Daniel McAdams, the Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, was banned from Twitter last week. Officially, it was because he used the word “retarded” to describe the odious establishment propagandist Sean Hannity after noting the hilarious fact that the Fox News host had been wearing a CIA lapel pin while “challenging the deep state”. Unofficially, it was because McAdams has been operating for years at the apex of one of the most effective antiwar movements in the United States.
An article from Liberty Conservative News about McAdams’ encounter with the business end of the Twitter censorship hammer reports that the outspoken foreign policy critic received a notification that his account “has been suspended and will not be restored because it was found to be violating Twitter’s Terms of Service, specifically the Twitter Rules against hateful conduct.”
“It is against our rules to promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease,” the notification reads. “Additionally, if we determine that the primary purpose of an account is to incite harm towards others on the basis of these categories, that account may be suspended without prior warning.”
Now, unless Sean Hannity does in fact have some literal mental handicap we don’t know about, it’s not accurate to say that he was attacked or threatened on that or any other basis; rather, he was merely insulted with a common pejorative that is not widely considered to be politically correct. It is also certainly not accurate to say that the primary purpose of McAdams’ now-defunct Twitter account was to incite harm toward others based on the aforementioned categories. Indeed, the article notes, the word “retarded” is used constantly on Twitter by users all around the world who never suffer any consequences for it; a quick Twitter search easily confirms that the word is used as an insult multiple times per minute. The reasons given for McAdams’ suspension can therefore be regarded as bogus.
wow. Guess they didn’t like his foreign policy views?https://t.co/1NdOxK1AjQ
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) September 4, 2019
In reality, McAdams was suspended because there are people on Twitter who, either due to profession or obsession, make it their business to report any effective opponent of western imperialism at every opportunity to Twitter admins, many of whom apparently have a clear pro-establishment bias of their own. It’s happened to me on more than one occasion, and we may be sure that it happened to Daniel McAdams last week as well.
Which is annoying. It’s annoying to know that at some point I’ll probably slip up and say something imperfectly in an increasingly restrictive speech environment which gets me permanently banned from that platform. I like Twitter. I’m good at it. I’ve recently concluded that it’s pretty much useless for dialogue, but it is a great way for one person to get unauthorized ideas seen millions of times per month by people who might not feel like reading an entire article. I’ll be very put off when the banhammer finds my pretty face.
But you know what’s even more annoying? What’s even more annoying is that we live in a society where insulting a murderous war propagandist like Sean Hannity gets you silenced and marginalized, but being a murderous war propagandist like Sean Hannity does not. Being a murderous war propagandist like Sean Hannity gets you rewarded with fame and fortune at every turn.
I’d like us to reverse this, please.
I’d like to live in a society where promoting mass military slaughter is the thing that gets someone de-platformed and shunned, not using a rude word to insult someone who promotes mass military slaughter.
A society where a US president killing mountains of people around the world attracts more media attention than his rude tweets.
A society where being a warmonger is just as taboo and reviled as being a serial killer or a child rapist.
A society where people get their news from reporters who tell the truth about what’s happening, not from veterans of depraved intelligence agencies whose entire professions have been devoted to deceit and disinformation.
A society so sensitive to the horrors of war and the realities of its power dynamics that black bloc protesters would put more energy into disrupting appearances by people like Henry Kissinger and John Bolton than people like Milo Yiannopoulos.
A society so emotionally awake and empathetic in the way it operates that sociopathy and psychopathy become more of a disabling handicap than schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
A society so healthy that we no longer spend our creative energy figuring out ways to kill and exploit and manipulate each other and instead spend it figuring out ways to collaborate with each other and with our ecosystem for the benefit of everyone.
A natural society, the kind we imagined as small children that we would be inheriting, instead of this insane stew of oligarchic psyops and cultural mind viruses which rewards sociopathy and elevates social cannibals.
That society is already here in embryonic form, only hidden beneath a fog of confusion about what we are and where the stable ground of sanity is. Some of that fog was created accidentally, as the result of a species suddenly evolving extra brain matter at an unprecedented speed and stumbling out of the trees into a world of WiFi and processed meats. Most of the fog has been created deliberately, with countless generations of powerful humans inflicting narratives upon their subjects which further advantage the powerful and further disadvantage the powerless.
