In the controversy surrounding the coordinated corporate censorship of Alex Jones' notorious Infowars franchise across multiple online platforms, journalist Glenn Greenwald made an under-appreciated tweet in response to the various leftists and Democrats who've attacked anyone objecting to the censorship as "defending Alex Jones."
"The world's dumbest and/or most deceitful people have always been those who equate 'I defend X's right to speak' with 'I defend X and their ideas,'" wrote Greenwald. "It's the scummiest tactic there is. They did it to Chomsky when he opposed prosecuting a Holocaust denier."
The tweet got mostly lost in the shuffle of warring opinions at the time, but it so perfectly summed up the general gist of the debate. Principled leftists have objected to the way a handful of Silicon Valley plutocrats have been handed unlimited authority to determine what ideas and information are suitable for public consumption and coordinate to remove the online audiences of any speaker deemed unsuitable. The fact that they started with a widely reviled speaker shouldn't matter, the argument goes, because sooner or later the powerful people who are able to censor will begin censoring in the interests of power. This always ends up hurting the left (the actual left, not the McResistance rainbow-flag-on-a Reaper-drone "left" that is permitted a platform in mainstream America), because leftists are the political faction that stands in the most stark opposition to the status quo which holds existing power structures in place.
These few principled leftists brave enough to take a strong stand on the issue have been attacked and smeared with amazing viciousness by leftists who are blinded by their hatred of Jones, and by Democrats who know that censorship will never hurt their power-enabling faction. The position that the left is always the real target of censorship was ignored and replaced with the absurd straw man argument that anyone objecting to the coordinated de-platforming is defending Alex Jones because they love him and think Infowars is awesome.
And now, just days after these foam-brained livestock applauded the removal of Alex Jones' audience by their beneficent Silicon Valley overlords, we are already seeing Facebook deleting the pages of leftist outlets. Imagine that.
TeleSUR English, the English version of a prominent left-leaning Latin American publication, has had its Facebook page deleted without explanation. This is the second time that Facebook has done this, and as of this writing, more than 24 hours after it was initially reported, the page is still gone.
Five days earlier, the left-leaning Facebook page of Venezuela Analysis was temporarily unpublished, reportedly just as it had a story getting high-performing circulation regarding The Guardian's fact-free conspiratorial false flag allegations about the attempt on President Maduro's life.
TeleSUR, incidentally, happens to be headquartered in Venezuela, which is of course the primary topic covered by the unaffiliated Venezuela Analysis. Venezuela, incidentally, happens to have the single largest confirmed oil reserve of any nation on planet earth. It also, incidentally, happens to be the target of relentless imperialist sabotage attempts by the US-centralized power alliance. The propaganda arm of that same power alliance, incidentally, just so happens to be regulating Facebook's content.
Oh yes indeed.
The Atlantic Council is an extremely shady NATO-aligned think tank with ties to powerful oligarchs. It's an organization with tentacles in world-shaping events like the international response to the establishment Russia narrative, from the DNC hack to the discredited war propaganda firm Bellingcat to Russian trolls to the notorious PropOrNot blacklist publicized by the Washington Post. A couple of its lackeys happen to have attacked yours truly with a Twitter-based smear today, but no hard feelings, moving on.
Two weeks after an Atlantic Council fellow published a bizarre screed in Defense One explaining why there needs to be a "NATO of infowar" to propagandize westerners for their own good, Facebook announced that it was forming a partnership with the Atlantic Council to fight "disinformation" on the platform.
And now here they are, shutting down pages which dispute the official imperial narrative about a nation that sits firmly in the crosshairs of the US-centralized empire, and doing so with absolute impunity.
But hey, at least we shut down Alex Jones! Right guys?
I talk about narrative all the time because that really is what it's all about. Humans are storytelling animals; if you can control the stories you can control the humans. The problem we face is that those who are controlling our stories are using them to advance power-hungry agendas that happen to be killing our ecosystem while driving us toward Orwellian dystopia and escalating tensions between two nuclear superpowers.
The plutocratic empire is held together by sheer narrative control, by the ability of ruling oligarchs to control the stories people tell each other about what's going on in the world. The fact that trust in plutocrat-owned media is at an all-time low and people's ability to network and share information is at an all-time high has not escaped the attention of our rulers, and they are doing everything in their power to stop us from sharing unauthorized ideas and information with each other.
