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Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
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Jan 24 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Free speech matters because dissent from the status quo is how the status quo gets changed. If voices which opposes the status quo are always denied access to mainstream platforms and algorithmically suppressed online, they're unable to change the status quo. They have no voice.
If the only way to get your voice heard is to support the status quo, as far as the reason free speech matters is concerned it's functionally the same as having no speech at all. It's like saying "You have free speech; you can say anything you want into this hole in the ground!"
It doesn't matter what you're free to say if nobody hears you say it. If those who support the status quo are loudly amplified on all media while those who oppose it are denied platforms and algorithmically censored, dissenting views have no effect. They effectively don't exist.
"Nobody's obligated to give you a platform" is a nonsense argument if all platforms with any meaningful influence are being actively cut off from literally everyone who wants to significantly change the status quo. And they are.
caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/01/24/cen…
"Nobody's obligated to give you a platform" is a nonsense argument if all platforms of any influence are heavily intertwined with and supportive of status quo power structures. And they are.
"Nobody's obligated to give you a platform. If you want to oppose the status quo you are free to oppose it quietly, on your own, where no one can hear you, while those who support the status quo are loudly amplified on new media and traditional media so everyone can hear them."
An environment where everyone has "free speech" but only those who support the status quo get heard is functionally indistinguishable from an environment where no one has free speech and only authorized state propaganda gets heard.
Which is of course the idea. A tremendous amount of effort goes into keeping the public from awakening to the injustices of status quo systems and organizing to change them while still giving them the illusion of freedom. Whoever controls the narrative controls the world.

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More from @caitoz

Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
Jan 21
Consider the possibility that the Orwellian dystopia you fear is already here and has been in place for many years but you just haven't noticed because you're still allowed to watch Netflix or buy a gun or say whatever you want to say within a small impotent online echo chamber.
Consider the possibility that the powerful are already getting everything they want from you, right now, and any suspicious actions you see them taking is not them constructing a cage for you but them tightening the bolts on a cage that was quietly built around you some time ago.
Consider the possibility that while they've been training you to watch out for communism and microchips and overt totalitarianism, they've been covertly transforming us all into mindless gears in a machine constructed to serve their interests which challenges them in no way.
Read 18 tweets
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
Jan 19
Silicon Valley manipulation of information via algorithm is far more consequential than its censorship of individuals. The fact that online platforms manipulate what speech gets heard has far more of an impact on public thought. It doesn't matter what you say if no one hears you.
A big deal gets made whenever a high-profile individual gets removed from a major online platform, and rightly so; we shouldn't let overt censorship be normalized and expanded. But censorship via algorithm is far more damaging, and gets far less attention.
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/silicon-vall…
Some celebrity losing their online platform has far less of an impact on the way people think about things than the way government-tied monopolistic megacorporations are using algorithms to elevate authorized narratives about the world while suppressing unauthorized narratives.
Read 7 tweets
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
Jan 19
Capitalism is so absurd that its proponents respond to questions of *systemic* problems by babbling about what people can do *as individuals*. Jobs don't pay enough? Get a better job. It's like addressing the problem of a skyscraper being on fire by saying "Try not to get burnt."
It's like if there was a locked room full of ten prisoners and you only gave them enough food to keep seven alive, and you responded to their complaints by saying "Make sure you grab the food first when I throw it in your cell then."
It's a belief system you can only hold in place with psychological compartmentalization. Tell that one suffering guy to get a better job and save his money, and then simply do not think about the millions of people who are working low-paying jobs and unable to save any money.
Read 4 tweets
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
Jan 4
We don't talk enough about how bat shit insane it is that monopolistic Silicon Valley corporations censor people in obedience to US government orders, up to and including censoring discussion of a wildly important historical figure who was assassinated by that same US government.
Medhurst literally just posted screenshots from this thread. Tell me what's in here that you think should be censored on US government orders and why that should not freak you the fuck out.
When I talk about censorship on social media I always get airheads bleating "Hurr, durr, it's not censorship, it's a private company enforcing their TOS." No it's censorship you idiot. It's just a job that's been outsourced by the government like everything else in neoliberalism.
Read 4 tweets
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
Dec 28, 2021
This is what happened in Syria, it's what happened in Libya, and it's what was on track to happen in Xinjiang before Beijing said "nah" and launched its crackdown. The west isn't mad at Beijing for committing a "genocide", it's mad at Beijing for preventing one.
Lots of overlap with all three, BTW.
The actual interest in Xinjiang has been about the fact that it is a key geostrategic region that the western empire would greatly benefit from balkanizing away from China so it can't fulfill the role planned for it in the Belt and Road Initiative.
Read 6 tweets
Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ Profile picture
Dec 27, 2021
You can understand why the US political system refuses to bring Americans out of debt and impoverishment by imagining what would happen if it didn't. Ordinary people would use their new financial influence to create a system that serves them rather than a globe-spanning empire.
In a system where money equals power, people would begin using their new economic power to change political and economic realities for their benefit. They'd begin working to divert wasteful war machine spending to themselves. The oligarchs who control US politics can't have that.
Money is power and power is relative, so those with lots of money are incentivised to keep as much money as possible for themselves to maximize their power. If everyone a is king then nobody is a king.
Read 4 tweets

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