Those of us who are amused and glad that finally there are some politicians who engage in hyperbole and confrontational politics with the same abandon as Leftists have a new celebrity to follow, Georgia’s firebrand GOP Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
It isn’t necessary to recapitulate the many ways Greene has horrified the mainstream. They are too numerous to briefly summarize and some of the concerns about her comments and conduct have merit. But so what? There are dozens of members of the U.S. Congress who have committed equally if not more egregious offenses, especially if you examine their history prior to taking office.
As a USA Todayheadline blared on February 9, “Marjorie Taylor Greene should be removed from Facebook for spreading ‘dangerous lies,’ advocacy groups say.” And who are these “advocacy groups?” They are partisan left-wing pressure groups, the beneficiaries of funding largesse that partisan right-wing pressure groups (is there even such a thing?) can’t imagine. And what about the “dangerous lies” we’re hearing night and day from left-wing sources?
It is a “dangerous lie” to claim the United States is “systemically racist.” It is a dangerous lie to claim there is a “climate emergency.” These are lies that are destined to turn the United States into a police state controlled by a small oligarchy. They are more dangerous than anything Marjorie Taylor Greene has ever said or done, not only because they represent a transformative, credible threat, but because – thanks to billions of dollars and years of repetition – millions of Americans believe these lies.
For several hours earlier this month, Marjorie Taylor Greene was locked out of her Twitter account, supposedly by mistake. Expecting her accounts on Twitter and Facebook to survive is a poor bet. And the reason Greene is considered a threat by these and other mainstream platforms has little to do with anything she’s ever said in the past, however hyperbolic. Greene is a threat because she is willing to challenge the big lies of our time: the lies of systemic racism and a climate emergency.
On principle, and for a variety of reasons, Greene’s voice should be heard. To respect the First Amendment. To adhere to the Section 230 exemptions that prohibit social media platforms from engaging in editorial censorship in exchange for immunity from some liability. And most of all, to offer equal time. A tough voice on the right, standing up to an avalanche of state-sanctioned, media-driven, corporate supported leftist propaganda that inundates the nation.
* * *
https://winston84.com/wp-content/uploads/W84iOrig-MarjorieTaylorGreene.jpg400400Edward Ringhttps://winston84.com/wp-content/uploads/logotext_v4_280x50.pngEdward Ring2021-03-22 12:17:442021-07-15 07:15:49How Long Will Marjorie Taylor Greene Last On Mainstream Platforms?
Dr. Carol Swain, a respected university professor who has never committed even the mildest breaches of decorum and professionalism, has just been suspended by Facebook. For the next 30 days, Dr. Swain cannot stream videos on Facebook. Her transgression? Announcing a live stream on the topic of Critical Race Theory.
One may wonder how this can earn Facebook censorship, when Critical Race Theory is being obsessively promoted by every academic, politician, and corporate special interest in America. And why would Dr. Swain, an African American woman, of all people, be denied a platform to examine this topic? Here, in her own words, is the reason why:
““I feel like what they are doing with these tactics of Critical Race Theory and segregation in the schools is a rejection of the Civil Rights Act. It seems like they are rejecting integration.”
Swain, you see, is a conservative black intellectual who believes, along with thousands of other black conservatives, that Critical Race Theory is a dangerous new variant of racism that should be opposed. And for this, she is being silenced.
As someone who recently served the Trump administration as Co-Chair of his 1776 Commission for education, Swain’s public profile and ability to influence public opinion has been on the rise. Better not let that happen!
This legislation, along with a mind numbing torrent of concurrent executive actions as well as countless initiatives on the part of states, schools, and corporations, are all explicitly racist. They will divide the nation, harming and alienating whites at the same time as they do more harm than good to people of color.
Dr. Carol Swain is not alone, however, she is joined by a growing army of black conservatives that recognize the impossibility of enforcing equality of outcome instead of providing equality of opportunity. This battle against “anti-racist” racism has just begun, but resistance is growing. Swain deserves the support of every conservative in America.
* * *
https://winston84.com/wp-content/uploads/W84iOrig-CarolSwainDr.jpg400400Edward Ringhttps://winston84.com/wp-content/uploads/logotext_v4_280x50.pngEdward Ring2021-03-22 10:44:192021-07-15 07:15:49Facebook Suspends Dr. Carol Swain from Video Streaming
If you read the nearly 10,000 word entry for Gab on Wikipedia, you might come away convinced it is a haven for right wing hatred. Abundant examples are cited. Founder Andre Torba claims Gab exists to counter, as he puts it, “the entirely left-leaning Big Social monopoly.”
It would be foolish to suggest that right wing hate doesn’t exist, or that right wing haters aren’t active on Gab. But a coordinated campaign to silence Gab, to eliminate it as a viable platform, creates a cure that is worse than the disease.
In late 2020 another alternative platform, Parler, was denied hosting services by Amazon at the same time as Apple and Google removed Parler from their app store. After a few months, Parler limped back to life, but it may never be the same.
The difference between Gab and Parler are two-fold. Both of them – just as has happened with Facebook and Twitter – have had users who posted material that went beyond hate, which is protected speech, to calls for violence, which is not. But Gab’s continuity as a platform for alternative voices has given it credibility with right wing users. In turn, this is because Gab has developed their own internally owned server infrastructure that has expanded apace with the growth of their user base, which happened slower and over a longer period of time than Parler.
Now Gab is under attack by banks, which should come as no surprise. The financial sector, under enormous coordinated pressure from leftist pressure groups, has been cutting off services to individual users – Andy Ngo, Laura Loomer, RedPill78, and Lana Lokteff are just a few examples of content creators who have been banned by payment processors. In Lokteff’s case, she has been put on the MATCH list, blacklisting her from using any financial services.
In response to being denied services by four banks in four weeks, Gab’s CEO Andrew Torba has stated his intention to buy and operate his own bank. Gab has shown extraordinary resourcefulness in keeping its technology infrastructure independent. It will be interesting to see if they can do the same with their financial infrastructure.
As platforms grow, it becomes almost impossible to control what people post. Facebook, with billions of users, lets speech that crosses the line – not just hateful, but inciting violence – at a far greater absolute quantity than Gab. But Facebook, with its almost limitless resources, can maintain massive censorship operations using teams of monitors and programmers. You have that ability when you’re a monopoly, raking in more cash than you can spend. Even if Gab were not outspoken in defense of free speech, they are at an inherent disadvantage.