But sanity is right there, patiently waiting underneath the insanity. Waiting for us to open our eyelids and part the fog and remember our natural state. It’s right here, closer to us than our own breath, so simple and obvious that we can spend our whole lives overlooking it.
It’s that comfy homely chair where you can let your bum nestle into the folds of the earth, the vantage point from which you truly don’t mind what happens, you’re just curious as to what you’ll do next.
It’s that quiet still place from where inspiration bubbles up, just below the babble of the unreliable narrator of our patterned thinking mind.
It’s that place between sleep and at rest, right before the clamor of thoughts bustle in.
It’s where ideas spring from in the middle of the night or in the middle of a shower, from that relaxed, happy state that peeks through when you forget yourself for a moment.
It’s right here, just below the surface of the made-up matrix of mind gunk.
This is the place from which our sane society will be birthed into the world.
Sink in and live from here whenever you remember to.
Let it be birthed through you.
________________________
The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
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44 responses to “Meditations On Twitter’s Silencing Of Daniel McAdams”
The fools at Twitter need to be educated, else they might be mentally sub-par.
“Retarded” means SLOW! Nothing more, nothing less. Example: My car is being retarded as I apply the brakes.
But Twitter needs a brain transplant already; it has rendered itself useless.
On a related note (perhaps) The Freeway Blogger was recently banned from Twitter for snark-tweeting that Hillary Clinton had “cut off everyone’s arms and legs.” http://freewayblogger.blogspot.com/2019/09/dear-twitter-or-why-my-tweet-stating.html
What has happened here? Apparently an army of Twitter vigilantes who now how to manipulate Twitter’s civility algorithm, or an army of narrative control freaks. Nonetheless, The Freeway Blogger has been silenced on Twitter for awhile, but not on America’s roadways.
Excellent
I’d just like to point out that Usenet still exists, even if it is largely deserted. Why is no-one suggesting re-inhabiting it to bypass corporate filters? Just pick a newsgroup and start promoting it as a venue.
“A society so healthy that we no longer spend our creative energy figuring out ways to kill and exploit and manipulate each other and instead spend it figuring out ways to collaborate with each other and with our ecosystem for the benefit of everyone.”
This one brilliant sentence needs to be on all our Tees. Highly subversive, since it goes straight against the American ethos since the 1600s. We ourselves are going to be wiped out if we can’t get this implemented. A revolution in consciousness will be needed. Keep at it for us, Caitlin!
A little too much Alan watts at the end. Over most people’s heads
This is a rather interesting website, and quite concerning. What http://www.deagel.com/country/United-States-of-America_c0001.aspx is forecasting is that the population of America drops from 327 million to 100 million by 2025. That is a 70% reduction within approximately 5 years. For those a little slow in math, that is 7 out of every 10 Americans are gone. I would consider that a National Security issue.
What a bummer, McAdams is good people. Hopefully DARPA’s “SemaFor” will go on a haywire ban spree and send everyone to Mastodon (basically a decentralized Twitter clone).
Enjoyed the podcast very much and plan to employ the subtle shade-casting maneuver going forward to bypass programmed rebuttal scripts. And if you guys need a song or two for the show, please feel free to download anything I have.
hey, guys and gals, go check out Anya Parampil, a brilliant Grayzone journalist, dressing down Ricardo Hausmann, a Harvard Economics Professor and an advisor to Juan Guaido and his US-appointed “government” of Venezuela. it’s a riot! you don’t want to miss it.
A link helps:
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/09/06/go-to-hell-venezuelan-coup-leader-ricardo-hausmann-stages-whatsapp-meltdown-when-confronted-with-his-own-hypocrisy-and-lack-of-transparency/#more-14369
This is what happens when dissidents use means of communication controlled by the enemy. (Remember when Twitter terminated the primary account used by Julian Assange supporters, back in July?) We need open-source, democratic alternatives to the likes of Facebook and Twitter.
