Category Archives: Free Speech

Strip Social Media’s Social Engineers Of Their State Grants-Of-Privilege

Argument, Business, Conservatism, Free Speech, Law, libertarianism, Republicans, Technology, The State

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As ever, the political caste, in general, and “the party of industry and commerce,” in particular, has shown itself to be arrayed against Middle America.

How so?

An army of Covington Kids ought to have advanced on social media’s loathsome moral crusaders and censors. It can’t, because stripping the tech trolls of their state-grants of privilege has slipped down the order of business.

Depriving social media’s social engineers of their state grants-of-privilege seems more than reasonable.

Nobody conservative is arguing that “government should regulate content moderation of social media,” CATO Institute.

What is being advocated is that social-media censors be deprived of their state-grants of privilege and protections against liability. For social media are collective frauds. While acting as editors and social engineers, they are legally safeguarded as mere platform providers.

Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, tech companies currently enjoy broad immunity from civil lawsuits stemming from what users post because they are treated as “platforms” rather than “publishers”.

Trump’s executive order is designed to pressure regulators, including the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, to come up with new rules that would curtail that immunity. It is likely to face legal challenges. (The Guardian)

Look, laws exist. Too many of them. It would be great were there fewer of these laws. However, whether intended or not,  the upshot of corporate libertarianism is that laws only ever hamper the little guy and gal, never the multinational shyster and fraudster.

Naturally, conservatives must agree that unfettered speech is just that.  They can’t start carving out pet exceptions.

UPDATE (4/13/021):  The Civil Rights Act route is way better than Section 230 repeal—although that, too, must be tackled.

UPDATED (3/22/022): MERCER DOMAINS BANNED BY DEEP TECH FACEBOOK

Cultural Marxism, Donald Trump, Free Speech, Ilana Mercer, IlanaMercer.com, Liberty, Political Correctness, Technology

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“Not everything that’s banned by social media is worth reading. But the time is fast approaching when one can say with confidence that most of what isn’t banned is not worth reading.”—ILANA MERCER.

Or, at least, is unimportant. (Self-serving hyperbole? Maybe a smidgen.)

Facebook has banned both my domains: Even mention of their names is flagged on Facebook.
I’ve mentioned the latest blog post on Facebook by directing readers to Twitter.

Note how I’ve already censored myself, removing a perfectly fine adjective from the blog’s description on Facebook (“Wall Of Moms? More Like Wall Of [Feral] Flesh.”)

In any case, my guru confirms the following: “It looks like Facebook has banned www.barelyablog from posting to Facebook. It looks like they’ve also banned ilanamercer.com. Their reasoning is that you’ve ‘violated their Community Standards.’ What the violation was they will not say.”

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Indeed, the “Continue” button leads only to more Kafka:

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Disagreeing with Deep Tech gets one nowhere.

“You’re obviously doing something right,” suggested a Twitter friend. First it was, “If you’re not called a racist, you’re doing something wrong.” Now it’s, “If you’ve not been banned by Deep Tech, you’re doing something wrong.”

Another asked, “Why the concerted effort at censorship by big tech right now, do you think?” For me, Arthur Pogonatus, the marginalizing has been ongoing for 20 yrs. First the Republicans when, in 2002, this writer came out against Bush’s Iraq war–and for being independent on most issues. In 2018, I’m told, Wikipedia, the Southern Poverty Law Center of “encyclopedias, banned me. Banishing has been ongoing from one faction or another.

The best description of the New America comes courtesy of my colleague, Fred Reed, writing on the Unz Review, which has also been banned by Facebook and has become a haven for dissidents:

Congress does nothing, one parry neutering the other and all bought and paid for by special interests, by Wall Street and the arms makers and the big corporations. Local governments submit to the rioters or stand aside as the burning goes on. This is not society. It is chaos.

I agree with the Reed paragraph that precedes the one just posted, but, see, I can’t post it, because, this time, people on the Right would evince an allergy to aspects of the objective truth and they’d “blow.”

Fred’s right. “It’s Gonna Blow: Be a Miracle if it Don’t.”

A Washington Post writer compared the “fight against big tech [to] the fight against organized crime.”  I’m not sure this comparison holds. For one, what fight?

Certainly, the author fails to mention the plight of those on the speech spectrum who’ve incurred the wrath of Deep Tech. In particular, those of us on the dissident right who’ve been banned and lack political representation or hefty champions (other than one small woman, whom I call “The Force”: Michelle Malkin).

It’s certainly not Don Trump, Jr. See “Is Political Participation Predicated On Views About Holocaust?”

RELATED: “The Anatomy of A Twitter Blocking — My Own,” Ilana Mercer, June 27, 2019

UPDATE (3/22/022):

UPDATE III (9/30/020): The Meta On ‘Cancel-Culture King’ Ben Shapiro

Celebrity, Conservatism, Critique, Free Speech, Political Philosophy

From his comfy perch alongside establishment conservatives, Ben Shapiro regularly whinges about the de-platforming of members of his center-right, ideological cabal. This, as he vilifies and ostracizes those on the alt- and dissident right.

Understand, Ben. It’s all in the meta: Your methods are of a piece with the methods of the Left. For you can’t claim to support unfettered speech if you actively work to fetter those whose speech you abhor.

