I am so pro-west that I want the west to embody the actual western values it pretends to embody. I am so pro-west that I support the practice of spreading western values to the west. I’m a western cultural imperialist, except I want to do western cultural imperialism to the west. I’m like a conquistador, a western colonialist setting sail to spread the wonders of western civilization to these godless western savages. Except, instead of actually just bringing them murder, slavery, theft and disease I really am trying to bring them western civilization.
I am so pro-west that I want the western values that were sold to me as a child to be actual things that actually exist. And because I support western values much more than the actual west does, I get called “anti-west” and told to move to China. Shit, THEY should move to China.
A guy I follow on Twitter named David Gondek put it very nicely: “There is nothing wrong with western civilization that living up to its own professed principles wouldn’t fix.”
It’s not “anti-west” to want the west to end warmongering, militarism, censorship, propaganda, government secrecy, oligarchy, injustice, oppression and exploitation, it is PRO-west. The “western values” of peace, justice, equality, democracy, freedom and accountability that we were taught in school are very good things. The only problem is that the west doesn’t actually value them.
The whistleblower pointed at an AP investigation on how the Covid-19 pandemic has “normalized” spying on citizens
No matter how it’s being used, what is being built is the architecture of oppression.” He added, “As authoritarianism spreads, as emergency laws proliferate, as we sacrifice our rights, we also sacrifice our capability to arrest this slide into a less liberal, less free world.”
Former CIA and National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has claimed vindication after a media report exposed how surveillance tools deployed to fight Covid-19 are now being abused by law enforcement and other authorities – as he predicted over two years ago.
“I talked about this back in early 2020 and was dismissed as paranoid, as is our tradition when someone points to the predictable outcome of a dangerous but popular new trend,” Snowden said in a Twitter post on Friday. The former US intelligence contractor cited this week’s Associated Press article on how Covid-19 had “accelerated and normalized” the use of state surveillance and tracking tools against ordinary citizens and activists.
Snowden linked to an April 2020 interview with Vice founder Shane Smith in which he predicted that emergency measures used to deal with the Covid-19 crisis would become permanent and be used to infringe civil liberties. At the time, pandemic fears were at their height, and many governments across the globe were being lauded for using cutting-edge surveillance applications to track infections and quarantine people who had possibly been exposed to the virus.
I talked about this back in early 2020 and was dismissed as paranoid—as is our tradition when someone points to the predictable outcome of a dangerous but popular new trend. Stopping this will be harder, now.
“When any of us looks at where this is heading, we need to think about where we’ve been,” Snowden told Smith. “And sadly, these kinds of emergency powers that are born out of crises have a perfect history of abuse. I mean, down the board, whenever you look at these things, the funniest part about it, in a dark way, is that the emergency never ends and becomes normalized.”
The AP article cited mobile-phone tracking and other technology being used to accuse people of crimes, block citizens from travelling, harass “marginalized communities” and link personal health data to surveillance and law enforcement systems.
Snowden came to fame by exposing the US government’s global and domestic surveillance tactics that sprung from an earlier crisis, the September 11 terrorist attacks. He lamented that with pandemic-related technology already being abused, “stopping this will be harder, now.”
In the 2020 interview, Snowden argued that because everyone was so fearful about the present, they neglected to think about how the decisions that were being made would affect the future. “No matter how it’s being used, what is being built is the architecture of oppression.” He added, “As authoritarianism spreads, as emergency laws proliferate, as we sacrifice our rights, we also sacrifice our capability to arrest this slide into a less liberal, less free world.”
In a greatly anticipated Friday night drop of what was expected to be a cache of information involving the censoring of Hunter Biden’s notebook story days ahead of the 2020 presidential election, moments ago Elon Musk – who worked in collaboration with the notoriously independent gonzo journalist Matt Taibbi of “Vampire Squid” fame – has published the “Twitter Files.”
Shortly before their release, Matt Taibbi sent the following email to his substack subscribers:
Dear TK Readers:
Very shortly, I’m going to begin posting a long thread of information on Twitter, at my account, @mtaibbi. This material is likely to get a lot of attention. I will absolutely understand if subscribers are angry that it is not appearing here on Substack first. I’d be angry, too.
