UPDATE 2: This update should be properly placed under the “no shit” file, but since I got some blowback for my first update — from 2022 (see below) — I’ll make it explicit. In my original update, I said that legal proof of actual censorship “will come to light more and more.” It did. It’s old news. The problem is that most people never saw it. Ten days ago, when this old (non)story officially broke, I decided then not to bother with it — primarily because I loathe politics so much and because it’s old news and because the utter obviousness of what’s been happening these past few years is beyond beyond. But there have been a few new developments. The following headline is chosen randomly from USA Today (August 28th, 2024), but it could have been from any major media outlet since every major media outlets reported this: In brief, actual censorship was at work. One interesting thing to note is that the censorship cited in all these major media headlines is that the Biden administration is guilty. This is interesting because the Trump administration was every bit as guilty of exactly such things — as it was also Donald Trump, never forget, who got the murderous excuse for a vaccine pushed through at “warp speed,” so that the left could fall in love with it, no matter how many people it’s killed and will kill. The reason I find all of this so interesting is that it’s mattered not at all to “the party of free speech and no censorship” — the left — that they’ve officially, in all the headlines from 10 days ago, shut down free speech and endorsed true censorship. Yet it doesn’t so much as raise an eyebrow — not among any single person I know. Let me also note, purely for posterity, that my own political designation — and this is  according to me, the one and only person truly qualified to know such information — is not nor has ever been “libertarian” or “conservative” or any other such rubber words. I am, according to me, a classic liberal — which believes, among other similar things, that “the government which governs least governs best,” as Henry David Thoreau so well expressed it. The deep ideological strain of anarchism, which runs all throughout libertarianism, from the very beginning right up to the present, is an ideological strain with which I profoundly disagree — primarily (though not exclusively) because actual anarchism is an impossibility: it will result in either mob rule or de facto rule. (I’ve discussed this subject in more detail here.) All of which I mention because the libertarian label(s) continually ascribed to me are perfectly indicative of a decades-long fact that never ceases to astound me: not one of my detractors — not a single one — has ever been able to accurately recapitulate my actual views, which are simple and, in my closely considered opinion, absolutely uncontroversial compared with this buccal-fecal carnival we now know as partisan politics, which are insane — a brand clinical lunacy guilty of the most heinous crimes in human history, including (but not limited to) convincing the entire world that the very ideologies guilty of such heinous crimes are, in fact, sane. In comparison with such insanity, classic liberalism stands utterly alone — and utterly sane — requiring only one fundamental thing: that the principle of individual autonomy be applied in full across ALL spheres of human activity, whether economic or ethical, whether political or private. Classic liberalism is the freedom to act, to interact with those who voluntarily agree to interact with you, to keep what you earn, to spend or save as you choose, and to do with your body and brain what you alone decide. Classic liberalism is nothing more or less than this.

Here’s the recent headline from USA Today, which was as recently echoed by every major media outlet, left, right, or in between:

Republicans were right: Zuckerberg admits Biden administration censored your Facebook feed

(Link)

UPDATE: This is an updated repost, originally published over two years ago, which I’m reposting now because actual censorship (as defined at the beginning of the article below) has now to some extent been proven. The legal work and legal proof among legal scholars, many of whom I correspond with, will come to light more and more — as it will also be denied and then turned into yet another political weapon meant to divide and polarize humanity. That early proof is why I’m reposting this article. It is not the proof itself. Please note also that I’ve only made a three-or-four short-sentence change to my original article. I note these few changes, in boldface, in the actual text. Though my changes are brief and few, they are significant.

No private action is an act of censorship.

Only governments can censor.

No private individual or platform, no magazine or press, no agency or business may rightfully suppress another publication by force. (Competition or competitive advantage does not equal force.) Only governments have the power to enforce silence and suppress with impunity.

When governments do this, it is an act of censorship.

Private companies can ban or reject whomever they decide. It is their right.

Nobody has a right to a Facebook page or Instagram or a Twitter profile or a Tiktok application or whatever.

In the same way — and for the same reason — that nobody has the right to an organ transplant, so nobody has the right to a social media platform.

It is a voluntary transaction consensually entered into.

It is an arrangement you are free not to enter.

When and to the extent a private platform or publication does conspire or collude with government, it then becomes censorship proper.

We have now crossed that line officially — the United States and most of the once-free world — and that is why I’m reposting this article, which was originally written some time ago.

All the major social-media platforms are now to one extent or another under government edict.

This means that actual censorship — as I described in the opening above in my original post from over two years ago — is now at play in all major media outlets, including social media.

