So I have been thinking about the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” that network of governments, corporations, NGOs, Intelligence agencies, corporate and state media, and self-appointed “disinformation experts” that are gradually, subtly, and often not so subtly, turning our world into an Orwellian dystopia.
(a) Wrong question (b) To the degree governments are censoring speech, they are doing so by getting the Internet corporations to do it for them. Taking the corporations out of the chain will force governments to do it themselves, openly, and prevent them from hiding behind Internet corporations and their "moderation policies." You can't fight an opponent if you can't see him.
So are you thinking that once the corporations are taken out of the chain that government censorship can be successfully fought on First Amendment grounds? If so, then that would be worth pursuing. Because as things stand, I think the US government is clearly trying to hide from First Amendment cases by claiming that it's private companies, not the government, that's doing the censoring. This despite the glaringly obvious facts that the government is pressuring corporations to censor by openly calling them onto the floor of Congress and surreptitiously through backdoor requests to censor various accounts as was revealed in the Twitter Files. I imagine there's more of that going on with YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms that we don't know about directly (yet). And remarkably, loads of Democrats seem thrilled to be able to say to anyone mentioning the First Amendment, "The First Amendment only applies to the government, not to private corporations." Certainly true, but not an accurate representation of what's going on in practice.
To my thinking, there's no good reason for a platform like Facebook to censor its subscribers because every one of them provides income for the company by creating data that Facebook can sell. And that is their business model. More conflict and controversy among users just generates more posts and more data: all good for Facebook. Censorship costs money to pay censors and to develop "better" algorithms for censorship (based on my experience, FB is light years away from finding one that makes sense) and winds up costing money in the loss of data from suspended or banned users.
Granted, I'm no expert. It may be that this is all accounted for by FB, etc., and these companies have figured out how to censor (no matter how crazily) and not really lose money (or at least not much). I'd say that clearly the loss has to be less than what government fines would cost, but then in our hypothetical (the one all these Democrats seem to believe is real), the government isn't doing anything to encourage or force censorship on the corporations. So there would be no fines and we are truly talking about whether loss of members - temporarily or permanently - results in lost data and thus lost revenue.
To return to the main point, if your idea is NOT to get things onto a First Amendment basis, then I can't quite see the point. I've been saying for years that the big Internet platforms function as the contemporary "public square" and thus need to be declared as public utilities. The phone companies can't refuse to serve someone as a customer because s/he uses phones to discuss unpopular political positions. The water company and the power company can't refuse to serve someone as a customer because they find that customer's speech "offensive." If these social media platforms (including YouTube) are seen properly as public utilities, then we're free of the charade of Silicon Valley executives arbitrarily censoring whomever they like without there being any recourse whatsoever for citizens. I am in favor of any scheme that effectively makes these spaces public and gives users access to First Amendment protections.
Unfortunately, I don't see how this is possible. The corporations have been thoroughly infiltrated by the pro-censorship agenda, not only ideologically but also physically, with three letter agency recruits working their anti-democratic mandates behind the scenes. Twitter is just one example. Even after the much ballyhooed takeover by free speech "absolutist" Musk, his own employees continually sabotage the publication of anti-leftist agenda material. The incestuous (and highly profitable) relationship between the regime and the large corporations who could provide a "public square" prevents any law or regulation that would endanger this relationship. Pizzo is paid, protection is provided, the status quo remains. Removing corporations from the chain is as likely as Congress voting term limits on themselves.
“To the degree governments are censoring speech, they are doing so by getting the Internet corporations to do it for them.”
No longer. See the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 in Ireland. This nightmare of a bill tears the disguise off the “content moderators” and shows the world full frontal, naked Orwellian censorship demanded by the government. No longer content to play in the shadows, requesting corporations to silence citizen voices, the Irish Green Party has decided to come out of the tyranny closet and celebrate their anti-democratic nature by yet again demanding loss of freedom for a chimera of the greater good.
Re your ending question - I don't know - but my sense lately is many people are NOT really 'here'. Not fully, more like a sketch sort of in hiding,I wonder if they are waiting something out - too overwhelmed and scared to engage.
Prior to Covid I projected a lot of qualities on people, that I think now weren't ever true. I really didn't expect so many humans to cower and go along, let alone get nasty on those of us who didn't. Most of the real cowards I know most definitely don't know that about themselves. Hypocrites - same.
It's going to be a far smaller number of people (who are really HERE) that will drive the next version of the world.
Prior to Covid and the reaction to George Floyd, I wasn’t really “here.” As I watched events unfold i didn’t recognize my country. I have educated myself and am now paying attention. It’s not good news.
I really appreciate your articulation of this, especially the second paragraph. I haven't been able to write that out without going bitter and angry, thanks.
Very insightfully stated! Those "qualities" we expected to be there in those we most trusted and believed in were, in many cases, not only absent, but, as you correctly point out, totally inverted along with supposedly cherished values which we came to mistakenly believe were still intact; and this cowardice and hypocrisy were evident everywhere in institutions and individuals alike and on both national and global scales, as they persist to this day; yes, there were rare exceptions who were not ready to relinquish their sovereignty and personal souls (identity), but as you perceptively state in your summation, it will be a small number of survivors who will save humanity from its inhumanity!
Great piece! Seems like the root of the problem is the Global Corps are becoming more and more .... The Government.... But of course unelected and unrestricted.....as Dr Joseph Farrell has said the Globocorps should be required to have the USA Constitution as part of their incorporation articles in the USA....
Yes, I think some sort of legislation along the lines that you proposed would be very helpful. However, and I hate to be a downer, but at least here, in the United States, such legislation would never get through Congress. Of course, the reason is that our corporations effectively own our members of Congress. any law maker that would propose such an act would immediately be cut off at the knees by having his or her funding pulled by most, if not all corporate donors. Here in America, it is well known and understood that the candidate with the most money almost always wins.
I can't help but feel it's all so deeply fucked, that what has to happen, has to be exposed, is what underpins corp/government abuses. Not saying it's not worth discussing, that's all in the right direction. I guess I'm feeling like something deeper is going to have to give, and once that does, some semblance of sanity returns. Many of us have to be willing to just walk away from what they are offering us. If they don't get our attention, they become irrelevant. We need that.