The last 96 hours have been among the most chaotic of my life, involving multiple trips back and forth across the country, with a debate in Canada in between. There’s a long story I hope to be able to tell soon, but can’t, not quite yet anyway. What I can say is that in exchange for the opportunity to cover a unique and explosive story, I had to agree to certain conditions.
Those of you who’ve been here for years know how seriously I take my obligation to this site’s subscribers. On this one occasion, I’m going to have to simply ask you to trust me. As it happens, there may be a few more big surprises coming, and those will be here on Substack. And there will be room here to to discuss this, too, in time. In any case, thanks for your support and your patience, and please hold me to a promise to make all this up to you, and then some.
And this is what Taibbi has been tweeting in the past few minutes (link here):
1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES
2. What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.
3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.
4. Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time.
5. In its early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”
6. As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters.
7. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly.
8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”
9. Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party:
10. Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However:
11. This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right.
12. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives.
… Okay, there was more throat-clearing about the process, but screw it, let’s jump forward
16. The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story
17. On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published BIDEN SECRET EMAILS, an expose based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop:
18. Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.
19. White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: “At least pretend to care for the next 20 days.”
20. This led public policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams:
22. Although several sources recalled hearing about a “general” warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story. In fact, that might have been the problem…
23. The decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with the former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role.
24. “They just freelanced it,” is how one former employee characterized the decision. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”
25. You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gadde and former Trust and safety chief Yoel Roth. Comms official Trenton Kennedy writes, “I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe”:
26. By this point “everyone knew this was fucked,” said one former employee, but the response was essentially to err on the side of… continuing to err.
27. Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?”
28. To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted”:
29. A fundamental problem with tech companies and content moderation: many people in charge of speech know/care little about speech, and have to be told the basics by outsiders. To wit:
30. In one humorous exchange on day 1, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reaches out to Gadde to gently suggest she hop on the phone to talk about the “backlash re speech.” Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern.
31. Gadde replies quickly, immediately diving into the weeds of Twitter policy, unaware Khanna is more worried about the Bill of Rights:
32. Khanna tries to reroute the conversation to the First Amendment, mention of which is generally hard to find in the files:
33. Within a day, head of Public Policy Lauren Culbertson receives a ghastly letter/report from Carl Szabo of the research firm NetChoice, which had already polled 12 members of congress – 9 Rs and 3 Democrats, from “the House Judiciary Committee to Rep. Judy Chu’s office.”
34.NetChoice lets Twitter know a “blood bath” awaits in upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying it’s a “tipping point,” complaining tech has “grown so big that they can’t even regulate themselves, so the government may need to intervene.”
35. Szabo reports to Twitter that some Hill figures are characterizing the laptop story as “tech’s Access Hollywood moment”:
36. Twitter files continued: “THE FIRST AMENDMENT ISN’T ABSOLUTE”
Szabo’s letter contains chilling passages relaying Democratic lawmakers’ attitudes. They want “more” moderation, and as for the Bill of Rights, it’s “not absolute”
37. An amazing subplot of the Twitter/Hunter Biden laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, and how long it took for the situation to get “unfucked” (as one ex-employee put it) even after Dorsey jumped in.
38. While reviewing Gadde’s emails, I saw a familiar name – my own. Dorsey sent her a copy of my Substack article blasting the incident
39. There are multiple instances in the files of Dorsey intervening to question suspensions and other moderation actions, for accounts across the political spectrum
40. The problem with the “hacked materials” ruling, several sources said, was that this normally required an official/law enforcement finding of a hack. But such a finding never appears throughout what one executive describes as a “whirlwind” 24-hour, company-wide mess.
41. It’s been a whirlwind 96 hours for me, too. There is much more to come, including answers to questions about issues like shadow-banning, boosting, follower counts, the fate of various individual accounts, and more. These issues are not limited to the political right.
42. Good night, everyone. Thanks to all those who picked up the phone in the last few days.
* * *
The release was telegraphed one week ago, when Musk acknowledged that revealing Twitter’s internal discussions surrounding the censorship of the New York Post‘s Hunter Biden laptop story right before the 2020 US election is “necessary to restore public trust.”
Raise your hand if you think @ElonMusk should make public all internal discussions about the decision to censor the @NYPost’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 Election in the interest of Transparency.
