Category Archives: Free Speech

Ben Domenech: Selling Soothing, Snake-Oil Conservatism On FOX News Primetime

Argument, Conservatism, Donald Trump, Free Speech, Israel, Political Philosophy, Race, Racism, Technology, THE ELITES

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With Ben Domenech’s somnambulist, soothing, well-articulated, Establishment conservatism, Fox News is lulling viewers back into a meaningless, middle-of-the-road, political impotence.

And a load of claptrap.

Last night, June 5, Big Tech censorship was obviously panned vigorously for speech oppression, but an Israeli actress ensconced in Hollywood got to make allusions on air to her preference for censoring anti-Israel comments, when those are uttered by people lacking “expertise” on Israel. More philosophical bunkum, but certainly in line with neoconservatism’s Israel First position.

Americans—certainly this writer, who is pro-Israel—support unfettered speech! That used to be the American position—which includes the rights of people to express anti-Israel positions no matter the state of their expertise, which the silly sabra seemed to be demanding as a condition for speech on Israel.

Discussed too was the incitement to murder whites, expressed by a deviant at Yale, Aruna Khilanani. This, according to panelist Liz Wheeler, was best understood not as murderous anti-whitism needing to be aggressively combated, but with the aid of her unscholarly, unlearned allusions to the Frankfurt School… Wheeler’s ignorant theoretical escapism will help your life as much as voting Republican did.

In this context, Lynette Ackermann asked me, “Ilana, Have you any suggestions for a new paradigm for the 21st century?”

Reply: “What I am strongly suggesting in my commentaries about anti-whiteness is… keep it real. When it comes to anti-whiteness—a very serious, grave reality—you need a scrappy strategy, not a paradigm.” No theoretical escapism!

But the worst slot belonged to Douglas Murray, much revered for his accent and inchoate, wishy-washy positions. The segment dealt with Facebook’s verdict to ban Donald Trump for another two years. (Frankly, President Trump had not stood up for voters like myself, whose websites are banned for life, presumably, with no ability to appeal. And the former president’s response to Facebook’s Nick Clegg was, to put it charitably, puzzling: “Next time I’m in the White House there will be no more dinners, at his request, with Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. It will be all business!”)

Likewise, for his part, Domenech evinced great concern over Facebook curtailing the power of politicians; not so much about the power of the people curtailed.

But Murray is really something. The sassy, salient line he repeated again and again on the live broadcast—it doesn’t appear in the Fox News online video—was this: The Big Tech meddlers are “not fit for purpose“:

“… it is high time we make it clear that we cannot and will not live under the rules of Big Tech. They are not up to the job that they have taken upon their shoulders to perform.”

The premise of that statement is that, while Deep Tech is not up for the job;  someone is up for the job of censor and speech adjudicator. On display here is “Bic Con” deception, Tory deception, too. These establishment conservatives do not trumpet absolute free speech: Richard Spencer’s, Nick Fuentes’, Tommy Robinson’s, Michelle Malkin’s, mine. They seldom come to the defense of dissidents. For this reason, Murray is wont to make a stupid (cleverly worded) statement:

“We are dealing with kids here,” he said, adding “these companies got everything about the last year wildly wrong” and citing Big Tech’s censorship of the Wuhan lab leak theory.

Crystal clear premise once again of the Murray fatuity is this: If Deep Tech were more mature and accurate in their prediction (Murray awoke pretty late in life to most truths, too)—they might be in a position to adjudicate which speech if fit for consumption, which not.

Wrong. Absolutely wrong, but well-spoken.

DeSantis Law Doesn’t Give Private Citizens Deserving, Unfettered Access To The Social Media Super Highway

Free Speech, Individual Rights, Law, libertarianism, Natural Law, Regulation, Republicans, Technology

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From the fact that Ron DeSantis is the only Republican to have proceeded against Deep Tech in any meaningful way—it doesn’t follow that his bill, the “Big Tech” bill, is useful or fair to the Little Guy or Gal. Not unless he or she is prepared to and can afford to launch law suits.