Meanwhile, Big Tech bias makes platforms like Gab necessary. Consider how NPR distorts the purpose of Gab. They write: “Founded in 2016 as an almost anti-Twitter, the platform embraces far-right and other extremist provocateurs, like Milo Yiannopoulos…”
Stop right there.
Milo Yiannopoulos? If you want to propagandize unfairly against Gab, mention the posts made on Gab by the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter, and ignore the fact that violent psychos slip through the cracks at a far greater volume on the big platforms.
Using Milo Yiannopoulos as an example of why Gab is problematic is a joke. Yiannopoulos has never called for violence. He’s never done anything more than offer takedowns – often grotesquely offensive but usually hilarious – of progressive pieties. The fact that Yiannopoulos has been driven off the mainstream platforms and has found a home on Gab is precisely the reason why Gab, and multiplying sites just like Gab, must continue to exist.
* * *
https://winston84.com/wp-content/uploads/Gab-LOGO.jpg400400Edward Ringhttps://winston84.com/wp-content/uploads/logotext_v4_280x50.pngEdward Ring2021-03-15 12:54:132021-07-15 07:15:49Gab Owns Their Servers. Banking Next?
Big Tech’s war to control the narrative has led to attacks on “hate speech,” which morphed into attacks on the more pliable “misinformation.” It isn’t that bans on constitutionally protected hate speech have been largely effective, thanks to Big Tech exercising nearly monopoly power over online communications in America. It’s that there are infinite sources of embarrassing counter-narratives that aren’t hateful at all. Hence the new front in Big Tech’s censorship offensive: “Misinformation.”
If you don’t want to run afoul of the new guidelines, don’t produce a dissenting narrative on COVID-19 treatment or the recent U.S. presidential election, much less anything having to do with sensitive race and gender issues, or immigration. And don’t discuss conspiracies of any kind, because apparently there is no such thing as a “conspiracy,” and only “conspiracy theorists” ever bring up conspiracies, and to even suggest the existence of any conspiracy, anywhere, is “misinformation.”
The power of memes and hashtags, however, is their clever use of novel images or a few words used in a new and original context can go viral before the censors even know what’s happened. A hilarious and powerful example of this is the hashtag #BlueAnon, which rhymes with “QAnon” and flips the concept on its head.
As reported in American Greatness, BlueAnon is now a term used to mock the Left as the most prolific conspiracy theorists. As tweeted by Max Nordau (@MaxNordau):
“WHAT DOES ‘BlueAnon’ MEAN?
Who paid Brett Kavanaugh’s debts? Why did Justice Kennedy resign? The Capitol riot was planned by Republicans, and Capitol police collaborated. Detention centers are concentration camps. Trump is a Russian asset.”
A definition posted in the Urban Dictionary, removed within days, defined “Blue Anon” as follows:
“A loosely organized network of Democratic voters, politicians and media personalities who spread left-wing conspiracy theories such as the Russia Hoax, Jussie Smollett hoax, Ukraine hoax, Covington Kids hoax, and Brett Kavanaugh hoax. Blue Anon adherents fervently believe that right-wing extremists are going to storm Capitol Hill any day now and ‘remove’ lawmakers from office, hence the need for the deployment of thousands of National Guard stationed at the U.S. Capitol.”
Another recent source of embarrassment to a very rigid orthodoxy is the hashtag (that trended on Twitter for a while) “#SuperStraight” (also surviving so far in the Urban Dictionary). Described in a Black Pigeon video last week, the #SuperStraight hashtag is being promoted by that oppressed minority, the heterosexual that is not attracted to transsexual members of the opposite sex. Armed with diagrammatic memes festooned with images and arrows, proliferators of the #SuperStraight hashtag are asserting their right to only be attracted to members of the opposite sex who were born that way.
The hilarity of this meme ought to be disarming. These “super straights” are “coming out of the closet” after “years of oppression,” victims of “super straight phobia,” and “the orientation of super straight” and “super straight pride” is the “final frontier of human rights.”
Once Urban Dictionary removed “Blue Anon,” over a dozen replacement definitions went up. Such is the nature of memes and hashtags. When they strike a chord, they attract harmonious refrains too numerous to silence.
* * *
https://winston84.com/wp-content/uploads/Blue-Anon-Definition.jpg400400Edward Ringhttps://winston84.com/wp-content/uploads/logotext_v4_280x50.pngEdward Ring2021-03-15 10:00:102021-07-15 07:15:49The Futile War on Memes and Hashtags
It would be interesting to ask anyone who still thinks YouTube has the right to take down a speech by an ex-president of the United States, if they even listened to it. Because if questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election is now openly censored by every major communications platform in America, and it is, then why was the four year assault on the legitimacy of the 2016 election not also censored?
America’s mainstream media, most definitely including the online communications monopolies known as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, spent four years actively promoting “misinformation” in the form of questioning the legitimacy of the Trump presidency, but now they are actively suppressing “misinformation” that questions the legitimacy of the Biden presidency. And they’re doing this, despite ample evidence that Biden’s election was far less “legitimate” than Trump’s.
Read the transcript of Trump’s CPAC speech. He used the word “election” 42 times in that speech, nearly every time in the context of questioning its integrity. And he’s probably going to keep on doing that in every speech he delivers from now on, as he should. America’s election “integrity” is a joke, and Democrats in Congress are doing everything they can to institutionalize the sham procedures that will destroy forever any remaining trust by voters in the integrity of their elections.
What are they thinking at YouTube? That it’s ok from now on to censor the speeches of an ex president, based on remarks he makes that are supported – despite the blatant, offensively false misinformation coming from every “trusted” news source in the country – by ample evidence? YouTube even suspended the RSBN channel for posting the speech, singled out because they have posted every speech by Trump. Exactly how will RSBN move forward, if they can’t post another speech by the ex-president?
It would be bad enough if websites suppressed misinformation in some objective manner, as if that’s possible. There are clearly cases where misinformation can be harmful, as the “shouting fire in a crowded theater” example illustrates. But in general, people have a right to be wrong. Facts are often in dispute. Conclusions based on a set of agreed facts can nonetheless vary widely. Allowing freedom of expression will result in good ideas surviving and bad ideas dying in the sunlight of open debate.
