Tag Archives: Twitter

Post-Decency Politics: House Democrats Use Hearing to Attack Both Free Speech and a Free Press, by Jonathan Turley

When you got nothing else, you go ad hominem. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:

Below is my column in The Hill on continued scorched earth tactics of Democrats in attacking any witnesses raising free speech concerns over government censorship.

Here is the column:

“At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Those words were first asked by lawyer Joseph Welch in his confrontation with Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) during the Senate’s infamous Army-McCarthy hearings. This week, nearly 70 years later, Welch’s words seem more relevant than ever after House Democrats savaged two journalists who attempted to explain a government effort to censor citizens.

It was only the latest of a series of hearings in which FBI agents and other whistleblowers, experts and journalists have been personally attacked for raising free-speech concerns. Last week’s hearing showed definitively that we live in a post-decency era.

The latest attacks came as journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified about breaking the “Twitter Files” story, detailing how the FBI and other agencies secretly sought to censor or ban citizens from social media. In her opening statement, Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands), the ranking member of the House Judiciary subcommittee, attacked them as “so-called journalists” and said they were “a direct threat” to the safety of others by reporting the censorship story.

Taibbi pushed back, saying that “I’m not a ‘so-called’ journalist” and giving a brief description of his award-winning career at Rolling Stone magazine and other publications. Yet other committee members also attacked the honesty of the two journalists. And after failed efforts to claim they were Elon Musk’s corrupt “scribes,” or limited by him in their investigations, the committee members attacked their ethics.

Continue reading

The Censorship Industrial Complex, by C.J. Hopkins

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)

Continue reading

Dems Blast “Threat” Of “So-Called Journalists” As Taibbi, Shellenberger Expose “State-Sponsored Thought-Policing”, by Tyler Durden

The Democrats are making asses of themselves trying to explain away videotapes we can all see and threatening those associated with their release. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Update (1300ET): Well, that escalated quickly…

As one might expect, the Judiciary hearing on the “weaponization” of federal agencies, featuring Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger as witnesses was full of fireworks, facts, and ad hominem friction.

Out of the gate, Ranking Member Democratic Del. Stacey E. Plaskett labeled the two “so-called journalists” as dangerous and a “threat” to former Twitter employees.

She claimed that Republicans brought “two of Elon Musk’s ‘public scribes'” in “to release cherry-picked out-of-context emails and screenshots designed to promote his chosen narrative – Elon Musk’s chosen narrative – that is now being parroted by the Republicans” for political gain.

“I’m not exaggerating when I say you have called two witnesses who pose a direct threat to people who oppose them,” Plaskett said after the video.

Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, had a simple response to her accusations:

“It’s crazy what you were just saying.”

“You don’t want people to see what happened,” Jordan continued.

“The full video, transparency. You don’t want that, and you don’t want two journalists who have been named personally by the Biden administration, the FTC in a letter. They say they’re here to help and tell their story, and frankly, I think they’re brave individuals for being willing to come after being named in a letter from the Biden FTC.

Continue reading

When the Private Sector Is the Enemy, by Ryan McMaken

Large corporations are fully on board with statism. From Ryan McMaken at lewrockwell.com:

Last Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee meeting provided some much-needed insight into how corporate personnel at Twitter (before Elon Musk’s takeover) had essentially turned the company into an adjunct of the federal government and its intelligence agencies.

Present to testify were high-ranking company personnel who oversaw Twitter during the covid panic and in the early days of the Hunter Biden laptop controversy. Specifically, they were former employees Yoel Roth, Anika Collier Navaroli, and Vijaya Gadde. All three had titles with words like “trust” and “safety” in them. There was also James Baker, a former Twitter attorney and a former FBI agent who promoted the now-disproven “Russiagate” theory. It was clear from their testimony that all four saw themselves as righteous arbiters of truth and that anyone who disagreed with their views was guilty of “misinformation.” Conveniently, this “misinformation” overwhelmingly tended to coincide with these employees’ personal political views.

In practice, however, these keepers of “trust” and “safety” did not function as disinterested fact-checkers, journalists, or stewards of any kind. They certainly weren’t entrepreneurs focused on delivering the highest value for their owners. Rather, they were acting as extensions of the US administrative state, the FBI, and the Democratic Party.

Continue reading

Twitter censorship is the modern-day red scare, by Jonathan Turley

Are you now or have you ever been a Russia asset? Twitter and the FBI want to know. From Jonathan Turley at nypost.com:

“The Democratic Party [is] the bedfellow of international communism.” Those words from Sen. Joe McCarthy captured the gist of the Red Scare and the use of blacklists and personal attacks to silence critics. The Democrats this week appear to have taken up the same cudgel in labeling opponents and critics Russian sympathizers and fellow travelers in opposing government involvement in a massive censorship system.

The Red Scare is back and it is going blue.

I testified this week in Congress on the Twitter Files and how they suggest what I have called “censorship by surrogate” or proxy.

The files show dozens of FBI and government employees actively seeking the censorship of citizens and others for their viewpoints. In my testimony, I warned that this was reminiscent of the McCarthy period where the FBI played a role in the establishment of blacklists for socialist, communists, and others. I encouraged Congress not to repeat its failures from the 1950s by turning a blind eye to such abuse.

