Human rights activist and Hoover Institution fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali warned on “The Story” Tuesday that “censorship terrorists” are leading the country “down a path to hell” in response to New York Times opinion columnist Bari Weiss’ scathing resignation letter.
The Somalia-born Ali praised Weiss as “the stuff that courage is made of” after Weiss alleged “constant bullying” by colleagues in what she called an “illiberal” environment.
Weiss published the resignation letter that she sent to Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger on her personal website earlier Tuesday. In it, the 36-year-old claimed Twitter had become the paper’s “ultimate editor” and the “paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space.”
BARI WEISS QUITS NEW YORK TIMES WITH SCATHING RESIGNATION LETTER
“I think there’s a lot of truth to that,” Ali said. “There are so many of us who see what social media is doing and it’s really quite harmful. We are being led down a path to hell through institutions like Twitter, but there’s also a lack of leadership.”
According to Weiss’ account, Times leadership appeared to turn a blind eye to the “bullying and terrorizing” of those who voiced an opinion different than their tormentors, Ali explained.
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“The leaders, the people who are supposed to discipline what I call ‘censorship terrorists’ are not doing their jobs,” she said.
“What we are seeing is, not that the leadership is being silenced and doing nothing, no,” Ali went. “They are actively appeasing the mobs and then we know, really know, that things are going to go off a cliff.”
Ali said that Weiss deserved credit for speaking out and understanding “that we are at a crossroads here in America and in other civilized Western countries.
“This is about Western civilization, and I think we are transitioning from being open societies to becoming a closed society,” she said. “What defines an open society? It is freedom. What defines a closed society? It is fear, and it looks like The New York Times newsroom and opinion pages are adopting fear.”