But it’s worse. These websites are suppressing information that, far from being misinformation, is often more factual than the narratives being protected. Election integrity is one example, but there are plenty of other examples. Banning the books, and the accounts, of authors that question the wisdom of encouraging gender dysphoric children to begin life altering medical treatments? How can you trust arbiters of information vs misinformation if they’re willing to do that?
When establishment institutions censor the speeches of a former U.S. president, at the same time as they censor countless other counter-narratives of obvious integrity, they destroy the fabric of the nation by destroying faith in the integrity of American institutions. Is that their intention?
Lawmakers in two states are now considering legislation that push back against censorship by online online communications monopolies, in particular, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
In Texas, Senate Bill 12 would prohibit online censorship based on the views expressed or repeated by a social media user based in the state. According to the sponsoring Senator, Bryan Hughes, “affected users could sue to get reinstated online if they were removed or blocked from social media over statements about politics, religion or other opinions.”
In Florida, one proposal in the state Senate would force Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms to give users a month’s notice before their accounts are disabled or suspended. Another proposal would “prohibit companies from suspending the account of a political candidate and be subject to a fine of $100,000 for each day the account of a statewide candidate is blocked, or $10,000 a day for other office seekers.”
That conservatives are routinely singled out for suppression, demonetizing, or deplatforming ought to be obvious. Conservatives question several narratives that liberals tend to accept – election integrity, early treatment options for COVID-19, climate change, and a host of race and gender related issues. The website Massachusetts Live just published a report, citing numerous examples, of how this bias even extends to comedians. You can tell any joke you want, as long as it only attacks conservatives. The Babylon Bee is demonetized. The Onion is not. Go figure.
Online communications platforms benefit from a federal law known as Section 230, which was added to the Communications Decency Act in 1996 to protect fledgling internet communications platforms from being sued for content posted by their users. It’s a good law, but it comes with an obligation: If online communications platforms are to be immune from liability for what their users post, they also must not behave as publishers and selectively edit content. Because publishers are liable for the content on their platforms, as they should be. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are trying to keep their cake and eat it too.
All of these efforts are problematic. Calls to repeal Section 230 could backfire. As it is, these biased platforms have to at least maintain the appearance of equanimity. If they are subject to lawsuits from anyone feeling threatened or offended by their content, they would scrub anything even slightly controversial from their platforms. And small alternative platforms would be even more cautious, and hence more even more censorious, since they would lack the financial resources to withstand any lawsuits by supposedly aggrieved parties.
As for these measures in Texas and Florida, they may help a little. Allowing content providers recourse in civil court when they’ve been censored will help those players with enough money to hire an attorney and file a lawsuit. Using the state itself to prosecute these platform operators if they take down political ads may also help.
The best course however, is common sense from the U.S. Congress. Section 230 to be enforced, not scrapped.
* * *
https://winston84.com/wp-content/uploads/W84iOrig-BabylonBee.jpg400400Edward Ringhttps://winston84.com/wp-content/uploads/logotext_v4_280x50.pngEdward Ring2021-03-08 09:41:302021-07-15 07:15:49Florida and Texas Resist Online Censorship
Rogan O’Handley, also known as DC Draino, was thrown off Twitter on February 27. As the generic message on his defunct Twitter URL now helpfully explains, “Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules.”
But what rules? Twitter rarely explains why they deplatform individual accounts, and since they can deplatform a sitting U.S. President, they’re willing to deplatform anyone.
DC Draino didn’t have the following or the name recognition of President Trump, but he is no lightweight. With 1.8 million followers on Instagram and nearly 200,000 followers on Facebook, he’s got a big voice. A sampling of his comments on his remaining accounts provide insight into why Twitter decided to wipe his account. It isn’t hard to figure out, especially since he had a habit of posting screen shots of some of his Tweets on his Facebook page, where, for now at least, he survives.
“Let’s start the anti-mask movement.” “So nice to see things return to normal after Trump: Bombing the Middle East, No stimulus checks, Fewer jobs… Barbed wire around the Capitol, Open borders…” “Biden will put kids in cages but not schools.” “Fauci was quoted today as saying we will return to normal in 2022. Which is weird because Florida returned to normal 6 months ago…” “Forcing kids to wear masks 6 hours a day in schools is child abuse.”
Yeah. Better not let that sort of seditious misinformation proliferate. Especially since any credible skepticism regarding how COVID-19 has been handled is already deleted from the mainstream platforms and will not come up on Google search results.
DC Draino has been a guest on many alternative media outlets, including One America News, but watch out. As part of the full spectrum assault on alternative media, even the big conservative news networks are now threatened.
Ana Eshoo, the long-serving congresswoman whose district lies just south of Nancy Pelosi’s in the San Francisco Bay Area, recently sent a letter to “12 cable, satellite, and streaming TV companies urging them to combat the spread of misinformation and requesting more information about their actions to address misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies spread through channels they host.” Presumably Eshoo intends to summon the executives of these companies to Washington DC to testify in front of her Congressional Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. The targets? Fox, Newsmax, and OANN.
If you Google “misinformation and the Nazis” you will be helpfully guided to a page full of top search results showing articles, mostly recent, that purport to link Trump’s criticism of media bias to Adolf Hitler’s attacks on the press. But fascism can find expression wherever there is extremism. The rhetoric of the German Nazis of the 1930’s can just as easily be attributed to the current war, extreme by any objective historical standard, yet supported by every establishment institution in America, against “misinformation” coming from conservatives.
What a great catch-all. “Misinformation.” Today it’s directed at any content relating to masks, medicine, race and gender, and the recent presidential election. There is an accepted and promoted narrative, and then there’s “misinformation.” Tomorrow expect the war on “misinformation” to escalate, with the “climate emergency” the next topic to benefit from a wholesale purge of dissenting views.
DC Draino is just the latest victim of an ongoing erasure. And Ana Eshoo is a stone cold fascist, no matter what Google search might otherwise suggest.
For the last four years, an anonymous commentator with a YouTube channel called “Way of the World” offered his perspective on what was happening to Western Culture because of globalism. Last week YouTube obliterated his channel. He had already been thrown off Facebook and Patreon.