This is precisely what happened in Mussolini’s Italy: the state and the corporations were wed by force, so that businesses were no longer private. This was Mussolini’s version of Syndicalism, which is a thoroughly leftist-socialist economic doctrine. It is pure poison. It is also sometimes known as cronyism, which is a leftist ideology, tacitly sanctioned by the right, and it is a deceptive tactic the sole purpose of which is to gain control over private lives through manipulation: economic manipulation, linguistic manipulation, and ideological manipulation.

It is a tactic that has been enormously successful, and that’s precisely the reason this tactic is not only still used: it’s used in ways far more comprehensively, insidiously, deceptively, and dangerously.

If you wish to see the precise way in which the left nullifies and usurps private-property rights — including the right to ban people from a private platform — keep watching the world. Please.

I predict that if you’re observant, the great myth that fascism is “rightwing” will evaporate before your very eyes, and I predict also that you will discover the true meaning of the word “privilege,” which is far from the bastardized version you’ve had hammered into your head these past several years: i.e. hatred of any and all successful people, even if you’re a billionaire, like Oprah Winfrey, or Robyn Rihanna, or a former President of the United States, like Barack Obama.

What this means, among many other things, is that the white homeless bag-lady nonetheless, according to the psycho-tactical quasi-ideology now known as “white privilege” or “white fragility” — a bastardized, perverted linguistic tactic from the beginning, I repeat — this white homeless bag-lady nonetheless has more “privilege” than, for instance, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, and Rihanna. Do you know the reason given?

Answer: because this homeless bag lady is white.

Forget the systematic abuse she’s grown up among since she was an infant, physical, psychological, emotional, and otherwise, and forget also the complete destitution this white woman grew up among — and forget also the fact that she is not even fully “white,” though she does indeed look white, but is in actuality part Mexican and Native American and also fifty percent white (on her father’s side) — she is still, I repeat, according to the quasi-ideology of so-called privilege, nevertheless more “privileged” than Oprah, Barack, Rihanna.

Yes.

It has come to this.

It has come to this and much, much more.

Just incidentally, both of those terms — “white privilege” and “white fragility” — have already dated, frozen into the secular dogma they always were — so much so, in fact, that even the inventors of these neologisms and psycho-tactics, as well as their deepest proponents, no longer like using them any more — or certainly not as much as they did a few short years ago: because though still quite new to the world — and this by any etymological standard imaginable (i.e. less than two decades) — the terminology is embarrassing in how dated it already is.

This is all related to censorship.

Please keep reading.

---

The collusion of government and business creates actual privilege. It is an ancient phenomenon that goes back millennia — perhaps beginning with the ancient Egyptian Pharos and perhaps earlier.

In such a case, no matter the era or terminology used, government’s role is not the protection of individual rights.

Government is in such cases officially in the business of granting privileges — or not.

In such businesses as these — which is also known as cronyism — the prospects go on forever.

I ask you to please never forget the following. I’ve said it many times before, and I will say it many times in the future.

I will keep saying it because it’s true.

It has always been true, and it always will be true — even if and when they change the terminology.

It is also one foolproof way you can always know — know infallibly — that what you’re being told is an adversary doctrine — a false and deadly doctrine:

Socialism in any and all of its constantly mutating forms, whether democratic or not, is by definition an ideology of force.

Never forget that.

It is your North Star.

It is the only thing you’ll ever need in order to gauge and measure any proposed politico-economic system, no matter its name, no matter if it’s still called socialism, or democratic socialism, or communism, or welfare statism, or any other term that may be adopted.

All of these things are secondary — whether it’s “white privilege,” “climate-change,” forced or coerced vaccinations delivered for the first time in all of human history by means of lipid nanoparticles, which cross the blood-brain barrier and placenta, or whether it’s a National Income Tax (from 1913 in the USA, which, exactly like “2 weeks to flatten the curve,” was explicitly instituted as [and I quote] “a temporary measure”) or whether the Federal Reserve (also from 1913) or whether social-security (which was also instituted “temporarily” in the 1930s) or medicare or medicaid or anything else — it is all purely, merely secondary detail meant to confuse, alarm, distract.

I implore you to remember this and never lose sight of it.

All of these mushrooming details and distractions are carefully crafted to be just that: details that become entrenched in societies, in a mere matter of months or even weeks, as the world has witnessed so starkly and in real time with so-called covid-19, and once these things are entrenched they can never be retrogressed away from, as we’ve also witnessed so starkly and in real-time with so-called covid-19 and the murderous excuse for a vaccine, which for the first time in all of human history is delivered by means of lipid nanoparticles that cross the blood-brain barrier and placenta, and the longterm consequences of which nobody knows.