The third tool of discipline or technique of dealing with the pain of problem-solving, which must continually be employed if our lives are to be healthy and our spirits are to grow, is dedication to the truth. Superficially, this should be obvious. For truth is reality. That which is false is unreal. The more clearly we see the reality of the world, the better equipped we are to deal with the world. The less clearly we see the reality of the world — the more our minds are befuddled by falsehood, misconceptions and illusions — the less able we will be to determine correct courses of action and make wise decisions. Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know where we are, and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.– Henry Hazlitt, The Conquest of Poverty [1973]
I’m currently reading a collection of essays titled A Moment of Danger, about media post-WWII. One author devotes an entire essay to pointing out that so-called interactive or user-produced content is just a further way to control the dialogue; it is NOT democratic. Do people often make the mistake that something like Twitter is genuinely open? (I don’t know, I don’t do Twitter.) Like Facebook I have read that they have no problem with hateful comments directed toward women, but are very protective of pedophiles and other criminals.
People might think you’re on to something very important in these 100% honest writings, Ms. Johnstone. “Be careful what you ask for” is the familiar phrase. Perhaps genuine and eternal peace on Earth is approaching faster than anyone thought possible. Thank you.
Peace.
Some of Ms Johnstone’s readers will enjoy these two articles as much as I did:
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-most-consequential-whistleblower-who-wasnt/
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/09/06/power-of-diplomacy-and-partnership-at-vladivostok/
It is sad that the ones who are deciding what content can be published are the ones who told us there were wreckages of airplanes in the Pentagone and in a field in Pennsylvania on 9/11 even if there were no wreckages of airplanes at all to be seen.
So, of course, truth will be suppressed.
Isn’t it a clear sign that the return of the days of Noah are upon us?
It also means that the return of Jesus is very near and I pray the Rosary to hasten His Glorious return because I have really, but really seen enough bullshit.
The asnwer is exceedingly simply.
I have never had an account with Twitter or Facebook. I do not participate in “social media” at all – apart from occasional forays into Slashdot, which I regard as just another violent but enjoyable pastime like ice hockey or street fighting.
On the other hand, I regularly read Caitlin’s articles – and those of Paul Craig Roberts, John Michael Greer, James Howard Kunstler, Ron Paul and Daniel McAdams, Craig Murray, The Saker, Dmitry Orlov, Andrei Martyanov, South Front, Michael Hudson, John Pilger, C.J. Hopkins, Noam Chomsky, John Helmer, Wikileaks, Moon of Alabama, Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett, Rob Slane, Andre Vltchek, Off Guardian, Media Lens and many others. (Those listed are just the ones I read most regularly – many of them every day).
No wonder I have no time for newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, or ridiculous propaganda fronts like Facebook and Twitter.
Stick to writers who respect logic, facts and figures – and their readers’ intelligence and education. Stick to writers who have personal integrity.
greyzone (blumenthal), william blum, glenn greenwald, ellen brown, aaron matte, korea policy institute, korea in focus… i wish these could be more open to, and interactive with, their readers, though.
Wow you are on fire!
The Force is strong in this one 😉
Awaken us from consensus trance,
With words of liberation,
Echoes of the real.
Connected within,
Intuition speaks wisdom,
Though mental slavery reigns for now,
Such light will cast out darkness,
Eventually.
May your inner fire,
Become a conflagration,
That consumes mass delusion like wood,
So we may all burn brightly,
And know true freedom.
I do about the same thing that you do, Caitlin. I write. I publicly document what I learn as I am learning it, and I spend a lot of time researching how this insane world really works. My website has been shadow-banned from Google search results. Commercial anti-virus programs actually block access to my website as “dangerous or potentially harmful”. My domain name registrar recently seized my URL without comment or justification. I have noticed the same thing happening to other websites that I reference, like HistoryReviewed.com. Many of the YouTube videos I have linked to on my website have been “disappeared” and can no longer be found anywhere on the Internet using the search engines. For a while, I was saving the banned videos when I could on PewTube, and then PewTube mysteriously and unexpectedly vanished. The degree of censorship that is currently taking place is beyond belief. It is really sinister, indeed it is downright evil. It is coming from the “usual suspects” (as Mike King calls them), those who control the narrative for their benefit at our expense. Google’s selection of the ADL’s CTS Online Hate Index to police the Internet in early 2018 was the beginning of the end of free speech. Silencing Assange seems to have made them grow bolder. If my experience, or Assange’s experience, is any indication, your voice is at risk too. You don’t even have to do anything wrong. In fact, you need only do what is right to be targeted, and you are doing a lot of that, from what I can see. From the perspective of the controllers, that makes you “dangerous or potentially harmful”. Welcome to the club. Be prepared, because they don’t give you any warning.