I know my lovely, it's the modern conundrum! Getting information is a huge thing. I seek information on composting toilets and keeping chickens and the internet is very useful. But I'd probably get there in the end. Shit decomposes, I don't need an information source to tell me that. Bung in some substrate and let the worms do their thing. Can I grow veg in the resulting organic humus? Yes, my nose and my eyes and my gut affirm that. Feed the chickens, water them, watch them, love them. I will see when something isn't right. Simple really, the eggs speak for themselves. Plus I know plenty of people who have lots of great info on keeping chickens and decomposing things. Reading a government website for info on covid though is not useful. Or correct information. It's information with an agenda. Same with all mainstream media outlets. I'm not sure that leaving the internet means we have to live in caves. I don't remember us all doing that in pre-internet times - I remember living in houses with amenities like running water and central heating and so on. I suppose in order for someone to 'lose' another has to 'win' but is that really true? I don't think about winning as a position I can achieve in this case. Each day I wake up is a win of sorts for me. I don't think anyone has to lose anything in order for that to happen. Waking up in a cave, perhaps with other people around, a fire on, the billy steaming for a brew, sounds pretty good to me but I get your point! Surely being happy IS a win? I wish you happiness. :-)
And I wish you the same. ❤️😎 I must maintain that the regulation of information and who wields the power to disseminate it is some Gutenberg level stuff. Yes, people existed and lived simple, if not shorter lives, and perhaps happier ones. We can’t know. But the egomaniacal dictators, and that’s truly what they are, who edict what is truth are going to be the end of our free world. I’m not quite ready to go quietly into that night.
I just don't see that there are any politicians in a position of power that could be trusted to enact laws like the ones you are proposing. Our political system is so corrupt that it is impossible to get elected if you are a person of integrity.
Sometimes you fight a battle because you believe you can win the battle. Other times, you fight a battle knowing that you will lose, in order to get more people to fight the next battle with you.
...and often you fight for what is right because it is right, and surrender is not in you.
I think about where you were a few years ago, in terms of notoriety and (as I surmise) income and support, and seeing bravery win through this far is very encouraging.
Subscription, like debt, is against my principles, but I will support your defense if you call for it.
Everything SHOULD be privately owned. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
The problem here is that we are not headed to a world of private property but to a fascist world. I’ve been writing about police state America for decades.
It’s not really private property if the State tells you what you may or may not do with it. That’s the essence of fascism/corporativism. Having titular deed to property doesn’t mean much when the State is dictating your actions or you use the State to steal from others.
As for social media, maybe the best option is for paid access but with liability in place, a la, books and newspapers.
Short of that, 230 needs to be revised so social media don’t get to keep their cake and eat it, too. I’ve written a number of times about this issue. Any company enjoying 230 protection should act as a common carrier a la phone companies, that is, a social media company provides a service but does not monitor, censor, ban, etc. its users, anymore than phone companies do. If illegal behavior is suspected, the company could report it to the police, but it is not under its purview to BE the police.
As long as users are provided reliable tools to ban/restrict/silence unwanted content, that should suffice. People need to curate their own content, not have some biased algorithm or human do it for them.
Your premises seek to carve out exceptions to property rights, i.e., freedom. But such bad ideas are how we got in this mess in the first place. You’re attempting to treat the symptoms rather than get to the root cause of the disease.
Your approach--however well intentioned--is doomed to fail.
I believed this for a long time. I don't know anymore. I just really question what prevents monopolization, corruption, etc., while conceding entirely that governments are not only failing to prevent it but actively encouraging it. Much like the U.S. Constitution, wouldn't we need some semblance of a moral society for "privatize everything" to work?
As you say, we need a moral society for freedom to exist. History over the past century has demonstrated what happens when, for example, the U.S. tries to "impose" our idea of a proper government etc. on a culture that has no history or respect for liberty or rights. The attempt is not going to be successful.
A document like the Constitution is not going to save us. But we have to identify the proper principles for freedom first if we are ever going to recognize when we are getting closer to those ideals or drifting farther from them.
As I wrote in the original post, our government and, worse, the citizens of this country have not had respect for property rights for a long time. We have literal fascism: surface acknowledgement of property rights that masks gross and wide-spread VIOLATIONS of property rights. That is what fascism is: government dictating to private individuals and to businesses what they may or may not due with their own property. And it is the entity that CONTROLS X or Y or Z that, in reality, actually "owns" that property.
Nothing external to PEOPLE "prevents" violations of our rights and freedom. Only PEOPLE can do that. Liberty doesn't enforce itself. We have lost the culture and political wars a long time ago because, as I wrote, people constantly carved out little "exceptions" to rights and liberty because they wanted something via coercion rather than persuasion. Cut away enough of the foundation of anything, especially something as fragile as freedom, and sooner or later that structure will collapse. That is precisely where we are now.
But I would encourage you not to give up on your belief in one of the core principles underlying freedom. Things are bad enough as they are. Imagine how much worse they would be where there is NO respect for property rights or freedom. The U.S.S.R. comes to mind...
Appreciate your thoughts and agree wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, no chance we or our children will see Ancapistan in our lifetimes. As it is, only a tiny fraction of the population has any idea how bad things really are, nowhere close to the numbers required to affect meaningful change. Black pilled, sure, but when everything's an op, it's hard to be optimistic.
Yeah. It usually falls to a small percentage of people to effect change. For example, what was it? Only 20% of colonists supported independence from Britain? And the enemies of freedom have been boiling the frogs for over a century. Positive turnaround won’t happen overnight, and there’s no one to “save” us except for ourselves.
I think I can empathize with folks in the ‘30s when FDR was at full force and twisting the country and liberty into knots. Crap we’re still wrestling with. The remnants of the Enlightenment folks must have felt a similar hopelessness then as I do now sometimes.
I try to remind myself of positives such as over half of states passing Constitutional carry, a switch I never thought I’d witness. And the abrupt collapse of the Soviet Union after 80 years.
But, like you, I think I won’t live to see any real sea change. But who knows? The more kids who escape government-run propaganda mills known as schools, the greater the odds of them seeing and acting in accordance with the truth. A handful showing what is possible can go a long way.
We can’t alter the world, but maybe we can affect a few people around us, and they more folks, and so on. We definitely have to play the long game while seizing whatever short term wins we can.
Until then, I guess we’re stuck with the ol’ Chinese curse about living in “interesting times”...
Are you in favor of abolishing the First Amendment? Because it only applies in either public spaces or your own privately owned space, so that would mean you don’t think anyone deserves free speech who can’t afford it, with which I would loudly quarrel.
“Freedom of speech means freedom from interference, suppression or punitive action by the government—and nothing else. It does not mean the right to demand the financial support or the material means to express your views at the expense of other men who may not wish to support you. Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to agree, not to listen and not to support one’s own antagonists. A ‘right’ does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one’s own effort. Private citizens cannot use physical force or coercion; they cannot censor or suppress anyone’s views or publications. Only the government can do so. And censorship is a concept that pertains only to governmental action.”
The Ayn Rand Column, “The Fascist New Frontier”
###
Without property rights, no other rights can be exercised.
Trying to fight fascism by appealing to fascism is evil, not to mention self-contradictory.
