“It’s a Private Company,” They Say. Oh, Really? – LewRockwell 9/8/22

Source: LewRockwell.com

From the Tom Woods Letter:

During the George W. Bush years, Glenn Greenwald rose to prominence for his opposition to the White House’s record on civil liberties.

Oh, the left-liberal establishment loved him.

Then he decided he would apply his principles equally to both sides.

Then they didn’t like him so much.

Today he published an important thread on Twitter, a portion of which I wanted to share with you. Here he describes exactly what’s going on with the suppression of dissident voices. And unlike all too many libertarians, whose entire analysis was “they’re private companies; they can do what they want,” Greenwald gets to the heart of what’s happening:

The regime of censorship being imposed on the internet – by a consortium of DC Dems, billionaire-funded “disinformation experts,” the US Security State, and liberal employees of media corporations – is dangerously intensifying in ways I believe are not adequately understood.

A series of “crises” have been cynically and aggressively exploited to inexorably restrict the range of permitted views, and expand pretexts for online silencing and deplatforming. Trump’s election, Russiagate, 1/6, COVID and war in Ukraine all fostered new methods of repression.

During the failed attempt in January to force Spotify to remove Joe Rogan, the country’s most popular podcaster – remember that? – I wrote that the current religion of Western liberals in politics and media is censorship: their prime weapon of activism.

But that Rogan failure only strengthened their repressive campaigns. Dems routinely abuse their majoritarian power in DC to explicitly coerce Big Tech silencing of their opponents and dissent. This is *Govt censorship* disguised as corporate autonomy.

There’s now an entire new industry, aligned with Dems, to pressure Big Tech to censor. Think tanks and self-proclaimed “disinformation experts” funded by Omidyar, Soros and the US/UK Security State use benign-sounding names to glorify ideological censorship as neutral expertise.

The worst, most vile arm of this regime are the censorship-mad liberal employees of big media corporations. Masquerading as “journalists,” they align with the scummiest Dem groups to silence and deplatform.

It is astonishing to watch Dems and their allies in media corporations posture as opponents of “fascism” – while their main goal is to *unite state and corporate power* to censor their critics and degrade the internet into an increasingly repressive weapon of information control.

A major myth that must be quickly dismantled: political censorship is not the byproduct of autonomous choices of Big Tech companies.

This is happening because DC Dems and the US Security State are threatening reprisals if they refuse. They’re explicit.

But the worst is watching people whose job title in corporate HR Departments is “journalist” take the lead in agitating for censorship. They exploit the platforms of corporate giants to pioneer increasingly dangerous means of banning dissenters. *These* are the authoritarians.

This is the frog-in-boiling-water problem: the increase in censorship is gradual but continuous, preventing recognition of how severe it’s become. The EU now legally mandates censorship of Russian news. They’ve made it *illegal* for companies to air it….

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