Thread by @LibertyBlitz

1/ It's Friday, so time for my weekly thread. Will go over my recent piece about Russiagate and how American culture and civil society are much worse off as a result.

Here it is if you missed it:
libertyblitzkrieg.com/2019/03/25/rus…

2/ As someone who correctly called Trump-Russia collusion, aka "Russiagate," a scam from day one, I've been a little surprised and disappointed by the quality of discussion since this hoax was exposed.

3/ For instance, I see a lot of people talking about how bad this is for mass media and how people need to be held accountable. I mean, sure, in some ways the former is true, but the latter will never happen and we should know better by now.

4/ We know from the 21st century that people spouting off lies/propaganda for the powerful are always rewarded and promoted (Iraq war pushers), and financial oligarchs are likewise shielded from responsibility for criminality and fraud (banker bailouts/no one went to jail).

5/ Thinking the media somehow "failed" by pushing Russiagate is extremely naive. It assumes that the role of mass media and blue checkmark punditry is to inform the masses of the truth and fight for justice. Don't be ridiculous.

6/ A cursory examination of American culture/economy makes it crystal clear that crime and lying pays, so long as you're wealthy, powerful and connected. Likewise, being a minion of the wealthy and powerful by pushing their narratives also pays. And they wanted Russiagate pushed.

7/ So Russiagate was clearly and unequivocally a huge success for those who pushed it. Russiagate was a business model as much as it was a lazy conspiracy theory. Rachel Maddow makes $10 million a year. You think she cares? Her life won't be impacted, but ours will.

8/ I think many people have forgotten, but the whole normalization of online platform censorship (on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter) wasn't really a big thing until after the 2016 election and the proliferation of the lie that Trump was a Kremlin agent.

9/ The hysteria and fear that was intentionally stoked following Hillary's embarrassing loss was used to convince much of the public that ideologically impure ideas needed to be eradicated from social media.

10/ So now we have tech oligarchs in charge of deciding who gets to talk in the public square and who doesn't, all in the name of saving us from Russians. Some of the people who asked for this were just dupes, but many cynically did it to silence their political rivals.

11/ So what are we left with? We already had a two-tier justice system in the offline world, but this has now been transferred to online. On the one hand, an average peasant can be banned forever from Twitter for writing "learn to code" at a blue checkmark, yet...

12/ Yet there's virtually nothing an MSNBC talking head making millions a year to spread intelligence agency propaganda can do to get banned. Nothing. We know this because none of the most egregious Russiagate grifters have been banned from anything.

13/ You can be sure Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg will never come out and condemn Russiagaters for peddling endless amounts fake news. This is because fake news that fits the ruling class narrative is protected speech. Some fake news is fact more equal than others.

14/ Our system is so completely rigged in favor of certain kinds of opinions, not even the most bald faced liars amongst them will face repercussions. They will be rewarded instead. Spread fake news to start wars that kill millions? Here's a promotion and an even bigger paycheck.

15/ What Facebook, Apple, Google and others have made clear is fake news is fine as long as it’s repeating lies of the government or intelligence agencies. This double standard doesn't just put a finger on the scale of debate, it threatens to kill it off entirely.

16/ As such, the Russiagate hoax was a tremendous success from the perspective of the entrenched U.S. power structure. We've now culturally accepted tech oligarch censorship of opinions deemed inconvenient to the establishment narrative. And we allowed this based on a lie.

17/ But it gets even worse. Russiagate got "liberals" and "centrists" thinking and talking like Joe McCarthy. Whipped up into an imperial frenzy of panic about Russians under every bed. Clamoring for payback and militarism. And they've been turned into such stooges under Trump.

18/ So congratulations to everyone who participated. You turned a mass of people who'd normally be anti-war under Trump into wild-eyed imperialists foaming at the mouth for militarism. You made flippant censorship the norm. We have to be one of the stupidest civilizations ever.

19/ With that off my chest, time to check out the garden. If you like what I do here and on the blog, consider supporting my work. My website is now 100% ad free so it's all up to the reader to pitch in now.
libertyblitzkrieg.com/support-libert…

20/ Special thanks to all my new patrons. I'm now at 108, and it continues to grow every week. Come join the fun:
patreon.com/michaelkrieger

21/ Finally, there's Bitcoin. It's good Bitcoin karma to donate BTC and inspire the next bull run.
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