A few days ago, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that Twitter under his leadership had “made a bunch of mistakes” with respect to moderation decisions relating to the 2020 election, “especially around the New York Post and the Hunter Biden laptop story
Give up your free speech at your peril. Once they are able to silence you, the game is over. The loss of all of your other freedoms will follow immediately after. Anyone that advocates to censor you, or to unmask your anonymity is your adversary. Treat them like one - no matter what else they say.
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Why is it so vital and necessary for the combined monolithic apparatus of government, corporations, and NGOs, to brute force censor everyone while decimating the careers and reputations of the dissenters? Here is why:
The reason the First Amendment is prime directive order 1, is because it is the most important freedom we have for the same reason it is the first target an adversary subverts, disrupts, and destroys during a crime, a war, or a takeover—preventing a target from assembling, communicating, and organizing a response to an assault grants an enormous advantage to the aggressors.
This is and has been occurring all across the globe since the minute this COVID-19 fraud was propagated to every corner of the earth.
The Second Amendment is second because it is the remedy for anyone trying to subvert the First.
The fog of this war is purposefully thick—a massive labyrinth filled with wrong turns, dead ends, and long, interesting paths to nowhere—relentless discombobulation are important tentpoles of demoralization and destabilization.
Jun 16, 2023·edited Jun 16, 2023Liked by eugyppius
America has the First and Second Amendments, Europe doesn’t. America has Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, Europe doesn’t. America has a conservative Supreme Court, Europe has leftist EU commissars. Substack is a beacon of free speech globally, hope it stays that way.
This is nothing but a tactical retreat and is mostly driven by a single event- Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter and his subsequent release of the details of the censorship in that company. The Left in the US is still trying to figure out how to undo the effects of that one event and I expect that, by the Summer of next year, the censors everywhere in the informal sphere of social media will once again be working to silence the hoi polloi like me.
There is no need to censor so long as we have "election month" that proceeds until an arbitrary number of ballots are collected. The regime has all future contests in the bag. Trump was a dead cat bounce of America's spirit of '76 anti-authority bent, and they will not let it happen again. Something cataclysmic will have to happen to disentangle Permanent Washington from the levers of power. "The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead." Interesting times are ahead (or not, and we have nothing to look forward to but more iPhones and Superbowls)
"Among these steps were broad changes in the way American presidential elections are conducted, assisted by the pretence of the pandemic."
Thanks for this. I sometimes feel alone - even among my own circle of critical thinkers - in dissecting the results of the 2020 election and being uncertain what the true result of that election would have been, absent the wholesale ballot manipulation that obviously took place. Like under Covid, the consensus is so strong that Biden won, yet the evidence is so abundant that he probably didn't, that I begin to question my own sanity.
Jun 16, 2023·edited Jun 16, 2023Liked by eugyppius
Trump’s stunning ascendancy to the presidency would not have been possible without the tectonic collision between a public empowered by digital platforms and the elites who control our ruling institutions. By 2015, social media had transformed the public from a passive audience into a hyperactive one whose numbers are unprecedented in human experience, and which has managed to bleed institutions of authority.
The internet’s democratization of information forever changed society’s traditional power dynamics. Whereas before the digital big bang a scarcity of sources in possession of a scarcity of information endowed those sources with authority and allowed dominant media to operate within a system of centralized, one-way news dissemination — meaning to consume the news was to ingest a diet of information pre-selected by the elites — after the internet, information was no longer limited to a newspaper and the 10 o’clock roundup, nor was it dispensed one to many via a rigid, top down pyramid. Media luminaries and government officials alike had always played an intermediary role in the way citizens received and processed information, but the internet’s sheer speed and scope completely upended the concept of authority as a belief system anointing the chosen few.
A new broadcast news outfit came to the UK, GBNews which set out to be unbiased, albeit Right leaning, and would not simply toe the Government line. It has been censured by Ofcom the (neutral Ha!) Govt appointed regulator for such horrors as reporting on mRNA deaths and injuries - including interviewing bereaved widows of young husbands... misinformation, and reports on dissent and challenge to the climate change narrative... misinformation. It challenges the whole transgender/Pride nonsense, and reports on the illegals immigrant scandal. Apart from Govt censure, some of its advertisers have pulled out due to its racist/homophobic/transphobia/antivaxxer/climate denier content. As a consequence it is not as aggressive as at its start-up, but still provides a reasonable antidote to the BBC and its stable mates. Perhaps the only way is for a subscription only News service, but maybe not a financially viable possibility.
The Yanks will never give up. Never have we been assaulted by the elites, media and corrupt government officials as we are now. More and more people are waking up...finally. It's the last dying gasp of these oligarchs. We shall never surrender. Jack Dorsey, Zuckerberg, etc. are a plague and no critical thinker listens to them. Long live Tucker...150 million viewers.