All you and I really want, as innocent, law-abiding individuals, is to have unfettered access to the social-media public square.

Politicians, of course, get protections, no problems. DeSantis has made “it illegal for large technology companies to remove candidates for office from their platforms in the run-up to an election.”

Close to useless tokenism in solving Deep Tech tyranny.

Yes, the Section 230 grant-of-government privilege should be done away with, but this more conventional solution is insufficient for the reasons DeSantis’ law is insufficent.

The only two best solutions are, my own: 1. Civil rights based litigation and the setting of a Supreme Court precedent, a direction I first floated in “Deep Tech: Locked Down And Locked Out, First By The State, Then By Silicon Valley,” and have motivated for repeatedly.

2. Declare social media platforms to be free speech, censorship-free spheres, a Richard Spencer idea. Republicans will have to contend with speech they don’t like.

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UPDATED (5/22/021): NEW COLUMN: The Moral Writer’s Commandment: Cite Your Sources! (And A Bit Of A Salve: The Beatles)

Argument, Canada, Conservatism, Ethics, Etiquette, Free Speech, Ilana Mercer, Journalism, Morality, Music, Paleoconservatism

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My first submission ever to an American news magazine was as a Canadian, in the early 2000s. What was visited upon me, on that occasion, shook me to the core.

I had been published by the Canadian Financial Post, a national newspaper, on the topic of intellectual property rights. Oh, the luxury of intellectual pursuit for the sake of it; these days, survival as free individuals is the pressing topic of the day.

Naturally, I credited scholarship galvanized in the making of my argument. And so, mentioned were Sir Arnold Plant, Tom G. Palmer and Stephan Kinsella, with whom I later collaborated in an IP symposium for the now-defunct Insight magazine.

The IP column submitted to the American Magazine was fielded by a well-known editor, a gate-keeper, who, in the unethical American model was both editor, writer and syndicated columnist. Still is.

Unethical, why? Because division of labor in our profession prevents corrupting conflict of interest. The latter always and everywhere gives rise to unethical conduct, all the more so given the grubby, ego-driven nature of journalism and journalists in America. With a few admirable exceptions (Townhall, American Greatness, CNSNews), almost all conservative editors also colonize their own editorial pages with their own copy.

Such opportunistic misconduct is zero-sum. The bad pushes out the good. In direct conflict with their mission, editors have the greatest incentive to keep talent off the pages, in-case it usurps theirs—and worse.

This particular editor-cum-writer-cum-syndicated columnist replied to my submission in the negative: My  piece (similar in “shoddiness” to “How Things Would Work In A Copyright Free Universe“) was just too shallow for his magazine. In other words, “Be gone with you lesser Canadian woman.”

My piece, however, was not too shallow for—wait for this—the American Editor’s syndicated column, where my column’s ideas cameoed in the United States under the dishonest man’s byline. Oh, yes. American Editor had excised smarty pants woman, seized upon her argument and her scrupulous citations of American scholars—and got himself a neat little column for his dry-as-dust syndicated slot.

Perhaps one day I shall name him, although to what avail, I don’t know. While it repulses me and I will not countenance it or be victim of it—unethical conduct doesn’t repulse many conservatives in the least.

I continue to be appalled afresh along this long and winding road (to conjure the pathos of the Beatles), and as the unfortunate topic of this week’s column attests.

Here’s the take-away lesson (as the kids like to say): Ecumenical submission to heavily promoted second-handers is not in me. When these second-handers pick the brains of longtime, marginalized, prolific, independent dissidents sans acknowledgement—they will be called out.

The new column is on WND.COM and The Unz Review, the staunchest defenders of my speech.

A bit of purity and inspiration amid a lot of moral ugliness:

The Beatles – The Long And Winding Road from Lennon-McCartney on Vimeo.

UPDATE (5/22/021):

This from a new and devoted reader I “met” through Michelle Malkin’s “Sovereign Nation”. His language is so vivid and filled with passion about ethics and justice.