That is the tactic.

It has worked all throughout history precisely because of the deliberately crafted details, which are fully intended to distract, alarm, confuse, overwhelm, and indoctrinate unsuspecting minds.

Your North Star, I repeat, is this:

In order to implement any of its stated goals, socialism by any name must at minimum expropriate.

Expropriation is an act of force. It is an unequivocal act of force.

Socialism can operate in no other way.

It can function by no other means.

Force is the handmaiden of any and all forms of socialism — as it is also the handmaiden (and the infallible giveaway) to any and all adversary, anti-life politico-economic doctrines that go by any other name.

The word “Democracy” is an example of another such word. George Orwell noted this very thing, with this very word — Democracy — and several other words, in his excellent 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” which I quoted here on the Journal Pulp several years ago, though in a slightly different context. George Orwell called this phenomenon “loaded language.” The following is from George Orwell’s 1946 essay:

The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.” The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

I repeat: your North Star is and will always be in the instigation of force, coercion, aggression, the manipulation of language and definitions.

The specific word or terminology is always secondary — but even more than that:

The words and terminology are deliberately used to manipulate and indoctrinate.

It is psycho-tactical.

The constant changing of definitions and the vagueness of these definitions is a large part of the tactic, but it’s not the end goal. It is a means to an end. That fact is crucially important to understand and never forget.

“First, confuse the vocabulary,” as the mass murder V.I. Lenin expressed it.

Notice also in this context that you will enrage all self-described socialists in the present day, to the point of death-threats (please ask me how I know), by pointing this fact out in regard to self-described socialist regimes, like Pol-Pot’s Cambodia or Adolph Hitler’s National German Socialist Part (NAZI is the acronym for Hitler’s self-described socialist government), even while the self-described socialists today, who are murderously enraged with you for pointing out this fact, fully and explicitly agree with you that the language is manipulated in order to confuse and indoctrinate.

That is one illustration of how insidious this psycho-tactic has become.

It has become more Orwellian than Orwell, and that is not an exaggeration.

Socialism, I say again, must expropriate.

Socialism, I say again, in any and all forms, no matter the specific word used, is an ideology of force.

Expropriation is unadulterated force. So is nationalization.

Socialism is force.

Nationalization is force.

They are identical.

The specific terminology is always irrelevant and secondary. It is a means to an end.

Socialism is the negation of voluntary, consensual human action.

Socialism is the boot that stomps out consent and consensual choice.

Socialism destroys the incentive to innovate and invent.

Socialism creates shortages.

I promise I am not wrong about this.

But even more urgent than that: the term “socialism,” like the term “white privilege,” is not the most relevant thing.

The most relevant thing is that the terminology will be deliberately changed again and that this changing of terminology is always the means to an end.

It will be changed again and again.

And again.

And again.

It is for this exact reason and by this exact method that the once fashionable and virtuous word “fascism” fell out of fashion and virtue, and is now the ultimate descriptor of politico-economic evil for the left and right alike.

It is for this exact reason and by this exact method that the once-fashionable word “communism” is now no longer used or as fervently embraced by its explicit, present-day proponents.

This is all done and this will all continue to be done in order to confuse, alarm, manipulate, and indoctrinate — all of us.

We are all targeted.

So that while I and others may rail tirelessly against socialism — as I have long done and as I will continue to do — the most important thing to recognize and always remember is your North Star:

Any ideology or philosophy or proposal, no matter its name, which in any way calls for the instigation of force, coercion, or aggression, even if it’s indirect, is an anti-life, anti-human, adversarial doctrine. Always.

Always and infallibly.

It is by their fruits — and not their name — that you can and will infallibly know them.

The most recent destruction of the philosophy of freedom was accomplished by means of a century-long system of state-financed education, one generation to the next, which has successfully inculcated into the minds of a majority the deadly doctrine that we all must be forced (by the state) to live for one another. State-forced egalitarianism — and not private initiative, not success and the right to keep what others have voluntarily paid you for because they value you and your work — state-forced egalitarianism, I say to you again, is the total goal.

