There is nothing new under the sun, Ecclesiastes 1:9 teaches, and that is certainly true when it comes to leftist efforts to demonetize and deplatform conservative media by squeezing advertising revenue.
They don’t want to argue with the right — they want to silence them.
Ben Shapiro testified this week before the House Judiciary Committee regarding “Collusion in the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).”
Thankfully, people are paying attention now.
GARM describes its mission as “a cross-industry initiative established by the World Federation of Advertisers to address the challenge of harmful content on digital media platforms and its monetization via advertising.”
WFA members include global brands such as McDonald’s, Exxon, Visa, Adidas and dozens more.
For conservative outlets, the loss of these advertisers could be devastating.
Far-reaching GARM
GARM landed in the House Judiciary hot seat because it flagged conservative content as too risky or offensive for all its corporate members to run advertising on.
The group had a far-reaching impact, according to the House investigation, affecting not only website advertising but also social media.
Based on a report issued by the Judiciary Committee and his own experience, Shapiro asserted that GARM targets media outlets that “reach hundreds of millions of people with opinions and beliefs long established as within the mainstream of American conservative thought.”
And conservatives were not the only ones targeted.
Elon Musk announced that he plans to sue “the perpetrators and collaborators in the advertising boycott racket” revealed by the House GARM report because X (formerly known as Twitter) was targeted due to its free-speech policies.
The GARM initiative uses lofty verbiage about protecting the public, but in reality it’s mostly an attempt at
political and cultural censorship.
Bringing dozens of global brands together under one umbrella makes GARM particularly dangerous because collective action magnifies the impact.
But the strategy of choking conservative media of revenue is not new at all.
At our website, Legal Insurrection, we have tracked and investigated the assault on conservative advertising revenue for over a decade.
The most successful innovator of the tactic was Angelo Carusone, who identified that risk-averse advertisers were a vulnerable pressure point on conservative media.
Calling for the public to boycott conservative media was not working, as conservative talk radio and Fox News personalities were too popular.
Rather than trying to win the political argument, deplatforming conservatives by starving them of revenue became the business model.
Carusone launched the “Stop Beck” campaign in 2010-2011, claiming he drove more than 300 advertisers from Glenn Beck’s Fox News show.
Carusone then parlayed the advertiser pressure tactic into a position at Media Matters for America, where he launched the “Stop Rush” effort to drive advertisers from Rush Limbaugh’s syndicated radio show.
That effort, which in many ways was AstroTurfed by Media Matters, failed after several years of harassment of Limbaugh advertisers.
‘Warfare’ on conservatives
Media Matters also led a decade-long campaign of “Guerilla Warfare and Sabotage” (its own terminology) against Fox News and conservative media. In later years, Media Matters’ efforts spawned copycat groups such as Sleeping Giants and Check My Ads targeting conservative media.
Carusone is now the president of Media Matters, which Musk, in another lawsuit, alleges manipulated X searches to drive away advertisers.
What started with Stop Beck has morphed into an industry trying to deplatform not only conservatives, but free-speech advocates as well.
GARM, like many similar predecessors, has aspirations beyond squelching ad revenue.
It actively works to establish itself as the ultimate arbiters of allowable speech.
From Beck to Rush to Fox News to Musk, leftist activists are not trying to win the argument, they are trying to deprive conservatives and free-speech advocates of platforms on which to make their arguments.
Ultimately, they are trying to deprive you, the audience, of hearing those arguments and coming to conclusions on your own.
GARM presents a particular threat because of the collective global brands it represents, and the fact that until now it operated sight unseen.
But it’s the same well-worn tactic of trying to deplatform and destroy conservative media rather than debating issues on the merits, in order to control what you are allowed to say and what you are allowed to hear.
William A. Jacobson is a clinical professor of law at Cornell University and founder of the Equal Protection Project (EqualProtect.org), where Kemberlee Kaye is operations and editorial director.