The Alt-Right asks questions. This is not despicable, as Mr. Shapiro terms the faction. The Alt-Left throws punches. This is despicable:

Daily Wire puff piece about its own editor here.

More me on Ben-Shap here.

“Ben Shapiro Attacks The Dissident Right.”

The Great Lady herself. Ms. Malkin knows that Ben-Shap deceives people into thinking he’s really smart by going “300 RPM”:

Conservatives are most certainly interested in cancelling conservatives and libertarians to their right.  Ben Shapiro is the “king of such cancellation culture,” as Ms. Malkin points out. And she is still standing, railing against the “two-faced pundits and keyboard warriors.” Bravo!

America First is why Shapiro, who is ConInc subsidized, tried to cancel Michelle. “There is no money in telling the truth (don’t I know it: was cancelled 20 years ago). … The young men Ben-Shap opposes pose a threat to his business model.” David Rubin is another intellectual mediocrity. True again. Been saying this for years.

UPDATE I (8/2/020):

UPDATE II (9/25): Ben Shapiro says “the 2ndAmendment only applies to ‘guns that are in common use’ and that if the #guns are not determined by government officials to be in common use, that they can “theoretically be restricted by the state.”

UPDATE II (9/30): Ben on the first presidential debate. 

NEW COLUMN: How Con Inc. Sells Out Dissidents To The Southern Poverty Law Center

Conservatism, Ethics, Free Speech, Media, Republicans

NEW COLUMN IS “How Con Inc. Sells Out Dissidents To The Southern Poverty Law Center.” It is currently on WND and The Unz Review.

Grubbing it with the SPLC and those conservatives who slip between the sheets with these scammers is ill-making. But, three years on, and my hand was forced by this fracas on Twitter. There was no option.

My thanks to WND, The Unz Review, American Greatness, Cassandra Fairbanks, Patrick Howley, and those who man-up.

Excerpt:

They’re unwilling to defend true dissidents, but Beltway lite libertarians and Con Inkers are forever genuflecting to privileged legacy journalists, who can afford to voluntarily leave their rich gigs in “protest” of cancel culture.

The Right hasn’t shut up about the New Yorker’s Andrew Sullivan, who is far less banal than the New York Times’ Bari Weiss. Both belong to the “nothing new, more of the same” neoconservative tradition. Her resignation antics are a storm in a C-cup; his “defiant” departure is the fussy equivalent (just for gay men).

For a more meaningful scandal, to the Right at least, consider the farce of a Conservative news and opinion organization (founded by a dragon slayer of a broadcaster), which has published lacerating pieces condemning America’s foremost hate group, yet has proceeded to purge writers, in compliance with the demands of said shakedown hate group.

American conservatism capitulating to America-haters? Negotiating with terrorists? Hypocrisy? Yes, yes, and yes.

Prone is the natural position of the Establishment Republican, Con Inker, neoconservative, whatever his latest opportunistic, political permutation may be.

The news site is the Daily Caller. The hate group is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The ransom demands issue from the illiterati of the SPLC, who regularly publish lists of—and hit pieces against—untouchable dissidents. They then proceed against us with all the vigor of a “a money grabbing slander machine,” to quote John Stossel, a veteran investigative journalist who has exposed this corrupt syndicate that lives off destroying people.

For his part, economist Thomas DiLorenzo has skillfully pried apart the revenue-rich, “racial racketeering” of the Southern Poverty Law Center, showing it to be nothing more than a “hate group hedge fund.”

Wrote the great leftist journalist Alexander Cockburn, in the New York Press, in 2007: “I’ve long regarded Morris Dees and his Southern Poverty Law Center as collectively one of the greatest frauds in American life. The reasons: a relentless fundraising machine devoted to terrifying mostly low-income contributors into unbolting ill-spared dollars year after year to an organization that now has an endowment of more than $100 million.”

An organization that shakes down paupers and pensioners to support its “ritualized forms of defamation.”

One would expect the Daily Caller, which has written against cancel culture and the Southern Poverty law Center, not to capitulate to such rot. But one would be wrong to expect principled positions from any Con Inc. org.

Opportunistic and prone are the only principles known to the D.C. media types. For they have no philosophy to speak of. Whatever political raiment he happens to be cloaked in—defeatism, hypocrisy and betrayal are the default positions of the D.C. “conservative” swamp dweller.

And so, July 7 saw Geoffrey Ingersoll, Daily Caller’s editor in chief, assume the supine position in a Twitter exchange, which ceded the terms of debate to the Democrats and their most diabolical proxies.

The Twitter entity before which Mr. Ingersoll was kneeling metaphorically in contrition was an account called “Sleeping Giants.” “They’re the worst,” attests Steve Bannon. They appear to be attached to a shakedown hub of cancel-culture activism. Illiteracy precludes any manifesto, but the constant nattering on a Twitter account has earned these cyberthugs a Wikipedia page.

To thrive, thugs need enablers. Enter Mr. Ingersoll.

First up on my Twitter feed, July 7, was a tweet from gutsy reporter Patrick Howley, founder of Big League Politics. …

…  READ ON. There’s lots of intrigue, unfortunately.

NEW COLUMN IS “How Con Inc. Sells Out Dissidents To The Southern Poverty Law Center.” It is currently on WND and The Unz Review.