There’s a reason America’s founders were dead set against the tyranny called democracy. It’s tyranny of the majority. If you can persuade 501 people out of a thousand that they ought to confiscate the property of someone in the minority, then that little guy loses his property to that group of thieves.
The dangerous one in that scenario is the one doing the persuading.
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| image found here |
That persuasive guy is probably not going to say something true, like, “That
guy worked as hard as any of us for the extra cow he’s got. But we want it,
and all of us together have the power to take it. So that’s what we’re going to
do. And then we’ll butcher the cow and divide it up among a few of us.”
That wouldn’t persuade. He would be more likely to say
something like, “You worked hard for what you’ve got. Why don’t you have an
extra cow? Is it fair that this rich guy has an extra cow and you don’t? The
only explanation for him having an extra cow is that he unfairly deprived you
of the chance to have it. The way to settle this unfairness is to even things
out: take his cow, divide it up among all the less fortunate.”
If he controls the message that the people hear, repeating
that lie, instead of the truth, over and over, so it’s the only idea people
have access to beyond their thinking, he’s likely to get half plus one—of those
making the effort to vote—to go along with that tyranny of the majority.
Democracy is especially dangerous when someone is
controlling the message.
Their History of Message Control
Do you remember, back in 2011, when Obama was pushing for
something they called internet neutrality? And then his efforts to give away US
control of the internet in his second term, succeeding at the tail end of 2016?
Yeah, those things happened.
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| Barack Obama screenshot from here |
Wonder what he means by accountability for all that power? He
means, of course, more control of the messages they allow—or maybe government
needs to step in and control the message. To protect “democracy.” He says,
Each of us has to pick a side. Do we allow our democracy to
wither, or do we choose to make it better? That’s the choice we face, if it’s a
choice worth embracing. Solving the disinformation problem won’t cure all the
ills our of democracy or tears all the fabrics of our world. But it can help
rebuild the trust and solidarity needed to make democracy stronger.
What’s the problem with media, again? Disinformation. How
does he lay out this big problem? Again, he’s talking to Big Tech:
Some of us have an opportunity to do what America has always
done at our best, which is to recognize that, even when the source code is
workin’, the status quo isn’t. And we can build somethin’ better—together. This
is an opportunity. It’s a change that we should welcome for governments to take
on a big, important problem, and prove that democracy and innovation can
coexist. It’s a chance for companies to do the right thing. You’ll still make
money. But you’ll feel better.
Who wants Obama—or anyone who believes and talks as he
does—in charge of controlling the messages we get to hear? Anyone?
What about Hillary Clinton? She put out this tweet: “For too long tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability.”
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| Hillary Clinton tweet from April 21, 2022 |
Ahem. There was that Trump-Russia-collusion hoax—paid for
and disseminated by the Clinton campaign. That was actual Russian
disinformation. But that’s not what she means. There was the Clinton email
server—info that was mostly quashed in the media, but was actual. She doesn’t
mean that. Well, she considers the true story of it to be
disinformation—because she doesn’t like that message.
Clinton and Obama were both pushing for the Digital Services Act to be passed in the European Union. It did pass, by the way. She says, “The EU is poised to do something about it”; i.e., something about all that stuff she labels disinformation. She continues, “I urge our transatlantic allies to push the Digital Services Act across the finish line, and bolster global democracy before it’s too late.”
Bolster global “democracy” by controlling the messages that
are allowed. She doesn’t mean (although she wants you to think she means) supporting
the idea of self-rule, where the people rule rather than the tyrants. She means
supporting the tyranny of the majority—when the majority is formed by
controlling the messages they are allowed to hear. And she wants that
controlling tyranny to be global, rather than just national.
This has been evident for a while to people who have been
paying attention. But now they’re getting so obvious that inadvertently they’re
waking up the masses they thought they had under their spell.
In Sunday’s Crossroads episode [first half hour on YouTube], Joshua Philipp spends an hour going through some of the history, which was making me feel like things were
hopeless; we were doomed to suffer this censorship and loss of our free speech.
But there was good news by the end. And more has happened this week. Every day
there’s more, so I’d better just finish this today.
So let’s go through that trajectory, from history to
what’s happening today.
