CPAC disinvites speaker over ‘reprehensible views’

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has disinvited from its 2021 event a featured speaker with a history of making anti-Semitic remarks.

“We have just learned that someone we invited to CPAC has expressed reprehensible views that have no home with our conference or our organization,” CPAC tweeted on Monday. “The individual will not be participating at our conference.”

We have just learned that someone we invited to CPAC has expressed reprehensible views that have no home with our conference or our organization. The individual will not be participating at our conference.

— CPAC 2021 (@CPAC) February 22, 2021

The tweet didn’t specify exactly who the disinvited guest is or which views prompted the conference to cancel the appearance. A spokesperson for the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the cancelation. 

But the announcement came after the left-leaning media watchdog Media Matters for America published an article highlighting anti-Semitic and conspiratorial tweets from Young Pharaoh, an online commentator who was initially scheduled to sit on a guest panel at the conference on Sunday afternoon.

CPAC’s official agenda for this year’s conference, which begins Thursday, has since been updated to remove Pharaoh’s name.

Pharaoh has posted a number of tweets expressing anti-Semitic views or rejecting the existence of Judaism outright. In one tweet from Jan. 4, he called Jewish people “thieving” and “fake.” In another posted in July, Pharaoh falsely blamed Jewish people for “censorship” and “pedophilia” on social media.

In other tweets, Pharaoh appeared to promote conspiracy theories, including the Qanon conspiracy theory and one claiming that the coronavirus vaccines will “alter your DNA.”

Pharaoh confirmed to The Hill that he had been disinvited from the event. In a brief phone interview on Monday evening, Pharaoh blasted CPAC’s decision to cancel his appearance. He said that he had agreed to attend the conference to speak out against what he described as “censorship” by tech companies. In canceling his appearance, he said, CPAC “publicly humiliated” and “silenced” him.

“I feel like I’m being silenced. I feel like my rights are being violated,” Pharaoh, 27, said. “Basically I’m being censored.”

Pharaoh insisted that he 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 that he could “understand why people are upset” but insisted that he stood by his past remarks before baselessly claiming that “there is no validity to Judaism.”