Featured in an analysis of the so-called intellectual dark web written in September 2019, by then Way of the World had already accumulated over 90,000 subscribers and over 5 million views. As described back then:
“The narrator, who is never shown, speaks softly and somewhat mournfully with a British accent. He reads frequently from poets and philosophers, and when he isn’t depicting text or video clips, the screen is backdropped with a slowly spinning image of planet earth. Like Black Pigeon, and many other right-of-center content creators on the IDW, he believes Western Civilization faces possible extinction.”
It would be disingenuous to suggest that the topics Way of the World discussed were not controversial. But his style, his tone, his logic, and his facts were impeccable. For these reasons, when YouTube banned his channel back in early 2020, it was reinstated after an appeal.
Since reinstatement, Way of the World did not change its style, tone, logic or respect for facts. But YouTube changed. The relentless expansion of content deemed ineligible for YouTube’s “commitment to openness” has finally, and permanently, caught Way of the World in its net. His appeal this time is unlikely to be granted.
The problem, as always, with banning Way of the World, and channels like it, isn’t merely that it violates the reason monopolistic platforms like YouTube enjoy Section 230 protections against liability, i.e., they cannot remove material based on their own editorial bias. That would be, and is, bad enough. But YouTube goes further.
When big tech monopolies ban reasoned, factual sources of information and commentary that oppose mass immigration into Western nations, they help confirm the more extreme assertions of the anti-globalist movement.
Big tech clearly favors mass immigration into Western Nations, which is something Way of the World clearly opposed. That is why he was banned, and that is not reason enough. In a culture that now indulges in white shaming in literally every possible venue of mass communication, either contrary points of view must be allowed, or the perception that there truly is a conspiratorial hidden agenda behind globalism will be encouraged.
The style, tone, logic and facts of the mass immigration zealots, the “anti-racists,” and the white guilt industry, are typically mediocre, contrived, divisive, presumptuous and polarizing. They could learn a lot from the example of decorum set by Way of the World. Perhaps that’s what made him such a threat.
Unfortunately, if Way of the World succumbs to the anger that has justifiably possessed his predecessors who have been driven onto fringe platforms, losing years of work in earlier purges, his commentary may take on a darker tone. That is tragic, and the arrogance of the people running the big tech communications monopolies is exclusively to blame.
* * *
https://winston84.com/wp-content/uploads/W84iOrig-WayoftheWorld.jpg400400Edward Ringhttps://winston84.com/wp-content/uploads/logotext_v4_280x50.pngEdward Ring2021-03-01 11:00:182021-07-15 07:15:49YouTube Deplatforms Way of the World
One of the most reliable and comprehensive sources of alternative news is The Epoch Times. And one of the beats covered assiduously by The Epoch Times is the ongoing epidemic of online censorship. This week The Epoch Times exposed two serious new acts of censorship.
The first, in an act that rivals the arrogance of Twitter’s permanent expulsion of President Trump, is YouTube’s decision to take down an interview with President Trump that was posted on the Newsmax TV channel. As quoted in the Epoch Times report, “A Google spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email: ‘We have clear Community Guidelines that govern what videos may stay on YouTube, and we enforce our Community Guidelines consistently, regardless of speaker and without regard to political viewpoints.'”
This is a stunning degree of arrogance on Google’s part. It is also counterproductive. Every time Google, or any of the big media corporations, exercise this level of censorship, tens of thousands of Americans lose trust in them. Ultimately, what Google has done only serves to further divide the nation.
The second, equally arrogant but if anything more sinister, is Amazon’s quietly removing the book “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.” This book is critical of “transgender ideology,” and as a result, according to the arbiters of truth at Amazon, it had to disappear.
These acts stand out simply because of their brazen enormity. YouTube, still owning a near monopoly share of online video viewers, deletes an interview with a former U.S. President. Amazon, the juggernaut that has crushed millions of retail jobs, owning a near monopoly share of online retail purchasing, deletes a book that attempts to, gasp, suggest that encouraging prepubescent children to begin irreversible “gender reassignment” medical treatments may not be a good idea.
Silencing a former president. Silencing any challenge to “trans ideology.”
If the big tech companies that have overwhelmed our public square and public marketplace can do these things, what can’t they do?
Thank God for Epoch Times, Newsmax, OneAmerica, Andy Ngo, Project Veritas, and hundreds of others that are still fighting to preserve a balanced dialog in American society. But they are gnats fighting elephants.
One of the biggest sources of original alternative content, Project Veritas, is now banned from one of the biggest platforms to reach millions of Americans, Twitter.
Without being terribly specific as to what the “repeated violations” were of the company rules, Twitter deplatformed Veritas on February 11.
The proximate cause of banishment was a brief video posted by Veritas where one of their journalists, 60 Minutes style, accosts an employee of Facebook who is returning home from a jog. This Facebook executive, Guy Rosen, had previously been featured in a Veritas video, leaked to Veritas by a Facebook whistleblower, where he claims the platform is freezing comments whenever automated systems detect “there may be a thread that has hate speech or violence.”
It’s interesting that Project Veritas, at least so far, survives on Facebook, despite Facebook, and not Twitter, being the target of many recent controversial videos from Veritas. But that may change. On February 17, in yet another leaked video featuring Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, he is exposed expressing concern for the COVID-19 vaccines, worrying they may alter human DNA and wondering about the possible long-term side effects.
Because there are so many, it is difficult to keep track even of these major incidents of censorship. One of the biggest reasons for bans is so-called “hate speech.” But “hate speech” is a nebulous term. As the Veritas journalist put it to Facebook’s Guy Rosen, “do you ban hate speech, or speech you hate?”
Banning Veritas from a major social media platform is not a trivial incident of censorship – notwithstanding that no exercise of censorship is trivial. With their videos, Veritas provides essential balance. When nobody else was there to do it, Project Veritas has done landmark investigations. For example, they exposed the corruption at ACORN, seriously disrupting its activities.
A mainstay of the mainstream media that gets more biased very year, 60 Minutes, engages in reporting that is every bit as aggressive as Veritas, but runs virtually zero risk of being deplatformed from the major social media platforms. Why is this? 60 Minutes routinely presents investigations that are supposedly objective, but to informed observers are transparently biased. Their selectivity in pursuit of their narrative easily rivals, if not surpasses, anything Veritas has ever done.
