Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship & Free Speech @UAustinOrg : Dao Journalism Winner : Time, "Hero of Environment" : Author, “Apocalypse Never,” "San Fransicko"
688 subscribers
Nov 22 6 tweets 2 min read
The Australian PM @AlboMP wants global censorship to counter misinformation. But only free speech can counter misinformation. Please share this to affirm your opposition to his awful bill! Was the censorship bill a head fake to jam through Digital ID? 🤔
Nov 21 7 tweets 2 min read
I am concerned about the impact of social media on children, but this bill is a Trojan horse to create digital IDs, which is a giant leap into the totalitarian dystopia depicted in "Black Mirror," and already in place in China. And @AlboMP has proven censorial and untrustworthy. Spot on:

Nov 18 5 tweets 3 min read
Lovers of free speech just scored victories in the US, EU, and Ireland. But now we’re in pitched battles in Britain & Australia, which is at dire risk of trying to censor the entire planet. This is about all of us, so I’m flying down. Share this to show solidarity. LFG!!! Image I am headed directly to Canberra to meet with other free speech lovers and the wise and just representatives of the Australian people, who I am confident will kill the @AlboMP governments aggressive and hostile assault on the freedom that enables democracy and all other freedoms.

Australia belongs to its people and it is up to them and their representatives to decide whether they want to remain a liberal democratic nation or instantaneously become a totalitarian one.

But it is the duty of friends of Australia to bluntly warn that @AlboMP is pushing a censorship law that would not only end free speech for Australians but also be viewed as a hostile assault on the free Internet worldwide by people in other nations, including in the US, its best ally.

x.com/shellenberger/…
Nov 17 5 tweets 3 min read
Trump's nominees are weird, say elites. But it was the elites' weird ideas that caused wars, addiction/OD crisis, Covid lockdowns, trans madness, censorship, and worse. Trump's nominees trigger the covert narcissism of elites who are rightly defensive at their appalling record. Democrats act like they’re starting to get it, but they’re not. Their problems are all much worse than they realize. It’s not just that the Party is leaderless. It’s that the Party and the establishment institutions upon which it relies are discredited with half the country and are about to become more discredited with even more Americans as the truth fully comes out about censorship, Covid, weaponization of government, the transgender medical mistreatment scandal, and much else that the media and elites have lied about over the last 20 years. The media isn’t what people thought it was. It was never a reflection of reality. It was a reality distortion machine and propaganda industry in service of maintaining the narrow interests and power of a tiny group of decadent and psychologically disordered elites and their deeply deformed, dishonest institutions. Some might be reformed but others are too far gone to be saved.

x.com/RNCResearch/st…
Nov 16 4 tweets 4 min read
The media says Trump's nominees are dangerous, but they're not. Their positions and priorities are well within the mainstream. The threat they pose isn't to the American people, it's to the pathocrats who created and worsened our border, public health, and foreign policy crises. Image Over the last few years, the American people have come to believe that our establishment institutions are at least partly responsible for a series of self-inflicted wounds. Our health and medical establishment either failed to address or enabled declining life expectancy, a mental health crisis including an addiction epidemic, and a botched response to Covid. Our military and foreign policy establishment unnecessarily started and prolonged war and conflict in the Middle East and violated civil liberties at home in the name of fighting terrorism. And liberalized migration laws have depressed working-class wages, swamped the ability of cities to absorb the new migrants, and created a humanitarian disaster on the border.

Given all of that, the President-elect Donald Trump’s nominations make sense. As Border Czar, Thomas Homan will take strong action to close the southern border and deport criminals. National Director of Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard will bring greater skepticism to foreign military entanglements and calls to restrict civil liberties for national security. And Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will stand up to the corporations that most everyone agrees have put self-interest before the public’s interest on everything from drug safety to food quality.

We shouldn’t be surprised that some of them hold views that many of us disagree with. The main criticism of Trump’s nominees is that they have dangerous and fringe views. Homan said he would deport whole families. Gabbard said the Russian-backed Syrian dictator was not America’s enemy. And Kennedy espouses marginal and unsubstantiated views on everything from nuclear power to 5Gs.

But Homan has made clear his focus will be on deporting criminals, not families, whatever one thinks of Gabbard’s position on the Syrian conflict, it’s obvious from the context that she made her remarks in service of her loyalty to the US, not Russia, and Kennedy has said, repeatedly, that he won’t ban vaccines.

