily to MAGA. UATX donors Joe Lonsdale and David Sacks both contributed heavily to Donald Trump, as have many other of her benefactors.

And then there’s this from Slate:

[Harlan] Crow…even has two paintings by Adolf Hilter…along with a signed copy of Mein Kampf and Nazi medallions. (Crow defended his controversial collection in 2014, saying it was not a celebration of repressive regimes but an effort “to preserve that as a part of our history.”)

Weiss is down to be chummy with people who want to take away her rights as long as they love low taxes. A weird flex. Addressing the billionaire-funded Federalist Society last year, Weiss offered:

“I know that there are some people in this room who don’t believe that my marriage should have been legal,” she said. “And that’s OK. Because we’re all Americans who want lower taxes.”

The Federalist Society folks ate it up.

A Note About What Anti-DEI Really Means

Your average American worker may be annoyed they have to attend a meeting about implicit bias or white privilege. Being annoyed by a DEI training doesn’t make you racist. Billionaires spending millions fighting against DEI, including hiring folks like Bari Weiss to attack it, is a racist pursuit.

Billionaires opposed to DEI believe that unqualified people are being unjustly hired because of their race. The reality is that DEI uplifts qualified people who have long gone un-hired, unjustly, because of their race. It’s as simple as that. But the billionaire racists want you to believe what they believe. So they hire people to invent slurs like “woke mind virus.”

“You know that meeting you attended? They are trying to break your will. Defend yourself against the woke mind virus!”

To be afflicted with the “woke mind virus” is really just to recognize the chasm of inequality that exists between us and billionaires—in terms of wealth, freedom, justice—and wanting things to be more equal. The billionaires hate that for some reason. And they flood the zone with “woke mind virus” shit by funding the likes of Weiss.

Here, another billionaire mouthpiece, Charlie Kirk, sells his audience the unlikely premise that everyone on “the left” including “woke CEOs” want to die in crashing planes piloted by people who are obviously unqualified because ‘look at how Black they are!’

Excellence is obviously the ultimate standard in hiring airline pilots. It’s racist as hell to assume that hiring Black pilots implies the standard is dropping. What business whose profits are uniquely linked to the safety of multi-ton objects loaded up with humans and flying through the sky would hire unqualified people just because ‘social justice warriors’ say so? The whole thing is absurd. And, say it with me because they don’t want you to say it, racist.

Perspective

Weiss actively harms trans people with The Free Press. Below, Bari can be seen running a piece by professional transphobe Jesse Singal wherein he makes shit up about what the social media app Bluesky “was supposed to be” in order to serve his narrative that he’s the real victim of harm (Yes, Singal received a death threat. Since you and I agree that death threats are bad, think about all the death threats against trans people that Bari and Jesse’s work has generated).

The purpose of this The Free Press article is to attack a new online public square where users can use moderation tools to keep their feeds free from hate, have meaningful conversation, and build democratic power. Billionaires like Weiss’ chum Elon Musk hate this. So, of course Bari Weiss is going to rush to run a piece by Jesse Singal that perpetuates a narrative that the left is violent and intolerant. They want to flip the script and insist that the public’s new social media alternative, a place to escape the racism, hate and misogyny on Twitter, is actually the place where intolerance thrives. Their ruse is bolstered by the fact that, because Jesse has spent years writing articles that make it harder for trans people to exist, he is the most blocked person on Bluesky.

The reality is trans people exist. They aren’t doing anyone harm. And some bigoted billionaires hate them. The politicians these billionaires sponsor have also figured out that attacking 1% of the population is a great way to distract Americans from the billionaires picking their pockets.

Check this out for some much needed perspective:

Substack Loves The Free Press

Sadly for everyone who disagrees with the billionaire effort to trick us into voting for their interests and against our own, Substack loves The Free Press. This week they announced they are partnering with Bari Weiss as Substack builds out a new set of features for large media organizations.

We’re partnering with The Free Press to build this first version of Substack’s enterprise offering while we learn how to best support organizations of this nature…
The Free Press in its current iteration launched on Substack in 2022 and has since accrued an audience of 1 million subscribers, including more than 135,000 paid subscribers. A recent funding round valued the company, which now has 50 employees, at $100 million.
We view The Free Press as an ideal partner for this initiative because of its longstanding presence on Substack, which extends back to its founding in early 2021, and because of its commitment to pursuing high-integrity journalism. The Free Press is old school in the best way, with meticulous editorial standards that it upholds through in-depth reporting, fact-checking, editing, original photography, and more. The Free Press, like Substack, is also dedicated to a business model based on subscriptions.

Cue an emoji version of me making the ‘yeesh’ face and pulling at my collar.

Closing Argument

I’ll end with this from Fair Observer:

Weiss is a product and promoter of the American art of hyperreality. She sucks up bits of reality and processes them for commercial advantage. That’s why the Venture Capitalist (VC) crowd that organized the All-In Summit loves her. She has done what all the great entrepreneurs celebrated in VC lore have done: She has not just made money — a banal accomplishment anyone with talent can manage — but built fame and prestige out of fabricating truly dangerous truths.

On behalf of billionaires, Weiss attacks free speech in the name of free speech. She attacks trans people, anti-racists, college kids, college professors, and anyone else with the temerity to disagree with the worldview of the people who fund her fake college and other “anti-woke” astroturfs.

The modern day use of the term “woke” is nothing more than an attack on progress. “Woke” is used today to attack anyone working for positive change and to hide the reality that every positive change in this country—on labor rights, women’s rights, civil rights, consumer protections, and environmental protections—was achieved by “woke” Americans struggling against the outrageously wealthy and their hand-chosen mouthpieces.

The people who got you an 8 hour workday and weekends off were “woke.” The people who agitated for the abolition of slavery were “woke.” The folks who took on segregation were “woke.” The people who got lead out of (most) of our pipes were “woke.”

Any time you hear the word “woke” you must push back and proclaim that it is a billionaire word meant to hinder any progress of which they do not approve. “Wokeism” is invoked by the powers that be, and thrust into our public conversation, by people who want to pick your pocket and have you blame your neighbor for it instead of them.

How’d I do?

What did I leave out? Too much quoting from other sources? It’s just plain easier to not have to reinvent the wheel! Speaking of those sources, definitely go read all the amazing articles I linked to because those people are smarter than me and doing incredible journalism that you should support!

UPDATES

As I come across more information about the grift that is Bari Weiss, I will stow it here for safekeeping.

12/30/24

While going through some old screenshots on I found this:

Bari Weiss lies and says that Democratic politicians ran on gender fluidity and defunding the police. Republican politicians ran on saying that this is what Democrats were running on. But that doesn’t make it true. Bari is once again revealed as willing to say anything, regardless of whether it is true or not, to benefit her donors.

Find facts about who is and isn’t funding police here. Catch up on the reality concerning Democratic politicians and trans rights here and here.

Also on 12/30/24 I decided to look into whether or not Bari took issue with Die Welt publishing an opinion piece by Elon Musk endorsing AfD, Germany’s neo-Nazi party. The editor of Die Welt’s opinion page resigned in protest. Though most all media reports on AfD as a “far-right” party, they are clearly neo-Nazis.

The use of Nazi-era slogans and imagery, combined with the party's hardline stance on immigration and Islam, has led to accusations that the AfD is fostering an environment in which extremist ideas can flourish.

Will Bari resign her position as columnist at Die Welt?

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With love,
Brian

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