Listen to a reading of this article:
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Twitter has permanently suspended the personal account of Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene for what the platform calls “repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy,” much to the delight of liberals and pro-censorship leftists everywhere. This follows the Twitter ban of Dr Robert Malone on the same grounds a few days prior, which followed an unbroken pattern of continually escalating and expanding censorship protocols ever since the 2016 US election.
In reality nobody ever gets banned for “Covid misinformation”; that’s just today’s excuse. Before that it was the fallout from the Capitol riot, before that it was election security, before that it was Russian disinformation, foreign influence ops, fake news, etc. In reality the real agenda behind the normalization of internet censorship is the normalization of internet censorship itself. That’s the real reason so many people get banned.
I myself had already written many, many articles warning warning about the increasingly widespread use of internet censorship via algorithm manipulation and deplatforming long before the first “Covid misinformation” bans started happening. Arguably the most significant political moment in the US since 9/11 and its aftermath was when liberal institutions decided that Trump’s 2016 election was not a failure of status quo politics but a failure of information control, which just so happened to align perfectly with the agendas of the ruling power structure to control the dominant narratives about what’s going on in the world.
Having unelected tech oligarchs ban duly elected members of Congress – or even the sitting President – from using their massive platforms is dystopian. Remember how many world leaders warned that FB & Twitter's banning of Trump was a threat to democracy.https://t.co/zIT7l04hMW https://t.co/2BPFrgeZXv
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 2, 2022
We saw this exemplified in 2017 when Google, Facebook and Twitter were called before the Senate Judiciary Committee and instructed to come up with a strategy “to prevent the fomenting of discord”.
“We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America,” the social media giants were told by think tanker and former FBI agent Clint Watts, who added, “Stopping the false information artillery barrage landing on social media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced—silence the guns and the barrage will end.”
Since that time the coordination between those tech platforms and the US government in determining whose voices should be silenced has gotten progressively more intimate, so now we have these giant platforms which people have come to rely on to share ideas and information censoring speech in complete alignment with the will of the most powerful government on earth.
The danger of this is obvious to anyone who isn’t a stunted emotional infant. The danger of government-tied monopolistic tech platforms controlling worldwide speech far outweighs the danger of whatever voice you might happen to dislike at any given moment. The only way for this not to be clear to you is if you are so psychologically maladjusted that you can’t imagine anything bad coming from your personal preferences for human expression being imposed upon society by the most powerful institutions on earth.
Silicon Valley Should Not Restrict Public Discourse About Covid Measures Which Affect Everyone
"Government-tied oligarchic megacorporations are among the very last institutions who should be in charge of worldwide political discourse."https://t.co/WlDypacgmM
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) December 30, 2021
It really only takes the tiniest bit of personal growth to understand this. I for example absolutely hate QAnoners. Hate them, hate them, hate them. They always used to make my job annoying because they saw my criticisms of the mass media and the oligarchic empire as aligning with their view that Donald Trump was leading a righteous crusade against the Deep State, so they’d often clutter my comments sections with foam-brained idiocy that perfectly served the very power structures I oppose. They saw me as on their side when in reality we had virtually nothing in common and couldn’t really be more opposed.
When QAnon accounts were purged from all mainstream social media platforms following the Capitol riot, it made my work significantly less irritating. I no longer had to share social media spaces with people I despised, and, if I were an immature person, I would see this as an inherently good thing. But because I am a grown adult, I understand that the danger of giant monopolistic government-tied platforms controlling worldwide human speech to a greater and greater extent far outweighs the emotional ease I personally receive from their absence.
I therefore would choose to allow QAnoners to voice their dopey nonsense freely on those platforms if it were up to me. Whatever damage they might do is vastly less destructive than allowing widespread communication to be regulated by powerful oligarchic institutions who amount to US government proxies. The same is true of Marjorie Taylor Greene and everyone like her.
This should not be an uncommon perspective. It doesn’t require a lot of maturity to get this, it just requires some basic self-preservation and enough psychological growth to understand that the world should not be forced to align with your personal will. It says bad things about the future that even this kindergarten-level degree of insight has become rare in some circles.
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60 responses to “Those Who Support Internet Censorship Lack Psychological Maturity”
……freedom of speech is now a commodity…….censorship?……freedom of choice…..