Continue reading→

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

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.

Continue reading→

Righteous Tyrants, by Julie Kelly

Tyrants gotta tyrannize, but today’s version are bland mediocrities compared to those who tyrannized in the past. From Julie Kelly at amgreatness.com:

No, they’re not cutting off food supplies or building labor camps but these modern-day tyrants seek the same ends: crush the opposition and control the masses.

They sure don’t make tyrants like they used to.

Tyrants once rose to power the old-fashioned way: defeating the opposition on the battlefield or at the faux ballot box. Despite their atrocities, these despots at least had some swagger—perhaps a way with the ladies, a good sense of humor, strong persuasive abilities, commanding verbal skills, pride in their appearance.

Not so with modern-day martinets. Our 21st-century tyrants possess nothing more than useless degrees from woke institutions and deep contempt for at least half the country, likely born out of a lifetime of social isolation. History, after all, shows that outcasts often seek revenge against their childhood tormentors later in life.

Such appears to be the case with the former Twitter executives who testified before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. Unimpressive by every measure—looks, personality, intellect, persuasiveness, grasp of the facts—the Twitter Four should serve as a reminder of what the defenders of freedom are up against. Thankfully, our enemies, while powerful for now, have the mental, physical, and emotional appeal of overcooked spaghetti.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

James Baker, Vijaya Gadde, Yoel Roth, and Anika Collier Navaroli took the quasi-stand this week at a House Oversight Committee hearing to explain their roles in colluding with the government to suppress free speech during an election year, particularly related to the New York Post’s coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020. Baker, the former general counsel for the FBI when the bureau used fabricated political opposition research to defraud a secret federal court and obtain a warrant to spy on Donald Trump, was fired by Elon Musk as Twitter’s general counsel after it was discovered Baker was vetting company files made available to independent journalists.

Continue reading→

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

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.

Continue reading→

“Free Speech for Whom?”: Former Twitter Executive Makes Chilling Admission on the “Nuanced” Standard Used For Censorship, by Jonathan Turley

Twitter wasn’t stopping people from yelling “fire” in a crowded movie house. They were shutting people down because of their political views. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:

Yesterday’s hearing of the House Oversight Committee featured three former Twitter executives who are at the center of the growing censorship scandal involving the company: Twitter’s former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, former deputy general counsel James Baker and former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth. However, it was the testimony of the only witness called by the Democrats that proved the most enlightening and chilling. Former Twitter executive Anika Collier Navaroli testified on what she repeatedly called the “nuanced” standard used by her and her staff on censorship. Toward the end of the hearing, she was asked about that standard by Rep. Melanie Ann Stansbury (D., NM). Her answer captured precisely why Twitter’s censorship system proved a nightmare for free expression. Stansbury’s agreement with her take on censorship only magnified the concerns over the protection of free speech on social media.

Even before Stansbury’s question, the hearing had troubling moments. Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md) opened up the hearing insisting that Twitter has not censored enough material and suggesting that it was still fueling violence by allowing disinformation to be posted on the platform.

Navaroli then testified how she felt that there should have been much more censorship and how she fought with the company to remove more material that she and her staff considered “dog whistles” and “coded” messaging.

Continue reading→

EU Technocrat Threatens Musk With “Sanctions” Unless He Stamps Out Free Speech On Twitter, by Tyler Durden

From the article, here’s the money question: What is so threatening about free speech? Unravel that, and you get the answers to a lot of other questions. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

The battle over Twitter is often made to appear complex and chaotic, but it can all be boiled down to a simple dichotomy – It’s about the people who demand censorship in favor of the establishment narrative vs. the people who want free speech and fair rules applied to everyone equally.

Everything else is noise and distraction.

The complications arise when we try to define free speech when it comes to social media.  Private companies are not subject to many legal boundaries related to free speech rights.  This is an argument that the political left and government representatives made constantly during the massive purge of conservative and liberty oriented accounts by Big Tech companies since 2016.  And, as we saw with Twitter previous to Elon Musk’s takeover, governments took full advantage of this legal loophole in order to silence people using social media websites as middlemen.

The ongoing release of the Twitter Files proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that collusion between Big Tech and governments for the sake of censorship is a reality.  In America, at least, this is a constitutional no-no.  The fact that politicians and agencies like the FBI were actively seeking out and targeting ideological opponents and having them silenced on Twitter is a direct violation of the 1st Amendment and these people should be subject to prosecution (the FBI even shelled out at least $3 million to Twitter for services rendered).

Prosecution might never happen, but at least the evidence is undeniable today after years of the public being lied to.

The reality that Twitter was acting as an enforcement agent for government censorship around the world tells us exactly why so many establishment officials have been up in arms over Musk’s purchase of the platform.  Until now, every single major Big Tech company has been operating in lock-step with the establishment narrative.  People couldn’t even talk about Hunter Biden’s laptop, let alone talk about the inconvenient facts surrounding “climate change” or the covid mandates and vaccines.

Continue reading→