By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech.”—Benjamin Franklin
Beware of those who want to monitor, muzzle, catalogue and censor speech.
Especially be on your guard when the reasons given for limiting your freedoms end up expanding the government’s powers.
In the wake of a mass shooting in Buffalo, NY, carried out by an 18-year-old gunman in military gear allegedly motivated by fears that the white race is in danger of being replaced, there have been renewed calls for social media monitoring, censorship of flagged content that could be construed as dangerous or hateful, and limitations on free speech activities, particularly online.
As expected, those who want safety at all costs will clamor for more gun control measures (if not at an outright ban on weapons for non-military, non-police personnel), widespread mental health screening of the general population and greater scrutiny of military veterans, more threat assessments and behavioral sensing warnings, more surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities, more “See Something, Say Something” programs aimed at turning Americans into snitches and spies, more metal detectors and whole-body imaging devices at soft targets, more roaming squads of militarized police empowered to do random bag searches, more fusion centers to centralize and disseminate information to law enforcement agencies, and more surveillance of what Americans say and do, where they go, what they buy and how they spend their time.
All of these measures play into the government’s hands.
As we have learned the hard way, the phantom promise of safety in exchange for restricted or regulated liberty is a false, misguided doctrine that serves only to give the government greater authority to crack down, lock down, and institute even more totalitarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.
Add the Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board” to that mix, empower it to monitor online activity and police so-called “disinformation,” and you have the makings of a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.
After all, it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth.
Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.
If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.
It’s been a long time since free speech was actually free.
On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak.
In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.
That’s not a whole lot of freedom, especially if you’re inclined to voice opinions that may be construed as conspiratorial or dangerous.
This steady, pervasive censorship creep clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness and inflicted on us by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) is technofascism, and it does not tolerate dissent.
These internet censors are not acting in our best interests to protect us from dangerous, disinformation campaigns. They’re laying the groundwork now to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.
The internet, hailed as a super-information highway, is increasingly becoming the police state’s secret weapon. This “policing of the mind” is exactly the danger author Jim Keith warned about when he predicted that “information and communication sources are gradually being linked together into a single computerized network, providing an opportunity for unheralded control of what will be broadcast, what will be said, and ultimately what will be thought.”
What we are witnessing is the modern-day equivalent of book burning which involves doing away with dangerous ideas—legitimate or not—and the people who espouse them.
Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted). The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.
Having been reduced to a cowering citizenry—mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all—we have nowhere left to go and nothing left to say that cannot be misconstrued and used to muzzle us.
Yet what a lot of people fail to understand, however, is that it’s not just what you say or do that is being monitored, but how you think that is being tracked and targeted.
We’ve already seen this play out on the state and federal level with hate crime legislation that cracks down on so-called “hateful” thoughts and expression, encourages self-censoring and reduces free debate on various subject matter.
With every passing day, we’re being moved further down the road towards a totalitarian society characterized by government censorship, violence, corruption, hypocrisy and intolerance, all packaged for our supposed benefit in the Orwellian doublespeak of national security, tolerance and so-called “government speech.”
Little by little, Americans have been conditioned to accept routine incursions on their freedoms.
This is how oppression becomes systemic, what is referred to as creeping normality, or a death by a thousand cuts.
It’s a concept invoked by Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist Jared Diamond to describe how major changes, if implemented slowly in small stages over time, can be accepted as normal without the shock and resistance that might greet a sudden upheaval.
Diamond’s concerns related to Easter Island’s now-vanished civilization and the societal decline and environmental degradation that contributed to it, but it’s a powerful analogy for the steady erosion of our freedoms and decline of our country right under our noses.
As Diamond explains, “In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism… Why didn’t they look around, realize what they were doing, and stop before it was too late? What were they thinking when they cut down the last palm tree?”
His answer: “I suspect that the disaster happened not with a bang but with a whimper.”
Much like America’s own colonists, Easter Island’s early colonists discovered a new world—“a pristine paradise”—teeming with life. Yet almost 2000 years after its first settlers arrived, Easter Island was reduced to a barren graveyard by a populace so focused on their immediate needs that they failed to preserve paradise for future generations.
The same could be said of the America today: it, too, is being reduced to a barren graveyard by a populace so focused on their immediate needs that they are failing to preserve freedom for future generations.
In Easter Island’s case, as Diamond speculates:
“The forest…vanished slowly, over decades. Perhaps war interrupted the moving teams; perhaps by the time the carvers had finished their work, the last rope snapped. In the meantime, any islander who tried to warn about the dangers of progressive deforestation would have been overridden by vested interests of carvers, bureaucrats, and chiefs, whose jobs depended on continued deforestation… The changes in forest cover from year to year would have been hard to detect… Only older people, recollecting their childhoods decades earlier, could have recognized a difference. Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important. By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm.”
Sound painfully familiar yet?
We’ve already torn down the rich forest of liberties established by our founders. It has vanished slowly, over the decades. Those who warned against the dangers posed by too many laws, invasive surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids and the like have been silenced and ignored. They stopped teaching about freedom in the schools. Few Americans know their history. And even fewer seem to care that their fellow Americans are being jailed, muzzled, shot, tasered, and treated as if they have no rights at all.
