A few points to highlight about the above-linked video report we just published on the attempts by Sen. Warren & Adam Schiff to demand Amazon suppress certain books.
First, this is part of a year-long campaign by Dems to use their majority power in DC to mandate censorship.
There are so many reasons why this attempt by the Democratic Party to commandeer Big Tech censorship power for themselves is so dangerous.
Perhaps the gravest is that this is all about imposing a framework where dissent from or questioning of decrees from authorities is banned.
In the video, I revisit the destruction of Parler - it became *the most-downloaded app*, when leading Dems demanded Apple, Google and Amazon destroy it, and they obeyed.
A key Dem with amazing candor said why: Big Tech now knows Dems rule DC & thus must comply with their orders.
That Democrats should use their political domination of the US Government to censor the internet is now a widespread view of most Democrats, as is the view that tech monopolies should do so. Polling data makes clear: internet censorship is extremely popular among Democrats.
The most bizarre part is that liberals, to justify censorship, haul out the classic libertarian view that private companies can do whatever they want.
But that's false: the law is clear: the First Amendment is violated when the state pressures private actors to censor for them.
Many liberals dismiss *state censorship* as just Culture War trivialities -- as if a free internet is like bickering over pronouns.
It's especially bizarre that people who spent 5 years shrieking about fascism are so cavalier about this union of state & corporate power.
The full video report is here. The internet was heralded in the 1990s as an unprecedented tool of liberation from centralized control. The Snowden reporting was about defending internet freedom. It's now becoming the greatest tool of coercion and control:
There are few people in the democratic world more powerful or tyrannical than Moraes. He believes he is Brazilian democracy itself, and thus any criticisms of him are a criminal attack on the state.
Brazil's left views him as a deity, since he censors/imprisons their opponents.
On Tuesday, we began reporting in @Folha on a massive archive of data we obtained from his chambers between his top aides (6gb).
After the first day, the left united to defend him because they see him as infallible, and he called our reporting a plot to destroy democracy.
It's hard to explain the cult-like adoration the left has for him. No matter what he does - ban people from the internet or imprison them with no due process or trial - they go online and type "Eu autorizo, Xandão!" (we support you, Great Alexandre!).
Not even herd animals are this flagrant about it. You tell me how and why corporate media constantly speaks from the same exact script this way, verbatim. #KamalaIsJOY
I find it so interesting when long-obvious truths suddenly are acknowledged in mainstream circles.
Here, in the WPost, even @TaylorLorenz (!!) admits that the hordes of #Resistance freaks and anti-Trump obsessives are as conspiratorial and deranged as what they claim QAnon is:
Here's @SohrabAhmari in the @NewStatesman on how many prominent liberals -- not anonymous Twitter trolls but major DNC donors and academics -- are deranged and drowning in moronic conspiracy theories.
@SohrabAhmari @NewStatesman Just by the way: a non-trivial sector of the Brazilian left still believes the 2018 stabbing attack on Jair Bolsonaro was fake -- despite doctor testimony, his multiple surgeries, etc. -- and now believes the same about the attack on Trump.🇧🇷
Also: US corporate media always tries to deny "journalist" status to anyone who actually does real adversarial reporting against the US Govt, rather than just doing a Natasha Bertrand of writing down what CIA orders.
Assange won multiple journalism awards around the world:👇
I urge everyone to watch the repulsive exchange between Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani at the 2008 GOP debate Dave mentioned.
It shows how blind and repressive the Bush-Cheney-era GOP - and US - were, and still are, to core truths about our foreign policy:
That military aggression by the US and allies (Israel) will produce "blowback" -- meaning the people we bomb will hate us and want to kill us in return -- was created by the CIA!
Yet it's so taboo that TikTok was forced to censor the bin Laden letter because it discuss this.