The word “egalitarian” is another loaded word, and it too has already begun to change: its most ardent proponents no longer like to use it as they once did because the truth 0f it has been spotted by too many — especially after the horrors revealed to the world about Pol Pot and his genocidal, self-described socialist Khemer Rouge, which explicitly and repeatedly used the word “egalitarianism” to all the world in describing what they sought and which so much of the world, like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, once praised with a full-throat. This is identical to the way in which Bernie Sanders, David Sirota, virtually all of Hollywood (i.e. not just Sean Penn), and countless mainstream media personalities praised Hugo Chavez, repeatedly and with the most fulsome sort of messianic zeal — right up to the days following the exposure of Chavez’s murderous and self-described socialist regime, which killed countless millions of innocent Venezuelan human-beings, and which has never been acknowledged or apologized for by Bernie Sanders or any of the others who directly aided, abetted, and praised a homicidal dictator named Hugo Chavez, and whose legacy of horror continues to this day.

Hugo Chavez and his particular socialist regime, like Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Lenin, Castro, Hitler, and any number of others, have in less than 7 years been forgotten and buried by most of the world — though not by me, and I will not only never forget it or let it be buried: I will continue to fight it. As I will continue to fight also their horrific reign of destruction and the principle behind that reign of destruction, which in Venezuela is still, right now, going on (under an only slightly different name) and thus remains unchanged. That is what this article is: it is part of my lifelong vow and commitment to expose mass-murder and totalitarian tyranny no matter the name it chooses to place itself under.

No matter the terminology, the enforcers are the ones who permit the rest of us to exist.

That is all you need to know — ever — and it’s all you ever need to focus upon. Everything else is an intended distraction and a deliberate loading of details in order to keep humans divided, alarmed, and confused.

Ask yourself this:

Why do the enforcers get to permit the rest of us to exist?

It is a good question — in fact, it is in a politico-economic context the only question — and it has never in all of human history been answered logically.

Not a single time.

The following or some variation of it is the only answer you’ll get — and this answer is not only wrong and illogical, but genocidal and horrific:

Because humans do not exist by right, you will be answered. You will immediately then be overloaded in minutia and details and endless lexical hairsplitting, which will immediately overwhelm and confuse.

And yet the fact remains and will always remain: that is the only answer you’ll ever get.

You can fully and forever inoculate yourselves against all such psycho-tactics. All you ever have to do is remember your North Star, your guiding light:

Is the instigation of force, coercion, compulsion, or aggression in any way at play in any of the proposed policies or measures? No amount of minutia, detail, or hairsplitting matters.

Know this also:

The only alternative to acting by right is acting by permission.

The only alternative to acting by right is acting by permission.

The only alternative to acting by right is acting by permission.

Ask yourself: whose permission? And why?

In the history of the entire world, no good answer has ever been given to that question, and do you know the reason?

Because no good answer for it exists.

The doctrine that destroyed freedom can be summed up in this one word: anti-individualism.

When any form of egalitarianism is the goal — no matter the name given to it — individual choice is not permitted and cannot be permitted.

Voluntary transactions cannot be permitted.

Consensual interactions are deemed illegal.

Why is this so?

Because when humans are left free, humans naturally stratify. This is healthy and it is good, and it creates vibrancy and diversity and fosters ingenuity and invention.

The reason the anti-individualism lie proliferated and won-out in the minds of so many is that the principle was conceded by the left, right, and middle alike: the principle that each individual human being does exist by right. They let it go. They were unable to defend it against the onslaught of attacks.

That is the thing all major political parties have conceded, and it is the thing they all have in common.

It is also why I have said over and over and over, until I was blue in the face, beginning from the time I was a teenager until right now: bipartisan politics are meaningless. They too are pyscho-tactical, invented, and propagated purely to confuse and sow strife and division and conflict among human beings. They are intended to obliterate the human impulse to good-will, and in this regard, as you can see everywhere around you — and in a way greater than ever before — they have succeeded.

According to all adversary politico-economic ideologies — no matter their current name, no matter their name to come — individuals exist not by right but only by government permission. Individuals are either granted the privilege to exist or not. Governments are the ones who grant this privilege or not.

The greatest threat to free speech isn’t Facebook or Twitter or AWS or Snapchat or Instagram or any of the others. It is the near-unanimous call, from all so-called sides of the so-called aisle and the so-called political spectrum, for some government control of these platforms.

Censorship, I repeat, means coercion — including but not limited to the forcible prohibition of speech or the monitoring of speech — and this is something of which only governments are capable.

Freedom of speech guarantees that no one may rightfully silence you.

It does not guarantee you a publication platform — not any more than the right to freely exchange guarantees that you’ll have customers.