There’s a Wall Street Journal Political Diary piece by Jason L. Riley, from February 3, 2011, 12:44 P.M. ET. The lead-in says,
About Those New Internet Regulations
Two days before Christmas, the Obama administration issued
new "net neutrality" regulations for Internet service providers. But
Republicans now in control of the House say the issue is far from settled.
The issue at that time was
mainly about ISPs (internet service providers), and whether they could charge
for different tiers of service. Rep. Marsh Blackburn was trying to get it
blocked. One argument was that the FCC didn’t have power to make this rule
without going through Congress. The issue appeared to be mostly partisan.
Entities favoring “net neutrality” included, according to Wikipedia, computer science experts, consumer advocates, human rights organizations, and internet
content providers. Opposition included ISPs, computer hardware manufacturers,
economists, technologists, and telecom equipment manufacturers. There are
various reasons. But, as with virtually all areas where government interferes,
there would be unintended consequences, and they would likely be exactly
opposite of the stated goal, which was better internet speed for all. I won’t list all the details of how it played out,
but in 2017 President Trump got rid of it.
About halfway through Obama’s second term, he started
pushing for further control of the internet. An Investor’s Business Daily
piece from November 11, 2014, starts with this:
While in China, where free speech is suppressed, the
president again pitched net neutrality, in which a "free and open
Internet" is regulated by a government that would be both gatekeeper and
traffic cop.
He’s still calling it “net neutrality” at this point. But
it’s about government control of content, something the Chinese have been fully
embracing for a long time. That editorial reminds us, “In a 2010 speech to
graduates at Hampton University in Virginia, Obama complained that too much
information is a threat to democracy.” He’s consistent on that to this day.
Back in June of 2016 the National Telecommunications and
Information Administration (NTIA) “decided” (I’m assuming at the Obama
administration’s insistence) to turn over control of the Internet Assigned
Numbers Authority (IANA) to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN). Senator Ted Cruz was fighting to prevent that from going
through. In an American Thinker editorial I had saved, they said,
On the surface, this would appear to be a welcome effort to
privatize a former government function, but in reality it relinquishes the U.S.
government’s role as the arbiter and guarantor of Internet freedom and turns
over full control to a group subject to the anti-freedom impulses of the
so-called international community, including the United Nations.
The important detail here is that it wasn’t just the
assigning of names and numbers that got turned over. And the story we got told
was that the US didn’t relinquish control; it just dispersed some of it.
Instead of the US Commerce Department, which must abide by the US Constitution's free speech clause, the US is now one of 171 nations plus 35 observers in
the Governmental Advisory Committee. None of those other entities have any
obligation to abide by our Constitution.
There’s more to be concerned about. In September of 2016,
Joshua Philipp was one of the few reporters talking about this turnover. In an
article for the Epoch Times he writes:
In November 2014, Li Yuxiao, a research fellow at the Chinese
Academy of Cyberspace, stated, according to the state-run China Daily:
“Now is the time for China to realize its responsibilities. If the United
States is willing to give up its running of the internet sphere, the question
comes as to who will take the baton and how it would be run.
“We have to first set our goal in cyberspace, and then think
about the strategy to take, before moving on to refining our laws,” he said.
Li is now the head of a department designed to enforce the
Chinese regime’s laws on technology companies. His comments are tied to a
process announced by the United States in 2014 to relinquish control of the
internet by ending the contract between the U.S. Department of Commerce and the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
This process is now nearing its completion, with a deadline
of Oct. 1.
It took a bit longer than October 1, but by December 2016, the turnover had happened—so, prior to Obama leaving office.
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| A Chinese paramilitary policeman tries to block photos of a military parade rehearsal prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images) image found in Joshua Philipp's 2016 article |
China, of course, seized the opportunity to fill the vacuum. Here’s an explanation from Philipp from his 2016 article:
Li is now the secretary-general of the Cyber Security
Association of China, which is chaired by Fang Binxing, the creator of China’s
Great Firewall, which censors and monitors the country’s internet. The
association, formed on March 25 [2016], gives the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
a vehicle for spreading its systems and laws for governing the internet abroad,
while giving its efforts a benign facade under the label of “cybersecurity.”
