Tag Archives: censorship

Pro-Censorship Democrats Whitewash the Federal Government’s Iron Fist, by Jim Bovard

Posted on March 16, 2023 | Leave a comment

It’s not censorship, it’s proactive speech monitoring and enhancement. From Jim Bovard at libertarianinstitute.org:

The House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held a hearing last Thursday on the Twitter Files. Elon Musk purchased Twitter last October and was aghast to learn how the feds had previously domineered his new company. “Twitter is both a social media company and a crime scene,” he tweeted on December 10. Musk chose a handful of journalists to go through Twitter’s records and expose how the feds domineered the company.

Prior to Thursday’s hearing, the Twitter Files revealed that the U.S. State Department had directly pressured Twitter to cancel almost 300,000 accounts (including those of journalists and foreign diplomats). In June 2021, a State Department contractor sent Twitter a list of “around 40k Twitter accounts that our researchers suspect are engaging in inauthentic behavior…and Hindu nationalism more broadly.” But the list was full of hapless Americans with no ties to India or its politics. The State Department sent Twitter a list of 5,500 names believed to be “Chinese…accounts” engaged in “state-backed coordinated manipulation.” The list was so sloppy that it “included multiple Western government accounts and at least three CNN employees based abroad,” according to a Twitter internal analysis. One Twitter executive ridiculed the presumption that “If you retweet a news source linked to Russia, you become Russia-linked.”

The FBI perpetually browbeat Twitter to suppress accounts, including Twitter parody accounts that only idiots or federal agents would not recognize as humor. Taibbi wrote, “The master-canine quality of the FBI’s relationship to Twitter comes through in this November 2022 email, in which ‘FBI San Francisco is notifying you’ it wants action on four accounts.” In a March 2022 meeting with top Twitter executives, FBI agent Laura Dehmlow “warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government.” Dehmlow had a task force of 80 agents to curb “subversive data utilized to drive a wedge between the populace and the government.” Her team continually pounded Twitter headquarters with tweets and individuals they wanted suppressed.

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The Censorship Industrial Complex, by C.J. Hopkins

Posted on March 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

It’s nice the Twitter revelations pulled back a bit of the curtain, but it barely debts the complex. From C.J. Hopkins at consentfactory.org:

I think something is seriously wrong with my brain. Yesterday, I hallucinated that Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified before a subcommittee of the US House of Representatives about the Censorship Industrial Complex, i.e., the US arm of the global official propaganda and disinformation apparatus that has been waging an all-out war on dissent for the better part of the last six years.

I know this couldn’t have actually happened, and was just an extended hallucination (probably the result of the copious amount of drugs I consumed in my misspent youth, or the effects of a Commie bio-weapon with a fatality rate of less than one percent, because I’ve been writing about The War on Dissent (2018), and The Criminalization of Dissent (2021), and the global Corporate COINTELPRO op (2017), and The War on Reality (2021), and The Manufacturing of Reality (2021), and Manufacturing Truth (2018), and Manufacturing Normality (2016), and The Road to Totalitarianism (2022), and The Gaslighting of the Masses (2022) … well, for quite some time. So, I’m sure it was just an hallucination, because there’s no way Matt and Shellenberger were actually sitting there talking about how …

“We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation ‘requests’ from every corner of government: the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA. For every government agency scanning Twitter, there were perhaps 20 quasi-private entities doing the same, including Stanford’s Election Integrity Project, Newsguard, the Global Disinformation Index, and others, many taxpayer-funded.” (Matt Taibbi’s Statement to Congress)

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The Censored Generation, by Thomas Buckley

Posted on March 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

Censorship protects the bubble-wrapped cohort when what’s needed is a lot of pins. From Thomas Buckley at mises.org:

Incredulity. Astonishment. Disgust. Anger.

It is these feelings—amongst others—that describe the general reaction to the revelations of the Twitter Files and other egregious episodes of Big Tech censorship of the electronic public square.

