"Dystopian"

Sean Davis: "The unholy union between monopolistic tech oligarchs and corrupt media."

Tucker Carlson: "All of these people you vote for in the hope that they will protect you...all of them are AWOL."

Tucker Carlson: A lot of Americans are staying quiet right now, and, of course, that's the point of censorship: to keep people isolated and alone.

Tucker: If you are in the news business and Google tells you to do something, you do it. In all of human history, no single entity has had more control of information than Google does right now.

Tucker: Google finds it intolerable that Zero Hedge and The Federalist have unmonitored comment sections where readers can say what they want!

Glenn Greenwald:

That NBC has, and uses, the power to have sites it ideologically dislikes ideologically kicked off Google Ads is dystopian.

It's particularly chilling since NBC/MSBNC was one of the worst purveyors of deranged conspiracy theories over the last 4 years. https://

Read and watch more here.

"Can't complain!"

via Steven Hayward

What's next?

via Oregon Muse

"...tightening their grip on free speech"

Let's turn to Mark Steyn to read in part what he has to say about the pandemic.

...Meanwhile, the cartel of woke billionaires who control access to the entire repository of human knowledge are tightening their grip on free speech. When it comes to Coronavirus, you're free to agree with what the WHO and the government are saying - even though what they say this week may disagree with what they said last week. But, if you're two California doctors calmly explaining why their experience with actual patients differs from the pronouncements of Anthony Fauci (who hasn't seen a patient in two decades), YouTube will ban you in the public interest.

Read more and watch two videos here.

The erosion of shared political consensus

What does it mean to be woke? Roger Kimball writes in part in American Greatness,

There are two central tenets of the woke philosophy. The first is feigned fragility. The second is angry intolerance. The union of fragility and intolerance has given us that curious and malevolent hybrid, the crybully, a delicate yet venomous species that thrives chiefly in lush, pampered environments.

...when the free speech movement started at Berkeley’s Sproul Hall in 1964, it was a left-wing movement that demanded tolerance and challenged conventional behavior and mores. Today the Left espouses the opposite—not tolerance and free speech but conformity, censorship, and intolerance.

...The truth is that American universities are among the safest and most coddled environments ever devised by human ingenuity. The idea that one should attend college to be protected from ideas one might find controversial or offensive could only occur to someone who had jettisoned any hope of acquiring an education. Many commentators have been warning about a “higher education bubble.” They have focused mostly on the unsustainable costs of college, but the spectacle of timid moral self-indulgence also deserves a place on the bill of indictment.

...The suppression of free speech by the wardens of wokeness has prompted many conservatives to champion free speech as an all-purpose antidote. I sympathize with that endeavor, and have written probably dozens of articles defending a robust idea of free speech. In my view, if you say “I am for free speech, but not ‘hate speech’ or speech that offends Mohammed or speech that insults Greens or speech that mocks, satirizes, ridicules, and laughs at some P.C. icon,” etc. then you are not for free speech at all. Your “but” is merely a species of capitulation pretending to be redemptive conceptual nuance. Free speech is by nature offensive speech, at least potentially. If it couldn’t offend, if it couldn’t insult, it also couldn’t enlighte...The Bill of Rights, Justice Jackson said, is not “a suicide pact.” In other words, when it comes to free speech the choice “is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either.”

The Bill of Rights, Justice Jackson said, is not “a suicide pact.” In other words, when it comes to free speech the choice “is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either.”

Conservatives have rightly lamented the assault on free speech that is such a conspicuous and disfiguring reality of life in America today. But that loss only achieves its true significance in the context of a more fundamental erosion: the erosion of that shared political consensus, that community of sentiment, which gives life to the first-person plural, that “We, the People,” which made us who we are. Should we lose that, we shall have lost everything.

Read more here.

Top ten worst colleges for free speech

FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, has just completed its annual listing of the top ten worst colleges for free speech. Read it here.

Zuckerberg argues for free expression

In the Wall Street Journal, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a case here for free expression. I hope he means what he says.

Socialism? Are you serious?

Roger Kimball writes in Spectator,

I do not think it is properly appreciated just how bizarre it is that socialism appears to be making a serious comeback, not just as a common-room amusement among ignorant students who have no idea what socialism is, but also among presidential candidates and members of Congress, some of whom, anyway, know only too well what that murderous ideology entails.

