Guest Post by Ron Paul
Last week’s massive social media purges – starting with President Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter and other outlets – was shocking and chilling, particularly to those of us who value free expression and the free exchange of ideas. The justifications given for the silencing of wide swaths of public opinion made no sense and the process was anything but transparent. Nowhere in President Trump’s two “offending” Tweets, for example, was a call for violence expressed explicitly or implicitly. It was a classic example of sentence first, verdict later.
Many Americans viewed this assault on social media accounts as a liberal or Democrat attack on conservatives and Republicans, but they are missing the point. The narrowing of allowable opinion in the virtual public square is no conspiracy against conservatives. As progressives like Glenn Greenwald have pointed out, this is a wider assault on any opinion that veers from the acceptable parameters of the mainstream elite, which is made up of both Democrats and Republicans.
Yes, this is partly an attempt to erase the Trump movement from the pages of history, but it is also an attempt to silence any criticism of the emerging political consensus in the coming Biden era that may come from progressive or antiwar circles.
After all, a look at Biden’s incoming “experts” shows that they will be the same failed neoconservative interventionists who gave us weekly kill lists, endless drone attacks and coups overseas, and even US government killing of American citizens abroad. Progressives who complain about this “back to the future” foreign policy are also sure to find their voices silenced.
Those who continue to argue that the social media companies are purely private ventures acting independent of US government interests are ignoring reality. The corporatist merger of “private” US social media companies with US government foreign policy goals has a long history and is deeply steeped in the hyper-interventionism of the Obama/Biden era.
“Big Tech” long ago partnered with the Obama/Biden/Clinton State Department to lend their tools to US “soft power” goals overseas. Whether it was ongoing regime change attempts against Iran, the 2009 coup in Honduras, the disastrous US-led coup in Ukraine, “Arab Spring,” the destruction of Syria and Libya, and so many more, the big US tech firms were happy to partner up with the State Department and US intelligence to provide the tools to empower those the US wanted to seize power and to silence those out of favor.
In short, US government elites have been partnering with “Big Tech” overseas for years to decide who has the right to speak and who must be silenced. What has changed now is that this deployment of “soft power” in the service of Washington’s hard power has come home to roost.
So what is to be done? Even pro-free speech alternative social media outlets are under attack from the Big Tech/government Leviathan. There are no easy solutions. But we must think back to the dissidents in the era of Soviet tyranny. They had no Internet. They had no social media. They had no ability to communicate with thousands and millions of like-minded, freedom lovers. Yet they used incredible creativity in the face of incredible adversity to continue pushing their ideas. Because no army – not even Big Tech partnered with Big Government – can stop an idea whose time has come. And Liberty is that idea. We must move forward with creativity and confidence!
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Military members would fight and possibly die protecting your rights including freedom of speech. Now we have people in power and people who control the ability to communicate taking freedoms away and censoring your ability to voice your opinion if it doesn’t match theirs. This is the big step up for the country? Trump never did this. it comes across as something the Chinese would do.
It’s what the democrats/leftists/tyrants do … in other words, look deeper at the demographics of the incoming cabinet and you’ll see familiar faces and backgrounds — aipac, adl, jdl, $plc, etc.
Ron? Did you hear Martial Law was coming to town? No matter who we call president, I suspect.
That’s another reason- as if one should even be needed – that no one should join the military. And if anyone who joins ends up being used against Americans, he deserves whatever happens.
One could say the same for any LEO for that matter…
Americans had MULTIPLE opportunities to elect this man of integrity!
BUT … the average American voter, no matter their political persuasion are Total Absolute Dumfuks. This is now factual.
America may one day regret their Dumfuk-ness and wonder why they blew the opportunity.
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NOTE: How fucked up are ALL our institutions, and how has that affected all of us? Well, even as I was writing the above the though crept into my pea-brain … “Well, who cares …. maybe RP is a Swamp Creature as well.”
It is such a damned difficult and sad life when you can trust virtually .. NO ONE. Sometimes, not even members of your own family.
“Think of how stupid the average person is – and half of them are stupider than that.” – George Carlin
especially the ones that think a man will fix something for them
Only 3 thumbs up????