The implicit deal with companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc. is very simple: we will look at your ads if you give us a service for free. The deal did not include censorship.

But what is society to expect when those doing the censorship seem to see absolutely nothing wrong with it, and that it didn’t even occur to them that what they were engaged in—often at the specific request of governmental agencies—was at all a problem?

For a generation that has grown up with speech codes, enforced nicety, automatic deference to the feelings of others, and has been swaddled in bubble wrap against the vagaries of life, censoring of speech is not only not an ethical leap, it is the right thing to do.

Couple that with a permanent, purposeful self-infantilization that makes them defer to (or incoherently rage at for NOT censoring speech) anyone they perceive to be a grown-up—such as former FBI bigwig James Baker at Twitter—and the stage is not only set, but the terrifying end of the play writes itself.

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FBI Collusion With Twitter ‘Shocking,’ Witnesses Tell Panel at ‘Weaponization’ Hearing, by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Posted on February 11, 2023 | 2 comments

There is no place for a government agency to be telling a private entity what it can and cannot publish in a country that has a functioning First Amendment. From Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., at childrenshealthdefense.org:

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Thursday heard testimony from Congress members and ex-FBI agents who criticized government agencies for colluding with media and Big Tech to censor Americans.

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Thursday heard testimony from eight witnesses, including Congress members and former FBI agents, during what NPR described as “the Republican majority’s push to ramp up scrutiny of the Biden administration.”

Established last month, the subcommittee — which has subpoena power — is formally tasked with examining how the executive branch investigates and collects information about U.S. citizens, including as part of “ongoing criminal investigations.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) chairs the committee. He also chairs the House Judiciary Committee.

According to The Hill, Republicans formed the subcommittee “as a way to counter alleged abuse of a government they say is abusing its power to target conservatives,” while “Democrats see the committee as the weapon itself, a vehicle for the GOP to forward conspiracy theories that will mobilize the Republican base ahead of 2024.”

Two panels of witnesses testified Thursday. The first featured a slate of current and former lawmakers, including Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.

The second panel included two former FBI agents, Thomas Baker and Nicole Parker, Jonathan Turley, J.D., a professor at the George Washington University Law Center and Elliott Williams, principal of The Raben Group, a prominent lobbying firm.

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The Pain of Listening To Twitter Censorship Testimony, by Dr. Naomi Wolf

Posted on February 11, 2023 | 1 comment

It’s difficult listening to the second rate hacks who tried to destroy your work and your reputation trying to justify themselves. From Dr. Naomi Wolf at naomiwolf.substack.com:

Nasty, Ill-Dressed Technocrats, I Want My Life Back

As I type, I am undergoing the excruciating experience of listening to C-SPAN, which is airing “Twitter’s Response to Hunter Biden Laptop Story.” The larger issue is: who censored Twitter, and why, and whether there was illegal collusion (there was) between Twitter and the US government.

So I finally am seeing them — up close, in real life, in person. I am finally able to look at the faces of the heretofore faceless technocrats who took it upon themselves to try to destroy my life and ruin my name.

I am witnessing, as I see them seated primly in rows in a Congressional hearing room, the very faces — the somber, ill-cut but costly blue suits, the bad wire-rimmed glasses, the judgmental expressions — of those who were personally responsible for the misery, trauma, reputational damage, shattered dreams, and loss of income, in my one life, over the course of last two and a half years.

Here at last are the very people who took it upon themselves, or who oversaw their colleagues, to single me out, to collude with the White House, and with Carol Crawford of CDC, and with DHS perhaps, to suspend me — following an accurate tweet of mine that warned women of menstrual harms following mRNA injection.

The positions of these people, the views of them — their self-regarding, self-satisfied, smug certainty that their rightness is the only rightness that could ever be — do not remind me of the testimony or views of actual Americans. They remind me rather of the affect of functionaries in a Stalinist show trial, or of the nameless bureaucrats in Kafka’s The Trial.