Winston Churchill was too kind when he said that socialism was ‘the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.’ All that is correct. But beyond that, socialism rests upon two fundamental goals, the abolition of private property and the equalization of wealth. A corollary to the achievement of those goals, as socialist totalitarians the world over have instantly realized, is terror and a police state. And yet here we are with serious proposals to institute socialism in the United States.

Read more here.

Big Tech censorship of conservatives: impartial rules, or partisan malice?

Daniel Greenfield writes in FrontPage Magazine,

Censorship can’t truly shut down conservatives, but it keeps conservative voices from having a secure foothold in social media, while offering every possible benefit and subsidy to their leftist rivals.

Any active conservative knows that he can be silenced, at any moment, by a motivated crybullying campaign backed by lefty media outlets, as Crowder was, or by the sweep of the algorithmic scythe. The overall effect is to make it clear that the internet and social media are the native territory of leftists. Conservatives can only be occasional trespassers, living on the internet as tokens or guerrillas.

There can hardly be a formula more conducive to a state of political radicalism.

Censorship won’t make social media less divisive, as its advocates insist. The echo chamber of the press, radio and television that the media, named after these three mediums, dreams of returning to is impossible. What censorship really does is radicalize activists by giving them another enemy to fight.

YouTube’s censorship campaign, like those of other social media companies, is based on secretive algorithms, black box moderation, and confusing policies that are being selectively implemented. The big dot coms and their media inciters pretend that cleaning up the internet can be easily done. In reality, they can’t even clearly state the problem in a way that would stand up to any regulatory oversight.

The new YouTube policy cracks down on "videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status." Will that policy be applied to videos like, “White People are Evil”, “Dear White People, Kill Yourself Now”, and “All White People are Racist”? The Nation of Islam’s YouTube channel is humming along with offerings like, “Critical Thinking Outlawed as Anti-Semitism”.

Taken literally, it would ban a video arguing for raising the drinking age or the driving age.

But policies like these are not meant to be taken literally, they’re something to point to so that the censorship of conservatives appears to be the result of impartial rules, rather than partisan malice.

...When the rules are unclear, all the standards are double standards. Dot coms hide behind the illusion of policy when, as Steven Crowder’s case revealed, their responses aren’t determined by written policies, but by pressure campaigns and gut reactions, with the policies as little more than retroactive excuses.

...There is a more American solution that wouldn’t turn us into an obscene Orwellian cartoon.

It’s called freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech means letting people say whatever they want as long as they aren’t engaging in criminal behavior like sending death threats, molesting children or otherwise breaking the law.

...The censorship of the internet is a futile project conducted in bad faith for bad purposes. Like the censorship projects of every totalitarian regime and ideology, it will fail. The only question is how many people will be hurt along the way. Speech can’t be stopped. People, individually, can be destroyed.

That is what is at stake here.

YouTube’s latest disaster is a painful demonstration of the limitations of moderation and censorship. But the internet was never meant to be moderated. And trying to do so is a doomed proposition. There’s too much content, too many people and machine learning can never compensate for human cunning.

Free speech isn’t just a good idea. It’s not a nice slogan. Speech wants to be free.

It takes more energy to censor than to speak. Hunting down and silencing people you don’t like is a lot more work than making your own argument. Entropy is not on the side of the speech suppressors.

Natural rights are not just a philosophical position. They’re innate human realities. Repressing them is the equivalent of damming a river. It futilely restrains a natural force that will eventually break free.

YouTube tried to dam the river. But the river, the billions of hours of video, will always overflow.

Read more here.

Trump and free speech

Will President Trump do something meaningful to take up the cause of free speech? Don Surber wants to know.

The principal pillar of a free government

Thanks to Sundance

"Who knew fascism could be so chirpy?"

Tucker: The big tech companies have launched their fiercest attack yet on your right as an American to follow your conscience and to say what you believe! Zuckerberg says the death of free speech in America is a really positive thing that we all need to get behind. Who knew fascism could be so chirpy? Zuckerberg is not simply censoring political opinions. He is prescribing which political opinions you're allowed to have! 34-year-old Zuckerberg is worth 72 billion dollars and is completely cut off from reality. Yet, he can single-handedly make our First Amendment irrelevant after 250 years! The media thinks that's great! Without free speech, however, there is no democracy!

