Dear Friend,

Facebook is a sewer, and since 2008, the job of cleaning it up for public consumption has belonged to COO Sheryl Sandberg. As Melissa Gira Grant wrote in The New Republic, “The same day Sandberg minimized Facebook’s role in service of the armed people who tried to take the Capitol, people who claimed responsibility for organizing the mob were using Facebook and Instagram to plan more of them.”

Grant reminded readers that when she joined Facebook 12 years ago, “Sandberg was a 38-year-old millionaire. Sandberg’s career has, for better and worse, leveraged her usefulness to men in attaining their ambitions for her own substantial wealth and influence.… That has always been the two-pronged power of Sheryl Sandberg’s own womanhood: She has used it to position her success in a sexist industry as a feminist victory, and in turn she has used that to insulate her and Facebook from culpability.” 

Unlike mainstream media, The New Republic’s commentary on politics is fearless. Grant was not afraid to tell readers the truth: “Women served all kinds of roles in driving that mob on toward attempted murder: They took care of their sons, and they were on the front lines. They organized caravans of protesters on Facebook. Then they went on Facebook live to defend their actions in the mob.” 

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Melissa Gira Grant sums up Sandberg’s choices this way: “She can refuse to make the work of violent white supremacists—who are organizing themselves across the country; who seek to undermine our democratic institutions through disinformation, terror, and lethal force—any easier. She can own the power she has. She can stop lying. She can divest her Facebook fortune. At the very least, she can resign.” 

The best way to follow our country’s growing domestic terror threat and the social media outlets that facilitate it is to read Melissa Gira Grant and the best investigative reporters, opinion writers, and cultural critics in America. 

Subscribe to The New Republic today.

Sincerely,

Kerrie Gillis, publisher

Read Melissa Gira Grant’s article Sheryl Sandberg, Resign.