You don’t own other people or THEIR property. You are not their master. They are not your slaves.
Thinking it’s okay to violate the freedom of others by having government do your dirty work because YOU want access to what they have created is not justified just because it’s your ox being gored.
Of course, the 'joke' will be that it gets canceled (censored) as happened to another gathering at Central Hall, 'Westminster', quite recently actually, on Palestine and Apartheid Israel. Free speech? Have we ever had free speech? Before speech got digitised, the state and big business controlled all the mainstream media and where necessary, censored and when that didn't work, self-censorship always kicked in, he who pays the piper etc. For a brief period, before the powers that be realised just how powerful digital, independent media was, we did have free speech, proving just how dangerous free speech really is, so it's no wonder what was free no longer is, free.
The problem of course, as always, is that it has be seen. Traditional, independent media, effectively confined to print, unless banned, could at least be accessed but again, it's down to access and an audience. Digital media has the potential to be accessed by millions, hence the total censorship and it's already here and it doesn't require banning, if you don't know it's there, there's no need to ban it and Google have achieved that objective by rigging the major 'search' engine, so unless you already know where it is, the odds are, you'll never find it because you don't know it exists in the first place! It proves that digital media really is dangerous!
In my experience, Google helped me find alternative media sites. I don't believe it's possible for them to stop anyone who is willing to put a little time and effort to finding contrary perspectives.
I think you'll find that if you look for any really independent media site, eg Moon of Alabama, that Google have rigged the engine so that, you'll find 'About MoA' but that'll be it. I've checked a number of other indie sites and it's the same. So 'technically', the site is not banned but if I do a search for Donbas for example, I'll only 'find' MSM sources. Try it yourself.
I'm so confused. Did you mean apartheid Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, etc. etc. etc. All of the Muslim countries that murdered and expelled their Jews? Because in Israel Muslims live, work, and vote along side their Jewish brothers and sisters.
Congratulations! You just created the Federal Bureau of Anti-Deboosting, Counter Visibility Filtering, and Un-Shadow Banning Rights Compliance and Enforcement. They will require at least 5,000 members, 800 of which will be armed (why... who cares!)
In five years it will be renamed the Equitable Views Bureau and the enabling law will be reinterpreted to mean that the Bureau can assign mandatory viewing to ensure that all eligible and approved tweets get their mandatory minimum views based on ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, insect consumption level, and other qualifying hallmarks of social justice.
In ten years, Bureau members will kick down your doors if you fall behind in your mandatory view quotas.
Sorry CJ, asking the ‘wolf’ to protect you from the ‘snakes’ won’t work. The govt doesn’t really do anything well and it will likely be frustrating (or painful) if you get too close. Better idea is to go straight to the people, to suggest that they don’t need Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Toc and instant GPS on their phone to find the coffee shop. Start a billboard campaign which says: “Had enough? Cancel them”. Then list 3-4 social media sites and (importantly) how to turn off location tracking and routinely put their phone into aeroplane mode.
Always a fan of your work CJ - resonates with my outlook and general disposition quite well. Thanks for sticking with it. Simply maintaining a practice of regularly putting the word out for those who will hear it is the most important thing that folks like you, Matt, Michael, Russell, and so many others continue to do.
From this chair, the power mad corporations already own the governments who legislate - worldwide. So much so that actual practicing 'democracy' went out the window at the turn of the century. Thanks to modern technology, their control of information (5th Gen Warfare) is so comprehensive that they literally now define and control the worldview of the masses, and continue to tighten the noose on honest information w/censorship and bald faced lies. Matt & Michael's congressional testimony insanity is case in point. It's a formidable juggernaut that will not stop until it has total control of everything and everyone. Sick!!
Our recourse is to NEVER let up in sharing honest information however we can, as you have astutely noted in past posts. Also parallel communities, living as far away from their control systems as we can - a challenge given everyone's hypnotic addiction to the very devices that brainwash their minds, etc. The less we consciously participate in their plan, the better off we are. Sadly most people don't even know what we're talking about, the brainwash is so effective. Until we can recognize en masse what is being done to us and who is doing it, while renouncing petty partisan differences, we've lost. Again - never give up spreading the word .....but hey! - "LOOK! OVER HERE!! TRUMP!!!" - a ruse that has served power elites through all of history.
IMO - the true solution is relatively transcendent - humanity is consuming itself before its own deluded denying eyes - universally! Any plan short of truly organic evolution is no solution at all. To wit:
"The egocentricity experiment with human Design has run its course – its climax is our confluence of crises. Virtually all system solutions and ascension paths proposed by even the most enlightened among us fail to breach egocentricity’s stronghold. The forecast for our imminent extinction is well founded and arguably certain unless we become something new. Metamorphosis is appropriate terminology here. At this Moment in history, ages of humanity can be metaphorically distilled into a litter of newborn kittens, blind from birth, whose eyes are now poised to open onto their world for the very first time….are we ready? This is our evolution.
Relieving humanity of egocentricity’s bondage by consensus is impossible. Political proposals are hopelessly impotent. It is now imperative that we develop metamorphic catalysts immediately – means and methods to efficiently transmute egocentricity and profoundly evoke our innate senses of interdependence and compassion."
No - our predicament is unprecedented and universal - any effective solution must transcend any and every brand of belief to have any chance at all of success. Clues about "what this means in practice can be reviewed in the post below, that concludes:
"Our challenge is to engineer the Moonshot of an evolutionary path wherein we permanently catalyze our inherent human experience into a broader and deeper perceptual dimension – a transition that reifies a heart-centered, personal/collective human experience, as consciously interconnected individuals integrated within a coherent network – simultaneously separate and all together, like 7.x billion fingers on one ‘Whole’ hand. Once done, perhaps the best part will be an undeniable and perpetual sense of BELONGING – to one another everywhere, as constituent cells of a ‘Whole’ Humanity, integral to our living Earth."
Good luck with that! Maybe at a football match when all the crowd is singing in unison you will get such an energy going. But while we are all living separate lives with the "news" being fed into our brains, we won't get where you propose. There may be hope with those who don't engage with the system currently so look outside the educated, middle classes to start the revolution.
True that - as noted in the original comment "[solution] by consensus is impossible. Political proposals are hopelessly impotent." It has to be done for us - an as yet undiscovered, undeveloped process that catalyzes our evolution forward to a new paradigm where we all discover the heart we each have, and the connection it reveals to everyone else - fantasy to the ill egocentric beings we are now, but I can see it as clearly as this page before us now.