Dorsey's racket frequently includes these general expressions of remorse without the necessary elements for a proper apology. Off the top of my head, those elements include (1) specific acknowledgment of the wrong, (2) articulation of the injury caused by the wrongdoing, (3) identification of people injured by the conduct, (4) expression of intent to not cause similar injury in the future, and (5) demonstrated action taken to rectify the wrongdoing or injury.
Dorsey likes to talk like Harry Truman about how the "buck stops here" with generalized sentiments that on their face seem sort of like an apology followed by repetition of the wrong.
“ The formal sphere consists of the major press and broadcast media, where content is heavily influenced by corporate advertising;”. The reason why the BBC remains a Public Corporation funded by (compulsory) annual licence fee (currently £159) is allegedly to free its News output and programming of any external influence. This leaves its News output and programming subject to internal influence, with even BBC management recently admitting is Left wing and heavily biased.
These people are not stupid and if they are relaxing the censorship, that means they are comfortable in thinking that the election fortification fix is already in place. First, you can be sure that they have corrected the mistakes made in the 2020 election and have figured out how to make the cheating much less obvious. Second, they have successfully deleted Tucker Carlson's voice and in the process, have intimidated the other TV talking heads into being a little more careful about what they say. Third, they have inflicted (they believe) sufficiently mortal wounds to President Trump's chances of re-election.
However, while not stupid, I do believe they live in a well-insulated echo-chamber of their own egos. And as echo-chambers are closed loops, I think they have underestimated the potential that resides in all the people in the US who are sick to death of all the wokedness, all the transgenderedness, all the DIEedness, all the Climate Changedness, and especially of the DOJ's overt and increasingly obvious politically driven prosecution of those they don't like while completely ignoring the crimes of those they do like. I believe that the fear that resulted from witnessing the punishments of those who spoke out during the coronadoom travesty caused much self-censorship. I'm hoping there is a resultant unintended consequence of opening the eyes of a large number of people who have learned the lesson of keeping their thoughts to themselves, but know they can vote their thoughts.
I wonder what can be done on a personal level, to encourage journalists to engage with dissenting opinions and explore ideas they are covering neutrally. Even if we manage to halt the govt/tech sponsored censorship machine, what can we do to bring back civil discussion without reflexively blocking anyone that disagrees with you?
To Kathleen, who have I have followed for years, I penned a polite but firm critique of the article and entire premise she is proposing - even opening up on a personal level and sharing that my own wife was just diagnosed with terminal cancer, so I can appreciate the need of these people to feel safe.
Of course, this nets an instant block and she continues to shield her mind from ideas that deviate from her beliefs.
I don't expect her to listen to some random no-follower-twitter user, but it is reflective of a larger societal problem - even if we weren't asking Big Tech or our Govt to block ideas we don't like, we seem to have a large segment of society unwilling to engage to engage in discourse. Perhaps it was always like this, we just didn't have block buttons in our life before?
Jun 16, 2023·edited Jun 16, 2023Liked by eugyppius
I think this is perceptive. The Establishment has good reason to be confident, after their successful election thefts, censorship regimes, and pointless lockdowns and other restrictions have gone unpunished and even widely unacknowledged.
Perhaps they will allow us a little freedom. But I expect it will be very little, and temporary. After that, we will all be fully locked down and eating bugs.
Jun 16, 2023·edited Jun 16, 2023Liked by eugyppius
I love the analysis here: Formal, accepted discourse, as moderated by the elite gatekeepers, vs. informal, mostly unacceptable discourse, as occurs among the peasants, outside the gates of the castle. The rise of the internet gave the latter wings, and the arrogant establishment didn't see it coming until it was too late.
I agree that the gatekeepers have been extending their walls outward to include social media and, if possible, every realm of internet content. In fact, I'd say that in the US this has been going on ever since 2009, when President Obama took office, and began a series of meetings with big tech to establish an initiative to put the brakes on the dangerously fermenting freedom of expression the internet. We saw all of it go into overdrive in the waning days before Trumps historic win in 2016, and it hasn't let up until this year. The question is why?
You say it's confidence, but in my opinion, it's exactly the opposite. The censors have been exposed and their narratives discredited. While they've been able to shelter the public from this so far, the dam may be breaking. They're no longer so arrogant as to be sure they can continue to hide the truth, or even keep uninterrupted power, unless and until they develop a better plan. I look at their recent 'relaxation' of control and censorship as a tactical retreat, intended to limit short-term damage while the elites figure out how to preserve their power long enough to out-last Donald Trump and the challenge from the peasants.
