Fear greatly our loss of freedoms and basic human rights:
When the ever-expanding State effectively colludes with monolithic Tech Giants and Big Business to censor free speech and free thought, you know you are living in very dangerous times. And using the excuse of COVID to crack down on all those who dare to offer a differing point of view makes this all the more alarming.
My own personal story can be multiplied millions of times over. Fakebook has already banned me, and UselessTube has started pulling my videos. Fascistbook of course never told me what my crimes were: they just pulled the plug, resulting in hundreds of thousands of posts gone forever.
YouLoseTube did at least inform me of my horrible sins: I dared to let medical and scientific experts who take a different line to the official narrative on the Rona get a run. For that the censors came down on me big time. And so many others have known the same ugly censorship and assault on free speech.
As I wrote in a piece the other day, YouTube has recently pulled all Sky News videos for a week, citing the same foolishness: ‘misinformation about the virus’. Andrew Bolt said this about the situation:
“[They claimed] we’d broken its rules, specifically that YouTube doesn’t allow content that denies the existence of COVID-19. That claim … is 100 per cent false. Something is not right about this. There’s something very dangerous about how debate is being censored by these foreign social giants.”
And Sky News host Chris Kenny called this “cancel culture writ large.” He went on to say this: “Astonishing isn’t it. This is censorship. This is a gigantic global corporation, YouTube is owned by Google, one of the largest digital giants, worth well over one trillion dollars … censoring the news and views that Australians can see. This is a sad day for freedom of speech.”
It sure is. These Tech Giants with near monopoly powers can determine what people are allowed to see and read – even what they are allowed to think. And the purge on alternative thought gets worse by the day. All around the West we find Big Business, the Big State, and Big Tech working together to silence dissent and to shoot down those who dare to differ.
And the perfect storm for all of this, as mentioned, is to exploit a crisis – in this case, the Rona crisis. As I have been saying for a year and a half now, when a crisis is whipped up into hysterical levels, and fear becomes the name of the game for the masses, anything then is permissible: any and all freedoms and human rights can be stripped away in a moment, all to ‘keep us safe’.
Vaccine papers and vaccine passports are everywhere being touted if not mandated. Today those who for whatever reason are hesitant about getting the jab may be denied the right to travel, to get education, to attend venues, to get employment, and to get basic goods and services. There is nothing to prevent people tomorrow from being denied the right to buy a home, purchase food and clothing, and anything else.
And almost all of our politicians and commentariat – including those who claim to be conservative commentators – are singing from the same song sheet here. Some of the most hardcore pro-vaxxers can be found on Sky News, including Bolt, Paul Murray and Peta Credlin.
They are all talking about “incentives” – read: coercion and manipulation – for people to get the vaccines. This flies in the face of the Australian government’s own guidelines on this. The Australian Immunisation Handbook clearly says this about vaccination: “It must be given voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion or manipulation.”
Whether a carrot or a stick approach, all the Big players are pushing this, be it Big Business, Big Pharma, Big Tech, or the Big State. And the big loss here of course is freedom in all its forms. A recent piece on this from the US is worth quoting from:
Does anyone believe we’re not heading toward future national lockdowns in vain attempts to quell “climate change” or “racial injustice” or “wealth inequality” health crises, too? The world has been under attack from a Chinese Virus, and the world’s governments responded by locking up their citizens and expanding their powers permanently. That’s a little like having the government defend you from gunfire by first shooting you in the foot; one way or another, you’re hobbling away.
It’s just a little prick. Let the government stick you with its needle. What about the next needle, though, or the next one after that? If you are willing to hand to faceless bureaucrats the power to jab you today, do you consent to being jabbed whenever the government says it knows best? Because if there is anything about which governments are certain, it is that they always “know best.”