Friday, May 21, 2021 11:30 PM
Subject: Fwd: RESPECT IDEAS!:> “HOMO EROTIC SUBMISSION > A MERCER ORIGINAL IDEA

Dear Friends,

The following LINKS are for an excellent essay by Misses Ilana Mercer on ideas and their, not only origin, but the acknowledgement of credit where credit is due. And this is not a case of shallow egocentricity, of a blowing of one’s own horn, and at that, out of tune. It is something I imagine a number of you have come across; that which concerns one of the most vile forms of censorship. The DISPLACEMENT of a human being, by the dishonest pseudo-intellectual weakling, who subsequently RANSACKS his victim’s artistic-intellectual-scientific creation rendering it his own. The vomitory irony is that this dishonest action of cerebral faggotry is carried out by either one who has the power to bludgeon many a time the true creator into a living oblivion or is aided and abetted by those who’ve not any concern for the truth. Have no sympathy, their hearts are as cold as ice, and know not a beat of life. I am not preaching: they’re one degree of an evil hierarchy. Be forever courageous and take the ax of a woodman to this disease ridden tree.

What Misses Ilana Mercer has written is of a most profound importance, and always has been, with broad-spread consequences not just culturally, as in artistic production, but in all the dimensions of our lives, including the financial. I ask you all to think about this; truly contemplate it. Exactness and precision is called for to-day!

https://www.unz.com/imercer/the-moral-writers-commandment-cite-your-sources/ or: https://www.wnd.com/2021/05/moral-writers-commandment-cite-sources/ Read and pass on.

Rob Shimshock’s First Book Promises To Be Wonderfully Unwoke

Conservatism, English, Free Speech, Kids, Literature, Paleoconservatism, Race, THE ELITES

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I look forward to gaining insight into the mind of a young American writer, who’s on the wrong side of creation (pale male), to say nothing of the issues (non-woke)—ilana mercer

A young dissident, editor Rob Shimshock, is already up against The Amazon Machine, in his attempt to advertise his first book, Nightmare Crescendo: Breaking the Chokehold of Woke Capital. He tweets,

AmazonAds suspended an ad campaign for my new book, for being controversial and having…incorrect capitalization. Incorrect according to what, the AP, which insists you capitalize “black” but not “white”?

Fortunately, “the book,” Rob tells me, “is still up — and got a rank of #1, in a few, new-release categories and top 5 across the board in some others — but working with Advertising has been a pain. Amazon most recently denied one of my ads for an alleged incorrect use of ‘whose’… either this guy didn’t pass 4th grade English or was just that desperate to fabricate something to nuke the ad.”

I’m a stickler for grammar, as is Rob, my editor. I don’t see Rob’s errors anywhere. Besides, from the perspective of the drones working behind “Woke Capital,” isn’t it total racism to finger a writer for bad grammar? By the Amazon-advanced woke standards, English must be fluid if it is to avoid racism.

I look forward to receiving my review copy. For a book about politics, this almost sounds like fun—and is certainly a window in the mind of a young American writer, who is on the wrong side of creation (pale male), to say nothing of the issues. Read:

In his first book, journalist Rob Shimshock dissects the sinister symphony of academia, the media, the Deep State, Hollywood, Woke Capital, and their Soros-funded footsoldiers, a mesh of macabre melodies dragging our planet into the abyss. Shimshock diagnoses the sickness and offers antidotes through a series of literary “nocturnes” featuring bite-sized allegories like a battle between the Twitter bluebird and the U.S. eagle, blistering diatribes on the “cosmopolitan palate” and libertarian “Trojan whores,” admonitions against profit-driven “pathogenerals” and reprobate resisters to his 18th Amendment prohibition gang, a game manual for MONOPOLY: Regime Change edition, an ICE reality TV show pitch, and, yes, even a press release for the new superhero Dr. Deedee O. Hess, whose kooky finesse with hacking and leaking below-the-belt selfies of Big Tech CEOs is unrivaled.

Dictators loathe the sound of laughter. But they are terrified when that glee meets a formidable strategy. The Nightmare Crescendo has grown louder than ever before. Are you ready to become the instrument of its demise?

*Image courtesy Cassandra Fairbanks