Give up your free speech at your peril. Once they are able to silence you, the game is over. The loss of all of your other freedoms will follow immediately after. Anyone that advocates to censor you, or to unmask your anonymity is your adversary. Treat them like one - no matter what else they say.
---
Why is it so vital and necessary for the combined monolithic apparatus of government, corporations, and NGOs, to brute force censor everyone while decimating the careers and reputations of the dissenters? Here is why:
The reason the First Amendment is prime directive order 1, is because it is the most important freedom we have for the same reason it is the first target an adversary subverts, disrupts, and destroys during a crime, a war, or a takeover—preventing a target from assembling, communicating, and organizing a response to an assault grants an enormous advantage to the aggressors.
This is and has been occurring all across the globe since the minute this COVID-19 fraud was propagated to every corner of the earth.
The Second Amendment is second because it is the remedy for anyone trying to subvert the First.
The fog of this war is purposefully thick—a massive labyrinth filled with wrong turns, dead ends, and long, interesting paths to nowhere—relentless discombobulation are important tentpoles of demoralization and destabilization.
America has the First and Second Amendments, Europe doesn’t. America has Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, Europe doesn’t. America has a conservative Supreme Court, Europe has leftist EU commissars. Substack is a beacon of free speech globally, hope it stays that way.
Let’s keep pushing back against the GAE Woke Jihad together: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-wage-a-progressive-jihad
This is nothing but a tactical retreat and is mostly driven by a single event- Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter and his subsequent release of the details of the censorship in that company. The Left in the US is still trying to figure out how to undo the effects of that one event and I expect that, by the Summer of next year, the censors everywhere in the informal sphere of social media will once again be working to silence the hoi polloi like me.
There is no need to censor so long as we have "election month" that proceeds until an arbitrary number of ballots are collected. The regime has all future contests in the bag. Trump was a dead cat bounce of America's spirit of '76 anti-authority bent, and they will not let it happen again. Something cataclysmic will have to happen to disentangle Permanent Washington from the levers of power. "The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead." Interesting times are ahead (or not, and we have nothing to look forward to but more iPhones and Superbowls)
"Among these steps were broad changes in the way American presidential elections are conducted, assisted by the pretence of the pandemic."
Thanks for this. I sometimes feel alone - even among my own circle of critical thinkers - in dissecting the results of the 2020 election and being uncertain what the true result of that election would have been, absent the wholesale ballot manipulation that obviously took place. Like under Covid, the consensus is so strong that Biden won, yet the evidence is so abundant that he probably didn't, that I begin to question my own sanity.
What Jack describes is election interference.
The persecution of Trump has only made him stronger
Trump’s stunning ascendancy to the presidency would not have been possible without the tectonic collision between a public empowered by digital platforms and the elites who control our ruling institutions. By 2015, social media had transformed the public from a passive audience into a hyperactive one whose numbers are unprecedented in human experience, and which has managed to bleed institutions of authority.
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/reflecting-on-trumps-rise
The internet’s democratization of information forever changed society’s traditional power dynamics. Whereas before the digital big bang a scarcity of sources in possession of a scarcity of information endowed those sources with authority and allowed dominant media to operate within a system of centralized, one-way news dissemination — meaning to consume the news was to ingest a diet of information pre-selected by the elites — after the internet, information was no longer limited to a newspaper and the 10 o’clock roundup, nor was it dispensed one to many via a rigid, top down pyramid. Media luminaries and government officials alike had always played an intermediary role in the way citizens received and processed information, but the internet’s sheer speed and scope completely upended the concept of authority as a belief system anointing the chosen few.
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/the-digital-big-bang-309
A new broadcast news outfit came to the UK, GBNews which set out to be unbiased, albeit Right leaning, and would not simply toe the Government line. It has been censured by Ofcom the (neutral Ha!) Govt appointed regulator for such horrors as reporting on mRNA deaths and injuries - including interviewing bereaved widows of young husbands... misinformation, and reports on dissent and challenge to the climate change narrative... misinformation. It challenges the whole transgender/Pride nonsense, and reports on the illegals immigrant scandal. Apart from Govt censure, some of its advertisers have pulled out due to its racist/homophobic/transphobia/antivaxxer/climate denier content. As a consequence it is not as aggressive as at its start-up, but still provides a reasonable antidote to the BBC and its stable mates. Perhaps the only way is for a subscription only News service, but maybe not a financially viable possibility.
The Yanks will never give up. Never have we been assaulted by the elites, media and corrupt government officials as we are now. More and more people are waking up...finally. It's the last dying gasp of these oligarchs. We shall never surrender. Jack Dorsey, Zuckerberg, etc. are a plague and no critical thinker listens to them. Long live Tucker...150 million viewers.