The association is registered as a national nonprofit
organization, but according to the report, it answers directly to the Leading
Small Group for Network Security and Information—which is chaired by CCP leader
Xi Jinping—and is “responsible for shaping and implementing information
security and internet policies and laws.”
According to the report, the Cyber Security Association of
China, among other tasks, focuses on “public opinion supervision to help in
information control and propaganda” and “protecting core Chinese interests
under globalization, and promoting globally competitive Chinese IT companies.”
This sounds ominous. In practice, it might have simply
looked on the surface as international trade with China, which was being
encouraged at that time (and you could insert a story about Biden family corruption in China as well). Philipp’s article continues:
The Chinese regime has begun bringing major U.S. tech
firms—including Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., and
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)—into its newly formed committee,
the Technical Committee 260.
You may recall that, around that time (2015 and beyond), China was
pressuring tech companies to turn over their source code. Apple refused; IBM
gave in. China was also demanding encryption keys and backdoors to be built in.
China threatened to bar these tech companies from the Chinese market if they
failed to comply.
Maybe you noticed that, shortly after this Obama-administration
turnover of the Internet, censorship started increasing. Messages on Facebook,
Twitter, and other platforms started getting taken down, blocked, shadow
banned, or tuned in such a way that it didn’t come up for most users. Google algorithms
started filtering out certain sites, stories, and viewpoints. All this was well timed ahead of the 2016 election.
This Digital Services Act in the EU, that Hillary Clinton was lobbying for last week—in a Financial Times piece about it, they admit,
Regulators will also include an emergency mechanism to force
platforms to disclose what steps they are taking to tackle misinformation or
propaganda in light of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine.
What has the actual misinformation/disinformation been?
· There are no treatments; hydroxychloroquine and
ivermectin don’t work and are dangerous.
· Lockdowns and masks prevent the spread of the
virus.
· The vaccines are safe and effective.
I’m still unsure what Ukraine-related information is actual
misinformation, or disinformation. There may not be a good side, just people
who are suffering because of various corrupt regimes fighting each other. It
may take more time for a clearer picture to come through.
But, there was a fair amount of disinformation and censoring
of information to prevent people from knowing about the Obama administration
connection to Ukrainian corruption, and the Biden family involvement in
corruption there and in China, and elsewhere.
There was the Hunter Biden laptop. That actual, true
information came out just ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Should
American voters have been allowed to know about it? Mainstream media, in
lockstep with those who favor internet controls to disallow free speech,
claimed it was Russian disinformation. It was not.
They delayed the truth coming out. But the thing is, the story is coming out anyway. We now know
that the Hunter Biden laptop is what the 2020 New York Post story said
it was—the story that was taken down by Twitter and Facebook. To protect you
from “misinformation.”
Good News for Truth
Truth has a way of showing up—eventually. And maybe the
pressure of all that speech suppression is calling for a truth explosion.
Here are some recent good news items:
· Disney has lost $35 billion in shareholder value.
[That was when I wrote this on Monday. As of Thursday it was around $41
billion.] This is in response to the public learning that Disney has indeed
implemented a not-so-secret effort to aim LGBTQ-sexualized materials at
children. Disney decided to support wokeness rather than the families that have
been their customers.
· Disney lost its special privileges in Florida
and will be subject to the same taxes and regulations as other businesses.
· CNN+ launched and failed in less than a month,
losing $300 million in the process. One wonders why they thought something that
people could get for free and were choosing not to tune in to would bring in
viewers if they had to pay for it.
· Netflix has lost 35% of its share value, costing
them $400 million. This is in response to pushing woke programming.
· Spotify dropped the Obamas. That was a better
business decision for them than dropping Joe Rogan, whom they had tried to
censor because of his COVID-19 experience, which didn’t comport with the
allowed message.
· Trump’s new platform Truth Social has improved
after moving servers to Rumble. Reports from Joshua Philipp, as well as several
Blaze contributors, is that engagement is suddenly much better on Truth Social
than they had had on Twitter.
· Twitter—there’s the big story of the week. Elon Musk had bought enough shares to be offered a place on board. He turned that down. That wasn’t enough to give him a controlling interest, and he didn’t want to be limited from buying more shares. So he made an offer to buy the company outright. That sale went through on Monday of this week. He may take it private. But whatever he does, the intention appears to be to restore free speech to the public square.