Thanks for the positivity and a way to cope! It is so rare these days.
Now, I know how the innocent citizens of Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan felt during World War II. Our government is now an immoral, murderous, criminal enterprise run by thugs. Congress is now nothing more than a debate club. The executive branch serves at the behest of the oligarchs, Pentagon ad CIA. The government’s mouthpiece, the MSM, purposely manipulates and deceives the citizenry with their “official narratives”, in lieu of truth, which has created a concentration camp of the mind without guards or barbed wire. Question the official narrative lie and you could lose your job or perhaps worse. In the new Orwellian America, the citizen now exists for the state not the other way around just like in the old Sovet Union that we feared as children.
Our founding fathers bequeathed us a republic but warned, only, if you can keep it.
In Webster’s on-line dictionary retarded is defined as:
1 slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development : characterized by mental retardation
2 informal, usually offensive : very stupid or foolish
If Twitter censors have automatically assumed that Daniel McAdams was intending to describe Sean Hannity’s behavior as fitting the first definition, which Webster’s itself describes as “dated”, then it is Twitter itself that is being insulting to people diagnosed as being “slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development : characterized by mental retardation” not Daniel McAdams. McAdams was obviously using the word to be offensive in the second sense “very stupid or foolish”. It is not up to Twitter to feel offended on behalf of Sean Hannity.
Twitter censors are being deliberately disingenuous and are almost certainly in breach of the First Ammendment. How sad to see that the media itself is now gagging the media.
Twitter should now issue an apology to all parties and ban itself from using Twitter.
Obombie and Eric ‘the Red’ Holder, ATF Operation Fast & Furious killed hundreds, maybe thousands in Mexico. Obombie and Reptillary CIA Operation Zero Footprint killed thousands in Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt, then a quarter million in Libya and half million in Syria. There was no antiwar movement against these progressive mass murderers. A large part of the MAGA vote was antiwar, but that made Princess Kushy cry, so daddy bombed some Syrians.
The ” owners and the masters ” do not accept a difference of opinion in the public domain. Justice never gets to the owners and the masters; that is not the way that things should be!
Thank you for supporting McAdams.
his presentation about the Deep State at Mises Foundation conference was great. he’s very energetic and passionate.
Just curious: are you using A Course In Miracles in your spiritual adventures?
And that’s the thing – those responsible for murders/massacres/drone attacks – “fake” news – inciting by dog-whistling – against “disenfranchised” people – suffer not a whit. As always Caitlin – compassionately and passionately said!
We the peoples of the World need to return to the art, the practice of “Knowing one’s self”
For what ever it’s worth, I think the below links go along with your desire for Humankind to “Go within”.
Technology is convenient, can inform and can assist us physically, but it will not and cannot assist you tapping into the greater Consciousness of self and that wisdom pool beyond one’s self. Is there any question our “Civilization’ is unbalanced and needs healing?
I watched this video on YouTube today:
The real reason why DMT is banned – The Spirit Molecule | Graham Hancock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47ElVv3RG2M
Then, I watched a few YouTube videos of films made in the 1920’s and 1930’s predicting what our current inventions and cities would be like in the future. Then, I watched a few predicting now what the future in 2100 would be like, when I came upon this panel discussion.
I have seen this Physicist Michio Kaku way too much on tv, on the rare occasion I have watched one, over the years while staying in a hotel, searching the tube for something actually worth watching. Whenever I see too much of one “authority” on main stream media, I become very skeptical as to, why them? In the below panel discussion Kaku is quite adamant that in the future we will all want to take chip to the brain so AI can’t take us over.
It is an interesting panel discussion, particularly the contrast between what Kaku and Sadhguru had to say.