How Long Will Marjorie Taylor Greene Last On Mainstream Platforms?
/1 Comment/in News, Winston84 /by Edward RingThose of us who are amused and glad that finally there are some politicians who engage in hyperbole and confrontational politics with the same abandon as Leftists have a new celebrity to follow, Georgia’s firebrand GOP Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
It isn’t necessary to recapitulate the many ways Greene has horrified the mainstream. They are too numerous to briefly summarize and some of the concerns about her comments and conduct have merit. But so what? There are dozens of members of the U.S. Congress who have committed equally if not more egregious offenses, especially if you examine their history prior to taking office.
As a USA Today headline blared on February 9, “Marjorie Taylor Greene should be removed from Facebook for spreading ‘dangerous lies,’ advocacy groups say.” And who are these “advocacy groups?” They are partisan left-wing pressure groups, the beneficiaries of funding largesse that partisan right-wing pressure groups (is there even such a thing?) can’t imagine. And what about the “dangerous lies” we’re hearing night and day from left-wing sources?
It is a “dangerous lie” to claim the United States is “systemically racist.” It is a dangerous lie to claim there is a “climate emergency.” These are lies that are destined to turn the United States into a police state controlled by a small oligarchy. They are more dangerous than anything Marjorie Taylor Greene has ever said or done, not only because they represent a transformative, credible threat, but because – thanks to billions of dollars and years of repetition – millions of Americans believe these lies.
For several hours earlier this month, Marjorie Taylor Greene was locked out of her Twitter account, supposedly by mistake. Expecting her accounts on Twitter and Facebook to survive is a poor bet. And the reason Greene is considered a threat by these and other mainstream platforms has little to do with anything she’s ever said in the past, however hyperbolic. Greene is a threat because she is willing to challenge the big lies of our time: the lies of systemic racism and a climate emergency.
On principle, and for a variety of reasons, Greene’s voice should be heard. To respect the First Amendment. To adhere to the Section 230 exemptions that prohibit social media platforms from engaging in editorial censorship in exchange for immunity from some liability. And most of all, to offer equal time. A tough voice on the right, standing up to an avalanche of state-sanctioned, media-driven, corporate supported leftist propaganda that inundates the nation.
* * *
Facebook Suspends Dr. Carol Swain from Video Streaming
/in News, Winston84 /by Edward RingHere we go again.
Dr. Carol Swain, a respected university professor who has never committed even the mildest breaches of decorum and professionalism, has just been suspended by Facebook. For the next 30 days, Dr. Swain cannot stream videos on Facebook. Her transgression? Announcing a live stream on the topic of Critical Race Theory.
One may wonder how this can earn Facebook censorship, when Critical Race Theory is being obsessively promoted by every academic, politician, and corporate special interest in America. And why would Dr. Swain, an African American woman, of all people, be denied a platform to examine this topic? Here, in her own words, is the reason why:
““I feel like what they are doing with these tactics of Critical Race Theory and segregation in the schools is a rejection of the Civil Rights Act. It seems like they are rejecting integration.”
Swain, you see, is a conservative black intellectual who believes, along with thousands of other black conservatives, that Critical Race Theory is a dangerous new variant of racism that should be opposed. And for this, she is being silenced.
As someone who recently served the Trump administration as Co-Chair of his 1776 Commission for education, Swain’s public profile and ability to influence public opinion has been on the rise. Better not let that happen!
The timing of Swain’s suppression by Facebook couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the raft of “anti-racist” legislation moving through the U.S. Congress right now. To name just a few, with acknowledgement to the incomparable City Journal, there is the Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act, the Recognizing People of African Descent and Black Europeans Act, the concurrent resolution urging the establishment of a United States Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation, and the Anti-Racism in Public Health Act of 2021.
This legislation, along with a mind numbing torrent of concurrent executive actions as well as countless initiatives on the part of states, schools, and corporations, are all explicitly racist. They will divide the nation, harming and alienating whites at the same time as they do more harm than good to people of color.
Dr. Carol Swain is not alone, however, she is joined by a growing army of black conservatives that recognize the impossibility of enforcing equality of outcome instead of providing equality of opportunity. This battle against “anti-racist” racism has just begun, but resistance is growing. Swain deserves the support of every conservative in America.
* * *
Gab Owns Their Servers. Banking Next?
/1 Comment/in News, Winston84 /by Edward RingIf you read the nearly 10,000 word entry for Gab on Wikipedia, you might come away convinced it is a haven for right wing hatred. Abundant examples are cited. Founder Andre Torba claims Gab exists to counter, as he puts it, “the entirely left-leaning Big Social monopoly.”
It would be foolish to suggest that right wing hate doesn’t exist, or that right wing haters aren’t active on Gab. But a coordinated campaign to silence Gab, to eliminate it as a viable platform, creates a cure that is worse than the disease.
In late 2020 another alternative platform, Parler, was denied hosting services by Amazon at the same time as Apple and Google removed Parler from their app store. After a few months, Parler limped back to life, but it may never be the same.
The difference between Gab and Parler are two-fold. Both of them – just as has happened with Facebook and Twitter – have had users who posted material that went beyond hate, which is protected speech, to calls for violence, which is not. But Gab’s continuity as a platform for alternative voices has given it credibility with right wing users. In turn, this is because Gab has developed their own internally owned server infrastructure that has expanded apace with the growth of their user base, which happened slower and over a longer period of time than Parler.
Now Gab is under attack by banks, which should come as no surprise. The financial sector, under enormous coordinated pressure from leftist pressure groups, has been cutting off services to individual users – Andy Ngo, Laura Loomer, RedPill78, and Lana Lokteff are just a few examples of content creators who have been banned by payment processors. In Lokteff’s case, she has been put on the MATCH list, blacklisting her from using any financial services.
In response to being denied services by four banks in four weeks, Gab’s CEO Andrew Torba has stated his intention to buy and operate his own bank. Gab has shown extraordinary resourcefulness in keeping its technology infrastructure independent. It will be interesting to see if they can do the same with their financial infrastructure.
