About Those who Seek to Censor Us

For several years, it has been made clear (by the Twitter Files and through the works of Mike Benz, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and other courageous journalists) that America's censors are well-to-do people with degrees from fancy colleges who hide within enormous federally funded bureaucracies. Now consider these words of Matt Taibbi:

So let me pause to say something about America's current intellectual class from which the anti-disinformation complex works. By the way, there are no working class censors. The dirty secret of content moderation all over the world is that it's a tiny sliver of educated rich correcting everybody else. It's telling people what fork to use, but you can get a degree in it, basically.

The problem is America has the most useless aristocrats in history. Even the French dandies who were marched to the razor by the Jacobins were towering specimens of humanity compared to the Michael Hadens, John Brennan's, James Clapper's, Mike McFall's, and Rick Stengel's who make up America's self-appointed speech police. In pre-revolutionary France, even the most drunken, depraved, debauched libertine had to be prepared to back up an insolent act with a sword fight to the death.

Our aristocrats pee themselves at a mean tweet. These people have no honor, no belief, no poetry, no art, no humor, no patriotism, which is unique to them, no loyalty, no dreams, and no accomplishments. They are simultaneously illiterate and pretentious, which is very hard to pull off. They may have one idea, and it's not even an idea, but a sensation. Fear. Rightly so, because they snitch each other out at the drop of a hat. They're afraid of each other. But they're also terrified of everyone outside their social set, and they live in near constant dread of being caught with even one original opinion.

I just finished posting the following on FB, where I often piss off the sheep and where many well-meaning people are afraid to say what they think:

BTW, you'll rarely hear about these words of Matt Taibbi of the works of other amazing independent journalists from corporate media. They have by and large decided that their job is not to provide you with facts so you can make up your own mind on issues. Instead, they serve their corporate masters by telling you what to think. They feel that it's their job to fool you by hiding relevant facts from you and by making shit up on a grand scale in fairly lockstep coordination with other corporate outlets. I know this is hard to hear for many of you. I know that you might prefer to remain in blissful ignorance rather than do the hard work of growing a spine and telling these propagandists and censors to fuck off because they are Anti-American.

For more on how censors think, consider the words of Robert Corn-Revere, author of The Mind of the Censor:

The message of the censor is clear and unmistakable: I (or we) know the truth, and must control the ideas or influences to which you may become exposed to protect you from falling into error (or sin). Truth may be revealed by whispers from god, by political theory, by popular vote, or by social science, but once it has been determined, the time for debate is over. Anthony Comstock did not invent censorship, but his DNA may be found in the genetic code of every would-be censor who walks the earth. As Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy put it: “Self-assurance has always been the hallmark of a censor.” In this respect, he echoed Mencken’s assessment of vice crusaders that “[their] very cocksureness is their chief source of strength.”” . . .

There appears to be a psychological dimension to the censor’s dilemma as well. What can one say about the type of person who devotes his or her life to denouncing certain types of expression and advocating its prohibition while choosing a profession in which he immerses himself in it? Purity crusaders claim to hate the stuff they want to suppress and argue that it will ruin all who are exposed, but invariably they can’t get enough of it. They search it out, collect it, study it, categorize it, archive it, talk about it, and display it to others, all for the ostensible purpose of making such expression cease to exist. . .

Continue ReadingAbout Those who Seek to Censor Us

American Universities as Black-Ops Leading the Way on Censorship

Mike Benz explains: At min 5, he pulls up USASpending.gov, which he describes as the only substantive difference between the U.S. and North Korea or China or Russia. All of these do less censorship than the U.S. At USASpending.gov, we can actually see what our government is paying to each university to do its censorship. Simply plug in "misinformation," then read and weep. "We don't have a fucking First Amendment anymore." The government merely pays our universities to do its censorship. "Funded by the underbutt of the Pentagon."

Continue ReadingAmerican Universities as Black-Ops Leading the Way on Censorship

The Desperate Situation in London

London is unrecognizable. This is the desperate situation in the UK. According to Konstantin Kisin, the widespread riots are merely a symptom of much bigger challenges in the UK. The government's main tactic to "address this situation" is mass censorship and attempts to shut down Twitter ("X").

Continue ReadingThe Desperate Situation in London

Conservatives Defending Traditional Liberal Values

How did it come to be that conservatives have become the most vocal defenders of traditional liberal values? At Public, Michael Shellenberger describes the challenge facing those of us who embrace traditional liberal values:

For most of the post-war period, liberalism in the United States was defined around freedom of speech, the needs of the working class, and the fight against racism and sexism. It was liberals who defended the right to burn the American flag, and of neo-Nazis to march through a neighborhood of Holocaust survivors. It was liberals who fought against corporate power and for the rights of working people. And it was liberals who fought to end racial segregation and to protect girls and women, including in sports.

All of that has changed. Today, it is conservatives who are fighting the racial re-segregation of classrooms and workforces by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) administrators in thrall to Critical Race Theory (CRT). It is conservatives who are defending the right to freedom of expression online from progressives demanding greater censorship by Big Tech and the government. And it is conservatives who are defending the rights of girls and women to female-only spaces and sports from natal males...

A similar dynamic occurred with the natural environment. After World War II, both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, supported industrialization, economic development in poor nations, and nuclear power. Starting in the 1960s, the radical Left turned against industrialization, and started romanticizing peasant life in poor nations, while opposing nuclear energy in rich nations. The result was that Republicans were left holding positions that were once mainstream liberal ones...

As a result, conservatives find themselves in the paradoxical position of defending traditional liberal values like free speech and racial equality from progressives.... A big part of the reason as to why it has been left to conservatives to defend liberalism is because the radical Left, or what is sometimes called the Woke Left, had already defeated traditional liberals, first in major societal institutions and then in Congress, many years and some cases decades ago. [Christopher] Rufo attributes much of the radical Left’s success to its ability to manipulate language and emotions.

Traditional liberals didn’t understand who they were dealing with. The liberal university presidents, the newspaper editors, and the heads of various professional associations were committed to civil dialogue and democracy; the radical Left insurgents were not. The radical Left didn’t hesitate to use illiberal means, including making false accusations of racism, sexism, and homophobia, against their opponents...

Readers of Public know that I believe that the radical Left’s power stems from being able to offer a complete Woke religion to fill the vacuum left by declining belief in traditional religions ... Into the spiritual void emerged a new religion: victim ideology, or Wokeism.

Continue ReadingConservatives Defending Traditional Liberal Values