Michio Kaku and Sadhguru on the Future Technologies by the year 2100
You are 100% right to question the “experts” who are regularly paraded in front of the TV cameras. As someone who has been actively in search of the truth for well over 20 years, I can attest to the fact that the truth is told by those who usually have no major public platform and no broad audience. The minute they start to gain traction, they are either disappeared/de-platformed, or ridiculed and derided until people stop paying attention to them, or they morph into mouthpieces for the very same people they were initially claiming to hold to account (bait and switch). Anytime we see a news story on the TV that airs 24/7 (like 911 and the ensuing wars, or “Russiagate,” or the El Paso shooting), it’s almost sure to be some form of narrative control/propaganda. The legitimately important stories that do not serve the interests of the elite will air only once or twice, if they are aired at all, then will never be mentioned again.
………..
As many of us have said before, the real threat to established power is the joining together of the anti-establishment populists on the left and the anti-establishment populists on the right. That’s why the elites and their propagandists are promoting divisive issues and using divisive language in the MSM — by hyping immutable characteristics (race, gender, age, etc.) and then telling people that the “others” are trying to oppress them, they can continue to keep the 99% fighting among themselves.
………………
We are living through the beginnings of one of the most frightening times in recent history, IMHO. The level of censorship and narrative control is increasing at an alarming speed, and most of the people out there in Joe Sixpack land don’t even see it.
“Clearing The Fog” is good (see podcast by Zeese and flowers).
the wall street parasites, the war criminals who serve the parasites, and the presstitutes on wall street’s payroll are losing their grip on the narratives. they are desperate. so let’s celebrate and do some more upending.
a friend of mine got booted out of the Amazon third party marketplace, without a warning or explanation or recourse, after criticizing Israhell’s crimes against the palestinians at their little seller forum. and yes, 95% of the sellers were kowtowing the zionist narrative. i witnessed the whole thing first hand. whose bread you eat, his song you sing.
BDS everyday, in every way you can!
I used to have a lapel pin that I would wear on the back of my lapel, behind the “Peace Is Patriotic” pin on the front of the lapel.
Sometimes in a meeting or presentation I would flip my lapel to show the back button.
It said “Sounds Like Bullshit To Me”.
I never suffered any consequences, either.
http://www.johndayblog.com
Have you seen this?
https://www.globalresearch.ca/concealing-truth/5688047
counterpunch has an article about how the US has been amassing the military power along the columbia-venezuela borders, ready (=intimidating) to pound President Maduro. some of Columbia’s armed resistant movement has taken up armed again and went back to the mountains, because the US’s puppet in power have reneged on every promise on the signed agreement.
counterpunch / truthdig have an article by Ellen Brown, who explains and advocates for public banking, clean slate (debt forgiveness), and no private ownership of land, as many civilizations, including the modern-day China, have been practicing those three for 5000 years with great, just results.
thank you for the link. GR is always one of the best resources.
taken up not armed but arms, ugh.
The sad thing is, thoughtful truth-telling people like Caitlin keep using these tools of Empire because there is (apparently) no more efficient way of getting their words read by a certain section of the community. Oh for a platform not run by and for the PTB.
there are ways to communicate and organize without going though the internet. Hong Kong protesters have been using it (an app).
also, entities have been building alternative internets. so we won’t be at the war criminals’ mercy for long.
in the meantime, let’s give them hell. there are ways to force them to run for their money. leak leak leak all the dirty secrets of the criminals, for instance, as long as you don’t risk your life.
Right on. (As usual.)
So, pretty to think such a thing, and maybe where you are, such a thing may some day be possible, but here in the wonderful, always morally righteous U.S. of A., those days are long gone; rotted to the core by over a century of criminal injustice. Nothing here but putrid mindless cretins, stabbing each other in the back, and consuming the body parts.
I often wonder, in total amazement, at the total acceptance of the totally unreasonable/unthinkable by much of society that considers itself special, or even exceptional, and the worlds savour (bringer of peaceful, wealthy healthy democracies to the unfortunate, really!!!)—Yes, ‘if you don’t think about it…it possibly makes sense’. MK-Ultra mind control of the masses or wilful ignorance…maybe various levels of greed??? How about a total sensory overload leaving most somewhat zombified! What makes the world go around, and who controls that!!?? ‘Time gentleman please’ is nearing.
Beautiful Caitlin. So profound, so simple, so well expressed. Keep beaming out your Love to all of us Love starved folks. So grateful that you are serving the truth so generously.
My thoughts exactly.