This isn't a game. We have no time to be playing around cheering for the silencing of political opponents while the noose gets tighter and tighter. In a corporate system of government, corporate censorship is state censorship, and censorship is never a friend of the left. Ever. The reality of our situation is that online dialogue has been funneled into platforms owned by billionaires with clear, demonstrable ties to government agencies, and now they're beginning to censor that dialogue. The longer we wait to fight this, the weaker we become and the more tightly constricted our voices get.
Act now.
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Great post.
I don't often agree with what you have to say but I absolutely defend your right to say it.
Glad to have you on Steemit.
Sorry to hear about your Twitter censoring.
If you're interested in alternative platforms not controlled by the Silicon Valley plutocrats check out this post:
https://steemit.com/redpill/@apshamilton/list-of-alternatives-to-facebook-and-google-leaving-the-matrix
And if you want to fight back by against the censors (who censored Crypto first) join the global class action against Facebook & Google
It wasn't like they didn't give fair warning to Jones, he ran a video of a full grown man grabbing a kid by the throat and face slamming him into the ground. Some nut job watching his show goes out and does the same thing but only this time some young kids brains splat all over the place not only can his parents sue Jones but they can also sue the provider. I watched one of the other banned videos and personally how the video opened could have provoked someone radical to try and blow up the infowar studio, or even seek revenge on Utube or FB offices where innocent people could have been hurt. Further into the video I pretty much had to agree with everything he said....but it was the "shock" value of the commentary leading into the video that was concerning. The shock value was the lead in, to grab attention in a hugely competitive market, to agree to such activity is like saying what's the human cost of selling some vitamin supplements. People get sued everyday for not being directly involved in harm of other people, they provided the avenue or platform upon which the harm rendered itself from. Mandalay Bay is a perfect current example of such. How could they have possibly known especially in a business where people carry large bags in and out all day long. He basically was asked to tone down the "shock value" level, he didn't, and personally I can't blame the providers for not wanting to risk it. Overall it wasn't his content overall, he's been doing that for years, it was how he was hyping up his lead in to grab attention. There's always been limits, terms of conditions, just ask Howard Stern, the original "shock jock", he didn't like the rules so he moved somewhere that allowed him to say or do as he pleases, there are places out there that will take the risk Alex just needs to find them.
How about TeleSUR?
Or the demonetization of effective lefties like Jimmy Dore?
Jones is an ugly animal, he's not cute, he's not valuable.
@caitlinjohnstone is completely correct in that controlling the narrative is key.
Are you following Q at all by any chance?
Can't understand how Q is not censored on the YT. I'm sure it's algorithmically censored, but it's not a censor on sight situation... yet.
Peace
There's a very good reason Q isn't censored, but you don't want to know it.
People need to form cliques, and are biologically rewarded for doing the dirty work of defending cliques against opposition with shots of dopamine for denying facts, telling lies, and etc...
You and I too.
Even though you will be angry at me, deny the truth of what I say, and only realize that you did so because you're an animal designed to defend your clique long after it's too late to do any good, I will tell you why Q isn't censored.
Q is a psyop by the globalists, designed to turn the global tide to their benefit, by slight nudges. Rather than just state that you should be on their team, they nudge you bit by bit until you only finally realize you are, and have long been, supporting one of their teams in the fight against freedom, and by then you will have invested so much, and burned so many bridges back, that you will just remain onboard and retain the benefits of cliquing therein.
Psygroup is doing a masterful job running Q.
Sorry.
Assume much?
You know nothing about me and my beliefs. And you have no idea why I asked that question.
This is not our first interaction on this issue, and neither of us hasn't been to the rodeo before.
Of course I assume. It's the shortcut to clarity. Like all shortcuts, it can lead you astray. Perhaps I was wrong to assume you supported Q at this time, despite your prior advocacy.
I note you didn't prove me wrong.
I am curious if you are aware of entities like Psygroup, Black Cube, etc. Many 'retired' intelligence agency personnel staff such outfits, and official government sanction of their undertakings is pretended to be washed away.
