The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) suspected of its 2021 event a prominent speaker with a history of making anti-Semitic comments.
“We just learned that someone we invited to CPAC expressed reprehensible points of view that have no home with our conference or our organization,” CPAC tweeted on Monday. “The individual will not attend our conference.”
We just learned that someone we invited to CPAC expressed reprehensible points of view that do not fit our conference or organization. The individual will not attend our conference.
– CPAC 2021 (@CPAC) February 22, 2021
The tweet did not specify exactly who the uninvited guest was or what opinions prompted the conference to cancel participation. A spokesman for the American Conservative Union, which organizes the CPAC, did not immediately respond to an email requesting comments on the cancellation.
But the announcement came after the left-wing media Media Matters for America published an article highlighting anti-Semitic and conspiratorial tweets by Young Pharaoh, an online commentator who was initially scheduled to join a panel of guests at the conference on Sunday afternoon.
CPAC’s official agenda for this year’s conference, which starts Thursday, has been updated to remove Pharaoh’s name.
Pharaoh posted a series of tweets expressing anti-Semitic views or rejecting the existence of Judaism at once. In a January 4 tweet, he called the Jews “thieves” and “fake”. In another posted in July, Pharaoh falsely blamed the Jewish people for “censorship” and “pedophilia” on social media.
In other tweets, Pharaoh appeared to promote conspiracy theories, including Qanon’s conspiracy theory and one claiming that coronavirus vaccines “would alter his DNA”.
Pharaoh confirmed to The Hill that he had been discredited of the event. In a brief telephone interview Monday night, Pharaoh criticized the CPAC’s decision to cancel its participation. He said he agreed to attend the conference to speak out against what he described as “censorship” by technology companies. By canceling his presence, he said, CPAC “publicly humiliated” and “silenced” him.
“I feel like I’m being silenced. I feel like my rights are being violated, ”said Pharaoh, 27. “Basically, I’m being censored.”
Pharaoh insisted that “it has nothing to do with Qanon or any of the conspiracies”.
Asked about his anti-Semitic views and whether he understood the concerns about his comments, Pharaoh said he could “understand why people are upset”, but insisted that he kept his previous comments before stating without basis that “there is no validity for Judaism. ”