The Disgraceful Briahna Joy Gray
Briahna Joy Gray's relentless effort to exonerate Hamas and smear Jews over October 7th.
by Ben Cohen
Over the years, I’ve had a few interactions with former Bernie Sanders press secretary Briahna Joy Gray. I once got into a prolonged back and forth with her on Twitter during the 2020 election over not backing Joe Biden for president.
Sanders had dropped out of the campaign and immediately pledged support for Biden, but Gray would not. Biden was, according to Gray, not worth voting for because he was a “flawed candidate”. By that, Gray meant Biden had a history of making unfortunate gaffs, didn’t endorse medicare for all, and wouldn’t commit to erasing all student debt.
I argued that it wasn’t the time to teach Democrats a lesson on ideological purity, especially given Trump had killed roughly 400,000 Americans through gross negligence during the pandemic. Instead of responding to the specific questions I sent her, she repeated the same talking points over and over again: Democrats need to be taught a lesson and voting for Biden only makes them complacent.
This greatly pleased her Twitter audience of militant Sanders supporters, but it left me feeling despondent. Hillary Clinton had been hamstrung by strident Sanders supporters heading into the 2016 election, and their refusal to vote for her played a significant role in Trump’s victory. Sanders to his credit recognized this and was far quicker to endorse Biden after his loss, and campaigned for him vigorously.
If Joe Biden was more than acceptable to Bernie Sanders, why wasn’t he for Sanders’s staff?
Ideology over reality
I stopped following Gray after a while, mostly because I found her inability to budge on anything tiresome. Gray’s style of communication was also irritating — she refuses to speak to the people she debates, and insists on speaking at them. Gray isn’t interested in productive debate, she is interested in putting her views forward — most of which are poorly thought out, ideologically driven talking points. Gray is TV savvy, charismatic, and can be very eloquent, but she is also deeply dishonest and intensely arrogant.
I initially tried to interact with her because I have never believed Bernie Sanders followers are bad or immoral. The vast majority of them voted for Joe Biden and happily put disagreements aside for the sake of beating Donald Trump. It is, I believe, possible to disagree with people on policy specifics, but work together for the greater good. But Gray views Biden and his supporters as inherently evil, and refused to work with them to ensure Trump was removed from office.
When Biden got into office and rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement, expanded Medicare and Medicaid, improved the Affordable Care Act, pumped billions into public schools, and forgave billions in student debt despite extreme GOP resistance, none of this was good enough for Gray:
When you have already decided moderate Democrats can do no good, even when they deliver on progressive policies no hard left candidate could ever pass, you must publicly declare it is not enough. Gray, like all ideologically captured people, is more interested in promoting her narrative than the truth.
The consequences of ideology
When over a thousand innocent Israelis on October 7th of 2023 by Hamas, Gray embarked on what can only be called a calculated disinformation campaign to excuse the perpetrators. Gray was well practiced, having spent over a year excusing Russian crimes against Ukraine (she claimed America was really at fault for continuing “Cold War policies” of economic domination).
The list of Gray’s reality distortions over the Israel/Gaza conflict is impressive. From denying Hamas killed children to dismissing claims of rape and accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing” long before they invaded Gaza, Gray has waged war not on Israel, but reality.
Gray became so prolific on this issue that she began to appear on my social media timelines again, despite not following her. Recently, I made the mistake of watching an hour long debate with her at an event in Brooklyn, NYC:
The panel was asked whether Israel’s war on Hamas is just, with two arguing for Israel (Eli Lake and Michael Moynihan), and two against (Briahna Joy Gray and Jake Klein). It was excruciating to watch, mostly because Gray refused to answer any of the questions asked by moderator Konstantin Kisin, and repeatedly talked over the other guests. Gray used the platform not to debate, but to lecture, and it ruined what could have been an interesting event. I happened to agree with some of the things Gray was saying, but most of the time her soliloquies had little to do with the topic at hand.
Her performance was so bad that the audience turned on Gray, causing her to storm off the stage afterwards, claim everyone was racist, and tell Kisin that she hoped “someone drops a bomb on this entire building”.
Gray was widely panned on social media afterwards, but instead of accepting her behavior and performance were subpar, she doubled down and began calling anyone who criticized her a “Zionist”:
In far left circles, the term “Zionist” has become interchangeable with “Nazi”. It no longer represents the belief in a homeland for the Jewish people, but an a belief in racist, white supremacy fueled “settler colonialism”. On social media, Gray wields the word like a weapon — almost exclusively against Jews:
Love for Palestinians, or hatred for Jews?
