The regime of censorship being imposed on the internet – by a consortium of DC Dems, billionaire-funded "disinformation experts," the US Security State, and liberal employees of media corporations – is dangerously intensifying in ways I believe are not adequately understood.
A series of "crises" have been cynically and aggressively exploited to inexorably restrict the range of permitted views, and expand pretexts for online silencing and deplatforming. Trump's election, Russiagate, 1/6, COVID and war in Ukraine all fostered new methods of repression.
During the failed attempt in January to force Spotify to remove Joe Rogan, the country's most popular podcaster – remember that? – I wrote that the current religion of Western liberals in politics and media is censorship: their prime weapon of activism.
But that Rogan failure only strengthened their repressive campaigns. Dems routinely abuse their majoritarian power in DC to explicitly coerce Big Tech silencing of their opponents and dissent. This is *Govt censorship* disguised as corporate autonomy.
There's now an entire new industry, aligned with Dems, to pressure Big Tech to censor. Think tanks and self-proclaimed "disinformation experts" funded by Omidyar, Soros and the US/UK Security State use benign-sounding names to glorify ideological censorship as neutral expertise.
The worst, most vile arm of this regime are the censorship-mad liberal employees of big media corporations (@oneunderscore__, @BrandyZadrozny, @TaylorLorenz, NYT tech unit). Masquerading as "journalists," they align with the scummiest Dem groups (@mmfa) to silence and deplatform.
It is astonishing to watch Dems and their allies in media corporations posture as opponents of "fascism" - while their main goal is to *unite state and corporate power* to censor their critics and degrade the internet into an increasingly repressive weapon of information control.
A major myth that must be quickly dismantled: political censorship is not the by-product of autonomous choices of Big Tech companies.
This is happening because DC Dems and the US Security State are threatening reprisals if they refuse. They're explicit:
But the worst is watching people whose job title in corporate HR Departments is "journalist" take the lead in agitating for censorship. They exploit the platforms of corporate giants to pioneer increasingly dangerous means of banning dissenters. *These* are the authoritarians.
This is the frog-in-boiling-water problem: the increase in censorship is gradual but continuous, preventing recognition of how severe it's become. The EU now legally *mandates censorship of Russian news. They've made it *illegal* for companies to air it.
So many new tactics of censorship repression have emerged in the West: Trudeau freezing bank accounts of tucker-protesters; Paypal partnering with ADL to ban dissidents from the financial system; Big Tech platforms openly colluding in unison to de-person people from the internet.
All of this stems from the classic mentality of all would-be tyrants: our enemies are so dangerous, their views so threatening, that everything we do – lying, repression, censorship – is noble. That's what made the Sam Harris confession so vital: that's how liberal elites think.
This is why I regard the Hunter Biden scandal as uniquely alarming. The media didn't just "bury" the archive.
CIA concocted a lie about it (it's "Russian disinformation"); media outlets spread that lie; Big Tech censured it -- because lying and repression to them is justified!
The authoritarian mentality that led CIA, corporate media and Big Tech to lie about the Biden archive before the election is the same driving this new censorship craze. It's the hallmark of all tyranny: "our enemies are so evil and dangerous, anything is justified to stop them."
How come **not one media outlet** that spread this CIA lie – the Hunter Biden archive was "Russian disinformation" – retracted or apologized? This is why: they believe they are so benevolent, their cause so just, that lying and censorship are benevolent.
The one encouraging aspect: as so often happens with despotic factions, they are triggering and fueling the backlash to their excesses. Sites devoted to free speech – led by Rumble, along with Substack, Callin, and others – are exploding in growth.
But as these free speech platforms grow and become a threat, the efforts to crush them also grow – exactly as @AOC, other Dems and their corporate media allies successfully demanded Google, Apple and Amazon destroy Parler when it became the single most-popular app in the country.
It is hard to overstate how much pressure is now brought to bear by liberal censors on these free speech platforms, especially Rumble. Their vendors are threatened. Their hosting companies targeted. They have accounts cancelled and firms refusing to deal with them. It's a regime.
It's not melodrama or hyperbole to say: what we have is a war in the West, a war over whether the internet will be free, over whether dissent will be allowed, over whether we will live in the closed propaganda system our elites claim The Bad Countries™ impose. It's no different.
In even the most despotic nations, the banal, conformist citizen thinks they're free. As Rosa Luxemburg said: "he who does not move, does not feel his chains."
Of course the Chris Hayes's and Don Lemon's think this is all absurd: Good Liberals threaten nobody and thus flourish.
The measure of societal freedom is not how servants of power are treated: they're always left alone or rewarded. The key metric is how dissidents are treated. Now, they are imprisoned (Assange), exiled (Snowden) and, above all, silenced by corporate/state power (dissidents).
For more than a month, I've removed myself from the news cycle and The Discourse because my only priority right now is my family, my kids and my husband's health. But distance brings clarity.