“It should get our attention that every person or group of people that have discovered what the Native Americans call wetiko disease unanimously consider it to be the most important topic to understand in our world today. Wetiko psychosis—which can be conceived of as being a mind-virus—is at the very root of every crisis we face. Wetiko is the over-arching umbrella that contains, subsumes, informs and underlies every form of self-and-other destruction that our species is acting out in our world on every scale. If we don’t come to terms with what wetiko is revealing to us, however, nothing else will matter, as there will be no more human species.”
Are you talking about a metamorphosis that is embodied or some transhumanist idea of a shared, integrated, psychic network? Also, how is this hive mind the luminous version & not mass formation delusion, contagion, etc?
Thanks for engaging Claudia - great Questions! I think you will find both answered adequately in the following excerpts from another post on the same blog:
"Today’s Transhumanists rush to establish a race of biodigital Frankensteins. Hypnotized by wet dreams of enhancement, they attach wings to a caterpillar and call it a butterfly, ignore the pulse of their own breathing beings hidden behind a heartless view of the Universe, and charge headlong in passionate pursuit of some contrived delusional notion of ‘progress’."
"Our challenge is to engineer the Moonshot of an evolutionary path wherein we permanently catalyze our inherent human experience into a broader and deeper perceptual dimension – a transition that reifies a heart-centered, personal/collective human experience, as consciously interconnected individuals integrated within a coherent network – simultaneously separate and all together, like 7.x billion fingers on one ‘Whole’ hand. Once done, perhaps the best part will be an undeniable and perpetual sense of BELONGING – to one another everywhere, as constituent cells of a ‘Whole’ Humanity, integral to our living Earth."
Wait, why? I can't think of anything Brand has said in the last 10 years or so that most of us would find remotely controversial. I mean, it's OK not to like someone's personality, and frankly I could see the viewpoint that RB is just an attention seeker who will distract from the good things being done as a result of this conference, but did I miss something important that makes you dislike him so much?
I read his memoir. He comes across as a very dishonest creep on the make. Now he is all of a sudden a big star of the dissident left? Oh okay totes makes sense. Not a journalist not an activist but an actor who just pops up all over the place in the public eye over the past 10 years or so. No dues paid and a personal backstory that sounds very very very calculated to appeal to a lot of dudes on the left. Yes I think he is susssssss.
Ah, I was just curious. Never really associated him with "the left" in any meaningful way. Dissident in the same way as Taibbi (an actual journalist) and maybe Jimmy Dore, I guess? I could see that. Attention hog? Certainly. Thought a few of his standup routines were quite funny back in the day, but haven't kept up on him except seeing his face popping up in some places I might be prone to visit like you mention.
The government, which in essence is the territorial monopoly on coercion and violence, is the problem. Government meddling creates monopolies. And corporations do the bidding of the government to become monopolies. The boundaries between corporations and government are permeable - government bureaucrats find cushy corporate jobs and vice versa.
Reign in the government and you solve the problem.
Man, I wish I could contribute some brilliant insight here, but I'm overwhelmed by it all. I'd estimate half the available "news" content, even on off Broadway sites such as buzzfeed, are now written by intelligence simulations that have the deep biases and blindnesses of the normie fantasy world programmed in. If you could make a law that all "AI" output must be labeled as such, you couldn't enforce it without some horribly draconian intrusion into every author's writing space. Just an example of how things are getting away from us.
According to the Snowden docs, the security state apparatus was arm-twisting the manufacturers of internet infrastructure into compromising the security of their hardware designs with hidden backdoors in the name of "national security" nearly twenty years ago... meaning there is no content online at any level that is not subject to interception and control, deep web or shallow. Where have our totalitarians not infiltrated in the meantime? Like our governments, the internet belongs to wealth and power, and presents a smooth unscalable surface to the will and wishes of the demos.
I admire your thinking on the subject, and your proposals are powerfully composed. Having watched the adroit slaughter of Corbyn, where, I must ask, is the uncompromised actor in any western government who can even stand up to introduce such measures in legislature?
Before the Season of Pandemia, I felt very strongly that our best hope lay in striking the economy and the vote; simply refusing to cooperate. Gob-smacked and open-mouthed, I watched the system impose what a mounted to a strike on its own economy, celebrated with champagne fetes by those who wield our stolen wealth. Now I just plain don't know.
You know those shopping carts that have the bright plastic baby car on front, with the little steering wheel that lets Bitsy pretend she's driving the shopping cart while mommy steers from behind? My vote is that little steering wheel.
So, ultimately my question becomes, "How and where do we craft a space for the public to be a public?" because having a twenty-second human interaction with the cashier at checkout is a big win for socialization in my world these days. Using the popularity of fearless voices like yours and Taibbi's as a thumbnail guide, I'd say the existence of such courage is our best hope for awakening the public to its plight. To what effect, I scarcely know how to hope.
"... we are losing, or perhaps have already lost, our belief in our inalienable rights, and our power, and our very existence as “the people,” which is, after all, the foundation of democracy."
Might it be that part of our loss of the belief in our power is due to our "advanced" civilization telling us that what the American founders did, in equally extreme circumstances, is no longer acceptable? Yet what they were led to do has always been the way tyranny has been conquered. Of course, merely because something has always been done doesn't mean it has to done again. But the Left is already using violence to advance their evil agenda. We're constantly told that physical confrontation plays into the enemy's hands, but so does pacifism. I just don't see how talking will stop the left's attacks, on the censorship front or any other.
What government that currently exists would you trust to protect free speech? They are the ones responsible for destroying free speech RIGHT NOW.
(a) Wrong question (b) To the degree governments are censoring speech, they are doing so by getting the Internet corporations to do it for them. Taking the corporations out of the chain will force governments to do it themselves, openly, and prevent them from hiding behind Internet corporations and their "moderation policies." You can't fight an opponent if you can't see him.
So are you thinking that once the corporations are taken out of the chain that government censorship can be successfully fought on First Amendment grounds? If so, then that would be worth pursuing. Because as things stand, I think the US government is clearly trying to hide from First Amendment cases by claiming that it's private companies, not the government, that's doing the censoring. This despite the glaringly obvious facts that the government is pressuring corporations to censor by openly calling them onto the floor of Congress and surreptitiously through backdoor requests to censor various accounts as was revealed in the Twitter Files. I imagine there's more of that going on with YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms that we don't know about directly (yet). And remarkably, loads of Democrats seem thrilled to be able to say to anyone mentioning the First Amendment, "The First Amendment only applies to the government, not to private corporations." Certainly true, but not an accurate representation of what's going on in practice.
To my thinking, there's no good reason for a platform like Facebook to censor its subscribers because every one of them provides income for the company by creating data that Facebook can sell. And that is their business model. More conflict and controversy among users just generates more posts and more data: all good for Facebook. Censorship costs money to pay censors and to develop "better" algorithms for censorship (based on my experience, FB is light years away from finding one that makes sense) and winds up costing money in the loss of data from suspended or banned users.