Can there be anything more intrusive than Big Jabber taking complete control over a person’s health? If not, then why shouldn’t government also intervene in everything else that fills up a person’s life? Why shouldn’t state agents who “know best” also decide where each citizen is allowed to live, what he is allowed to own, whom he is allowed to see, and what he is allowed to think? Ceding to government the authority to decide what goes into our bodies surely cedes to government the authority to determine everything else we do with those bodies, too. Then the question remaining is this: if killing freedom is the cost of survival, aren’t we just fighting one China Virus by unleashing another? https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/07/what_vaccines_say_about_the_precarious_state_of_our_freedom.html
And this just came in from a news feed:
Canada’s Federal government released plans Thursday to create a “Digital Safety Commissioner” who would have the power to shut down websites deemed a threat to “democracy,” and to promote content deemed “harmful.” “Canadians expect their government to take action against serious forms of harmful content online. We need to create new rules for social media platforms and online services to address harmful online content and hold individuals accountable, while respecting the importance of freedom of expression in a free and democratic society,” said Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada David Lametti. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/canadas-govt-proposes-digital-safety-commissioner-to-shut-down-websites-deemed-harmful/
Yeah right, I sure trust the Big State – especially one like Trudeau’s Canada – to decide what is “safe” and what is “harmful”. I know full well that if CultureWatch were based in Canada it would be one of the first sites to be taken down by these censors. All this is scary stuff indeed.
And the number of steps between what we see happening in the West and what is now happening in Communist China are few and small indeed. I have written before about the totalitarian social credit system found in China, including quoting from Rod Dreher on this:
The bottom line: a Chinese citizen cannot participate in the economy or society unless he has the mark of approval from Xi Jinping, the country’s all-powerful leader. In a cashless society, the state has the power to bankrupt dissidents instantly by cutting off access to the internet. And in a society in which everyone is connected digitally, the state can make anyone an instant pariah when the algorithm turns them radioactive, even to their family. https://billmuehlenberg.com/2021/01/03/big-business-and-the-big-state-mean-big-trouble/
His very important 2020 book Live Not By Lies is worth quoting from further in this regard. His chapter on woke capitalism discusses how the West is so easily morphing into the Chinese system. He writes:
We don’t have to imagine the dystopian merging of commerce and political authoritarianism in a total surveillance state. It already exists in the People’s Republic of China. No doubt China’s totalitarianism has become far more sophisticated than the crude Sino-Stalinism practiced by its first leader, Mao Zedong….
China today proves that it is possible to have a wealthy, modern society and still be totalitarian. The techniques of social control that have been common in China could be adapted by America with relative ease. The fact that concentration camps in the American desert sound far-fetched should not keep us from understanding how much of China’s surveillance systems could be quickly made useful to corporate and government controllers here….
The Chinese Communist Party … not only maintains a secure grip on political power but also is turning the nation of 1.4 billion souls into the most advanced totalitarian society the world has ever known.
Beijing’s use of consumer data, biometric information, GPS tracking coordinates, facial recognition, DNA, and other forms of data harvesting has turned, and continues to turn, China into a beast never before seen worldwide, not even under Mao or Stalin. In China, the tools of surveillance capitalism are employed by the surveillance state to administer the so-called social credit system, which determines who is allowed to buy, sell, and travel based on their social behaviour….
The great majority of Chinese pay for consumer goods and services using smartphone apps or their faces, via facial recognition technology. These provide consumer convenience and security, making life easier for ordinary people. They also generate an enormous amount of personal data about each Chinese individual, all of which the government tracks.
The state has other uses for facial recognition technology. Television cameras are ubiquitous on Chinese streets, recording the daily comings and goings of the nation’s people. Beijing’s software is so advanced that it can easily check facial scans against the central security database. If a citizen enters an area forbidden to him—a church, say—or even if a person is merely walking in the opposite direction of a crowd, the system automatically records it and alerts the police.
In theory, police don’t have to show up at the suspect’s door to make him pay for his disobedience. China’s social credit system automatically tracks the words and actions, online and off, of every Chinese citizen, and grants rewards or demerits based on obedience.
All this should shock every single freedom-loving individual on the planet. The cancel culture and censorship that we see happening all throughout the West is simply so many steps behind what is going on in China. Only a fool can believe that we will never head down that path. We already are.
[1702 words]