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Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
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9 Jan, 15 tweets, 5 min read
The Boot Is Coming Down Hard And Fast

"This is all happening just in time for the Biden administration, about which critics had already been voicing grave concerns regarding the future of internet censorship."
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-boot-is-…
Biden has announced plans to roll out new domestic terrorism laws in the wake of the Capitol Hill riot.
archive.is/IxNz5 Image
Did you know that Biden has often boasted about being the original author of the US Patriot Act?
buzzfeednews.com/article/andrew…
The first draft of the Patriot Act was magically introduced one week after the 9/11 attacks. Legislators later admitted that they hadn’t even had time to read it, yet somehow its authors were able to gather all the necessary information and write the whole entire thing in a week. Image
Biden’s bill was never put to a vote, but after 9/11 then-Attorney General John Ashcroft reportedly credited his bill with the foundations of the USA PATRIOT Act. Image
A recent Morning Joe appearance by CIA analyst-turned House Representative Elissa Slotkin eagerly informed us that the real battle against terrorism is now inside America's borders.
In response to pressures from all directions including its own staff, Twitter has followed Facebook's lead and removed Donald Trump's account.
And it wasn't just Trump. Accounts are vanishing quickly, including some popular Trump supporter accounts. I myself have lost hundreds of followers on Twitter in the last few hours, and I've seen people saying they lost a lot more.
It also isn't just Trump supporters.
The online left is hopefully learning that cheering for Twitter "banning fascists" assumes that (A) their purges are only banning fascists and (B) they are limiting their bans to your personal definition of fascists. There is no basis whatsoever for either of these assumptions.
Google has ratcheted things up even further by removing Parler from its app store, and Apple will likely soon follow. This push to marginalize even already fringey social media sites is making the argument of "If you don't like censorship just go to another platform" look silly. Image
This is all happening just in time for the Biden administration, about which critics had already been voicing grave concerns regarding the future of internet censorship.
thegrayzone.com/2020/11/11/ric…
The censorship of a political faction at the hands of a few liberal Silicon Valley billionaires will do the exact opposite of eliminating right-wing paranoia and conspiracy theories, and everyone knows it. You're not trying to make things better, you're trying to make them worse. Image
The correct response to a huge section of the citizenry doubting an electoral system we've known for years is garbage would have been more transparency, not shoving the process through and silencing people who voice doubts and making that entire faction more paranoid and crazy.
Supporting the censorship of online speech is to support the authority of monopolistic tech oligarchs to exert more and more global control over human communication. Regardless of your attitude toward whoever happens to be getting deplatformed today, supporting this is suicidal.

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More from @caitoz

Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
7 Jan
MSM Already Using Capitol Hill Riot To Call For More Internet Censorship

@nytimes has wasted no time publishing not one but two new articles bolstering the narrative that more internet censorship is needed to prevent repeats of today's incidents.
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/msm-already-…
The United States received a very small taste of its own medicine today as rioting Trump fanatics temporarily forced their way into the nation's Capitol building, and now the whole nation is freaking out.
rt.com/op-ed/511740-u…
I am being generous when I say the US got a taste of its own medicine; unlike the horrific coups and violent uprisings the US routinely orchestrates in nations around the world, this one stood exactly zero chance of seizing control of the government, and only one person died.
Read 18 tweets
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
7 Jan
Aaand there it is, right in alignment with the US Senate Judiciary Committee who told social media giants in 2017 that it is their duty to "prevent the fomenting of discord.” Expect this to become the dominant narrative.
"Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words. America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions"
~ @selectedwisdom to social media officials at the hearing.
wsws.org/en/articles/20… Image
Rightist wingnuts are always used to justify policies that are designed to neuter the left. That's why any leftist who's cheered internet censorship for the wingnuts has been applying their own muzzle on behalf of the authoritarians. Many still don't realize this.
Read 4 tweets
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
5 Jan
Right-libertarians keep telling me that China is part of the same globalist power structure as western governments while China is nationalizing billionaire corporations and executing bankers for corruption. One of these things is not like the others, folks.
The one waging constant wars around the world, circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, initiating nuclear stand-offs and trying to destroy any nation which disobeys it is unquestionably worse.
Even if you accept 100% of the western establishment narrative about Xinjiang (which only a moron would do), it still wouldn't be as bad as the US empire waging constant wars, initiating nuclear standoffs, and destroying any nation which disobeys it.
Read 5 tweets
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
4 Jan
The Assange Extradition Ruling Is A Relief, But It Isn't Justice

"Judge Vanessa Baraitser has ruled against US extradition for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, but not for the reasons she should have."
#Assange #AssangeCase
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-assange-…
Baraitser's frightening ruling supported virtually every US prosecutorial argument that was made during the extradition trial, no matter how absurd and Orwellian.
judiciary.uk/judgments/usa-…
In the end though, Baraitser ruled against extradition. Not because allowing the extradition of journalists under the Espionage Act poses a threat to press freedoms worldwide. Not to prevent a global chilling effect on natsec journalism about the world's most powerful government.
Read 14 tweets
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
4 Jan
UPDATE: Judge ordered no extradition for Assange, and orders him released from Belmarsh Prison, both due to suicide risk concerns. The US has confirmed that it will appeal extradition ruling. He's still jailed, court is in recess and then they'll discuss possible bail or release.
It's likely they'll keep him jailed until after the US appeals the ruling, as Medhurst explains. We're definitely not out of the woods yet. But getting out of Belmarsh is excellent.
Read 4 tweets
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
3 Jan
People keep predicting coups, mass arrests and unprecedented upheavals in the US government because the mass media is acting very strange, which creates the illusion that the US government itself is acting very strange. Meanwhile the empire marches on completely uninterrupted.
What people are misperceiving is that it isn't the US government that's changing, it's the international world order. The US is approaching post-primacy and is unleashing tons of propaganda to roll out international agendas to prevent this, hence the bizarre behavior.
The information ecosystem looks wild, so America-fixated Americans get the mistaken impression that it's their government that is wild. Meanwhile great care is taken to maintain stability in the hub of the global empire, so all these prophecies of upheaval keep shooting blanks.
Read 4 tweets

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