And throughout history, most real reformers and innovators have held fringe views and have had aspects of their personalities that are problematic. In most cases, those flaws or idiosyncrasies proved to be a small price to pay for their willingness to overcome the many obstacles required to achieve serious reforms of deeply entrenched institutions. This is true not just of Homan, Gabbard, and Kennedy, but also of Defense Secretary and Attorney General nominees, Pete Hegseth and Matt Gaetz, respectively. The accusations the media has made against the two men are so far unsubstantiated by the available evidence.

And none of the allegedly wrong views or bad deeds of Trump’s nominees outweigh the potential of the nominees to reform the institutions that are directly responsible for the invasion of Iraq, prolonged occupation of Afghanistan, entanglement in foreign conflicts, corporate capture of the FDA, the weaponization of government, Covid school closures, authoritarian and gratuitous Covid vaccine mandates, unhealthy diets, the addiction crisis that kills 100,000 Americans per year, the humanitarian disaster along the border, and the mistreatment of children with pseudoscientific transgender medicine.

Strong leaders committed to reforming America’s military and foreign policy establishment, its public health, food, and medical establishments, and its immigration and border security establishment are precisely what the American people wanted when they voted for Trump. If those nominees pursue destructive agendas in lieu of doing their jobs, we will be the first to call them out for it. But the establishment has no ground on which to stand...

Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning reporting, read the rest of the article, and watch the rest of the video!
Nov 15 13 tweets 5 min read
Over the last decade, Democrats & the media said that those of us who opposed DEI, racial quotas, and open borders had gone “far right.” We hadn’t. Rather, Democrats and the media had gone far left. We are only now emerging from 10+ years of extreme, psychopathic gaslighting. Image Make no mistake: it was the mainstream news media that induced the mass psychosis that radicalized Democrats into believing that the US had somehow become *more* racist, against all available evidence. Image
Nov 14 9 tweets 5 min read
None of @RobertKennedyJr 's views "have any value whatsoever," say the media. But even the author admits RFK's right about fluoride, raw milk, and the danger of Big Pharma. Elites are freaking out because they know RFK will hold them accountable for their gross abuses of power. Image This article is downright nasty: "But RFK Jr. is indeed a grade-A crank. Why should he have input on anything?"

Anything? Really?

"Let’s not pretend that Kennedy’s views have any value whatsoever."

The author is guilty of the obnoxious and over-the-top rhetoric he accuses @RobertKennedyJr of.

I don't agree with RFK about nuclear and vaccines, but it's wrong and gratuitously malicious to say Kennedy's views have no "value whatsoever" and to suggest he shouldn't have "input on anything."

Even the author admits that RFK is right about excess corporate power. "I’m ready to acknowledge the merit of Kennedy’s frequent claim that medical regulators are beset by conflicts of interest."

But then the author completely misrepresents his views, saying "Kennedy sounds less like a reformer and more like someone trapped in a web of conspiracy."

That's just false. Kennedy's views of Big Pharma are little different from the conventional, Ralph Nader-influenced views of the Democratic Party from 1962 to 2016.

Kennedy is criticizing the revolving door between Big Pharma and the government, which is the opposite of a "conspiracy" or a "theory."

RFK's whole problem with the revolving door is that it's legal and right out in the open, i.e., the opposite of a conspiracy, which is secret and (usually) illegal.

It is notable that the author never mentions the disastrous Covid lockdowns, abusive vaccine mandates, and other abuses of medical power.

His entire focus is to attack the people who rightly denounced the over-reaction.

The author is particularly disrespectful toward two of the people who were most right about the disastrous Covid lockdowns — @DrJBhattacharya @MartyMakary @VPrasadMDMPH — and most courageous in speaking out against them.
Nov 12 17 tweets 7 min read
The US and Australia have had a strong relationship for decades. Why, then, is Australia's Prime Minister @AlboMP attacking our relationship by pursuing mass global censorship, overtly aimed @elonmusk & X, which under previous management had banned @realDonaldTrump ? Image Do the people of Australia know that their Prime Minister is undermining their nation's historically special relationship with the United States? Why would @AlboMP be doing this just days after the election of @realDonaldTrump, which was made possible by free speech on X?
Nov 9 10 tweets 3 min read
They call it the “Democratic” party, but it’s not. They rigged 2016 for Hillary to beat Bernie. They got Klobuchar & Buttigieg to quit for Biden in 2020. They got Biden to quit for Kamala in 2024. Now they’re trying to get Sotomayor to quit for Kamala. It’s an authoritarian party Image 😳 Image
Nov 7 8 tweets 4 min read
Many Democrats say they want to understand what happened. Few genuinely do. That's because, at some level, they know they're guilty of having participated in a witch hunt in which they falsely accused their fellow Americans, and even their friends & family, of fascism & racism. Red Scare's @annakhachiyan is right: many of the people who loudly declared their fellow Americans racists and fascists are covert narcissists who now feel wounded and exposed by Kamala's defeat. At some level, they know they're guilty of witch-hunting and, per usual, are projecting.