…..de tocqueville pointed out the lack of intellectual enthusiasm by amerikkkants in the 19th century….so here we are in the 21st….clutching to guns and god….enjoying the fruits of genocide, slave labor, and the constant spectacle of “freedoms and liberties” that are constantly dangled like carrots on a stick….as the world we’ve created for ourselves is collapsing all around us, we are like deer in the headlights…frozen with eyes wide shut…..throwing words(bombast) and bombs at each other during the last mandate……the end…….
The question of whether censorship can ever be justified is not a simple one. Caitlin, you argue one side of it, but damage your own credibility by using language such as calling anyone who disagrees “stunted emotional infants.”
I think there are times when censorship can be justified, but it’s a dangerous place to go. There is NOT a simple answer as you suggest. But I’m not going to argue that point–my point here is to give you some general advice, because this is not the only post in which you resort to name-calling, which calls into question the enlightenment you kinda lay claim to. And it damages your impact–which matters, because so few people are doing the work you’re doing, relentlessly calling out the criminality of the US government. Or as you call it, “the international cabal loosely headquartered in Washington DC” or something like that. Not being a US citizen you focus pretty exclusively on the crimes against the rest of the world–which is fine because not enough people do that, and there is plenty of talk within the US about its crimes against its own citizens (although that talk has been rendered toothless by its being divided neatly into two opposing teams, something else you helpfully point out.)
All Hail Britannia:
https://wulfshead.blogspot.com/2022/01/u-u.html
…..at the risk of sounding psychologically immature i do agree with john knox….however, i do feel breathing kooties on everyone else is the same as yelling “fire” in the movie house….is bloviating blowhards with axes to grind thus spewing out baseless bullshit that gets people killed free speech?…ask the victims of mass shootings inspired by such bullshit about how they feel about free speech….or the sandy hook parents ….freedom of anything comes with responsibility….intelligent responsibility…..in amerikkka that seems to be in extreme short order…freedoms and liberties, burger and fries?…what’s the fucking difference?….basic civic responsibility has been disappearing for decades…amerikkkants are just fearful and desperate consumers who aren’t aware of the world beyond what’s presented in their gizmos and gadgets….getting vaxed and boosted….yep, i’m still alive and well…..is what will stem the spread of the virus…the herd immunity bullshit just means many more will die needlessly…..many in the poor countries have NO access to basic medical care or vaccines…..conscience anyone?……while i do feel the human right to speak freely and having open intelligent debate of opposing views are the main drivers of an open society, words like “accountability”, “responsibility”, “duty”, “respect”,and “consideration” or “rules” and “laws” are some foundations of which an open society is maintained and even….gasp….strengthened….the socio/psychopathic oligharcal and plutocratic rulers of this planet think otherwise….they are a small but extremely powerful collective…..we, us, are the very large collective, with more than we realize at our disposal……just think…..it can get very ugly in the beginning…barf bags included….but in the end it could be just that baby step we needed to be more civilized…..i don’t think a scientist should be censured for expressing rational concerns, but it’s the lethal blowhards with self inflated egos that pick up on it and run it toward the absurd…..for just $19.99 a month, plus FREE SHIPPING……..1/800/666-4355……
Reported.
A newbie here. After you Report it does Caitlin delete it?
Deleting it would be ironic in a thread about censorship.
Ha! Don’t you believe?
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“Brian”‘s post gives people an exercise in discernment.
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And a prime example for everyone of, “What not to do”.
What is missing in your argument is moral standards which transcends political bias. Such standards are crumbling within western society or simply no longer exist so there is no baseline for blocking speech which fall below those standards. Therefore speech is curtailed for all type of ridiculous reasons making free speech all but disappear. Who is the person deciding, you, me, twitter. What is happening now is clear political censorship.
Someone here introduced “Trusted News Initiative” (TNI) to me today in this thread.
What a ‘tip of the iceberg’!
Later I came across TNI again. Holy Smokes!
Either Dr Malone is getting totally stressed out (who wouldn’t be?) or TNI is going to be the most searched term in the internet this year and probably 2023 as well.
This could be huge beyond huge!
“What if the largest experiment on human beings in history is a failure?”
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/what-if-the-largest-experiment-on
Personal Growth? Americans? Lol You haven’t been paying attention..