As platforms grow, it becomes almost impossible to control what people post. Facebook, with billions of users, lets speech that crosses the line – not just hateful, but inciting violence – at a far greater absolute quantity than Gab. But Facebook, with its almost limitless resources, can maintain massive censorship operations using teams of monitors and programmers. You have that ability when you’re a monopoly, raking in more cash than you can spend. Even if Gab were not outspoken in defense of free speech, they are at an inherent disadvantage.
Meanwhile, Big Tech bias makes platforms like Gab necessary. Consider how NPR distorts the purpose of Gab. They write: “Founded in 2016 as an almost anti-Twitter, the platform embraces far-right and other extremist provocateurs, like Milo Yiannopoulos…”
Stop right there.
Milo Yiannopoulos? If you want to propagandize unfairly against Gab, mention the posts made on Gab by the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter, and ignore the fact that violent psychos slip through the cracks at a far greater volume on the big platforms.
Using Milo Yiannopoulos as an example of why Gab is problematic is a joke. Yiannopoulos has never called for violence. He’s never done anything more than offer takedowns – often grotesquely offensive but usually hilarious – of progressive pieties. The fact that Yiannopoulos has been driven off the mainstream platforms and has found a home on Gab is precisely the reason why Gab, and multiplying sites just like Gab, must continue to exist.
* * *
The Futile War on Memes and Hashtags
/in News, Winston84 /by Edward RingBig Tech’s war to control the narrative has led to attacks on “hate speech,” which morphed into attacks on the more pliable “misinformation.” It isn’t that bans on constitutionally protected hate speech have been largely effective, thanks to Big Tech exercising nearly monopoly power over online communications in America. It’s that there are infinite sources of embarrassing counter-narratives that aren’t hateful at all. Hence the new front in Big Tech’s censorship offensive: “Misinformation.”
If you don’t want to run afoul of the new guidelines, don’t produce a dissenting narrative on COVID-19 treatment or the recent U.S. presidential election, much less anything having to do with sensitive race and gender issues, or immigration. And don’t discuss conspiracies of any kind, because apparently there is no such thing as a “conspiracy,” and only “conspiracy theorists” ever bring up conspiracies, and to even suggest the existence of any conspiracy, anywhere, is “misinformation.”
The power of memes and hashtags, however, is their clever use of novel images or a few words used in a new and original context can go viral before the censors even know what’s happened. A hilarious and powerful example of this is the hashtag #BlueAnon, which rhymes with “QAnon” and flips the concept on its head.
As reported in American Greatness, BlueAnon is now a term used to mock the Left as the most prolific conspiracy theorists. As tweeted by Max Nordau (@MaxNordau):
“WHAT DOES ‘BlueAnon’ MEAN?
Who paid Brett Kavanaugh’s debts?
Why did Justice Kennedy resign?
The Capitol riot was planned by Republicans, and Capitol police collaborated.
Detention centers are concentration camps.
Trump is a Russian asset.”
A definition posted in the Urban Dictionary, removed within days, defined “Blue Anon” as follows:
“A loosely organized network of Democratic voters, politicians and media personalities who spread left-wing conspiracy theories such as the Russia Hoax, Jussie Smollett hoax, Ukraine hoax, Covington Kids hoax, and Brett Kavanaugh hoax. Blue Anon adherents fervently believe that right-wing extremists are going to storm Capitol Hill any day now and ‘remove’ lawmakers from office, hence the need for the deployment of thousands of National Guard stationed at the U.S. Capitol.”
Another recent source of embarrassment to a very rigid orthodoxy is the hashtag (that trended on Twitter for a while) “#SuperStraight” (also surviving so far in the Urban Dictionary). Described in a Black Pigeon video last week, the #SuperStraight hashtag is being promoted by that oppressed minority, the heterosexual that is not attracted to transsexual members of the opposite sex. Armed with diagrammatic memes festooned with images and arrows, proliferators of the #SuperStraight hashtag are asserting their right to only be attracted to members of the opposite sex who were born that way.
The hilarity of this meme ought to be disarming. These “super straights” are “coming out of the closet” after “years of oppression,” victims of “super straight phobia,” and “the orientation of super straight” and “super straight pride” is the “final frontier of human rights.”
Once Urban Dictionary removed “Blue Anon,” over a dozen replacement definitions went up. Such is the nature of memes and hashtags. When they strike a chord, they attract harmonious refrains too numerous to silence.
* * *
YouTube Bans Trump’s CPAC Speech
/in News, Winston84 /by Edward RingIt would be interesting to ask anyone who still thinks YouTube has the right to take down a speech by an ex-president of the United States, if they even listened to it. Because if questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election is now openly censored by every major communications platform in America, and it is, then why was the four year assault on the legitimacy of the 2016 election not also censored?
America’s mainstream media, most definitely including the online communications monopolies known as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, spent four years actively promoting “misinformation” in the form of questioning the legitimacy of the Trump presidency, but now they are actively suppressing “misinformation” that questions the legitimacy of the Biden presidency. And they’re doing this, despite ample evidence that Biden’s election was far less “legitimate” than Trump’s.
Read the transcript of Trump’s CPAC speech. He used the word “election” 42 times in that speech, nearly every time in the context of questioning its integrity. And he’s probably going to keep on doing that in every speech he delivers from now on, as he should. America’s election “integrity” is a joke, and Democrats in Congress are doing everything they can to institutionalize the sham procedures that will destroy forever any remaining trust by voters in the integrity of their elections.
What are they thinking at YouTube? That it’s ok from now on to censor the speeches of an ex president, based on remarks he makes that are supported – despite the blatant, offensively false misinformation coming from every “trusted” news source in the country – by ample evidence? YouTube even suspended the RSBN channel for posting the speech, singled out because they have posted every speech by Trump. Exactly how will RSBN move forward, if they can’t post another speech by the ex-president?
It would be bad enough if websites suppressed misinformation in some objective manner, as if that’s possible. There are clearly cases where misinformation can be harmful, as the “shouting fire in a crowded theater” example illustrates. But in general, people have a right to be wrong. Facts are often in dispute. Conclusions based on a set of agreed facts can nonetheless vary widely. Allowing freedom of expression will result in good ideas surviving and bad ideas dying in the sunlight of open debate.
