The uncompromising boldness of Christians can do great good in the world, even today.
Joel Berry, managing editor of The Babylon Bee, recently explained to podcaster Dillon England how a hilariously cutting throw-away article he wrote in 2022 got the Bee ceremoniously banned from Twitter and served as the final straw for Elon Musk to spend $44 billion of his own dollars to purchase the social media company. That purchase was one of the most substantial moves liberating free speech in decades. Here is the story.
On March 15, 2022, The Babylon Bee declared Rachel Levine, a man who started presenting as a woman as recently as 2011, and is the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health in the Department of Health and Human Services, as their “Man of the Year.” They did so in response to USA Today, two days prior, improperly declaring Levine their Woman of the Year. Here is the Bee’s article.
This got The Babylon Bee banned from Twitter for misgendering someone, just like it got The Daily Citizen silenced there more than a year prior.
Of course, no one is “misgendering” anyone when they call a man a man. Misgendering is not thing. Everyone knows what a man and woman are. People who get accused of this manufactured “crime” are simply refusing to play along, as everyone should, with the false notion that “gender identity” refers to anything real.
Joel Berry explained how the Bee participated in the defense of free speech by standing strong in their cancelation by Twitter: “Here is what Twitter told us. They said, ‘You can delete the joke and then you have to check this box saying you participated in hate speech.’”
Berry continued, “That was too far for us.”
Berry states these satirists certainly understood the consequences of their convictions,
Leadership [of the Bee] decided we’re not deleting the joke, if we lose our platform, if we lose our business, so be it. This is the red line that we are not going to cross. The truth is too important. Free speech is too important.
They decided to take a strong, principled stand when so many others, including smart Christians, had folded under the pressure to conform.
The Bee remained suspended from Twitter for quite some time, even though the platform was a primary publicity and revenue source for them.
Berry then jumped into the most interesting part of the story, explaining,
Unbeknownst to us, Elon Musk who is a fan of the Bee, he had interacted with our content a few times before. So, we knew he was kind of a fan. When he came back [from Germany, opening a Telsa factory there], he noticed the Bee hadn’t posted in a while and he DM’d our Babylon Bee Twitter account asking “Is the Bee suspended?”
Berry stated how excited they were at such a prominent query, but they had no way to respond to Musk’s question because their account had been deactivated.
He adds, “Elon Musk did some digging around and found Kyle Mann and some of the people that work for us and DM’d Kyle Mann directly and said, ‘Hey, can you talk?’”
Berry then explains how, on his birthday, March 24, 2022, he was driving home from a birthday date with his wife, and Kyle Mann calls him “all out of breath” saying “Joel, can you please go on Fox News for me at 10 because Elon Musk is about to call me and I can’t go on Fox.”
When the two talked that evening, Musk asked Mann to tell him what led to the Bee’s Twitter ban. Mann explained the joke about Levine being awarded “Man of the Year” and Berry adds, “Elon did his little laugh that he does” and then the two talked at length about how frustrated Musk was “at wokeness, how it was destroying everything.” Musk then quipped to Mann at the end of the conversation, “Maybe I should just buy Twitter!” Berry added, “The rest is history. From there, he started the process of trying to buy the platform.”
Of course, Berry admits the Bee being suspended was not the sole reason Musk decided to buy Twitter, but he asserts “it may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, or the thing that really sparked the process.”
On Musk’s first day at Twitter, the infamous sink day, Berry recalls, “It was a Friday morning and he texted us and said, ‘Do you wanna be unsuspended?’ and we said, ‘Sure!’” The Washington Post even reported that “hours after Elon Musk took control of Twitter … the Trust and Safety team responsible for combating hate speech on the site received an urgent directive: Bring back the Babylon Bee.”
Musk taking over Twitter was the saving of a very important vehicle for free speech across the globe by releasing the social media behemoth from the oppressive ideological capture which entangled it. While X still succumbs to some gender untruths, it is far better than under it’s previous ownership.
And all because some good Christian men decided to stand resolute after poking fun at the silliness of gender ideology – clearly a very potent weapon in the culture war for truth – and were willing to pay the price, even if it meant losing their own livelihood and creative outlet. Good for them!
You can see the pertinent section of this revealing interview here.
Related articles and resources:
It’s Official: Elon Musk Buys Twitter in Potentially Massive Victory for Free Speech
Twitter Locks Out ‘The Daily Citizen’ Over Factual Reporting on Biden’s Transgender Nominee
Twitter Continues Crusade Against Science in Purge of Biological Reality
‘Babylon Bee’ Gets Locked Out of Twitter, CEO Says, “Truth Is Not Hate Speech”
Elon Musk Becomes Twitter’s Largest Shareholder, Vows Changes
Elon Musk Blasts ‘Woke’ Culture, Warns of Declining Birth Rate in Interview with The Babylon Bee
Twitter Banned President Trump, But Still Permits These Five Dangerous Accounts
Congressman Jim Banks Suspended from Twitter for Calling Rachel Levine a ‘Man’
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