Two thumbs up here, Stuck. That man got railroaded hard. Bernie thinks he was sidelined? Sheeeeeit. Ron Paul is the O.G. railroaded candidate.
Bernie took the pay off. Not sure about Ron, I like him always have, but he has been there a long time.
A revival of a Soviet-Russia Samizdat method or similar, of covert self publishing among other new and innovative communications modes, shall arise to spread the dissident word in the new Global Oligarchic Totalitarian Technopoly.
Does anyone remember carbon paper or the venerable mimeograph machine? That’s how it can be accomplished.
Maybe in place of carbon paper and the mimeograph machine we can use .pdf files and e-mail and such … maybe the bulk e0mail spam software that folks use to screw US out of our money can be used to Unite US …
Only old people remember mimeograph machines,Auntie.
They can’t be hacked or surveilled.
I reckon I may break out the old blackberries.
All the big techs have had govt assistance, contracts and data sharing turning them into the behemoths they have become.
That they are in agreement with our central govt and act on their behalf is no surprise.
The corporations have taken over the government, not the other way around. Big Tech HQ’s should be stormed, not government buildings.
What was implied was the govt supported their EARLY growth which it did through contracts and deals to spy on us. Yes, the have grown large TOO large.
Drones and Hellfire’s coming to a neighborhood near you soon. As soon as they pass Patriot Act II, our masters will be free to kill anyone with a dissenting opinion. When they remind John Roberts of the pictures they have, he will side with the elite in purging the population of dissent.
Sites like this will be considered a terroristic threat and removed from the public’s view. They, too, read 1984 and have discovered a way to improve upon its tactics.
Ron Paul,
Why have you not exposed the bigger crimes you know these fellows have committed. You worked in the same house with Dennis Haskert…… Why don’t you speak out daily about his crimes against little boys that were never adjudicated?
Because he is paid opposition. Feeding from the .gov trough like all the rest of the grifters.
I suspect that Ron, like Pat Buchanan, is just too much of an old-school gentleman to grasp the depths to which the American political class has fallen.
In the old days, a Very Bad Man in US politics was merely a drunk, womanizing bribe-taker; those faults now appear quaint, almost harmless, compared to proclivities of the New Gods of America.
agree just like his weak son
you are clueless
Paul was a back bencher. Guys like him are lucky if the Speaker even returns a polite Good Morning. The best example I have is the Deputy Minority Leader in the Illinois House. He has NEVER spoken with or had a conversation with the corrupt Dem Speaker Madigan. If they pass in a hall and he says hello, he gets a filthy look in return. That is how Paul was treated back then.
This is some scarey shit.
Ron Paul is right, but I don’t see a problem with banning the Right from social media. Social media hasn’t helped the Right in the past. It has only provided a relief valve for everyone (left and right alike) to constantly whine about problems, which didn’t accomplish much other than deter anyone from taking action that might actually solve some of those problems. If I had one penny for every tweet that I have seen in the last four years (especially from Trump) that was simply whining about some perceived injustice, which also had thousands of “Likes” and retweets, I would be a multi-millionaire right now. And the really depressing aspect of most of those tweets is that they were so obvious that they were simply a waste of time to write and read. Trump could have tweeted “water is wet” and it would have gotten thousands of “Likes” and retweets. In fact he DID put out hundreds if not thousands of tweets that were just as meaningless or obvious, such as LAW AND ORDER, which did get thousands of “Likes” and retweets. Social media was also instrumental in spreading much disinformation that was harmful to the Right, especially the incredibly retarded Q-Anon nonsense. Banning the Right from social media can’t make things worse, and might make them better.
The man who should have been president nailed it.
And then he gets banned from Facebook for no reason.
Try talking with real live people. Start with those with enough mental acuity to refuse the face diaper.
Post a page on light posts, signage posts. Just like the lost dog and cat ads. “Free speech for all”. “Support the Bill of Rights”. “2nd amendment supports your freedom”. “No forced vaccines”. Be creative. Leave party out of it.
Post short messages that people read as they sit at the stoplight, or whiz buy in their car.
Low tech. Lets see the tech tyrants stop that.
Auntie loves the aroma of mimeograph fluid in the morning. It smells like victory.
Trump did say “take the guns first, due process later” when he was throwing white america under the bus and sucking up to the media.