Granted, I'm no expert. It may be that this is all accounted for by FB, etc., and these companies have figured out how to censor (no matter how crazily) and not really lose money (or at least not much). I'd say that clearly the loss has to be less than what government fines would cost, but then in our hypothetical (the one all these Democrats seem to believe is real), the government isn't doing anything to encourage or force censorship on the corporations. So there would be no fines and we are truly talking about whether loss of members - temporarily or permanently - results in lost data and thus lost revenue.
To return to the main point, if your idea is NOT to get things onto a First Amendment basis, then I can't quite see the point. I've been saying for years that the big Internet platforms function as the contemporary "public square" and thus need to be declared as public utilities. The phone companies can't refuse to serve someone as a customer because s/he uses phones to discuss unpopular political positions. The water company and the power company can't refuse to serve someone as a customer because they find that customer's speech "offensive." If these social media platforms (including YouTube) are seen properly as public utilities, then we're free of the charade of Silicon Valley executives arbitrarily censoring whomever they like without there being any recourse whatsoever for citizens. I am in favor of any scheme that effectively makes these spaces public and gives users access to First Amendment protections.
Very astutely stated!
"Taking the corporations out of the chain"
Unfortunately, I don't see how this is possible. The corporations have been thoroughly infiltrated by the pro-censorship agenda, not only ideologically but also physically, with three letter agency recruits working their anti-democratic mandates behind the scenes. Twitter is just one example. Even after the much ballyhooed takeover by free speech "absolutist" Musk, his own employees continually sabotage the publication of anti-leftist agenda material. The incestuous (and highly profitable) relationship between the regime and the large corporations who could provide a "public square" prevents any law or regulation that would endanger this relationship. Pizzo is paid, protection is provided, the status quo remains. Removing corporations from the chain is as likely as Congress voting term limits on themselves.
Exactly right!
“To the degree governments are censoring speech, they are doing so by getting the Internet corporations to do it for them.”
No longer. See the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 in Ireland. This nightmare of a bill tears the disguise off the “content moderators” and shows the world full frontal, naked Orwellian censorship demanded by the government. No longer content to play in the shadows, requesting corporations to silence citizen voices, the Irish Green Party has decided to come out of the tyranny closet and celebrate their anti-democratic nature by yet again demanding loss of freedom for a chimera of the greater good.
If I can quote a French philosopher, most people are "fighting dream figures, and their blows fall on mortal faces."
Re your ending question - I don't know - but my sense lately is many people are NOT really 'here'. Not fully, more like a sketch sort of in hiding,I wonder if they are waiting something out - too overwhelmed and scared to engage.
Prior to Covid I projected a lot of qualities on people, that I think now weren't ever true. I really didn't expect so many humans to cower and go along, let alone get nasty on those of us who didn't. Most of the real cowards I know most definitely don't know that about themselves. Hypocrites - same.
It's going to be a far smaller number of people (who are really HERE) that will drive the next version of the world.
Oh and you can watch cat videos AND care.
Prior to Covid and the reaction to George Floyd, I wasn’t really “here.” As I watched events unfold i didn’t recognize my country. I have educated myself and am now paying attention. It’s not good news.
You can, but it's creepy. Just kidding.
I really appreciate your articulation of this, especially the second paragraph. I haven't been able to write that out without going bitter and angry, thanks.
Very insightfully stated! Those "qualities" we expected to be there in those we most trusted and believed in were, in many cases, not only absent, but, as you correctly point out, totally inverted along with supposedly cherished values which we came to mistakenly believe were still intact; and this cowardice and hypocrisy were evident everywhere in institutions and individuals alike and on both national and global scales, as they persist to this day; yes, there were rare exceptions who were not ready to relinquish their sovereignty and personal souls (identity), but as you perceptively state in your summation, it will be a small number of survivors who will save humanity from its inhumanity!
Great piece! Seems like the root of the problem is the Global Corps are becoming more and more .... The Government.... But of course unelected and unrestricted.....as Dr Joseph Farrell has said the Globocorps should be required to have the USA Constitution as part of their incorporation articles in the USA....
Yes, I think some sort of legislation along the lines that you proposed would be very helpful. However, and I hate to be a downer, but at least here, in the United States, such legislation would never get through Congress. Of course, the reason is that our corporations effectively own our members of Congress. any law maker that would propose such an act would immediately be cut off at the knees by having his or her funding pulled by most, if not all corporate donors. Here in America, it is well known and understood that the candidate with the most money almost always wins.
You have a firm understanding of how the sausage is made, here in D.C.
I think the points you make, make good sense.
I can't help but feel it's all so deeply fucked, that what has to happen, has to be exposed, is what underpins corp/government abuses. Not saying it's not worth discussing, that's all in the right direction. I guess I'm feeling like something deeper is going to have to give, and once that does, some semblance of sanity returns. Many of us have to be willing to just walk away from what they are offering us. If they don't get our attention, they become irrelevant. We need that.
Thanks.
Yes, I agree. The day we all overcome our addiction to the internet is the day they lose their power
Yet how else do we get information? Sure we can go live in a cave and be “happy”. Not sure that’s winning.
I know my lovely, it's the modern conundrum! Getting information is a huge thing. I seek information on composting toilets and keeping chickens and the internet is very useful. But I'd probably get there in the end. Shit decomposes, I don't need an information source to tell me that. Bung in some substrate and let the worms do their thing. Can I grow veg in the resulting organic humus? Yes, my nose and my eyes and my gut affirm that. Feed the chickens, water them, watch them, love them. I will see when something isn't right. Simple really, the eggs speak for themselves. Plus I know plenty of people who have lots of great info on keeping chickens and decomposing things. Reading a government website for info on covid though is not useful. Or correct information. It's information with an agenda. Same with all mainstream media outlets. I'm not sure that leaving the internet means we have to live in caves. I don't remember us all doing that in pre-internet times - I remember living in houses with amenities like running water and central heating and so on. I suppose in order for someone to 'lose' another has to 'win' but is that really true? I don't think about winning as a position I can achieve in this case. Each day I wake up is a win of sorts for me. I don't think anyone has to lose anything in order for that to happen. Waking up in a cave, perhaps with other people around, a fire on, the billy steaming for a brew, sounds pretty good to me but I get your point! Surely being happy IS a win? I wish you happiness. :-)
And I wish you the same. ❤️😎 I must maintain that the regulation of information and who wields the power to disseminate it is some Gutenberg level stuff. Yes, people existed and lived simple, if not shorter lives, and perhaps happier ones. We can’t know. But the egomaniacal dictators, and that’s truly what they are, who edict what is truth are going to be the end of our free world. I’m not quite ready to go quietly into that night.