Sneaky bastages.
I have not written anything on Q except that it was a psyop.
I'm pretty sure it's a psyop. I say "pretty sure" only to distinguish it from the corporate media which I know is a psyop.
I am not familiar with Psygroup and Black Cube, but I will find out after writing this.
Because you have proved my assumption was incorrect, I take back my entire screed. I must have misrecalled, and for my error I apologize.
Thanks for setting me straight!
I didn't know the names, but I knew the players.
I see the 2 teams tribing up: Pedophiles vs Traitors. Doesn't look like much room for negotiation to me. I have yet to see a fact confirmed from either side.
I'm not much on tribing up. I tend to wind up somewhere other than the binary answers allowed, and then they show me their ass and my ass usually escapes being hit as the door shuts on my way out.
As far as my addressing whether you were right or wrong, you essentially asked me when I stopped beating my wife.
I'm not a fan of apologists to the current system we live under and I'm also no fan of being telepathically (sp?) pigeon holed into a binary choice.
As you show, it's hard to be wrong if you admit you don't know. It's all too often the true answer, and more should know and state it.
Thanks!
TeleSur is up and running on FB, just checked, last post six hours ago. Sometimes FB pulls stuff until it gets investigated. I had that happen with something I shared that someone posted on my account. When you first see the warning it looks pretty concerning...I was like what could I have possibly posted that someone complained about. I go on there a couple times a month at the least, as I scrolled down there was a correction that said the content had been viewed and was deemed to be okay and they released the hold on it. I believe the media does try and control the narrative, there's no doubt about that. That's why it's important we have people willing to go the alternate route to get news out there....but that doesn't mean some of those people have complete free reign to provoke, suggest, or instigate violence unless a platform from which they are provided to unleash that kind of propaganda is willing to take the risk. People have been killed for less then someone opening their show with the statement that Muhammad is a pedophile, if they will attack a news organization over drawing cartoons someone on the fringe of radicalization could easily take offense at that remark he made. FB, Utube or any other news organization has to at some point ask themselves is that statement worth the risk?
The Internet is under attack .
Sublime reporting, as always Caitlin. I would only object to one tiny factual error, and that is your statement that Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. In fact, the US does.
Under Colorado lie 2 trillion barrels of oil. I learned this fact about a decade ago IIRC. After the cognitive dissonance passed, that little known fact gained me useful insight into the desperate venality of USG foreign policy regarding the petrodollar.
I am sure that after you verify the claim, as I did, you will also have more reason to decry the horror of war for oil, since it's really a war for future profit, once we burn up everyone else's oil.
Thanks!
That reminded me of how I tell those who aren't into the political arena of things. I tell them to think of oil as something that can be gardened. You have two gardeners, one who continually plants her oil in the same spot year after year, each year her yield gets smaller and less because she pulls out all the nutrients without replacing them. She is just concerned about instance profits. The other gardener moves her garden around from plot to plot each year taking special concern to let mother nature along with her own care of adding nutrients back into the soil so each year she has a plentiful bounty each year. The first gardener is representative of foreign oil, they will take their plots and run it for profits until their is nothing left. The second gardener is representative of the US, they will buy the oil of foreign plots while their land of oil is nurtured in anticipation of a bountiful future stock. I can't believe someone actually said to me once, well if we run out of oil we'll just go bomb them and take their oil. I said not without oil to produce the gas.
Over the few years though I've come to think of it as it really never was about profits per say to the US as much as it was about who in the ME was profiting off the oil and their intended purpose for those profits.
The left has been dealing with censorship for quite sometime, I just find it odd that we chose Alex Jones to be our martyr.
We didn't choose Alex Jones, massive media corporations did the choosing when they conspired to censor him. They got us in a no-win situation here, knowing most won't want to defend Alex Jones for a myriad of good reasons, and I think they realized this when they decided to act together aganst him. I personally don't like Alex Jones at all, and I think his brand of propaganda is gross and destructive, but I also can't stand the idea of massive corporations being able to conspire to shut down independent media, knowing that such tactics are also used against good people who don't deserve it at all.
and.... you appear to be missing from twitter.... i’ve been keeping my eye out for baitlin bonstone but so far no luck!