“I Feel That Way Too”: Creator Says She Lost 90% of Her Income After Speaking About Palestine
February 1, 2026
THIS IS THE COST OF SPEAKING.
“I lost 90% of my income the moment I started talking about Palestine.
Contracts signed, then cancelled.”
Michelle MiJung Kim says what many are living in silence:
We’re told not to speak about a genocide because we can’t afford to lose our jobs.
This is how censorship works now.
No laws.
No bans.
Just livelihoods quietly destroyed.
When telling the truth costs everything,
silence becomes enforced
and complicity becomes policy.
@michellekimkim
#SilencedForPalestine #EconomicCensorship #FreeSpeech #freepalestine #fyp
English Script:
I lost 90% of my income. As soon as I started talking about Palestine online. 90%. Contracts that were signed, canceled. So I get the trade off and I get that many people cannot afford. But even that is so enraging, right? We’re in a place where we cannot speak about a genocide that is happening because we cannot afford to lose our job, because our health care depends on it. Our dependents depend on it that we don’t have the conditions that allow us to take these types of risks and to say the truth that we all feel. And what a maddening reality that is, being able to acknowledge that all of these things are connected, that when we stay quiet, of course there is cost to our movement, but also ourselves. That this cognitive dissonance that we see and feel inside keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I hope that when we do it together, when more of us are able to do the scary thing together, that we keep each other a little bit safer, that we de-risk when more of us participate, and that it’s up to all of us. We actually have immense power to inspire people who are in our lives, never mind society, but just people in our lives who are looking to us to see who what other people are doing. This podcast to me is in many ways a call to be together, to be scared together so that we can practice courage together, build community together, be messy together so that we can actually break out of this cognitive dissonance and be with people who keep us grounded and remind us that what we’re seeing is real, and the anger and the sadness and the fear that we feel is deeply valid.