That’s a lot of good news for free speech in a short amount
of time.
The opponents of free speech are reacting as you might
expect: with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.[i]
Literally, in the case of that story of Disney losing government privileges in
Florida. Independent reporter Andy Ngo provided video from the floor of the State
House in Tallahassee. While the speaker was calling for mutual respect and
decorum surrounding the vote on the issue, Democrat lawmakers and lobbyists were
literally shrieking in the background.
On Monday, after news came out of Elon Musk’s success in purchasing
Twitter, panic set in among the speech suppressors. First, here are a couple of
things Musk said:
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and
Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of
humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing
the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase
trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has
tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community
of users to unlock it.”—Elon Musk
We’ll forgive him for using the word democracy; in this
sense I think he means self-rule. He also says,
“I hope that even my
worst critics remain on Twitter,
because that is what
free speech means.”—Elon Musk
Now, for the critics. The prize goes to Ari Melber of MSNBC:
“You could secretly ban one party’s candidate, or all of its
candidates, all of its nominees, or you could just secretly turn down the reach
of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else and the rest of us might
not even find out about it until after the election.”
He seems blissfully unaware that that is what actually
happened. It has been happening for several elections. It is a big reason for
someone who favors free speech to step in and stop their rule by secret
algorithm.
Other classic responses include several pundits handwringing
about how dangerous it is to have a billionaire own a tech platform—while they
are working for a billionaire-owned tech platform. (There’s a collection of
responses here, with some brief pithy commentary.)
So, as Laura Ingraham puts the question:
“Netflix losing subscribers. CNN+ shuts down. Disney stock value dropping. Twitter takeover by Musk. Just the beginning?” —Laura Ingraham
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| image found here |
More Battles to Come—But We Know the Outcome of This War
Yes. Let’s hope this is just the beginning. My sense is, like
some wars, you can look back and see when the final outcome was determined, but
there are still battles to go through on the way there.
The control of the Internet—along with so many media
outlets—will continue to cause serious free speech casualties. The evil overlords
seem intent on imposing CCP-style speech controls on all of us.
Thursday the Biden administration announced its creation of
a Ministry of Truth (1984 reference), which they are giving the dystopian name
of Disinformation Governance Board, under the Department of Homeland Security.
It appears DHS is now in the business of—not protecting our borders, or
protecting US citizens from America’s enemies seeking to commit terrorism here on US soil; rather
it is in the business of spying on US citizens, down to the details of their social
media posts, to stop them from disagreeing with the controlling tyrants.
While the timing makes it appear this new DGB was in response to
Musk’s purchase of Twitter, it must have been in the works for some time. They
announced that this new law enforcement agency will be headed by 33-year-old
Nina Jankowicz. Tucker Carlson went through what we know about her—which is both dystopian and ridiculous. This
was a colorful line: “Jankowicz comes from a place called the Wilson Center. That’s
a nonprofit named for America’s other mentally incapacitated warmonger bigot
president.” The Wilson Center produces disinformation, and supposedly
information about disinformation. It is heavily funded by the Biden
administration.
Jankowicz happens to be a former advisor to the neo-government in Ukraine, which at this time in history makes that connection to the Biden administration look more than suspicious. Tucker plays video of her singing—yes singing. A little ditty about disinformation that she has set to the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” from Mary Poppins. In another place and time, her voice might be acceptably pleasant. But here, this ditty is too unbelievable to be put in a dystopian novel.
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| Nina Jankowicz, head of the new Disinformation Governance Board screenshot from here |
The ACLJ covers this new agency as well. They point
out that, to stop it, Congress merely has to cut off funding. That’s the short
solution. The longer one is to take things to court, because the very existence
of an agency to censor the speech of US citizens is clearly unconstitutional.
The thing is, we see what they’re doing. We’re speaking
freely regardless. We’re finding free speech alternatives. We’re finding new
and maybe better ways to be heard. If they try to control the Internet, who
knows, we may find some entrepreneur who will develop a parallel, free-speech
internet that they can’t control.
So, battles still to come. But we know the outcome of this
war on free speech. Truth wins.