Here again, Caitlin is pandering to the far-right haters, primarily in the USA.
Brenton Tarrant followed Stefan Molyneux, and even gave Molyneux donations.
There are many more examples…
Caitlin, why don’t you bugger off to the United States, and leave the rest of the rational, caring and nonviolent world in peace.
Agree, kind of. It’s the US arms dealers and their politicians with their armed enforcers who should leave the rational, caring and nonviolent world in peace.
France, Russia, China sell arms as well. If the US stopped tomorrow, they would fill the gap.
Let’s do an experiment: citizens of each abovementioned countries should tell their own government to stop selling weapons and then dare to hold their own government responsible – and not worry about the governments of other nations. Then report back to this page with your observations.
Fauci is right, and so is Chomsky. We need to stop the spread, even if we sometimes hurt the feelings of those who are against public health rules. Sometimes we have to censor or otherwise restrict pedophiles and other dangerously mentally ill people, because they are too harmful to the rest of us. That’s civilization.
Stalin’s Russia was civilization too. Did not make what he did right. Mao’s China was civilization too. Did not make what he did right. These so called health rules are just a coordinated excuse to usher in a totalitarian state.
That’s what the slave owners said about Lincoln. He took away their right to own slaves.
Writing against anything about the abject corruption of the COVID *vaccines* or about the lying High Priest of lies, Dr Anthony Fauci gets the ire up on most any platform. I was canceled by Medium and I was a Medium member since November ’17! I’ve written about all sorts of governmental malfeasance but Big Pharma wields a very big canceling stick. There are treatments that are generic and quit effective but have been essentially banned here in the US. They’d rather see a patient die that allow inexpensive medications to be dispensed by your Doctor.
Read Robert F. Kennedy’s book, “The Real Anthony Fauci”, for some real eye openers. I knew Big Pharma was bad but they make the illegal Cartels seem like kindergartners, minus the blood.
Yes, I’m a victim of the cancel culture wars. Peace, The Ol’ Hippy
Caitlin, as usual I agree with your reasoning, and I have to agree that censorship is likely to be the greater of two evils here. But there’s a real dilemma, in that the negative effects of “misinformation” being pumped into so many minds that are incapable of critical thinking and thus accept whatever appeals to their emotional predispositions, have already been very substantial and are likely to grow, perhaps exponentially. If we allow pure freedom of speech here the effects will continue to be, it seems to me, analogous to giving poisoned candy (or guns) to children, which few of us would allow. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.
What I think it boils down to is the fact that freedom must be used responsibly (i.e. to do good, not bad things); when, as is so often the case, we do not use it responsibly we land ourselves in this enormous dilemma, which has now become so severe that it actually threatens life as we know it on Earth.
As I attempt to make clear in “The Choice” (check it out on Amazon) this is what it’s all coming down to, as Dan Rather (!) observed recently; “Right and Wrong”. If we keep on doing wrong things with exponentially increasing power we’re going to be in real trouble. We’re already so close to The Cliff…
You wrote, “misinformation being pumped into so many minds that are incapable of critical thinking”
:
Excuse me, but that smacks of coastal-US arrogance. “We, the educated and intelligent class know what is best for the fly-over states”.
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Intelligence also makes you more skillful at rationalizing what you *already* believe. Or, makes you skillful in rationalizing those beliefs that you have already adopted and mimic from your identity group.
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Those, for example, that bought into the Russiagate nonsense, displayed great skill at fooling themselves.
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I agree with you that Russiagate was (largely) nonsense. Does that mean that we’re both “rationalizing what we already believe”, or does it mean that we’ve done our homework and we’re correct in our conclusions? Truth is truth and falsehood is falsehood; we desperately need to distinguish between them, whatever coast or prairie we live on. But I dunno; you busted me on that one; I live in California and I grew up in Massachusetts!
from what I’ve read, it was complete nonsense.
“live in California and I grew up in Massachusetts!”
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I used to know Rt 128 pretty well.
Am still a Red Sox fan.