But it’s worse. These websites are suppressing information that, far from being misinformation, is often more factual than the narratives being protected. Election integrity is one example, but there are plenty of other examples. Banning the books, and the accounts, of authors that question the wisdom of encouraging gender dysphoric children to begin life altering medical treatments? How can you trust arbiters of information vs misinformation if they’re willing to do that?
When establishment institutions censor the speeches of a former U.S. president, at the same time as they censor countless other counter-narratives of obvious integrity, they destroy the fabric of the nation by destroying faith in the integrity of American institutions. Is that their intention?
* * *
Florida and Texas Resist Online Censorship
/1 Comment/in News, Winston84 /by Edward RingLawmakers in two states are now considering legislation that push back against censorship by online online communications monopolies, in particular, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
In Texas, Senate Bill 12 would prohibit online censorship based on the views expressed or repeated by a social media user based in the state. According to the sponsoring Senator, Bryan Hughes, “affected users could sue to get reinstated online if they were removed or blocked from social media over statements about politics, religion or other opinions.”
In Florida, one proposal in the state Senate would force Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms to give users a month’s notice before their accounts are disabled or suspended. Another proposal would “prohibit companies from suspending the account of a political candidate and be subject to a fine of $100,000 for each day the account of a statewide candidate is blocked, or $10,000 a day for other office seekers.”
That conservatives are routinely singled out for suppression, demonetizing, or deplatforming ought to be obvious. Conservatives question several narratives that liberals tend to accept – election integrity, early treatment options for COVID-19, climate change, and a host of race and gender related issues. The website Massachusetts Live just published a report, citing numerous examples, of how this bias even extends to comedians. You can tell any joke you want, as long as it only attacks conservatives. The Babylon Bee is demonetized. The Onion is not. Go figure.
Online communications platforms benefit from a federal law known as Section 230, which was added to the Communications Decency Act in 1996 to protect fledgling internet communications platforms from being sued for content posted by their users. It’s a good law, but it comes with an obligation: If online communications platforms are to be immune from liability for what their users post, they also must not behave as publishers and selectively edit content. Because publishers are liable for the content on their platforms, as they should be. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are trying to keep their cake and eat it too.
All of these efforts are problematic. Calls to repeal Section 230 could backfire. As it is, these biased platforms have to at least maintain the appearance of equanimity. If they are subject to lawsuits from anyone feeling threatened or offended by their content, they would scrub anything even slightly controversial from their platforms. And small alternative platforms would be even more cautious, and hence more even more censorious, since they would lack the financial resources to withstand any lawsuits by supposedly aggrieved parties.
As for these measures in Texas and Florida, they may help a little. Allowing content providers recourse in civil court when they’ve been censored will help those players with enough money to hire an attorney and file a lawsuit. Using the state itself to prosecute these platform operators if they take down political ads may also help.
The best course however, is common sense from the U.S. Congress. Section 230 to be enforced, not scrapped.
* * *
Twitter Deplatforms Rogan O’Handley
/in News, Winston84 /by Edward RingRogan O’Handley, also known as DC Draino, was thrown off Twitter on February 27. As the generic message on his defunct Twitter URL now helpfully explains, “Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules.”
But what rules? Twitter rarely explains why they deplatform individual accounts, and since they can deplatform a sitting U.S. President, they’re willing to deplatform anyone.
DC Draino didn’t have the following or the name recognition of President Trump, but he is no lightweight. With 1.8 million followers on Instagram and nearly 200,000 followers on Facebook, he’s got a big voice. A sampling of his comments on his remaining accounts provide insight into why Twitter decided to wipe his account. It isn’t hard to figure out, especially since he had a habit of posting screen shots of some of his Tweets on his Facebook page, where, for now at least, he survives.
“Let’s start the anti-mask movement.” “So nice to see things return to normal after Trump: Bombing the Middle East, No stimulus checks, Fewer jobs… Barbed wire around the Capitol, Open borders…” “Biden will put kids in cages but not schools.” “Fauci was quoted today as saying we will return to normal in 2022. Which is weird because Florida returned to normal 6 months ago…” “Forcing kids to wear masks 6 hours a day in schools is child abuse.”
Yeah. Better not let that sort of seditious misinformation proliferate. Especially since any credible skepticism regarding how COVID-19 has been handled is already deleted from the mainstream platforms and will not come up on Google search results.
DC Draino has been a guest on many alternative media outlets, including One America News, but watch out. As part of the full spectrum assault on alternative media, even the big conservative news networks are now threatened.
Ana Eshoo, the long-serving congresswoman whose district lies just south of Nancy Pelosi’s in the San Francisco Bay Area, recently sent a letter to “12 cable, satellite, and streaming TV companies urging them to combat the spread of misinformation and requesting more information about their actions to address misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies spread through channels they host.” Presumably Eshoo intends to summon the executives of these companies to Washington DC to testify in front of her Congressional Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. The targets? Fox, Newsmax, and OANN.
If you Google “misinformation and the Nazis” you will be helpfully guided to a page full of top search results showing articles, mostly recent, that purport to link Trump’s criticism of media bias to Adolf Hitler’s attacks on the press. But fascism can find expression wherever there is extremism. The rhetoric of the German Nazis of the 1930’s can just as easily be attributed to the current war, extreme by any objective historical standard, yet supported by every establishment institution in America, against “misinformation” coming from conservatives.
What a great catch-all. “Misinformation.” Today it’s directed at any content relating to masks, medicine, race and gender, and the recent presidential election. There is an accepted and promoted narrative, and then there’s “misinformation.” Tomorrow expect the war on “misinformation” to escalate, with the “climate emergency” the next topic to benefit from a wholesale purge of dissenting views.
DC Draino is just the latest victim of an ongoing erasure. And Ana Eshoo is a stone cold fascist, no matter what Google search might otherwise suggest.
* * *
YouTube Deplatforms Way of the World
/1 Comment/in News, Winston84 /by Edward RingFor the last four years, an anonymous commentator with a YouTube channel called “Way of the World” offered his perspective on what was happening to Western Culture because of globalism. Last week YouTube obliterated his channel. He had already been thrown off Facebook and Patreon.