The erosion of our freedoms happened so incrementally, no one seemed to notice. Only the older generations, remembering what true freedom was like, recognized the difference. Gradually, the freedoms enjoyed by the citizenry became fewer, smaller and less important. By the time the last freedom falls, no one will know the difference.
This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls: with a thousand cuts, each one justified or ignored or shrugged over as inconsequential enough by itself to bother, but they add up.
Each cut, each attempt to undermine our freedoms, each loss of some critical right—to think freely, to assemble, to speak without fear of being shamed or censored, to raise our children as we see fit, to worship or not worship as our conscience dictates, to eat what we want and love who we want, to live as we want—they add up to an immeasurable failure on the part of each and every one of us to stop the descent down that slippery slope.
We are on that downward slope now.
The contagion of fear that has been spread with the help of government agencies, corporations and the power elite is poisoning the well, whitewashing our history, turning citizen against citizen, and stripping us of our rights.
America is approaching another reckoning right now, one that will pit our commitment to freedom principles against a level of fear-mongering that is being used to wreak havoc on everything in its path.
Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, while we squabble over which side is winning this losing battle, a tsunami approaches.
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I don’t think I can tolerate all this tolerance much longer.
each moment you tolerate it brings them one moment closer to victory.
Pity we can’t use “cancellation” back at ’em: “She called me a honky – I demand she be fired!”
they intend to turn the rules against you.
but if we’re not all playing by the same rules, then there are no rules.
We’re all playing by the same rules.
The rules are these: The rules are whatever they say they are and the rules only apply to us, not to them.
Perfectly consistent. One set of rules for everyone!!!
This game is pretty fun, no?
that is indeed how they see it. but it only works if we agree. that’s why they seek to eliminate everyone who disagrees.
Leaving but one question:
Which set of rules will we abide by when we respond to THEM?
They are cancelling themselves. I noticed she forgot to engage her emergency brake, but there was no way i was going to be accused of ‘mansplaining’. Besides, that’s the insurance company’s job.
“Cancellation” of tyrants is old and effective.
I’d ask you to ask Caucescu or Mussolini as a few examples,
but they are no longer available for comment.
“motivated by fears that the white race is in danger of being replaced”
“pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
The Great Replacement isn’t a theory, it’s government policy across the Western world. We’re seeing genocidal governmental immigration policy, targeting the white population for eradication – and anybody that notices is branded a heretic.
By the same people celebrating our genocide.
The plantation owners want new more compliant slaves. The fact that white folks don’t breed enough is because of their choice of things and experiences over family.
You will note also, their “Pan-European Negroid Race” (actually their term, re Cloward and Piven)…
…excludes the North American continent.
“where only that which is ‘safe’ and ‘accepted’ by the majority is permitted”
incorrect. they don’t see themselves as the majority, rather they see themselves as the humans and everyone else as cattle who are to be told what to think and do. you could line up 100 to 1 against them and they’d just smile at your primitive ignorance and continue giving you orders.
Room 101 for John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead per O’Brien’s orders; now.
This sounds like a global warming article. “Slowly Easter Island was deforested and the people killed themselves because they didn’t listen to mother earth”… (eyes rolling)… Chip
John’s reference to Easter Island seems more of an analogy than a plug about global warming.
John always “makes it clear” in his book “Battlefield America” (which I bought and read BTW). And while I generally like the author, he seems to be pitching his books and teeters towards global warming BS… Chip
It was possible to start an alter internet a loooong time ago. Don’t complain if you keep playing with their ball and they beat you up and take it away.
Censorship is what the left uses when their lies are no longer believed.
If they are censoring, they are censoring the absolute truth.
QED.
No election at any level will fix what is wrong with our society and some of the people that infest it.
This is true, in the primary vote just three days ago it was the first time I had not voted since about 1973. Instantly felt better about the future, at least for my life.
It’s getting harder to vote. Texas primaries were in March. Only reason I voted was to cast a vote for county commissioner in my precinct and that only because the incumbent is correct the county ain’t got the dough to keep the county roads baby butt smooth. I’ve seen the numbers from commissioners’ meetings.
Gripes me that those that are totally exempt from any property tax including county road taxes because of disability exemption are often the ones that complain the most about the county roads. The challenger was talking trash about the incumbent’s failure to maintain the county roads.
Control freak ass-hat clowns to the left of me want to beat me up
Control freak ass-hat clowns to the right of me want to beat me up
Here I am stuck in the middle of ass-hat clowns
Certainly more to come at TBP from John Whitehead. From Rutherford website:
Battlefield America: The War on the American People
Interesting the mention of “towns”. Very small town America near me, “Republican”. “Republicans” make up the entire city council. Several years ago the city council decides to start discussions about implementing a swat team. Money is an issue of course and I’ve no info the idea progressed past initial discussion. To date I’ve not noticed donations from Federal Government in the form of armored vehicles left over and refurbished from the Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos. Never know though, they could be hidden unbeknown to those out of the loop. This stuff is like some kind of disease, like a cancer that spreads with no cure. Ass-hat clowns.