So many sweet memories of growing up in the Mass. countryside eight miles west of Concord. The Cambridge/Boston folk music scene, Greenwich Village in the early Sixties, then off across the country, and now fifty years of living in the wilds of Northern California. Pretty hard to complain! The state of the world is another matter…
Shelburne Falls and a memory of lunch with friends overlooking a picturesque bridge; Harvard Square; hikes around Wachusett Reservoir; sailboarding in Wellfleet; retrieving apples in orchards with frisky friends
Excellent points. I’ve been attacked on other sites for NOT believing the Holocaust was made up, that the moon landings were faked, that the Earth is flat, that God created the Earth 6,000 years ago, and white people are God’s chosen people. So much of this stuff becomes a physical threat to many people. Look at the election workers being threatened with physical violence by Trump supporters (who believe 100% that the election in the USA was stolen). Where do you draw the line?
TJRICH asked, “where do you draw the line?”
Were you leading to an answer you prefer?
Perhaps you had in mind, “doesn’t matter, so long as I, or my group, does the drawing”.
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You will be happy to hear that the Security-State/News Media Complex
has a new angle. They want you to believe, *and we know you are ready to believe*, that what is bad for Julian Assange is bad for Trump.
:
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/01/03/investigative_issues_security_states_influence_over_us_news_outlets_810343.html
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“a new article from NBC News that urges the prosecution and extradition of Julian Assange, claiming that the WikiLeaks founder, once on U.S. soil, will finally provide the long-elusive proof that Donald Trump criminally conspired with Russia.”
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Anyone not believing the above should have a line drawn through them.
For those who haven’t seen Robert Malone’s interview by Joe Rogan, he explains, among other interesting things, how the BBC, Reuters, Facebook, Google/YouTube and Twitter set up in 2019 the Trusted News Initiative to combat misinformation about Covid.
Wow! Already in 2019, these motherfuckers (for want of a more appropriate word for people who’d pushed for three years the Russiagate conspiracy theory knowing full well – because a six year old could debunk that narrative – that it was pure gaslighting) knew what was gonna be the truth about Covid. So any debate, especially with renowned virologists and epidemiologists, would be superfluous. Worse! Toxic.
Now where did this idea come from? They had learnt the lesson of the 2016 US election when Russia was instrumental in getting Donald Trump elected by spreading fake news all over the joint. Hadn’t noticed that? Russia was doing this all day. Had taken over CNN, MSNBC and the written press which were openly campaigning against Trump to…
Err… Where was I? Anyway Russia got Trump elected by the American people against their better judgement. And Putin had Trump in his blackmailing portfolio because he had a tape of the Donald getting two hookers to pee on the bed where Obama had slept during his last visit to Moscow. Who filmed that? Spielberg? Who gave Putin the tape? Betty Boop? I mean how gullible did you have to be to believe this even if you thought that Trump was an obnoxious oaf – which I do?
The BBC (whose motto is “more people in more places trust BBC News than any other news source”), Reuters – which is republished verbatim by all the newsrooms in the world -, Facebook, Google/YouTube and Twitter, in their quasi-divine wisdom, said they believed that shit, which was the worst start for accurate information about anything that anyone could possibly imagine in their worst nightmare.
Now you might have read that James C. Smith, who made a career at Thomson Reuters all the way up to chairman and CEO until 2020 has been simultaneously sitting on Pfizer’s board of directors since 2014. Wow! And according to Malone, it’s Reuters that provides the “fact-checkers” for Twitter.
You don’t say… To add insult to injury, the executive shareholders of both Pfizer and Reuters are investment management corporations BlackRock and Vanguard, BlackRock, led by Larry Fink, being also the main shareholder of Vanguard.
That’s modern capitalism for you. Forget the Dickens boss who was exploiting workers by making profit on their sweat. Larry Fink has a $9 trillion portfolio that includes the savings Dickens’ workers have placed in a life insurance policy, hoping for a good return on investment. Larry Fink’s job is to see to it that this happens, that all his investors make money all the way down to Joe Sixpacks who lives on minimum wage – and even if he has to get sacked so that his company becomes more productive. That’s the beauty of it.
And this context guarantees you that you’ll get the most objective information about Covid, its vaccines and its drugs from these folks.
That is interesting about the Trusted News Initiative (TNI),
why hadn’t I heard of that before? Just now I did some further
reading on it.
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Perhaps you are already aware that when you say Reuters you really should say
Reuters-CIA.
:
“Reuters employs former CIA personnel as company’s Government Global Business Director.