Well said, once again!
I just don't see that there are any politicians in a position of power that could be trusted to enact laws like the ones you are proposing. Our political system is so corrupt that it is impossible to get elected if you are a person of integrity.
Sometimes you fight a battle because you believe you can win the battle. Other times, you fight a battle knowing that you will lose, in order to get more people to fight the next battle with you.
...and often you fight for what is right because it is right, and surrender is not in you.
I think about where you were a few years ago, in terms of notoriety and (as I surmise) income and support, and seeing bravery win through this far is very encouraging.
Subscription, like debt, is against my principles, but I will support your defense if you call for it.
Indeed, and spot 🎯 on.
It can't be fixed in The USA by voting since computers got involved to create dishonest elections.
It would take a Meteor to fix DC.
LOLz.
Hurrah, meteor❗️
I think your basic premise is incorrect.
Everything SHOULD be privately owned. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
The problem here is that we are not headed to a world of private property but to a fascist world. I’ve been writing about police state America for decades.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J39NE4S
It’s not really private property if the State tells you what you may or may not do with it. That’s the essence of fascism/corporativism. Having titular deed to property doesn’t mean much when the State is dictating your actions or you use the State to steal from others.
As for social media, maybe the best option is for paid access but with liability in place, a la, books and newspapers.
Short of that, 230 needs to be revised so social media don’t get to keep their cake and eat it, too. I’ve written a number of times about this issue. Any company enjoying 230 protection should act as a common carrier a la phone companies, that is, a social media company provides a service but does not monitor, censor, ban, etc. its users, anymore than phone companies do. If illegal behavior is suspected, the company could report it to the police, but it is not under its purview to BE the police.
As long as users are provided reliable tools to ban/restrict/silence unwanted content, that should suffice. People need to curate their own content, not have some biased algorithm or human do it for them.
https://russellmadden.substack.com/p/social-media-madden-dorsey-and-trump
Your premises seek to carve out exceptions to property rights, i.e., freedom. But such bad ideas are how we got in this mess in the first place. You’re attempting to treat the symptoms rather than get to the root cause of the disease.
Your approach--however well intentioned--is doomed to fail.
https://russellmadden.substack.com/p/freedom-except-for?s=w
I believed this for a long time. I don't know anymore. I just really question what prevents monopolization, corruption, etc., while conceding entirely that governments are not only failing to prevent it but actively encouraging it. Much like the U.S. Constitution, wouldn't we need some semblance of a moral society for "privatize everything" to work?
As you say, we need a moral society for freedom to exist. History over the past century has demonstrated what happens when, for example, the U.S. tries to "impose" our idea of a proper government etc. on a culture that has no history or respect for liberty or rights. The attempt is not going to be successful.
A document like the Constitution is not going to save us. But we have to identify the proper principles for freedom first if we are ever going to recognize when we are getting closer to those ideals or drifting farther from them.
https://russellmadden.substack.com/p/the-constitution-versus-the-people?s=w
As I wrote in the original post, our government and, worse, the citizens of this country have not had respect for property rights for a long time. We have literal fascism: surface acknowledgement of property rights that masks gross and wide-spread VIOLATIONS of property rights. That is what fascism is: government dictating to private individuals and to businesses what they may or may not due with their own property. And it is the entity that CONTROLS X or Y or Z that, in reality, actually "owns" that property.
https://russellmadden.substack.com/p/property-rights?s=w
Nothing external to PEOPLE "prevents" violations of our rights and freedom. Only PEOPLE can do that. Liberty doesn't enforce itself. We have lost the culture and political wars a long time ago because, as I wrote, people constantly carved out little "exceptions" to rights and liberty because they wanted something via coercion rather than persuasion. Cut away enough of the foundation of anything, especially something as fragile as freedom, and sooner or later that structure will collapse. That is precisely where we are now.
But I would encourage you not to give up on your belief in one of the core principles underlying freedom. Things are bad enough as they are. Imagine how much worse they would be where there is NO respect for property rights or freedom. The U.S.S.R. comes to mind...
Appreciate your thoughts and agree wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, no chance we or our children will see Ancapistan in our lifetimes. As it is, only a tiny fraction of the population has any idea how bad things really are, nowhere close to the numbers required to affect meaningful change. Black pilled, sure, but when everything's an op, it's hard to be optimistic.
Yeah. It usually falls to a small percentage of people to effect change. For example, what was it? Only 20% of colonists supported independence from Britain? And the enemies of freedom have been boiling the frogs for over a century. Positive turnaround won’t happen overnight, and there’s no one to “save” us except for ourselves.
I think I can empathize with folks in the ‘30s when FDR was at full force and twisting the country and liberty into knots. Crap we’re still wrestling with. The remnants of the Enlightenment folks must have felt a similar hopelessness then as I do now sometimes.
I try to remind myself of positives such as over half of states passing Constitutional carry, a switch I never thought I’d witness. And the abrupt collapse of the Soviet Union after 80 years.
But, like you, I think I won’t live to see any real sea change. But who knows? The more kids who escape government-run propaganda mills known as schools, the greater the odds of them seeing and acting in accordance with the truth. A handful showing what is possible can go a long way.
We can’t alter the world, but maybe we can affect a few people around us, and they more folks, and so on. We definitely have to play the long game while seizing whatever short term wins we can.
Until then, I guess we’re stuck with the ol’ Chinese curse about living in “interesting times”...
😏
Are you in favor of abolishing the First Amendment? Because it only applies in either public spaces or your own privately owned space, so that would mean you don’t think anyone deserves free speech who can’t afford it, with which I would loudly quarrel.
“Freedom of speech means freedom from interference, suppression or punitive action by the government—and nothing else. It does not mean the right to demand the financial support or the material means to express your views at the expense of other men who may not wish to support you. Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to agree, not to listen and not to support one’s own antagonists. A ‘right’ does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one’s own effort. Private citizens cannot use physical force or coercion; they cannot censor or suppress anyone’s views or publications. Only the government can do so. And censorship is a concept that pertains only to governmental action.”
The Ayn Rand Column, “The Fascist New Frontier”
###
Without property rights, no other rights can be exercised.
Trying to fight fascism by appealing to fascism is evil, not to mention self-contradictory.
You don’t own other people or THEIR property. You are not their master. They are not your slaves.
Thinking it’s okay to violate the freedom of others by having government do your dirty work because YOU want access to what they have created is not justified just because it’s your ox being gored.
Be as loud as you want. You’re still wrong.
Also: stellar use of a Straw Man Logical Fallacy.
I’m making a fairly specific argument about free speech and if you keep grandstanding I will rapidly lose interest.
That’s a good idea.
Ad hominem win! Or is that “appeal to authority,” as in, you?
