Category Archives: Technology

NEW COLUMN: Big Tech’s Financial Terrorism And Social Excommunication (Part 1: The Problem)

Business, Economy, Individual Rights, Law, Paleolibertarianism, Political Economy, Regulation, Republicans, Technology

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NEW COLUMN is “Big Tech’s Financial Terrorism And Social Excommunication (Part 1: The Problem).” It is currently on WND, Towhnhall.com, The Unz Review, and CNSNews.com

Excerpt:

Republican solutions to Big Tech tyranny do not begin to address financial de-platforming, the cancellation of citizen dissidents en masse, including the infringement of the right to partake in the public square and make a living.

In their weak case against Deep Tech (“Deep” to denote enmeshment with The State), Republicans are still defending only some speech on the “merits,” rather than all speech, no matter how meritless.

In a sense, the statist anti-trust bills—targeting especially Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google—being pushed by lawmakers are worse than useless.

The anti-trust impetus is misguided as it conflates corporate size with anti-competitive practices: the larger, the more monopolistic. However, reducing the size of an entity–a corporation–doesn’t necessarily alter its nature.

When a malignant cell divides, it doesn’t grow less potent. To the contrary, it innervates and enervates more spheres. Likewise breaking up Big Tech. Smaller malignancies metastasize and kill just as well.

The habitual failure of the representatives sent by Deplorables to D.C. to prevent cancellation en masse–the Orwellian nightmare from unraveling–cannot be understated. On the line is dissidents’ ability to speak, publish, partake in society; sell our cultural products, and transact financially over the country’s major online economic and social arteries.

No wonder the Tech crooks appear periodically on The Hill to make fun of the country’s comical representatives and their gullible, pliable voters. The richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, has no qualms about letting his delivery drivers, who, “operate under severe [app monitored] time constraints,” urinate in bottles for fear of losing their low-wage jobs.

Do you think the dim bulbs in Congress, posturing for the cameras, scare his ilk?

Do not forget that anti-trust busting or the repealing of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act are solutions the GOP had failed to implement when in control of both chambers and the presidency.

It was under Republican control that de-platforming (of a president, no less), the banning of legions of powerless dissident citizens, including detrimental financial de platforming, “occurred.”

Given this incontrovertible reality, The People have an obligation to quit the “my party, right or wrong” unconditional love, and demand the GOP work to unban ordinary, innocent folks, the crooked politicians be damned….

... READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN is “Big Tech’s Financial Terrorism And Social Excommunication (Part 1: The Problem).” It is currently on WND, Towhnhall.com, The Unz Review, and CNSNews.com

UPDATED: My solutions, presented next week, are not going to exist, as I like to say, in the arid arena of pure thought.

*Image courtesy WND.

MSNBC Celebrates Deep-Tech Speech Crackdowns. Republicans Did/Do Nothing About Deplatforming

Business, Free Speech, Individual Rights, Media, Republicans, Technology

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On June 4, 2021, one of MSNBC’s egos in an anchor’s chair said this:

“Social media giant is cracking down on politicians and speech. But is it too little too late?”

I transcribed the statement verbatim but it is not easily found as a URL hyperlink.

This is how illiberal mainstream liberalism has become. And it raises no eyebrows. How dare the US pose as a free society?

My point here, however, is contrarian. Again and again you will hear conservatives, politicians and pundits, complain on Fox News about the calamitous censorship by Deep Tech, as if it’s a problem that began with the Biden Administration.

De-platforming (of a president, no less), banning of legions of powerless dissidents, including detrimental financial de platforming, “occurred in a country with a Republican President, a Republican-controlled Senate, a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees, and a majority of whose state legislatures and governors are Republican.”

Republican solutions—anti-trust busting or the repealing of Section 230, which they refused to do when they were in control of both houses, and the presidency, all bandied about shallowly on Fox News—do not begin to address de-platforming, cancellation of dissidents, including the infringement of the right to make a living. (See sub-section, “Flouting The Spirit Of Civil Rights.”)

 I’ve done some theoretical rethinking. More to come.

*Image courtesy here.

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.

*Image credit