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Every Facet of Government Is in the Censorship Business, by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Posted on January 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

Not only is every facet of government in the censorship business, but they censor virtually every means of communication. In the U.S., the only thing that stands between the populace and totalitarian control of information is the alternative media. From Dr. Joseph Mercola at theburningplatform.com:

Story at-a-glance

  • Between the documentation obtained through a recent lawsuit against the White House and the Twitter files released by Elon Musk, it’s become quite clear that every facet of the U.S. government, including its intelligence agencies, are involved in illegal and unconstitutional censorship
  • We now have proof that the FBI has been acting as the key instigator and implementer of the government’s illegal censorship of Americans. The FBI has also actively interfered in multiple elections — all while inventing the narrative that foreign nations were interfering
  • Twitter has worked hand in hand with the U.S. Department of Defense to aid U.S. intelligence agencies in their efforts to influence foreign governments using fake news, computerized deepfake videos and bots
  • The Twitter files also reveal members of Congress have a direct line to Twitter and have had accounts suspended on their behalf and content removed at their whim
  • Discovery documents from a lawsuit against the White House filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana show at least 67 federal employees across more than a dozen agencies are also engaged in illegal censorship activities. This includes aides to President Biden, who pressured social media companies to change their policies to fit White House demands for censorship

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The Elitists’ Communications Counterrevolution, by Thaddeus G. McCotter

Posted on January 9, 2023 | 1 comment

We can’t possibly have an Internet free of state control. From Thaddeus G. McCotter at amgreatness.com:

We should have seen it coming.

The gleaming promise of new technology and its uses blinded us to the insidious extent imperiled elitists would go to protect their unmerited power, wealth, and status. We were naïve. Yet, even if one could have foreseen the metastasizing tyranny brought about by the digital age, it would have strained credulity to watch Americans—especially the young—not merely acquiescing to it, but embracing it.

Though we are now inured to its novelty, it bears recollecting that from the late 20th century to the present, we have lived through a worldwide communications revolution. Profoundly affecting the individual and society, the full impact of this revolution remains unclear. Humanity’s ability to choose and pursue happiness has been empowered to an extent undreamt. In the palm of one’s hand, or upon one’s laptop or desk, and with just a stroke of a key, one can instantaneously communicate with family and friends a world away, conduct business, petition the government for the redress of grievances, or bring calumny upon a major corporation. In sum, the communications revolution is an historically unprecedented technological boon for personal empowerment, growth, enrichment, and self-government.

It is this last that alarms the elitists.

The elitists believe they are entitled to wield power for the purpose of governing their inferiors (i.e., the rest of us). To facilitate this inversion of our free republic’s design, the elitists require the complicity of a significant amount of the citizenry who, through acquiescence, apathy, and/or dependency, are more than willing to submit to the elitists’ control over their lives, be it wholly or in part. Thus, for the elitists, the communications revolution is an existential threat. The empowerment of sovereign citizens to self-govern and, be it singularly or collectively, increase their ability to control and curtail—i.e., to subordinate—the power of public and private sector elitists, had to be blocked through co-option and coercion; through a communications counterrevolution.

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“We Don’t Do This”: Adam Schiff and the Underbelly of American Censorship, by Jonathan Turley

Posted on January 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

To call Adam Schiff a cockroach is to malign cockroaches. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:

Below is my column in the Hill on the recent disclosure of efforts by Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Cal.) to pressure Twitter to censor critics, including a columnist. This effort occurred shortly after Schiff’s office objected to one of my columns accusing him of pressuring social media companies to censor those with opposing views. While publicly denying that he supports censorship, Schiff was secretly pressuring Twitter to censor an array of critics.

Here is the column:

“We don’t do this.” That response from Twitter to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is a singular indictment, coming at the height of Twitter’s censorship operations. Apparently, there were some things that even Twitter’s censors refused to do.

One of those things was silencing critics of Schiff and his House committee.