Recall that the Post had its Twitter account locked in October 2020 for reporting on the now-confirmed-to-be-real“laptop from hell,” which contained still-unprosecuted evidence of foreign influence peddling through then-Vice President Joe Biden – including a 2015 meeting with an executive of Ukrainian gas giant Burisma.
Users who tried to share the link to the article were greeted with a message saying, “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.”
Then, days after Musk’s tweet, Twitter’s former head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, admitted it was a ‘mistake’ to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story.
In his first public appearance since becoming an ex-employee, Roth suggested that the Hunter Biden laptop story was simply ‘too difficult’ for Twitter to verify. Alternatively, the company could have perhaps simply trusted the Post, one of America’s oldest publications that doesn’t have a reputation for fabricating bombshell stories – like Twitter does with countless anonymous bombshells from other major publications.
“We didn’t know what to believe. We didn’t know what was true. There was smoke,” Roth said during an interview at the Knight Foundation conference, as noted by the Epoch Times. “And ultimately for me, it didn’t reach a place where I was comfortable removing this content from Twitter.”
“It set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 ‘hack and leak campaign’ alarm bells,” he said, referring to a notorious team of cyberspies affiliated with Russian military intelligence. “Everything about it looked like a hack and leak.”
When asked whether it was a mistake to censor the story, Roth replied, “In my opinion, yes.”
Would Roth have suppressed the story if it was a Don Jr. laptop full of incriminating evidence?
* * *
Finally, it will be very interesting to see which “independent”, “impartial” and “objective” members of the Mainstream Media cover the Twitter Files, which, unlike all that Russia collusion bullshit, was a real and actionable attempt to interfere with US democracy by covering up one of the most explosive political stories of a generation, not to mention an event that would have swayed the 2020 presidential election.
Abbott Laboratories Allstate Corporation AMC Networks American Express Company AT&T Big Heart Petcare BlackRock, Inc. BlueTriton Brands, Inc. Boston Beer Company CA Lottery (California State Lottery) CenturyLink (Lumen Technologies, Inc.) Chanel
Kellogg Company Kohl's Department Stores, Inc. Kyndryl* LinkedIn Corporation MailChimp (The Rocket Science Group) Marriott International, Inc. Mars Petcare Mars, Incorporated Merck & Co. (Merck Sharp & Dohme MSD)* Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook, Inc.)
Has the Earth exploded because of less moderation on Twitter? No. Has the Third Reich returned because gender identity warriors aren’t sitting on their laptops at home banning people who say Lizzo’s obesity is unhealthy or that men cannot be women, cannot menstruate and cannot have babies? Nothing has happened.
Take one look at some of the employees fired from Twitter in the past two weeks by Elon Musk and it’s easy to understand why the company operated as a far-left echo chamber for so long. Though company executives claimed that the platform was “politically neutral” for many years, evidence is coming to light which confirms what we already knew – There was a severe leftist bias that permeated every aspect of the social media site which specifically targeted and censored any viewpoints or facts that did not fit with their narrative.
Hilariously, Musk posted on the discovery of a supply closet at Twitter HQ containing activist swag including stacks of t-shirts which have “#StayWoke” printed on them. A neutral company? Not a chance.
Most interesting of all has been the absolute distress and in some cases, rage expressed by long-time employees over Musk’s free speech position. The level of open authoritarianism on display by the political left in the past few years has been astonishing, if not predictable. The reaction to changes at Twitter solidifies this obsession in crystalline detail. Here, a former contracted Twitter employee (a male identifying as a trans female) hired as a “moderator” (censor) tells NBC about his worries when it comes to the company’s future as a free speech-based platform.
Musk fired over 4000 outside contractors this past week, most of them employed as moderators. NBC’s message is relatively clear: Free speech is a negative. And, such an ideal being applied at Twitter overshadows the great harm being done to the poor innocent leftist employees who were doing God’s work by protecting platform users from unfiltered discussions.
The problem is, anyone can block anyone else on Twitter at any time and filter their own social media feeds, which completely debunks the common argument that people will be “harmed” by surprise exposure to politically incorrect discussions. The next most exploited argument is that “hate speech” will run rampant on the site – But the term “hate speech” has become so diluted by false leftist accusations and fraudulent hype that it is now meaningless. Even the term “groomer” was banned on Twitter before Elon Musk took over.