Gray has long maintained she harbors no hatred towards Jews, only Israel and Zionists engaging in white supremacy, ethnic cleansing and genocide. She also claims that as a person of color, she has a deep affinity for Palestinians and their fight for the “right of return”.
I have long suspected this isn’t the case, mostly because Gray has expressed no sympathy whatsoever towards the Jews murdered on October 7th, and steadfastly refused to acknowledge the mass expulsion of Jews from Arab lands during the 1940’s onwards. My sense was that Gray has fallen prey to radical identity politics, and believes Jews cannot be victims of Arab aggression or racism because they are white. While you could call this anti-white racism, I wasn’t sure whether it constituted antisemitism — at least not officially.
Last week however, Gray revealed her true colors in an interview with the sister of an Israeli abducted on Oct. 7. In the clip below, you can see Gray rolling her eyes when her guest begs her to “believe women when they say they got hurt” :
While Gray’s reaction was shocking, it sadly wasn’t surprising. The total indifference to Jewish victims of sexual violence and the disrespect shown to the sister of a woman held by a murderous Islamic cult is appalling. Amazingly, Gray went on to tell her guest that the stories of sexual assault on October 7th have been discredited. While some of the stories haven’t been proven, the UN conducted an extensive investigation and found that: “Based on the information it gathered, the mission team found clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment has been committed against hostages." The report added that it "has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing against those still held in captivity.”
Gray of course knows this, but stuck to her narrative even when talking to someone whose sister is being held captive by Hamas.
Gray was fired by The Hill almost immediately after, and then took to Twitter again to blame everyone but herself:
Reading between the lines, the blame is more specific: the Jews. Because Jews control the media, anyone critical of Israel has to be suppressed, this despite Gray criticizing Israel almost daily for almost nine months.
The horseshoe
Gray has dedicated her life to left wing causes. From her work with Bernie Sanders to her activism over issues like healthcare and income inequality, she deserves some praise for bringing attention to topics much of the media misses. But Gray, like every militant activist, has sacrificed integrity for ideology.
Her refusal to take responsibility for her words and actions also reveals a deeper pathology, and one that is rife in extremist politics in America. It is an inability to self reflect, or to empathize with those you might disagree with. As Iranian activist Elica Le Bon writes:
Briahna Joy Gray sat on a panel and told the audience that Hamas was seeking to create a democracy in place of Israel, in a state “like the United States.” It would not have even taken 11 seconds of research to quickly debunk this. She also smirked and rolled her eyes at the family of hostages asking her to believe the treatment of women in Hamas captivity, which she still refers to as the “mass rape hoax,” even after the U.N. reported that it found credible evidence of such rapes. These are just two small examples of falling far, far short of the most basic standards of journalistic integrity.
Anyone in such a position should understand that they were way out of their depth and honestly was neither qualified, nor compassionate enough to be doing this work.
The perfect horseshoe merges the self-victimization of the extreme left with the conspiratorial attitude of the extreme right to frame the most justified (and long overdue) termination of all time as a plot to “suppress free speech” by an entity that has no capacity to enact such suppression as a non-governmental actor, and never afforded such a right to deprive her of it.
It is possible to be empathetic to both Israelis and Palestinians, to condemn violence perpetrated by both sides, and to take a nuanced view of an enormously complex conflict that doesn’t necessarily fit Western leftist narratives. More than anything, this requires an acceptance of the other sides humanity, a point Briahna Joy Gray cannot seem to fathom. When faced with the consequences of her actions and incontrovertible evidence of her own callousness, Gray still cannot face the truth. And thus she retreats further into ideology, and away from basic human empathy.
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I watched her thing with the hostage sister. She tried to trap her into blaming Netanyahu for her sisters situation. But the sister was prepared and never touched that issue. Kidnapping was what Hamas did. I think Gray was frustrated. She’s a smooth talker.
Now the issue in the debate (I only saw the clip) when she decries Israel as an ethno state and then says Hamas wants a state like the US - that was truly hilarious. Idiotic words strung together and coming out of her mouth.
She’s a venal antiSemitic bitch.
I mean, she’s a tankie through and through. She hates the West and everything it stands for. She would rather back illiberal, autocratic regimes in the name of tearing apart the Pax Americana than celebrate domestic policy wins that ostensibly should be things she wants to see happen.