As per reuters website, she is charged with “responsibility of advancing Thomson Reuters’ ability
to meet the disparate needs of the U.S. Government.”” – reddit
:
Reuters has not made it a secret:
https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/authors/dawn-scalici/
“Prior to joining Thomson Reuters, Ms. Scalici served 33 years with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
In her last federal assignment, she served as the National Intelligence Manager for the Western Hemisphere within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
In this role, she was responsible for overseeing national intelligence for an area of responsibility spanning from the Arctic to the tip of South America, including the US Homeland.”
Pushing British propaganda too:
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reuters-bbc-uk-foreign-office-russian-media/
“Trusted News Initiative”, I’m asking you… :o)
Gained an interesting lesson in psychology the other day.
Psychopaths are known to lie habitually, they will lie
even when it is in their own interest to tell the truth.
Why would they do this, you ask? As you already know,
psychopaths have a need to control people. If they are
telling the truth about a situation they are speaking
of something that is external to both themselves and you.
They are not controlling you, the external objective facts are.
But lies they tell exist only within themselves, they
created or added to that reality. They, the psychopath,
are controlling you and not some objective, factual reality.
That is one explanation for their lies and why they
participate in and promote lies.
This article is timely.
Moon of Alabama ( MoA ) is currently self-destructing over censorship.
Long time posters are being banned or blocked, some (like myself) without notice.
Note that I used a different handle at MoA – librul.
Also note that I did receive one warning, no one at MoA knows that I have been blocked, it may dawn on them eventually.
Note to any barflies (what MoA participants call themselves) if you chance to see this post:
1) If you want to see what b has deleted you can try Wayback Machine. For example, Black Bread is archived, just put this url in the appropriate box at Wayback Machine: https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/01/the-moa-week-in-review-ot-2022-001.html#comments
2) Frequently archive at Wayback Machine to protect your posts
3) As b is self-destructing perhaps we can cross-talk here at Caitlin.
4) I use the handle librul at MoA
The self-destruction over censorship you describe at MoA has already happened at Common Dreams, they are a shell of their former self. I would estimate as many as 35-40% of longtime supporters/commenters have been purged (including myself) for speaking the truth or breaking their new “no links” policy. It has to be affecting their financial bottom-line, so one has to wonder, if they are making that lost revenue up from other sources.
The thing about QAnoners is that people spent so much time talking about them, they ended up ignoring something even more scary which was the BlueAnoners and their ‘Russia affected the American elections’ rubbish.
I cannot remember what QAnoners issue was back at the start of their rise but:
a) They were completely smoking some heavy gear of on opiods or
b) They had a handle on something wrong, but state actors (agent prevocators blew the thing up into complete unbelievability). You know the same way people are called anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists…
This article is another public service. I am grateful that Caitlin Johnstone is standing up for free speech. As a criminal defense lawyer, which involves defending certain civil rights (including at times free speech), I have been disappointed by how many people do not see what the 1st Amendment right of speech is really about. Thank for having them know more.
“so they’d often clutter my comments sections with foam-brained idiocy that perfectly served the very power structures I oppose”
Can’t you bar people from your comments section using the software provided? And if not why not?
In my opinion, this is your blog and your content. So if there is anyone who should have a say on who gets to comment on your material, it is you, the author alone. Personally, forgive me for sounding ‘totalitarian’ but when I see some idiot commenting on my own material in a way that I see as counterproductive, I have no problem tossing their comment to the Delete Button. But it’s not up to ‘higher ups’ to make those decisions.
Are you saying anyone who has an opinion other than your own gets deleted.
Thanks Caitlin,
I hope 2022 is our year.
And if you are reading this, the best of New Years to you Julian, hoping we bring you home soon.
I am censored all the time. My verbal expression causes nervous breakdowns in fascists. A fascist is a bundle of mental disorders Freud began to unravel. So, if I say that covid is a bio-weapon deliberately released on common man and woman, I am hounded out of the picture.I know that many others understand what I have been taught is true and they,too, are said to be liars and crackpots, fringe types. I don’t know how we are to have free and open discussions ever again, because the fear of death is being cultivated non stop by the political rulers, all nazis, of course. A modern nazi is no different than ancient ones-racist supremacists all. So the ideology of the fascist is pure defense mechanism preventing the truth of rape by primitive child rearing called normal, from entering consciousness. So much of what happens to children is grotesque, that it is natural for so many adults to then believe in virgin births, or that life was created by angels. That is why cartoons substitute for reality and TV can present totally rehearsed, contrived behavior, as natural and real. I am truly thankful that this website still functions, but I don’t think it will for long. For lies to work, there can be no dissent.