The corporate media has spent the better part of the past week predicting the implosion of Twitter after the firing of several thousand workers. At any moment the company was going to shut down, they claimed. This has not happened, revealing a stark truth – The company runs just fine without them. Those several thousand regular employees and contracted moderators were useless dead weight. The proof is right there for the world to see.
Has the Earth exploded because of less moderation on Twitter? No. Has the Third Reich returned because gender identity warriors aren’t sitting on their laptops at home banning people who say Lizzo’s obesity is unhealthy or that men cannot be women, cannot menstruate and cannot have babies? Nothing has happened.
This leads us to a singular conclusion – Leftist censorship is about power and control, not about safety They know it, and we know it. And now, with Twitter out of their hands, their denials can be challenged in an open forum. It’s the one thing they fear the most.
The United States Has Been Overthrown What has taken its place?
Paul Craig Roberts
The United States has undergone a coup. Having observed no martial conflict, you might think that I have gone off my rocker. But not all coups are physically violent. They can occur because poisonous ideas take hold and subvert society. The United States is defined by the Constitution, and when the Constitution is eroded away, so is the United States.
The Constitution has been eroding away for a long time. The liberals said the Constitution had to be a living document, which means that it is forever changing, which means redefined, which means eroded.
The Tenth Amendment was lost to Abraham Lincoln. George W. Bush got rid of habeas corpus in the name of national security when he declared that the “terrorist threat” gave him the power to hold American citizens indefinitely without presentation of evidence to a court, without trial and conviction. And he did. Obama one-upped Bush. He said he could execute American citizens on suspicion alone without due process of law. And he did. Bush and Obama were not held accountable for their violation of the US Constitution.
Today free speech and association are dead letter rights. Everyone can now censor our free speech–employers, school boards, people claiming they are “offended,” social media, print, and TV media. People who say something “offensive” can be erased and never heard from again. What this means is that whoever controls the right to be “offended” can cancel the free speech of those who cannot claim to be “offended.” Without free speech, there is no debate, just the imposition of approved views.
In Woke America, this is the situation today.
You can also tell a coup has occurred when traditional patriots like Make America Great Again Trump supporters and Oath Keepers are demonized by media and government officials as “domestic extremists,” persecuted, and imprisoned on false charges, such as the Americans who attended a rally in support of Trump and were turned, with Republican complicity, into “insurrectionists” who tried to seize control of the government by taking selfies of themselves sitting in Nancy Pelosi’s chair.
When something so juvenile can be designated an insurrection, you know a coup has occurred. The message is clear. Those supporting the established order against the coup that is being imposed are enemies of the people.
You can also tell a coup has occurred when perversity of all kinds, particularly sexual, is celebrated and normality is derided as “fascism” or some form of phobia or another word of abuse. When the moral high ground is held by LGBT– people who cannot reproduce–and nature’s norm of heterosexual is regarded. as an unjustified definition of normality, the natural order has been overthrown.
That’s where we are today. Soon pedophilia will be declared normal, and there will be brothels where formerly depraved people, now normalized, can have sex with children.
Impossible, you say, but not, for once one perversity is legitimized, all others follow, as we have experienced. It is just a matter of time. Once the rot starts, it doesn’t stop until the job is finished. We already have one foot in Sodom and Gomorrah, and the other foot is drawing nearer.
A controversial social media “creator” by the name of Andrew Tate has been axed from the internet for speaking his mind about the plight of modern men, the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) scamdemic, and more.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Tate himself said in an interview with Fox News‘ Tucker Carlson – watch below – every social media platform banned him all at once and without warning. He also saw his online banking accounts shuttered as punishment for rocking the boat.
One of his videos that has since gone viral shows Tate talking about modern-day slavery and the plight of humanity as people strive for success in a debt-based Ponzi scheme that has never served their interests.
“People started to realize how money is made,” Tate said about how the advent of the internet started a mass awakening. “People started to realize it’s all a scam.”
Tate, a “self-made millionaire,” also spoke of cryptocurrency and how it is outpacing global reserve currencies. This is waking people up to the notion that there is no need for corrupt central banks anymore – as if they were ever truly needed in the first place.
