Extremism thrives in ‘keyboard courtroom’ — America must think like jurors, not mobs

This post was originally published on this site.

The West is losing its ability to tell truth from falsehood, and the consequences are no longer abstract.What we’re witnessing is the rise of what I call the “keyboard courtroom,” a digital arena in which out-of-context photos and doctored videos pass as “proof” and where moral judgments are rendered instantly, emotionally, and often incorrectly.

In the keyboard courtroom, terrorism is reframed as “resistance,” victims are recast as “oppressors,” and atrocities are dismissed as propaganda, while unverified claims spread unchecked.Ourgeostrategic enemies — China, Russia, and Iran — play an outsized role, spreading divisive falsehoods.And a growing number of Americans, especially younger voters who get most of their news online, are ill-equipped to assess, at a baseline level, the veracity of what they’re seeing.

WHEN HATE BECOMES A BUSINESS: THE MONETIZATION OF ANTISEMITISM

Anti-Israel protest on Columbia University campus

Students at Columbia University participate in an anti-Israel protest.(Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The results are startling.For the third time in a single week, Jewish businesses and ambulances were targeted in a fire-and-bombing spree that’s consumed London — all while the government watches the alarming spike inBritish antisemitismwith mostly disinterested silence.This follows closely an attack a few weeks ago in Michigan, where a deranged anti-Israel advocate crashed an explosive-laden car into a Jewish school, with over 140 Jewish children inside — an attack many media outlets justified by noting that the terrorist’s family members had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.

What they mostly failed to add was that those same family members had been targeted because they were Hezbollah operatives — sworn to the destruction of the Jewish State and its seven-plus million Jewish citizens.

Anti-Israel students sitting and standing on Columbia University central lawn

Anti-Israel students occupy a central lawn at Columbia University in New York City on April 21, 2024.(Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

None of this moral confusion should surprise us.We saw it on full display onWestern campusesand in Western media outlets in the aftermath of the Hamas pogrom of October 7, in which 1,200 Jews were brutally murdered, scores of Jewish women were raped, and dozens of Jewish children were kidnapped and held hostage for hundreds of days.In one now-infamous example, a Yale professor called the rape-and-killing bloodbath “exhilarating.”

SIGN UP FOR ANTISEMITISM EXPOSED NEWSLETTER

I’ve spent the last two-plus years trying to understand how we got here, speaking at dozens of universities, high schools, and religious centers across the country.What I’ve found is that the problem isn’t just bias.It’s method.We’ve lost any semblance of a basic framework for evaluating contested claims.

A gavel on a bench as people leave court

A gavel sits on a judge’s bench as people leave court.(iStock)

There is, however, one place where ordinary people still get this right: the courtroom.

I’m constantly amazed by the extent to which twelve complete strangers get together in thejury box, analyze hundreds of pieces of evidence, listen to hours of argument, and then issue precisely the right verdict.It’s not because they understand the nuances of patent or antitrust law.It’s because they’re given a methodology that’s been tested over hundreds of years to help everyday people apply their common sense to complex problems.

We call these playbooks “jury instructions.” But we might as well call them “truth guides.”