Just as individuals do not relinquish their rights if and when they exercise their rights in an irrational manner, so social media does not become a “public utility” in providing a platform for billions of people. If this were the case, it would mean that government alone determines all online speech. (A public company on the stock market does not mean what many think: it only means that anyone can buy into that company and own shares in it.) And if that were the case, it would mean that the likes of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Donald Trump — they, I repeat, and not Jack Dorsey, are in charge of twitter. They, not the open market, grant Parler and Gab the privilege to exist and to compete, or not.

In such a nightmarish scenario, all companies and all businesses — even one-person businesses, no matter the industry — exist only when government grants them the privilege. In such scenarios all private enterprise is state-determined. All of it.

That, reader, is the total nullification of human freedom. It should horrify you senseless.

There is no issue now more important to freedom than free speech. This right acts as a guardian to all other rights. Today’s so-called cancel culture and woke mobs desire nothing more vehemently than to shut-off and silence all speech they deem incorrect or unacceptable or hateful. Their opponents likewise want to forcibly compel social media to promote their speech.

The political function of the right to free speech is not to subsidize people and their speaking platforms — that, I emphasize, is not included — but rather to protect dissenting voices and unpopular minority views from forcible suppression, either by government or other people. Many if not most lawyers and judges do not know this. But even more disheartening and appalling is the level of their apathy concerning the overwhelming importance of such issues.

Here is small sampling of what America would look like without the absolute and inalienable right to free speech, which does include so-called hate speech:

In Pakistan, people are arrested and sentenced to death for “blasphemy” for insulting Islam, while in Egypt, individuals are arrested for “debauchery” for waving rainbow flags at concerts.

Then, there are the thirty Turkish journalists currently facing consecutive life sentences for their anti-government articles, as well as the Kyrgyz author imprisoned for “inciting hatred between religious groups” for publishing a book questioning God’s form.

Don’t forget about Germany, where just this year police raided dozens of people’s homes for “hateful postings over social media,” or the United Kingdom, where a man was convicted for his anti-military Facebook comments, or France, where a man was fined for holding up a sign saying “Get lost, jerk” to French President Nicolas Sarkozy — words Sarkozy himself said to a critic who refused to shake his hand during a public event.

In response to the objection that such oppression would never happen in the United States, we at FIRE would argue that, well, it already has: Look no further than efforts to address hate speech on American colleges campuses, which have ensnared a professor for blogging about same-sex marriage, students for their racially-themed humor at a party, a student-created satirical play promoted as “offensive or inflammatory to all audiences,” and a student newspaper for printing political satire.

But what if outlawing such expression is the price we must pay for a more tolerant society? If only that were true.

Those urging a crackdown on hateful speech must explain why such laws are routinely used to target minority viewpoints and have done nothing to reduce levels of hate or intolerance in other countries. A 2014 article in The Daily Beast makes a salient point about how such laws actually have the opposite effect:

So one would assume that racial discrimination has been dumped on the ash heap of history in France, considering racist thoughts and symbols have been made illegal. How, then, does one explain that the National Front, whose former leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was found guilty of Holocaust denial, is now the most popular party in the country?

Advocates of hate speech bans should not be surprised to find that governments, when given the immense power to punish intolerance, have used this weapon against their critics. Investigative journalists, controversial politicians, political activists — these are the most frequent targets of hate speech laws. Even nongovernmental actors, such as Facebook, are inclined to use their hate speech policies to censor marginalized users.

(Source)

 

Bad ideas, reprehensible ideas, evil ideas — they only pose a threat when people don’t articulate and stand up for good ideas.

It is my opinion that socialist-progressive doctrine has only been successful — successfully indoctrinated into the minds of the majority, whether explicitly consciously realized or not, beginning in grade school — because of this one thing more than any other: the opposition’s inability to fully ground (fully, intellectually, and philosophically ground) the inalienable fact and nature individual rights, which are rooted in the human quiddity: our individuality and the individual reasoning mind, which possesses the faculty of volition, which gives rise to rights.

The rub is that the spirt of individuality and free-enterprise — the right to exist by right, as distinguished from government permission, and the right to succeed and grow wealthy and make something of yourself and provide wealth and prosperity for your loved ones — it is all still such a deep part of the American psyche and spirit and fabric that the attempt to supplant this spirit of independence and individuality with socialist dogma and force (precisely what the corrupt regimes coming into power have already begun), it will tear the United States asunder.

It won’t be absorbed.

Even in spite of the Herculean effort and the relentless campaign of indoctrination and dogma, which is one-hundred years old or more, it simply won’t be absorbed.

Nor should it be.

The attempt will create another civil war.