Nov 6 5 tweets 2 min read
Pure, perfect projection. The lack of self-awareness is awe-inspiring. Image
Image
Image
FWIW, I don’t think the cope will continue. The loss of the popular vote, the rightward movement of every state, and the threat of long term dominance by a nonracial working class party will force a significant correction in message in 2026. Image
Nov 4 4 tweets 3 min read
NBC last night aired a Trump message after a NASCAR race in an apparent effort to comply with the "equal time" rule after sparking controversy when it put Kamala Harris on SNL.

"A source familiar with the matter told the [Hill] Reporter the appearance was related to providing Trump with equal time."

It's a big victory that NBC acted. It shows that the public pressure we all brought to bear worked. X is game-changing. It's also further proof that NBC knew it was guilty.

But NBC still knowingly broke the law and interfered in the election, and it is still not in compliance with the law. That's because NBC promoted Harris and Kaine within seven days of election, the time was not comparable, and the other candidates, including Senator Tim Kaine's opponent, did not get comparable time.

There is no way that the time was comparable. The SNL skit was funny and humanizing and created by the best minds in television. The Trump campaign had to cobble something together at the last minute.

And, as of now, over 9 million people have watched the clip on YouTube. There's no way that 9 million people will see the Trump message that NBC put on after NASCAR.

As @BrendanCarrFCC notes, "The FCC adopted the seven-day rule to avoid gamesmanship by candidates (usually gamesmanship by the candidate seeking the Equal Time in the exemplar case) and for orderly planning (usually for the broadcaster)."

And, he notes, "NBC structured the SNL candidate appearance (just hours before an election) in a way that denies all other candidates their one week procedural right."

Finally, by law, NBC was required to give equal time to @HungCao_VA @RobertKennedyJr & @DrJillStein and it didn't.

NBC continues to act as though it is above the law. We should accept it as a victory that it felt the need to give Trump some time after NASCAR, but we should not let up the pressure.

Please, share this post to send a message to Congress and the FCC to hold @NBCUniversal accountable!

✊❤️Image Over the last week, we have seen the news media engage in disinformation, election interference, and dirty tricks:

— The media made unsubstantiated claims that Trump admired Hitler, which was always ridiculous;

— The media, en masse, falsely claimed that the Trump rally in New York was "fascist" and that a comedian told a "racist" joke about about Puerto Rico;

— The media claimed that the Trump team had "fully embraced" vaccine skepticism;

— And the media falsely claimed that Trump had called for the assassination of @Liz_Cheney

For seven years, the media has demanded mass censorship, by it and the US government, of social media, including X. They are still demanding it.

They have justified their demands for censorship by citing alleged "election misinformation," "vaccine misinformation," and "election interference.

And yet now, just in the last week, the media have engaged in all three.

It's only thanks to @elonmusk's purchase of X that the public has achieved, for the first time, true freedom of speech on the Internet.

It has allowed independent journalists to expose media disinformation in real-time.

For that reason, the media are obsessed with shutting down X. If @KamalaHarris is elected president, that's a real possibility.

I reached out to multiple people at CNN and NBC yesterday to request comment on their disinformation and election interference. None have responded.

It's clear that they believe they are not only above the law, they don't have to comply with their own demands for honesty and accuracy.

x.com/shellenberger/…
Nov 3 9 tweets 5 min read
The producer of Saturday Night Live said neither Harris nor Trump would appear on the show "because of election laws." Last night, about 60 hours before polls open, he put Harris on the show in a warm & humanizing sketch. He and NBC violated the equal time provision of the law.Image On October 1, 2024, Hollywood Reporter published this article. It said, "In a recent interview ahead of the show’s 50th season, SNL creator and long-running maestro Lorne Michaels revealed that he hadn’t reached out to the real-life candidates, and he didn’t intend to before the 2024 election. 'You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions.'"Image
Nov 1 5 tweets 3 min read
Biden didn't call Trump supporters "garbage," the media said. But he did. And now two officials and an internal email reveal that the White House press office altered the transcript after it "conferred with the president" in direct violation of the Presidential Records Act. Image After the head of the White House Stenography Office found out that the Press Office had altered the transcript to change what Biden said, he sent an email complaining of “a breach of protocol and spoliation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.” Image
Oct 30 5 tweets 3 min read
The Presidential Records Act prohibits altering official transcripts, which is what the White House did. And the alteration makes no sense. The White House is now claiming Biden was referring to the racism of Trump's supporters, but the transcript refers to "his supporter's."Image These manipulations come after:

— media falsely claimed comic at Trump rally called Puerto Ricans garbage

x.com/shellenberger/…

— owner of WaPo @JeffBezos pledged to earn back lost public trust

x.com/shellenberger/…

— prosecution of Trump under Presidential Records Act
Oct 30 4 tweets 2 min read
The New York Times says Biden only "appeared" to call Trump voters "garbage." That's disinformation. What Biden said is clear from the video. And now the White House has altered the official transcript in a potential violation of the Presidential Records Act Image THREAD
Oct 29 5 tweets 2 min read
This is disgraceful. Whatever you think of the joke made at MSG, it was about literal garbage, not people. Puerto Rico has been struggling with a solid waste problem for more than a decade, as @AOC of all people should know.
Oct 29 4 tweets 3 min read
All the major elements of the FBI & CIA conspiracy to interfere in the 2020 election on behalf of Joe Biden are now confirmed:

— FBI had the Hunter Biden laptop in Dec. 2019 & knew it "was real" immediately

— FBI, spying on Giuliani, knew he would give the laptop to media

— FBI ran a disinformation campaign in the summer of 2020 to "prebunk" the story with journalists & social media companies, both directly and through Aspen Institute, by falsely claiming Russians were planning disinfo relating to Hunter Biden

— "Former" FBI General Counsel turned Twitter Dep. Counsel, Jim Baker, convinced colleagues to censor the NY Post story after they had determined that it had *not* violated Twitter's Terms of Service

— CIA Director Gina Haspel approved, within a few hours, a disinformation campaign by 51 "former" CIA and other Intelligence Community leaders who falsely claimed the laptop was Russian disinformation

The result was that millions of voters thought the laptop was fake and never learned that Joe Biden oversaw a vast influence-peddling scheme involving China, Ukraine, and other nations, with his son and brother, until after the election.

These are high crimes for which people should go to prison.

x.com/shellenberger/… The evidence was already overwhelming that the FBI and CIA conspired to interfere in the 2020 election and violate the Constitution.

The new, spectacular reporting by former CBS investigative journalist @C__Herridge confirms that the FBI knew the laptop was authentic immediately.

The whistleblowers went to Herridge because they knew they could not trust the news media, which participated in the 2020 disinformation operation and continues to do the bidding of the FBI and CIA today. Both organizations and the media are rotten to the core.

Please re-post this thread and email it to your friends and family. They need to understand that some of the top investigative journalists in the country, IRS whistleblowers, Twitter Files, and documents subpoenaed and released by Congress prove the conspiracy by FBI and CIA.

The American people must know that the FBI, CIA, and legacy news media are a clear and present danger to the American people and to democratic republic.

Additional information here:

x.com/shellenberger/…
Oct 28 16 tweets 6 min read
All in last few hours:

- Leaked Dem memo shows “fascism” label isn’t sticking

- White House caught manipulating migration data

- More voters say Trump justified in challenging 2020 election results

The wall of lies is rapidly crumbing Image
Image
Image
The Woke totalitarians are spiraling. In response to subscribers quitting Washington Post, @JeffBezos has doubled down, saying he will hire more conservative writers. Image
Image
Oct 28 9 tweets 3 min read
The media are claiming that a comedian at the Trump rally today made a racist joke about Puerto Ricans. He didn’t. He was poking fun at the island’s infamous trash problem. The media are acting ignorant about it but they have covered it for years —> Image Look:
Oct 26 18 tweets 11 min read
The media say Trump lied when he told Joe Rogan that industrial wind turbines are killing whales, but he didn't. In fact, it's worse than Trump said. If the wind industry continues with its boats, noise, and vibrations, it will make the North Atlantic right whale extinct. This isn't a matter of opinion. This is the conclusion of the world's leading whale researchers and what the boat tracking data and sonar data both show.

The evidence is in this documentary, "Thrown To the Wind," below, with all supporting data and research here:

saverightwhales.org/media