"If we let them redefine speech as violence, the First Amendment has no meaning!"

They can tell you what to say and when to say it! They can use any force necessary to make you be quiet. They are saying your opinion and a terror attack are the same thing."

He'd settle for free speech!

Prosecute actions, not thoughts!

Chateau Heartiste writes,

There’s no such thing as “hate speech”. There is only free speech. And there is no such thing as “hate crime”. There is crime. We shouldn’t prosecute thoughts. We should prosecute actions. End the “hate crime” farce now.

Read more here.

"Europe has moved on to the next tragic stage of its civilizational suicide: rationalizing its surrender."

It seems to Mark Steyn that

...the most powerful European institutions (courts, media, police, bureaucracy) are increasingly eager to shovel core western liberties into the landfill. ...Following The Mark Steyn Show's Free Speech Forum, many readers have asked me to comment on the recent decision by the European Court of Human Rights, summarized in this headline:

Calling Prophet Muhammad a Pedophile Does Not Fall Within Freedom of Speech: European Court

There was "no violation" of freedom of expression because the courts "carefully balanced" freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected - and came down on the side of protecting feelings rather than freedom of expression.

...If your right to free speech has to be balanced with people's "feelings", then as a practical matter there is no free speech.

There is also no truth: It is not the defendant who "had made statements suggesting that Muhammad had had paedophilic tendencies" but the Hadith, which after the Koran are the most sacred foundational texts of Islam and in whose literal truth Muslims are enjoined to believe:

[60] What about he, who consummated a marriage with a girl of nine

5158- Urwa narrated: The Messenger of Allah 'Allah's blessing and peace be upon him' married A'isha when she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her when she was nine. She remained with him nine years (till he died).

So it's not that it's illegal to "suggest" that the Big Mo "had paedophilic tendencies", it's just illegal to suggest there's anything wrong with that.

...There will be much more of this: In the interests of "religious peace", the prohibitions of Islam are being extended to infidels, and the linguistic contortions of courts and media and police and bureaucrats confirm that Europe has moved on to the next tragic stage of its civilizational suicide: rationalizing its surrender.

Read more here.

Chinese government funds attacks on conservative free speech

Warner Todd Huston reports at The Lid,

One of the most prominent “research” groups behind the attacks on conservative free speech on the Internet this year is a company called “New Knowledge.” But now a new review of the company shows that one of its biggest backers is one of our biggest international opponents, the Chinese Government.

New Knowledge co-founder Jonathon Morgan describes his company as a “cybersecurity company specializing in disinformation defense for highly visible brands under attack by coordinated disinformation campaigns. Through machine learning and Ai, we detect threats and provide brand manipulation protection before damage is done.”

It is this “disinformation” that New Knowledge has been hired to root out and it is their work that has served as a basis for attacks on conservatives by The Washington Post and The Atlantic, not to mention the efforts by Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others to eliminate conservatives from the Internet.

"You can't talk religion here!"

A pastor who faced religious prosecution first in Iran, then in Turkey, came to America as a religious refugee. He casually shared his conversion story with two Somali women at the Mall of America in Minnesota. Another Muslim woman heard him sharing his faith and reported him. Mall Security Guards told him "You can't talk religion here." They arrested and detained him in handcuffs in the basement of the mall and he was denied bathroom privileges. The police finally came and arrested him on charges of criminal trespass and he was taken to jail. Tyler O'Neill has the story at PJ Media.

"The fair weather friends of the First Amendment"

Kevin Williamson writes at National Review,

...If we want a culture of open and robust discourse, then we do not want a culture in which Brendan Eich is driven from his job for having an unpopular view on gay marriage. If we want a culture of open and robust discourse, then we don't want a culture in which there is an organized-campaign-style effort to have journalists dismissed from their positions for holding unpopular views, or a boycott every time the New York Times or the Washington Post (or, I suppose, The Atlantic) adds a columnist who is not likely to please the Bernie Sanders Campaign Historical Re-enactors Society at Reed College. It is true that none of these things is a formal violation of the First Amendment, because the First Amendment is a restriction on what kind of laws the federal government may enact. But calling CNN’s daily output “fake news” isn’t a violation of the First Amendment, either.