Tate might be annoying, but his speech is still free speech
During his discourse with Carlson, Tate exemplified a lot of braggadocio about what the plandemic restrictions really started to ramp up, he and his friends traipsed off to Sweden, one of the only countries in the world that never had any lockdowns.
Tate and his friends would party it up in Scandinavia and afterward travel to Germany where some of the worst restrictions in the world were enforced with an iron fist. He would then show his followers the difference.
During his travels, Tate also encountered plenty of tyranny and abuse at airports and on commercial airplanes, prompting him to buy his own private plane that never required face masks, distancing or any other insanity.
Instead of enjoying these luxuries all to himself and his inner circle, Tate would post on social media about it, riling up his fan base to demand that such restrictions be dropped – and this is why he was ultimately banned from social media. (Related: Remember when Donald Trump promised to put an end to “radical left” social media censorship?)
Another topic Tate often speaks about that upsets the powers that be is the unfair way men are treated in today’s society. Women are routinely sent to the front of the line where they receive all the attention and praise while men are all but ignored unless they are someone famous with lots of money.
Discussing men’s issues is a major no-no in today’s Jezebelian world, and Tate now knows full well what happens to people when they deviate from the script.
At the same time, Tate can be rather garish in his verbal displays and he is not exactly a positive role model when it comes to how he made his fortune.
“I think Tate has a lot of good things to say, but in an objective sense the dude is still super sleazy,” expressed one commenter at Revolver. news.
“He made his first million running a camgirl business; openly brags about sleeping with over a thousand women; flaunts his cars in the most ostentatious way possible etc. Obviously shouldn’t be banned and hopefully, he can cool down on the physical pleasures, but being banned in itself doesn’t make you a good person by default.”
More of the latest news about social media tyranny can be found at Censorship.news.
Simply put, man, these privately held companies can just take someone right off of their platform is f*cked up, and in fact, the scary part about it is even speaking up against them — like I am currently doing — could get me censored. So we really don’t have real, true freedom of speech anymore, which is scary. And personally, you just see Mark Zuckerberg admit to it live on Joe Rogan, and the news wasn’t really talked about. So, all of these media platforms have controlled narratives by people who are paying them in their pockets.
YouTuber Jake Paul has slammed Mark Zuckerberg and Big Tech oligarchs for censoring the American people and destroying free speech.
Jake Paul recently came under fire for speaking out against the censorship of fellow social media influencer Andrew Tate, saying, “I don’t roll with Andrew Tate… But, I roll with free speech.”
Thegatewaypundit.com reports: Andrew Tate was recently banned from all social media platforms because of his views. Tate says that he was even banned from banks, Skype, Airbnb, and Uber in a “coordinated effort all at once.” No matter how much you disagree with someone’s speech, censorship is un-American.
The Regime is censoring everybody these days, including The Gateway Pundit. We recently reported that Jim Hoft of The Gateway Pundit is a key plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the State of Missouri. The lawsuit alleges that the public statements, emails, and recently released documents, establish that the President of the United States and other senior officials in the Biden Administration violated the First Amendment by directing social-media companies to censor viewpoints that conflict with the government’s messaging on Covid-19 and election integrity, which is a direct assault on the First Amendment.
The censorship of The Gateway Pundit is intended to harm dissidents of the Biden Regime and silence the truth about these issues.
As The Gateway Pundit reported, Jake Paul has been vocal in the past about the Biden Regime’s failed policies that have led to “highest gas prices, worst inflation, plummeting crypto prices, highest rent prices ever, and creating new and incomprehensible language.”
If you’re reading this and voted for Biden and you still don’t regret it then you are the American problem,” Jake concluded on Twitter.
Jake Paul squared off with Anderson Silva in front of the media on Tuesday in preparation for their upcoming boxing match.
The undefeated YouTube sensation is set to take on the former boxing champion from Brazil on October 29th at the Gila River Arena in Glendale, Arizona.
During the conference, The Gateway Pundit correspondent Jordan Conradson asked Paul, “what do you think of attempts to censor Americans by big tech companies and the current occupant of the White House?”
Everybody was caught off guard by the question, but Jake gave an excellent answer. He also used the opportunity to take a swipe at Zuckerberg and the Fake News Media for censoring information.
The crowd cheered when he agreed with our freedom of speech.