Dorsey's racket frequently includes these general expressions of remorse without the necessary elements for a proper apology. Off the top of my head, those elements include (1) specific acknowledgment of the wrong, (2) articulation of the injury caused by the wrongdoing, (3) identification of people injured by the conduct, (4) expression of intent to not cause similar injury in the future, and (5) demonstrated action taken to rectify the wrongdoing or injury.
Dorsey likes to talk like Harry Truman about how the "buck stops here" with generalized sentiments that on their face seem sort of like an apology followed by repetition of the wrong.
“ The formal sphere consists of the major press and broadcast media, where content is heavily influenced by corporate advertising;”. The reason why the BBC remains a Public Corporation funded by (compulsory) annual licence fee (currently £159) is allegedly to free its News output and programming of any external influence. This leaves its News output and programming subject to internal influence, with even BBC management recently admitting is Left wing and heavily biased.
You are correct.
These people are not stupid and if they are relaxing the censorship, that means they are comfortable in thinking that the election fortification fix is already in place. First, you can be sure that they have corrected the mistakes made in the 2020 election and have figured out how to make the cheating much less obvious. Second, they have successfully deleted Tucker Carlson's voice and in the process, have intimidated the other TV talking heads into being a little more careful about what they say. Third, they have inflicted (they believe) sufficiently mortal wounds to President Trump's chances of re-election.
However, while not stupid, I do believe they live in a well-insulated echo-chamber of their own egos. And as echo-chambers are closed loops, I think they have underestimated the potential that resides in all the people in the US who are sick to death of all the wokedness, all the transgenderedness, all the DIEedness, all the Climate Changedness, and especially of the DOJ's overt and increasingly obvious politically driven prosecution of those they don't like while completely ignoring the crimes of those they do like. I believe that the fear that resulted from witnessing the punishments of those who spoke out during the coronadoom travesty caused much self-censorship. I'm hoping there is a resultant unintended consequence of opening the eyes of a large number of people who have learned the lesson of keeping their thoughts to themselves, but know they can vote their thoughts.
Hopefully, if it's not already too late......
I wonder what can be done on a personal level, to encourage journalists to engage with dissenting opinions and explore ideas they are covering neutrally. Even if we manage to halt the govt/tech sponsored censorship machine, what can we do to bring back civil discussion without reflexively blocking anyone that disagrees with you?
In my meager Twitter use, Kathleen Quinn, and op-ed writer for LA Times, NYT, etc, shared this bizzare story https://twitter.com/mskathleenquinn/status/1669061709598695447 about cancer patients who are distraught over the dropping of masks.
To Kathleen, who have I have followed for years, I penned a polite but firm critique of the article and entire premise she is proposing - even opening up on a personal level and sharing that my own wife was just diagnosed with terminal cancer, so I can appreciate the need of these people to feel safe.
https://twitter.com/MichaelDAmbro17/status/1669080409911566338
Of course, this nets an instant block and she continues to shield her mind from ideas that deviate from her beliefs.
I don't expect her to listen to some random no-follower-twitter user, but it is reflective of a larger societal problem - even if we weren't asking Big Tech or our Govt to block ideas we don't like, we seem to have a large segment of society unwilling to engage to engage in discourse. Perhaps it was always like this, we just didn't have block buttons in our life before?
I think this is perceptive. The Establishment has good reason to be confident, after their successful election thefts, censorship regimes, and pointless lockdowns and other restrictions have gone unpunished and even widely unacknowledged.
Perhaps they will allow us a little freedom. But I expect it will be very little, and temporary. After that, we will all be fully locked down and eating bugs.
Ominous indeed.
I love the analysis here: Formal, accepted discourse, as moderated by the elite gatekeepers, vs. informal, mostly unacceptable discourse, as occurs among the peasants, outside the gates of the castle. The rise of the internet gave the latter wings, and the arrogant establishment didn't see it coming until it was too late.
I agree that the gatekeepers have been extending their walls outward to include social media and, if possible, every realm of internet content. In fact, I'd say that in the US this has been going on ever since 2009, when President Obama took office, and began a series of meetings with big tech to establish an initiative to put the brakes on the dangerously fermenting freedom of expression the internet. We saw all of it go into overdrive in the waning days before Trumps historic win in 2016, and it hasn't let up until this year. The question is why?
You say it's confidence, but in my opinion, it's exactly the opposite. The censors have been exposed and their narratives discredited. While they've been able to shelter the public from this so far, the dam may be breaking. They're no longer so arrogant as to be sure they can continue to hide the truth, or even keep uninterrupted power, unless and until they develop a better plan. I look at their recent 'relaxation' of control and censorship as a tactical retreat, intended to limit short-term damage while the elites figure out how to preserve their power long enough to out-last Donald Trump and the challenge from the peasants.