By the author of Be Ready for Anything and the online course Bloom Where You’re Planted
It’s not breaking news that the internet censors have been hard at work to silence voices that are in opposition to the mainstream media agenda. But after the influence that social media had on the last election, things are going to a whole new level. The internet, that last bastion of truly free speech, isn’t very free anymore.
We’re watching the evolution of Newspeak right before our very eyes as the internet strives to silence any voices that oppose their carefully crafted stories of how guns are bad, there are 291 genders, and anyone who isn’t a liberal is an evil Nazi racist.
If you aren’t familiar with the term “Newspeak,” it’s from George Orwell’s prophetic novel, 1984.
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by eactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for commiting thought-crime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occcured to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?” (source)
YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook have all been participating in a full-on purge of not just conservative voices, but the voices of anyone who is loudly anti-establishment. Any internet personality who is pro-gun or anti-socialism can fully expect to be censored. If you go against the agenda, you will be silenced.
Apparently, we have become too discerning for their liking and we can’t be trusted to hear both sides of the story and decide what seems most accurate.
Let me preface this: It isn’t about being a fan of websites like Infowars or Natural News. It’s about being a fan of free speech. It’s about getting the truth instead of a carefully scripted narrative.
In this video, Ben Swann, who is mercifully back from a long, unexplained hiatus, gives us the facts on how the internet censors are striving to ensure we hear only one side of the story.
I’m certainly not in the same category as Mike Adams or Alex Jones, who have hundreds of thousands of followers, but even I have experienced this censorship. Facebook frequently refuses to allow me to pay to boost posts that might be controversial in nature, Back in 2016, I posted an article containing 2 videos, one of which was quickly removed from YouTube. It was about the threat of civil unrest to the Milwaukee suburbs after a cop killed a black man. The media portrayed the man’s sister as warmly trying to prevent the unrest, urging people not to burn down their own neighborhoods. But they cut her rant right before she urged people to burn down the suburbs instead. I quoted her as saying:
Burnin down sh*t ain’t going to help nothin! Y’all burnin’ down sh*t we need in our community. Take that sh*t to the suburbs. Burn that sh*t down! We need our sh*t! We need our weaves. I don’t wear it. But we need it. We need our food. We need our gas. Y’all wanna hurt somebody you take that sh*t further out! (source)
But somehow, I was the one who was in the doghouse for quoting what she said and showing both of the videos. My article was reported as “hate speech” a number of times and Facebook removed it. Not only did they remove it, they banned me from posting for a week, giving me a “warning” about hate speech. I also got put in Facebook jail once when someone asked what Godwin’s Law was and I used the word Nazi because it hurt someone’s feelings who was from Germany when I said the word “Hitler.” I could not make this stuff up.
A lot of you may be wondering why alternative media sources use social media at all, and the answer is – we have to if we want to be heard. If we want to be competitive and we want our stories to be out there, we must go where the people are. And there are millions of people on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
But purges like this are why it’s particularly important that you sign up for email lists if you want to hear the real stories. (You can sign up for mine right here.) And even then, it isn’t a guarantee you won’t be the victim of censors. During the election, for research purposes, I signed up for both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s email lists. Clinton’s ended up in my inbox without fail, while Trump’s went to my spam folder, no matter how often I marked it as “not spam.”
This is something we have to stop now. We have to speak up and let these social media outlets know that we aren’t going to put up with their censorship and their control of the national narrative.
We’re watching 1984 unfold right before our very eyes.
MANY…of the alternative media sites are censoring, too. If you don’t agree with them or the majority of the posters, you’ll be ghosted, put on a ‘temporary suspend’, or Banned – as Mike Adam’s of Natural News does if you ask for proof of some outrageous claim.
I jut figure that if I’m getting banned, then I’m on the right track!
‘The Hill’. ‘Natural News/sister political site, etc.
Besides, MOST MSM online articles have removed any comments. They learned their lesson trying to sell ‘Official Narratives’ – which are the actual ‘conspiracy theories’.