What’s actually at work here is a variation on “Heads I Win/Tails You Lose.” When the Left wants to stop an unpopular speaker from delivering remarks at Berkeley, then that’s just meeting speech with more speech and some firebombs. And, it’s true: There isn’t any First Amendment reason why you can’t have a riot at Berkeley every time Ann Coulter gets invited to speak there. But there are all sorts of other reasons.

...Freedom of the press does not mean extending special privileges, legal or customary, to the New York Times and CNN. And freedom of speech means a lot more than the absence of formal censorship by the federal government. Formal protections for free speech are important and necessary, but they do not amount to very much without a free-speech culture to back them up.

You can have free speech, or you can have what Andrew Cuomo, Elizabeth Warren, and the editors of the New York Times have pressed for. You cannot have both.

Read more here.

Appeasement is evil and corrupting.

Mark Steyn writes,

I'm not sure what's on the rundown for today's show, but some stories are just ongoing, day by day, remorselessly. For example, free speech is now so imperiled in much of the "free world" that simply scheduling a debate on a controversial subject will attract the attentions of the mob - and by "controversial subject" I don't mean Islam or abortion or gay marriage or climate change; a debate on the subject of free speech is now so provocative that, as I noted the other day, the "progressive" thugs will descend to break it up, throw smoke bombs, smash the windows of ancient listed buildings, and put the security guards in hospital.

As repulsive as these goons are, the reaction of officialdom is worse: They take the side of the mob, and thereby incentivize them. For example, Martin Sellner (of the Austrian wing of the European "hipster-right" movement Generation Identity) was originally scheduled to speak at a British free speech conference organized by UKIP's youth branch. However, this was canceled "due to security threats from the far left".

That's disgraceful: the heckler's veto turned pre-emptive and given official sanction.

So, instead, it was arranged for Herr Sellner to give a speech at Speakers' Corner at Hyde Park in London. Speakers' Corner has been a global symbol of free speech for a century and a half: Marx and Lenin both spoke there, and George Orwell and Marcus Garvey, and the first generation of African nationalist leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah. If I recall correctly, the only form of speech prohibited there was "insulting the Queen", but in a 1999 court decision Lord Justice Sedley removed even that genteel restraint.

Nevertheless, flying in from Vienna to give a speech on the very subject for which Speakers' Corner is famous - freedom of expression - Herr Sellner and his girlfriend Brittany Pettibone were detained upon the arrival of their flight on Friday. After twelve hours of separate detention at Luton Airport, the UK Border Force then moved them at 1am on Saturday to the main detention facility at Heathrow.

Austria is a member of the European Union, as is (almost two years after the Brexit vote) the United Kingdom. There is supposed to be freedom of movement between EU member states - Austrians, for example, have the right to work in the UK. Yet the same "Border Force" that breezily waves through the family of the Ariana Grande bomber, and the Parsons Green Tube terrorist, and the jihadist loon who killed a Japanese man in Dundalk will not even permit Mr Sellner and Miss Pettibone to set foot on UK soil to give a speech on free speech for fear that such an exercise of free speech might be too provocative to those who revile it.

So much for freedom of movement within the EU. What about freedom of movement within Her Majesty's Dominions? Lauren Southern, formerly of The Rebel and a Canadian subject of the Queen, has just been denied entry to the UK by Home Secretary Amber Rudd on the grounds that she represents "a threat to the fundamental interests of society and to the public policy of the United Kingdom".

Those are not legal concepts in a free society: they're all-purpose control mechanisms. A government that's entirely incompetent when it comes to keeping out people who want to bomb and stab and decapitate you is suddenly "the most competent Border Force in the world" when it comes to keeping out people who talk and interview and argue - people whose only weapons are words. This will not end well for English liberties.

Appeasement is evil and corrupting. And so officialdom, so useless in restraining those who would destroy us, grows ever more comfortable in shutting down freedom of expression, freedom of movement and freedom of association in the doomed cause of maintaining social tranquility.