Featured in an analysis of the so-called intellectual dark web written in September 2019, by then Way of the World had already accumulated over 90,000 subscribers and over 5 million views. As described back then:
“The narrator, who is never shown, speaks softly and somewhat mournfully with a British accent. He reads frequently from poets and philosophers, and when he isn’t depicting text or video clips, the screen is backdropped with a slowly spinning image of planet earth. Like Black Pigeon, and many other right-of-center content creators on the IDW, he believes Western Civilization faces possible extinction.”
It would be disingenuous to suggest that the topics Way of the World discussed were not controversial. But his style, his tone, his logic, and his facts were impeccable. For these reasons, when YouTube banned his channel back in early 2020, it was reinstated after an appeal.
Since reinstatement, Way of the World did not change its style, tone, logic or respect for facts. But YouTube changed. The relentless expansion of content deemed ineligible for YouTube’s “commitment to openness” has finally, and permanently, caught Way of the World in its net. His appeal this time is unlikely to be granted.
The problem, as always, with banning Way of the World, and channels like it, isn’t merely that it violates the reason monopolistic platforms like YouTube enjoy Section 230 protections against liability, i.e., they cannot remove material based on their own editorial bias. That would be, and is, bad enough. But YouTube goes further.
When big tech monopolies ban reasoned, factual sources of information and commentary that oppose mass immigration into Western nations, they help confirm the more extreme assertions of the anti-globalist movement.
Big tech clearly favors mass immigration into Western Nations, which is something Way of the World clearly opposed. That is why he was banned, and that is not reason enough. In a culture that now indulges in white shaming in literally every possible venue of mass communication, either contrary points of view must be allowed, or the perception that there truly is a conspiratorial hidden agenda behind globalism will be encouraged.
The style, tone, logic and facts of the mass immigration zealots, the “anti-racists,” and the white guilt industry, are typically mediocre, contrived, divisive, presumptuous and polarizing. They could learn a lot from the example of decorum set by Way of the World. Perhaps that’s what made him such a threat.
Unfortunately, if Way of the World succumbs to the anger that has justifiably possessed his predecessors who have been driven onto fringe platforms, losing years of work in earlier purges, his commentary may take on a darker tone. That is tragic, and the arrogance of the people running the big tech communications monopolies is exclusively to blame.
* * *
YouTube Censors, Amazon Deletes, Epoch Times Exposes
/1 Comment/in News, Winston84 /by Edward RingOne of the most reliable and comprehensive sources of alternative news is The Epoch Times. And one of the beats covered assiduously by The Epoch Times is the ongoing epidemic of online censorship. This week The Epoch Times exposed two serious new acts of censorship.
The first, in an act that rivals the arrogance of Twitter’s permanent expulsion of President Trump, is YouTube’s decision to take down an interview with President Trump that was posted on the Newsmax TV channel. As quoted in the Epoch Times report, “A Google spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email: ‘We have clear Community Guidelines that govern what videos may stay on YouTube, and we enforce our Community Guidelines consistently, regardless of speaker and without regard to political viewpoints.'”
This is a stunning degree of arrogance on Google’s part. It is also counterproductive. Every time Google, or any of the big media corporations, exercise this level of censorship, tens of thousands of Americans lose trust in them. Ultimately, what Google has done only serves to further divide the nation.
The second, equally arrogant but if anything more sinister, is Amazon’s quietly removing the book “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.” This book is critical of “transgender ideology,” and as a result, according to the arbiters of truth at Amazon, it had to disappear.
These acts stand out simply because of their brazen enormity. YouTube, still owning a near monopoly share of online video viewers, deletes an interview with a former U.S. President. Amazon, the juggernaut that has crushed millions of retail jobs, owning a near monopoly share of online retail purchasing, deletes a book that attempts to, gasp, suggest that encouraging prepubescent children to begin irreversible “gender reassignment” medical treatments may not be a good idea.
Silencing a former president. Silencing any challenge to “trans ideology.”
If the big tech companies that have overwhelmed our public square and public marketplace can do these things, what can’t they do?
Thank God for Epoch Times, Newsmax, OneAmerica, Andy Ngo, Project Veritas, and hundreds of others that are still fighting to preserve a balanced dialog in American society. But they are gnats fighting elephants.
* * *
Twitter Deplatforms Project Veritas
/1 Comment/in News, Winston84 /by Edward RingOne of the biggest sources of original alternative content, Project Veritas, is now banned from one of the biggest platforms to reach millions of Americans, Twitter.
Without being terribly specific as to what the “repeated violations” were of the company rules, Twitter deplatformed Veritas on February 11.
The proximate cause of banishment was a brief video posted by Veritas where one of their journalists, 60 Minutes style, accosts an employee of Facebook who is returning home from a jog. This Facebook executive, Guy Rosen, had previously been featured in a Veritas video, leaked to Veritas by a Facebook whistleblower, where he claims the platform is freezing comments whenever automated systems detect “there may be a thread that has hate speech or violence.”
It’s interesting that Project Veritas, at least so far, survives on Facebook, despite Facebook, and not Twitter, being the target of many recent controversial videos from Veritas. But that may change. On February 17, in yet another leaked video featuring Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, he is exposed expressing concern for the COVID-19 vaccines, worrying they may alter human DNA and wondering about the possible long-term side effects.
Facebook bans all posts that make similar claims about the COVID-19 vaccines, making this video somewhat embarrassing for the company.
Because there are so many, it is difficult to keep track even of these major incidents of censorship. One of the biggest reasons for bans is so-called “hate speech.” But “hate speech” is a nebulous term. As the Veritas journalist put it to Facebook’s Guy Rosen, “do you ban hate speech, or speech you hate?”
Banning Veritas from a major social media platform is not a trivial incident of censorship – notwithstanding that no exercise of censorship is trivial. With their videos, Veritas provides essential balance. When nobody else was there to do it, Project Veritas has done landmark investigations. For example, they exposed the corruption at ACORN, seriously disrupting its activities.
A mainstay of the mainstream media that gets more biased very year, 60 Minutes, engages in reporting that is every bit as aggressive as Veritas, but runs virtually zero risk of being deplatformed from the major social media platforms. Why is this? 60 Minutes routinely presents investigations that are supposedly objective, but to informed observers are transparently biased. Their selectivity in pursuit of their narrative easily rivals, if not surpasses, anything Veritas has ever done.
Once again, the double standard applies.
* * *