So, you are good with no publicly owned spaces for communication where free speech would apply. This would be in the US. Laws vary elsewhere.
Thanks for making that clear via omission. I hope you have a great day.
So you don’t think it matters whether publicly owned spaces should exist. Please be clear.
I was entirely clear in my first comment.
Just discovered your work through this post, but I can't locate any to buy excepting Kindle. No thanks.
https://www.lulu.com/search?page=1&q=Russell+madden&pageSize=10&adult_audience_rating=00
These are also available in softcover on Amazon
Of course, the 'joke' will be that it gets canceled (censored) as happened to another gathering at Central Hall, 'Westminster', quite recently actually, on Palestine and Apartheid Israel. Free speech? Have we ever had free speech? Before speech got digitised, the state and big business controlled all the mainstream media and where necessary, censored and when that didn't work, self-censorship always kicked in, he who pays the piper etc. For a brief period, before the powers that be realised just how powerful digital, independent media was, we did have free speech, proving just how dangerous free speech really is, so it's no wonder what was free no longer is, free.
The alternative media is our final line of defense against total narrative control.
The problem of course, as always, is that it has be seen. Traditional, independent media, effectively confined to print, unless banned, could at least be accessed but again, it's down to access and an audience. Digital media has the potential to be accessed by millions, hence the total censorship and it's already here and it doesn't require banning, if you don't know it's there, there's no need to ban it and Google have achieved that objective by rigging the major 'search' engine, so unless you already know where it is, the odds are, you'll never find it because you don't know it exists in the first place! It proves that digital media really is dangerous!
In my experience, Google helped me find alternative media sites. I don't believe it's possible for them to stop anyone who is willing to put a little time and effort to finding contrary perspectives.
I think you'll find that if you look for any really independent media site, eg Moon of Alabama, that Google have rigged the engine so that, you'll find 'About MoA' but that'll be it. I've checked a number of other indie sites and it's the same. So 'technically', the site is not banned but if I do a search for Donbas for example, I'll only 'find' MSM sources. Try it yourself.
First result is the website:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=moon+of+alabama
My location: Canada
Browser: Firefox
I Googled it and found it immediately: www.moonofalabama.org
(I live in Hungary. Maybe that explains it.)
I never said you couldn't find it, what I did say, was you'll only find the 'About MoA' page.
I'm so confused. Did you mean apartheid Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, etc. etc. etc. All of the Muslim countries that murdered and expelled their Jews? Because in Israel Muslims live, work, and vote along side their Jewish brothers and sisters.
Congratulations! You just created the Federal Bureau of Anti-Deboosting, Counter Visibility Filtering, and Un-Shadow Banning Rights Compliance and Enforcement. They will require at least 5,000 members, 800 of which will be armed (why... who cares!)
In five years it will be renamed the Equitable Views Bureau and the enabling law will be reinterpreted to mean that the Bureau can assign mandatory viewing to ensure that all eligible and approved tweets get their mandatory minimum views based on ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, insect consumption level, and other qualifying hallmarks of social justice.
In ten years, Bureau members will kick down your doors if you fall behind in your mandatory view quotas.
Sorry CJ, asking the ‘wolf’ to protect you from the ‘snakes’ won’t work. The govt doesn’t really do anything well and it will likely be frustrating (or painful) if you get too close. Better idea is to go straight to the people, to suggest that they don’t need Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Toc and instant GPS on their phone to find the coffee shop. Start a billboard campaign which says: “Had enough? Cancel them”. Then list 3-4 social media sites and (importantly) how to turn off location tracking and routinely put their phone into aeroplane mode.
Always a fan of your work CJ - resonates with my outlook and general disposition quite well. Thanks for sticking with it. Simply maintaining a practice of regularly putting the word out for those who will hear it is the most important thing that folks like you, Matt, Michael, Russell, and so many others continue to do.
From this chair, the power mad corporations already own the governments who legislate - worldwide. So much so that actual practicing 'democracy' went out the window at the turn of the century. Thanks to modern technology, their control of information (5th Gen Warfare) is so comprehensive that they literally now define and control the worldview of the masses, and continue to tighten the noose on honest information w/censorship and bald faced lies. Matt & Michael's congressional testimony insanity is case in point. It's a formidable juggernaut that will not stop until it has total control of everything and everyone. Sick!!
Our recourse is to NEVER let up in sharing honest information however we can, as you have astutely noted in past posts. Also parallel communities, living as far away from their control systems as we can - a challenge given everyone's hypnotic addiction to the very devices that brainwash their minds, etc. The less we consciously participate in their plan, the better off we are. Sadly most people don't even know what we're talking about, the brainwash is so effective. Until we can recognize en masse what is being done to us and who is doing it, while renouncing petty partisan differences, we've lost. Again - never give up spreading the word .....but hey! - "LOOK! OVER HERE!! TRUMP!!!" - a ruse that has served power elites through all of history.
IMO - the true solution is relatively transcendent - humanity is consuming itself before its own deluded denying eyes - universally! Any plan short of truly organic evolution is no solution at all. To wit:
"The egocentricity experiment with human Design has run its course – its climax is our confluence of crises. Virtually all system solutions and ascension paths proposed by even the most enlightened among us fail to breach egocentricity’s stronghold. The forecast for our imminent extinction is well founded and arguably certain unless we become something new. Metamorphosis is appropriate terminology here. At this Moment in history, ages of humanity can be metaphorically distilled into a litter of newborn kittens, blind from birth, whose eyes are now poised to open onto their world for the very first time….are we ready? This is our evolution.
Relieving humanity of egocentricity’s bondage by consensus is impossible. Political proposals are hopelessly impotent. It is now imperative that we develop metamorphic catalysts immediately – means and methods to efficiently transmute egocentricity and profoundly evoke our innate senses of interdependence and compassion."
https://bohobeau.net/2016/07/24/care-to-evolve/
Keep it coming CJ!!! peace love
What does this mean in practice? Presumably you don't believe Christianity might help the situation?
hey MUNCHY - thanks for engaging!
No - our predicament is unprecedented and universal - any effective solution must transcend any and every brand of belief to have any chance at all of success. Clues about "what this means in practice can be reviewed in the post below, that concludes:
"Our challenge is to engineer the Moonshot of an evolutionary path wherein we permanently catalyze our inherent human experience into a broader and deeper perceptual dimension – a transition that reifies a heart-centered, personal/collective human experience, as consciously interconnected individuals integrated within a coherent network – simultaneously separate and all together, like 7.x billion fingers on one ‘Whole’ hand. Once done, perhaps the best part will be an undeniable and perpetual sense of BELONGING – to one another everywhere, as constituent cells of a ‘Whole’ Humanity, integral to our living Earth."
https://bohobeau.net/2021/01/29/woke-world/
Good luck with that! Maybe at a football match when all the crowd is singing in unison you will get such an energy going. But while we are all living separate lives with the "news" being fed into our brains, we won't get where you propose. There may be hope with those who don't engage with the system currently so look outside the educated, middle classes to start the revolution.