Hey, this just happened to me yesterday with my neighborhood blog, which is widely read in my community. Huge post about the student walk-out, complete with photos and video from 7 or 8 schools. I commented thoughtfully about how teenage drivers kill 10 people every day in the US, half of those accidents due to cell-phone distractions. Why not ban kids from using cell phones or cars until they’re 21? They’re obviously far more dangerous if we’re so concerned about human life. Moderator refused to post my comment. 63 other comments have been posted so far – almost everyone congratulating these amazing kids, and thankful that this generation will finally do something about the horrible gun violence. I posted another comment indicating that comments that don’t fit the narrative are being censored. It wasn’t allowed. Two emails to the blog editor with no response. This is the 3rd time over the course of the last 5 years that my husband or I have written a polite, thoughtful comment, that runs against the agenda, and they won’t publish. This kind of censorship leads people to believe there’s only one main viewpoint, and swings people towards the herd mentality, even if they had an independent thought. It’s really outrageous and I believe this is happening on every level. Once we don’t have the internet to communicate with other truth-seekers things are going to be tough.
Right on Daisy!
MSM does not like the competition of alternative news sites, or the fact their agenda is being underminded by people who dare to question or even entertain a differing view point.
I am still seeing censorship of emails from the trump campaign and the white house.
I signed up for both, but both always end up in spam even after I mark them as ‘not spam’.
It is SO hypocritical that liberals are accusing conservatives and libertarians of being fascist (they cannot even define it). Fascists have always sought to disarm the people and stifle free speech, exactly the agenda of the left. And please never forget that the Democratic party was the party of segregation and racism – seems they still are. Also, early gun control efforts were aimed at keeping guns from the hands of black people. Everyone has the right to self-defense. Only tyrants and dictators take guns from their people.
Many things cause far more deaths than guns: cars, alcohol, cigarettes, home accidents, properly administered prescription drugs; the list goes on. If everything was banned that is dangerous, we would live in caves or shelters made from the natural environment and not have any technological advances.
Oh come on people. You should be more tolerant of those who call you bigots and take away your freedom of speech and 2nd amendment. After all Mao se Tung and Palpot were just the forerunners of today’s liberalism and they really didn’t mean any harm when they had the soldiers silence political opposition and then kick their bodies into a pit and cover them up with dirt. Just ask any communist or socialist you happen to see. But it was a bit difficult to keep party loyalists alive because you know how it is with all the high level suspicion and all. Sometimes you have to use those soldiers and pits to silence those closest to you in the administration because you just can’t be sure who you can trust. What’s an honest dictator supposed to do anyway?
Sorry, but I don’t use Facetard, Gootard, Youtard or Twitard, lest I become a retard. I think that’s what they want you to become. I’m quite sure.
More Newspeak: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/03/10/don_lemon_the_term_globalist_is_racist_anti-semitic.html
Of interesting note, economist Robert Reich did a documentary back in 2013 called Inequality For All.
He noted globalism was the chief culprit for inequality and not just here in the USA but a world wide phenomena.
Daisy, Occasionally, something appears in your blog worth printing to pass around. As you know, civilization is so fragile now, we may one day soon lose access to power for the Internet, and a hard copy may be useful. However, as I’ve told you before, your formating does not permit printing from our devices, without cutting off the right margin. Try it yourself by attempting print from an iPad.
Thank you for the great article, Daisy. I’ve been suspicious of the censorship for quite some time, but am only recently realizing how widespread it has become. I am continually shocked by the lack of critical thinking and tired of reading opinion as journalism (one reason why I love your blog – thank you for reporting facts!). Interestingly, I opened your email about the new blog post, started reading, then got distracted with another task. A few days later, I’m trying to find the original email and it is nowhere to be found in my gmail. I thought I might have accidentally deleted or dropped it into another folder, but no luck – not in trash, any other folders, and I haven’t deleted anything in ages. Do you suppose that google would actually delete an email? It sounds extreme, but not much surprises me anymore…
Thanks for sharing great info, Daisy!
it’s only gonna get worse since trump revoked net neutrality. it won’t be long until american internet is no different than china’s.