This censorship mania consuming Western liberals is deeply dangerous -- and growing.
As I've often said, the media outlets screaming most loudly about "disinformation" are the ones that spread it most frequently, casually and destructively (NBC/CNN/WPost, etc).
It's equally true of those now claiming to fight "fascism": real repression comes *from them.*
I'm going to remain detached until the health crisis in our family is resolved. But internet freedom and free speech are not ancillary causes. They are central. This was the core cause of the Snowden reporting.
Without a free internet and free speech, dissent is an illusion.
Above all, stay focused on who your real enemies are.
They're not your neighbors who have been deceived into supporting the wrong party or wrong ideology. They are victims of the repression, which is all about maintaining a closed system of propaganda that can't be challenged.
The worst of all - the most repugnant and despicable - are those calling themselves "journalists" while doing the opposite of what that term implies: they serve rather than challenge power, they deceive rather than inform, they demand censorship rather than free and open inquiry.
Heap scorn on the corporate outlets and their deceitful, pro-censorship employees abusing the "journalist" label. Read them with full skepticism, or just ignore them.
Support outlets and platforms that want to protect free inquiry and the right of dissent, not rob you of it.
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This is what you will hear from all liberal corporate outlets for the next year: no, this time we mean it! This time Trump *really will be* fascist!
These are the people imprisoning non-violent Jan 6 protesters, prosecuting Trump to win an election, censoring the internet:
Look at this hive mind of corporate media outlets: they all think alike, say the same things, work for the same agenda, all have the same mindset and worldview, only hire those who see the world like them.
All from the last 3 days: like trained seals dancing to the same music:
The funniest thing is that while the largest corporate outlets constantly warn Trump is the next Hitler, that he'll be worse than Hitler, the "media critics" liberals most love -- @jayrosen_nyu, @Sulliview, @mmfa -- endlessly complain the media isn't sufficiently anti-Trump.🤷♂️
Nothing Israel is doing should be a surprise. Netanyahu was very candid and explicit from the start about what Israel planned to do to Gaza.
Western liberals who cheered it are now getting a bit queasy for their legacies, but this is what they vowed to support until the end:
So many media and political liberals who declared support for Israel's war are, as usual, now offering sniveling, impotent, self-protective statements of "concern" while still funding and arming Israel.
I far prefer the Israel supporters who are honest about what they support.
All over the world, what Israel is doing in Gaza is seen as one person's fault: Joe Biden. Only he had -- and has -- the power to stop or limit it.
But from both conviction and political calculation, he did what he's done his whole life: proclaim limitless support for Israel.
Many of Israel's "Palestinian prisoners" are people never convicted in court. They're imprisoned as part of Israel's military tribunals with a near-100% conviction rate, or just administratively detained.
And: they live in the West Bank, which Israel *illegally occupies*:
I've seen some objecting to the release of some "prisoners"because they attacked *not civilians,* but Israeli soldiers or police.
Is it prohibited - morally or legally - for people to attack foreign *soldiers or police* who are part of an illegal occupying force on their land?
In 1984, a studio film called "Red Dawn," starring Patrick Swayze, depicted heroic Americans doing everything possible to defend the US by trying to kill as many occupying Russian soldiers as possible: exactly what Ukraine was venerated for doing.
For months, many conservatives were demanding release of the manifesto of the Nashville shooter (we hired counsel to force this as well).
I don't believe they wanted to read it because they supported her grievances, but rather to understand what radicalized her to violence.
There are an endless number of things we consider bad, but also study to understand its causes: crime, terrorism, dictators, wars, extremism, diseases, serial killers.
That only Al Qaeda or 9/11 supporters want to read the Bin Laden letter is anti-intellectual idiocy.
There's no way to understand World War II or the rise of Nazism without understanding German grievances over the Treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany after WW1.
That those studying bin Laden's grievances are pro-Al-Qaeda is as dumb as claiming only Nazis would study this.
We'll also cover X's newly announced policy, unveiled just now by Elon Musk, that several phrases frequently used by some pro-Palestinian activists and journalists regarding Israel will be strictly banned.
It comes as Musk was widely accused of endorsing an anti-Semitic tweet.
The @ADL congratulates Musk on the new policy banning various phrases used about Israel:
It's amazing how this attack on Israel caused many Americans with an intense affinity for it to instantly revert back to the most childish and repressive post-9/11 behaviors.
The Guardian removed the bin Laden letter because people were realizing the same things Ron Paul said:
Ron Paul took this message into the deepest red districts in Iowa and South Carolina:
Neocons are using your money to fight foreign wars not in your interests. These wars *increase* the risk of anti-American terror attacks, etc.
And he came in second in 2008 and 2012.
Ron Paul's point: don't listen to the lies from the US Govt and US media about why there's anti-American hatred leading to 9/11: "They hate us for our freedoms."
Listen to them, he said, about why they hate us.
The @guardian removed that latter so people couldn't hear it.