True that - as noted in the original comment "[solution] by consensus is impossible. Political proposals are hopelessly impotent." It has to be done for us - an as yet undiscovered, undeveloped process that catalyzes our evolution forward to a new paradigm where we all discover the heart we each have, and the connection it reveals to everyone else - fantasy to the ill egocentric beings we are now, but I can see it as clearly as this page before us now.
“It should get our attention that every person or group of people that have discovered what the Native Americans call wetiko disease unanimously consider it to be the most important topic to understand in our world today. Wetiko psychosis—which can be conceived of as being a mind-virus—is at the very root of every crisis we face. Wetiko is the over-arching umbrella that contains, subsumes, informs and underlies every form of self-and-other destruction that our species is acting out in our world on every scale. If we don’t come to terms with what wetiko is revealing to us, however, nothing else will matter, as there will be no more human species.”
https://newagora.ca/totalitarian-psychosis-in-our-world-and-our-minds/
Are you talking about a metamorphosis that is embodied or some transhumanist idea of a shared, integrated, psychic network? Also, how is this hive mind the luminous version & not mass formation delusion, contagion, etc?
Thanks for engaging Claudia - great Questions! I think you will find both answered adequately in the following excerpts from another post on the same blog:
"Today’s Transhumanists rush to establish a race of biodigital Frankensteins. Hypnotized by wet dreams of enhancement, they attach wings to a caterpillar and call it a butterfly, ignore the pulse of their own breathing beings hidden behind a heartless view of the Universe, and charge headlong in passionate pursuit of some contrived delusional notion of ‘progress’."
"Our challenge is to engineer the Moonshot of an evolutionary path wherein we permanently catalyze our inherent human experience into a broader and deeper perceptual dimension – a transition that reifies a heart-centered, personal/collective human experience, as consciously interconnected individuals integrated within a coherent network – simultaneously separate and all together, like 7.x billion fingers on one ‘Whole’ hand. Once done, perhaps the best part will be an undeniable and perpetual sense of BELONGING – to one another everywhere, as constituent cells of a ‘Whole’ Humanity, integral to our living Earth."
https://bohobeau.net/2021/01/29/woke-world/
Me no trusty Rusty.
This event would be a lot more promising if Russell Brand's smarmy mug wasn't at the center of it.
Wait, why? I can't think of anything Brand has said in the last 10 years or so that most of us would find remotely controversial. I mean, it's OK not to like someone's personality, and frankly I could see the viewpoint that RB is just an attention seeker who will distract from the good things being done as a result of this conference, but did I miss something important that makes you dislike him so much?
I read his memoir. He comes across as a very dishonest creep on the make. Now he is all of a sudden a big star of the dissident left? Oh okay totes makes sense. Not a journalist not an activist but an actor who just pops up all over the place in the public eye over the past 10 years or so. No dues paid and a personal backstory that sounds very very very calculated to appeal to a lot of dudes on the left. Yes I think he is susssssss.
Ah, I was just curious. Never really associated him with "the left" in any meaningful way. Dissident in the same way as Taibbi (an actual journalist) and maybe Jimmy Dore, I guess? I could see that. Attention hog? Certainly. Thought a few of his standup routines were quite funny back in the day, but haven't kept up on him except seeing his face popping up in some places I might be prone to visit like you mention.
Russell Brand yesterday speaking to Redacted. https://youtu.be/4GB_DDvCgys
I’m not ok with restrictions on speech being the purview of governments. Most of the filtering done by corporations is at the behest of the government
Corporations have become the government.
“Catch-22 says they have the right to do anything we can't stop them from doing.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22
There seem to be fewer and fewer things we can stop them from doing.
The government, which in essence is the territorial monopoly on coercion and violence, is the problem. Government meddling creates monopolies. And corporations do the bidding of the government to become monopolies. The boundaries between corporations and government are permeable - government bureaucrats find cushy corporate jobs and vice versa.
Reign in the government and you solve the problem.
Man, I wish I could contribute some brilliant insight here, but I'm overwhelmed by it all. I'd estimate half the available "news" content, even on off Broadway sites such as buzzfeed, are now written by intelligence simulations that have the deep biases and blindnesses of the normie fantasy world programmed in. If you could make a law that all "AI" output must be labeled as such, you couldn't enforce it without some horribly draconian intrusion into every author's writing space. Just an example of how things are getting away from us.
According to the Snowden docs, the security state apparatus was arm-twisting the manufacturers of internet infrastructure into compromising the security of their hardware designs with hidden backdoors in the name of "national security" nearly twenty years ago... meaning there is no content online at any level that is not subject to interception and control, deep web or shallow. Where have our totalitarians not infiltrated in the meantime? Like our governments, the internet belongs to wealth and power, and presents a smooth unscalable surface to the will and wishes of the demos.
I admire your thinking on the subject, and your proposals are powerfully composed. Having watched the adroit slaughter of Corbyn, where, I must ask, is the uncompromised actor in any western government who can even stand up to introduce such measures in legislature?
Before the Season of Pandemia, I felt very strongly that our best hope lay in striking the economy and the vote; simply refusing to cooperate. Gob-smacked and open-mouthed, I watched the system impose what a mounted to a strike on its own economy, celebrated with champagne fetes by those who wield our stolen wealth. Now I just plain don't know.
You know those shopping carts that have the bright plastic baby car on front, with the little steering wheel that lets Bitsy pretend she's driving the shopping cart while mommy steers from behind? My vote is that little steering wheel.
So, ultimately my question becomes, "How and where do we craft a space for the public to be a public?" because having a twenty-second human interaction with the cashier at checkout is a big win for socialization in my world these days. Using the popularity of fearless voices like yours and Taibbi's as a thumbnail guide, I'd say the existence of such courage is our best hope for awakening the public to its plight. To what effect, I scarcely know how to hope.
"... we are losing, or perhaps have already lost, our belief in our inalienable rights, and our power, and our very existence as “the people,” which is, after all, the foundation of democracy."
Might it be that part of our loss of the belief in our power is due to our "advanced" civilization telling us that what the American founders did, in equally extreme circumstances, is no longer acceptable? Yet what they were led to do has always been the way tyranny has been conquered. Of course, merely because something has always been done doesn't mean it has to done again. But the Left is already using violence to advance their evil agenda. We're constantly told that physical confrontation plays into the enemy's hands, but so does pacifism. I just don't see how talking will stop the left's attacks, on the censorship front or any other.