Censorship and the erosion of freedom are alive and well in the West:
If you can control the content and flow and information, you can easily control the masses. Every dictator has known this. That is why free and democratic societies have always sought to have a diversity of media and information outlets, and not allow any one of them to have total control and monopoly powers.
But that is just what we find with most of the Tech and Media Giants: they have a massive corner on the market, and any smaller alternatives can barely make a dent on their stranglehold. So things like Facebook and Google and YouTube really have become a law unto themselves, and can basically do whatever they want.
Now you might argue that they are private companies and so they CAN do what they like. But not quite: in many ways they provide public services and act as public utilities. And when they are so powerful and so monopolistic, then there is a place to see their overwhelming power and control challenged – and broken up.
And worse yet, when all these groups tend to sing from the same song sheet – that of secular leftism – and work overtime to quash any competing voices – especially conservatives and Christians – then you know we have a real problem on our hands.
I have known all about this. As I said, I have been given the boot by Facebook for example. See my discussion of this here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2021/05/27/erased/
And of late YouTube has started to pull some of my videos. See my writeup about this here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2021/07/08/the-youtube-war-on-free-thought-and-free-speech/
And in the past I have had an entire page devoted to me on Wikipedia. It was put up by my enemies, so it contained all sorts of lies, falsehoods and diabolical calumny about me. One friend would regularly come along and correct their lies and disinformation, only to have the haters put it all back up. But now there seems to be no more pages about me at all to be found there.
But I of course am not alone in all this. Plenty of others have been through the wringer with these censorious outfits. Donald Trump for example has experienced this routinely, as have so many conservatives and Christians. War has been declared against anyone who dares to hold to differing points of view from the reigning secular left narrative.
Let me offer just a few more recent examples of all this. There would be so many to choose from, but these two stories are quite revealing – and shocking. The first involves Wikipedia and someone who knows a bit about it: its co-founder. Here is how one report covers this:
Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, warned that the online encyclopedia is “more one-sided than ever” in light of the website’s entries for Black Lives Matter, the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump’s two impeachments, and other contentious topics.
Sanger, in particular, took issue with how some Wikipedia entries are sourced. “In short, and with few exceptions, only globalist, progressive mainstream sources—and sources friendly to globalist progressivism—are permitted,” he wrote in an article on his website.
Several centrist news outlets such as The Daily Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal, and The Weekly Standard are sometimes allowed to be sourced, he said, but Wikipedia editors are “careful never to leave the current Overton Window of progressive thought.”
Unlike Facebook and Twitter, which take more top-down approaches to content moderation, Wikipedia, which turned 20 years old earlier this year, largely relies on unpaid volunteers to handle issues around users’ behavior, editing entries, and other aspects of the site’s management.
Wikipedia has 230,000 volunteer editors who work on crowdsourced articles and more than 3,500 “administrators” who can take actions such as blocking accounts or restricting edits on certain pages, according to a Reuters article.
Sanger suggested that Wikipedia’s editors have “systematically purged conservative mainstream media sources” because its editors “do not want what they dismiss as ‘misinformation,’ ‘conspiracy theories,’ etc., to get any hearing. In saying so, they (and similarly biased institutions) are plainly claiming exclusive control over what is thinkable. They want to set the boundaries of the debate, and they want to tell you how to think about it.”
Sanger noted that Wikipedia has banned Fox News’ political reporting, the New York Post, and the Daily Mail from being used as sources. According to a Wikipedia page on the sources that can be used, other conservative websites such as Breitbart, The Blaze, The Daily Wire, The Gateway Pundit, and Newsmax are also banned.
“Many mainstream sources of conservative, libertarian, or contrarian opinion are banned from Wikipedia as well, including Quillette, The Federalist, and the Daily Caller,” he added. “Those might be contrarian or conservative, but they are hardly ‘radical’; they are still mainstream. So, how on earth can such viewpoints ever be given an airing on Wikipedia? Answer: often, they cannot, not if there are no ‘reliable sources’ available to report about them.”
“It is not too far to say that Wikipedia, like many other deeply biased institutions of our brave new digital world, has made itself into a kind of thought police that has de facto shackled conservative viewpoints with which they disagree,” Sanger wrote in a conclusion on his website. “Democracy cannot thrive under such conditions: I maintain that Wikipedia has become an opponent of vigorous democracy.” https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/wikipedia-co-founder-warns-wikipedia-is-more-one-sided-than-ever_3887650.html
My second story involves something we find happening far too often: anyone who dares to disagree with the Statist Rona narrative, the lockdowns, the compulsory masking, and the demand for vaccinations and vaccine passports will be targeted by these Tech Giants. The recent YouTube video of mine that was pulled had to do with this very issue.
But you do not have to be a Christian or a conservative to be censored by the new enforcers of our health dictatorship. Anyone will be if they dare to differ, including folks like Naomi Wolf. Check out this news item:
Women’s health and civil liberties author and journalist Naomi Wolf has had her Twitter account suspended and YouTube channel frozen after she raised questions regarding the COVID-19 vaccine side effects, the constitutionality of lockdowns, and the candor of Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
She now considers legal action, she told The Epoch Times. “It’s premature to give details but I am in discussion with a legal team about a lawsuit against Twitter,” she said via email. “I’ve also been approached by another legal team about joining a class action lawsuit against several social media platforms.”
She hasn’t been given any explanation as to what piece of content that she posted on the social media platforms triggered the suspension, despite her multiple attempts to reach out to both Twitter and YouTube, she said. In fact, she received no explanation whatsoever from either platform. Instead, Twitter told the media that she was spreading vaccine misinformation. She considers that both false and defamatory. Google, which owns YouTube, and Twitter didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Wolf’s case highlights the escalation of social media censorship over the past several years. While the giant tech companies started with purges of voices that the establishment considered right-wing fringe, such as radio host Alex Jones and activist Laura Loomer, the list of taboo topics has now expanded so far that censors are coming after people like Wolf, a liberal feminist and life-long Democrat who used to be published by establishment press, including publications like The New York Times and The Guardian.
Her Twitter account was suspended around June 4, shortly after she posted a video of her husband, a private investigator, reading a publicly available CV of Prof. Ralph Baric, a coronavirus researcher. The bio indicated that Baric’s projects received tens of millions in funding from NIAID. https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/liberal-author-censored-by-twitter-and-youtube-after-questioning-fauci-considers-suing_3889747.html
These two cases are just the tip of the iceberg. Everywhere we are finding these censorious and increasingly totalitarian Tech Giants determining what is true and who can hear and see it. Woe to you if you dare to take a differing view on the latest PC hyper-left agenda items – be it the Rona, climate change, the trans revolution, and so on.
Yes, we can all avail ourselves of the smaller media alternatives. I am on MeWe, Gab, Parler and Minds. But their reach is miniscule compared to what these monopolies enjoy. We can only hope that Trump and Wolf and others who are taking legal action against these leftist giants are successful.
If not, you can kiss freedom and democracy goodbye. And you can then endure grovelling on your face forever before Big Brother tyranny.
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