Slightly off topic, but a good piece about another US politician:
https://dissidentvoice.org/2022/01/obama-im-really-good-at-killing-people/
Wonderful essay! Thanks for having the “maturity” in calling out left and right in their desire to control information. That desire is an equal mixture of arrogance and infantilism.
As we all know, universities also restrict freedom of speech in their pursuit of ideological purity. The free exchange of ideas in public spaces is largely a thing of the past. But if freedom means anything, it must be the freedom to think and speak. And we don’t advocate another’s freedom of speech only to protect our own freedom; we support their freedom because it comports with their dignity as a human being.
Question is:
Who are they protecting from ‘disinformation’?
The Proles or the Para$ite$ ?
Don’t need no Harvard or Oxford degree to figure that one out.
Nice to talk to you again,
The urge to censor is an outer manifestation of the inner mental process that seeks to control, judge, suppress and shape thought and emotional responses. But thought is serial and linear: one thought comes after another. So I think something, and right afterwards the next thought wants to negate it. See the futility. The first thought is already gone and the next thought tries to operate on it. It is trying to operate on memory, on the past.
It is just a habit, this conflict of thought against thought, and it is our life. The inner conflict is projected onto the outer world, and the same technique pits one person against another, and nation against nation.
“So I think something, and right afterwards the next thought wants to negate it.”
That’s only true for some modes of thought. Often one thought leads to another, building on it without negating it.
I once watched a debate. Everything both men said was true and persuasive. At the end, I told them them that they were both right and were simply describing two sides of the same coin. They both looked at me like I was crazy. The difference was my mind was open to see the truth on this subject and theirs was closed. I had no skin in the game so that made it easier. Open minds are an endangered species because of intense propaganda.
August 2021, Pew Research Center:
“More Americans now say government should take steps to restrict false information online than in 2018”
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/18/more-americans-now-say-government-should-take-steps-to-restrict-false-information-online-than-in-2018/
Wow. The majority of people are such idiots.
If you want “good” information, go to a source you trust. Don’t silence every other source, for everyone!
And Freud’s nephew was the original proponent of public relations. What a horror that bastard unleashed.
I think there was the guy who handled John D. Rockefeller’s image after the Ludlow Massacre, I’ve forgotten his name.
Ivy Lee.
Edward Bernays.
His name should be as infamous as Joseph Geobbels. Geobbels outright credits Bernays with creating the blueprint that the Nazis followed for their own propaganda.
American “Nazism” predates German, but because American Nazism “won” and has been able to steer the narrative since the 40s, it remains largely unseen.
Anyone who decides to censor another is revealing, not just a lack of psychological maturity, but their own biases and beliefs – usually on the opposite side of the fence. To me, it is a sign of weakness, a lack of conviction, narrow mindedness, and unwillingness to deal with different viewpoints. It is, of course, also very undemocratic, as democracy relies upon freedom of opinion and speech and the balancing of different needs.
It is the social media companies that need reigning in, not the people who use their services to communicate. Twitter doesn’t realise that eventually it will kill its business by its dangerous behaviour towards users it sees as dangerous, not understanding that the act of censorship is even more dangerous!
She still has her congressional twitter account, only her personal account got cut off. She is still free to use twitter whenever she pleases.
IMHO, the best thing we can all do in regarding this censorship of the Internet, is to remove subscriptions from the sites that practice this behaviour. I’m pretty sure when a few thousand, or more, people remove their subscriptions and find alternative media to post their stuff, this attitude will quickly subside. Problem is, do the subscribers have the Intelligence and WILL, to execercise their power ?
Making everyone wear a muzzle over an invisible super scary thingy which demands obedience sort of falls into such parameters.
You’re afraid of an invisible thing- psychology!
Modern psychology was pioneered by a cocaine addict who wanted to murder his father and boink his mother.
His conclusions, and the basis of his theories, are more likened to the observations of the physiological responses of human subjects under experimental conditions which did not allow for higher brain function.