In March 2021, the Biden White House initiated a brazenly unconstitutional censorship campaign to prevent Americans from buying politically unfavorable books from Amazon. The effort, spearheaded by White House censors including Andy Slavitt and Rob Flaherty, began on March 2, 2021, when Slavitt emailed Amazon demanding to speak to an executive about the site’s “high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation.”
Book Burning Goes Digital Read More
In the last four years we have seen an astonishing rise in censorship, as in other forms of bullying and coercion, inside and outside the academy, even from governments and state agencies. We can’t reverse that by regret. We can only reverse it by acts of resistance. The first antidote to censorship is bold speech and consistent action. Of that, Patrick Provost has provided an admirable example that we ought all to follow.
The Service of Dissent Read More
Thawteffery is the wicked management of thought, election-to-election, by wicked people for wicked purposes. I speak of the wicked as forming “the junta,” even though the conspiracy may be rather spontaneous. We are talking about some amalgam of a wicked faction, the Deep State, the administrative state, the swamp, the blob, and so on. It has become clear that the CIA and other intel agencies, and the Left Pole, are central in the junta.
The Four Sins of ‘Thawteffery’ Read More
They do it because it works. They do it by relentless increment. They disorient, they frighten, then they take. When you wake up and push back, they give a little back, slide into the background, and wait for you to calm down. But you never get back 90% of what was usurped and it just normalizes such takings for next time. And there is always a next time.
Their Victory is Not Set in Stone Read More
To some, Inman Grant is a hero, protecting children from online abuse, ridding the internet of revenge porn, and breaking new ground in leading a globally coordinated response to the problem of online hate. To others she is an e-Karen, a Censorship Commissar with a personal vendetta against Elon Musk, cynically exploiting multiple tragedies to lead a bureaucratic power grab and censor the speech of everyday citizens, both in Australia and globally. Both may be true.
The Face Behind Australia’s Censorship Push Read More
Will the ABC course-correct with Williams at the helm? Now that trust in legacy media is at historical lows, the ABC’s partnership with TNI does little to assuage fears that the network has passed the point of no return.
New ABC Fact-Checkers, Same Problems? Read More
Somehow – call me naive – I just didn’t expect the New York Times to be all-in on the immediate establishment of the surveillance state and universal censorship by the “awesome” Deep State. But think of this. If the NYT can be fully captured by this ideology, and probably captured by the money that goes with it, so can any other institution. You have probably noticed a similar editorial line being pushed by Wired, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Salon, Slate, and other venues, including the entire suite of publications owned by Conde Nast including Vogue and GQ magazine.
Now We Are Supposed to Cheer Government Surveillance? Read More
What to do about it? I would suggest a simple answer. Forget the model, which might be completely misconstrued in any case. Just say what is true, with sincerity, without malice, without convoluted hopes of manipulating others. It’s a time for truth, which earns trust. Only that will blow the window wide open and finally demolish it forever.
Is the Overton Window Real, Imagined, or Constructed? Read More
When the government heaves the law and Constitution overboard, euphemisms become the coin of the realm. During the Bush era, it wasn’t torture—it was merely “enhanced interrogation”. Nowadays, the issue is not “censorship”—but merely “content moderation.” And “moderation” is such a virtue that it happened millions of times a year thanks to the feds arm-twisting social media companies, according to federal court decisions.
Is Censorship the Biden Era’s Torture Issue? Read More
We must fight with everything we have against governments that behave in a dictatorial manner, against the evidence, using substandard experts, “for our own good,” as they say. The best way forward is to learn as much as possible about the methods governments used to suppress and distort the science. The Great Barrington Declaration, which has received almost a million signatures, was an important milestone. We need to establish an international cooperation of scientists at the highest level who will stand together and never again accept to be silenced when the next pandemic hits us.
The Death and Resurrection of Science Read More
The slogan became popular about ten years ago: the revolution will be decentralized with the creation of robust parallel institutions. There is no other path. The intellectual parlor game is over. This is a real-life struggle for freedom itself. It’s resist and rebuild or doom.
Did Lockdowns Set a Global Revolt in Motion? Read More
The majority of the court appeared to favor eliminating Chevron. It would be the height of hypocrisy – and one the most culturally devastating decisions since Dred Scott – to not see the parallels and to rule any other way than against the government in Murthy. With that ruling, we can begin to gather in the tentacles of the censorship monster.
Chevron, Murthy, and ‘Supreme’ Hypocrisy Read More