Paul: I think it’s a good question. I think the state of our society is in a really interesting place and a bad place at that. Simply put, man, I don’t think there should be censorship; freedom of speech. And the fact that these privately held companies can just take someone right off of their platform is f*cked up, and in fact, the scary part about it is even speaking up against them — like I am currently doing — could get me censored. So we really don’t have real, true freedom of speech anymore, which is scary. And personally, you just see Mark Zuckerberg admit to it live on Joe Rogan, and the news wasn’t really talked about. So, all of these media platforms have controlled narratives by people who are paying them in their pockets.
The Gateway Pundit reported that Mark Zuckerberg admitted to Joe Rogan that Facebook algorithmically censored the Hunter Biden laptop story for seven days on a request from the FBI to protect the Bidens.
This is not the only critical content that Facebook has censored to control the narrative.
OANN’s Daniel Baldwin shared the clip on his Twitter account. Watch below:
“We really don’t have real, true freedom of speech anymore.”
The great @jakepaul rips Big Tech for censoring private speech online during the #PaulSilva press conference. #JakePaul brings up Mark Zuckerberg on #JoeRogan as proof.
Doofuses like this one are preventing free speech?
Twitter executive calling Elon Musk mentally handicapped, "special" and saying he has "aspergers."
This Twitter exec goes on to say that Twitter is "not here to give people free speech" @elonmusk is going to want to see this one too…pic.twitter.com/dQZamaLiC8
As the Left-wing social media giants continue to target Infowars and Alex Jones, banning his channels and pages and disrupting his ability to earn a living, some analysts and experts say the CEOs who run those companies are crossing a legal line and ought to be held accountable.
Paul Craig Roberts, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under President Ronald Reagan, told USA Watchdog’s Greg Hunter in an interview this week that the only way Leftist elites in government and the private sector can promote their “awful” ideas is to censor and ban free speech from anyone who disagrees.
“The agendas of the elite are hidden,” Roberts said. “They are not something the American people would support. The elite are fearful that their cover stories are so thin that if truth can be shown on their agendas, they will be discredited.
“They will lose their abilities to impose their agendas,” he continued. “So they are closing down truth tellers in order to maintain control over explanations. Alex Jones is a threat to the elites’ control over the explanations… They are sending the message that says get on board with the official explanations or we will terminate you.”
Recently, Jones was notified that Facebook and YouTube had banned Infowars’ and Jones’ pages, while tech giant Apple removed entire libraries of Jones’ podcasts, along with Spotify.
And while not every agrees with Jones’ content, many of them do not support the censoring of his content. “I don’t support Alex Jones and what Infowars produces,” said Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell, Fox News reported.
“However, banning him and his outlet is wrong” because it will inevitably lead to similar actions being taken against anyone or any organization outside the Left-wing acceptance bubble.
In fact, the censorship and banning had already begun. Twitter “shadow bans” conservatives, while many Right-leaning media have noted that their referral traffic from Facebook has dropped as much as 90 percent in some cases.
Violations of the law
But Roberts says there is a legal remedy to all of this censorship and banning – it’s just not being used, for some reason.
“Why is this possible?” he told Hunter in reference to the censorship. “It is possible because the antitrust laws of the United States have not been enforced. These are all monopolies. Monopoly is against the law. It’s against the Sherman Antitrust Act, but they don’t enforce it because they’re so powerful.”
He adds that the media-tech companies have grown so large that they no longer feel they have to operate in a fair, unbiased manner.
“They should be broken up,” he said, “or they should be nationalized or actually they should be arrested … they are part of a plot” to overthrow POTUS Donald Trump. Included in the plot, he said, were several traditional media including The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and even NPR.
“There is not an ounce of integrity in the media,” Roberts continued.
As to his monopoly allegations, Roberts has a point. As of June, according to the statistics website Statistica, Google accounted for an astounding 78.81 percent of all search traffic, giving the platform incredible influence and control over results. Google is even more pervasive in other countries, rising as high as 94.39 percent in India, where more than a billion people live.
The site also noted that Google receives nearly one-third – 32.4 percent – of all digital ad revenue.
Facebook’s share is far greater. Statistica reports that the platform’s ad revenue market share in 2018 is 79.2 percent.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
Tales from the Conspiratum 