In the latest tranche of “Twitter Files,” journalist Matt Taibbi revealed that Twitter balked at Schiff’s demand that Twitter suspend an array of posters or label their content as “misinformation” and “reduce the visibility” of them. Among those who Schiff secretly tried to censor was New York Post columnist Paul Sperry.

Sperry drew Schiff’s ire by writing about a conversation allegedly overheard by one of his sources. Sperry’s article, which appeared in RealClearInvestigations, cited two sources as overhearing two White House staffers discussing how to remove newly-elected President Trump from office. The article raised the possibility of bias on the part of an alleged key player in launching the first Trump impeachment, CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella. The sources reportedly said that Ciaramella was in a conversation with Sean Misko, a holdover from the Obama administration who later joined Schiff’s staff. The conversation — in Sperry’s words — showed that “just days after [Trump] was sworn in they were already trying to get rid of him.”

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Censor or Else: Democratic Members Warn Facebook Not to “Backslide” on Censorship, by Jonathan Turley

Posted on December 19, 2022 | Leave a comment

Democrats see media as nothing more than their public relations arm to further their agenda. The First Amendment is for losers. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:

With the restoration of free speech protections on Twitter, panic has grown on the left that its control over social media could come to an end. Now, some of the greatest advocates of censorship in Congress are specifically warning Facebook not to follow Twitter in restoring free speech to its platform.

In a chilling letter from Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), André Carson (D-Ind.), Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Facebook was given a not-so-subtle threat that reducing its infamous censorship system will invite congressional action. The letter to Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, is written on congressional stationery “as part of our ongoing oversight efforts.”

With House Republicans pledging to investigate social media censorship when they take control in January, these four Democratic members are trying to force Facebook to “recommit” to censoring opposing views and to make election censorship policies permanent. Otherwise, they suggest, they may be forced to exercise oversight into any move by Facebook to “alter or rollback certain misinformation policies.”

In addition to demanding that Facebook preserve its bans on figures like former president Donald Trump, they want Facebook to expand its censorship overall because “unlike other major social media platforms, Meta’s policies do not prohibit posts that make unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud.”

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The Fifth Estate, by Mike Solana

Posted on December 15, 2022 | Leave a comment

Who has been pulling Twitter’s strings? From Mike Solana at piratewires.com:

pirate wires #85 // summary and analysis of the twitter files, a dangerous alliance of powers, and technology’s nature brings the industry home

Dangerous alliance. In 1787, Edmund Burke said there were “Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there [sits] a Fourth Estate more important than they all.” The notion of some vital power beyond our government was imported to the New World, and today constitutes a core belief of the American liberal: there is no free people, we’re often told, without a free press independent of congress, the courts, and our president. But throughout the 20th Century thousands of media outlets gradually consolidated, and by the dawn of our internet era only a few giants remained. These giants largely shared a single perspective, and in rough agreement with the ruling class the Fourth Estate naturally came to serve, rather than critique, power. This relationship metastasized into something very close to authoritarianism during the Covid-19 pandemic, when a single state narrative was written by the press, and ruthlessly enforced by a fifth and final fount of power in the newly-dominant technology industry.

It was a dark alliance of estates, accurate descriptions of which were for years derided as delusional, paranoid, even dangerous. But today, on account of a single shitposting billionaire, the existence of the One Party’s decentralized censorship apparatus is now beyond doubt.

A couple weeks back, alleging proof Twitter acted with gross political bias, and in a manner that influenced U.S. elections (!), Elon Musk opened his new company’s internal communications to a small handful of journalists. They set immediately to breaking a series of major stories that have rewritten the history of Trump-era tech. Long story short, Twitter leadership lied to the public, relentlessly, for years, and everything the most paranoid among us ever said about the platform was true. “Trust and safety” is a euphemism for political censorship, with “expert” teams comprised almost exclusively of the most radical, joyless grievance studies majors you ever met in college. Their goal is to reshape American politics by dominating the bounds of what the public is permitted to consider American politics. In these efforts, they have mostly been succeeding.

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