From Big Tech to Big Brother… Doug Casey on why “hate speech” is a nonsense term… The only way to limit government… In the mailbag, things are getting heated…
We found this out the hard way earlier this year.
Google threatened to ban advertising from Legacy Research unless we complied with its demands to censor our web posts. We refused. So Google “de-platformed” us.
It’s a threat President Trump is now concerned about.
Yesterday, he tweeted that Google, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley companies are “controlling what we can and cannot see.”
Last week, one of the founders of FB’ers for Political Diversity – a group that is now made up of more than 100 Facebook employees – posted to the company’s internal message board under the title “We Have a Problem with Political Diversity.”
According to a copy leaked to The New York Times, the post began…
We are a political monoculture that’s intolerant of different views. We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack – often in mobs – anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology.
Jones runs the controversial Infowars website, where he receives about 10 million monthly visits (more than the websites of mainstream news outlets The Economist and Newsweek.)
And earlier this month, under pressure from liberal groups, Facebook, Apple, YouTube (owned by Google), and Spotify banded together and de-platformed him for violating their “hate speech” policies.
According to Doug, “hate speech” is a fabricated concept promoted by groups that dislike free speech. And as he wrote recently in a must-read essay on the Jones de-platforming, so-called hate speech can actually be useful…
It allows you to judge the character, intentions, and intelligence of the speaker. It gives you the data you need to judge who you’re dealing with—good or bad, rational or irrational. Further, suppressing speech is comparable to tightening the lid on a pressure cooker.
All speech, and all words, should be allowed. Sometimes it will be in bad taste, or stupid. But so what? It’s not something a busybody or bureaucrat should decide for you.
He’s a promoter of some “out there” theories.
For instance, he’s claimed the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax. He’s also claimed the U.S. government has a “gay bomb,” chemicals from which have leaked into the water supply and are turning the “freaking frogs gay.”
But this is not about whether you approve of Jones or not. It’s about Facebook, Google, and other Silicon Valley monopolies deciding what you can (and can’t) see online.
Now, some will argue that Facebook and Google are private companies, so they can do whatever they want with their platforms. But as we showed you last week, the line between these Big Tech companies and government entities is murkier than most folks understand.
Here’s colleague Dan Denning, who’s been tracking the rise of online censorship and surveillance for Bill Bonner Letter readers…
We’re talking about corporations – acting on behalf of the government (the Deep State) – deciding which ideas the public should or shouldn’t know about.
We’re back where we started with a few large companies – dominated by ultra-wealthy individuals in cahoots with the Deep State – controlling what the American people see and hear.
Think Arthur Sulzberger at The New York Times or the Graham family running The Washington Post. It’s more important than ever for investors and individual Americans to get their news and information from sources that aren’t controlled by the powerful.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent non-profit that supports freedom of speech worldwide, Twitter has censored 1.5 million tweets from Turkish journalists under its “country withheld policy.”
That’s just a fancy term for government censorship. Twitter, by its own admission, has removed these tweets at the behest of Turkey’s authoritarian government.
News broke recently that 40% of Americans couldn’t name a single one of the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
But as you’re probably aware, they are the freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the right to petition your government with grievances.
Earlier this summer, Dan went on a road show defending liberty throughout the former Soviet Bloc – with stopovers in Ukraine, Poland, and the Czech Republic. And as he told audiences there, the most important of the five is freedom of speech. We’ll give Dan the final word…
Censoring speech is the most direct way to censor thought. If people are watching you all the time, you watch what you say. If you stop saying it, eventually you’ll stop thinking it. Thus is your behavior modified by cracking down on free speech.
You can only keep government limited if you’re free to speak your mind and hold those in power accountable. Alex Jones, warts and all, is a threat to those in power because he questions that power. But at the risk of offending a lot of readers, we’re ALL Alex Jones now.
Stay tuned for more on this important theme tomorrow… We’ll share the simple steps Dan recommends you take to shore up your privacy online. As you’ll see, they can help you fight back against Silicon Valley and its censors.
The debate continues over Silicon Valley’s partnership with the Deep State: Is it really a big deal… Or, as one dear reader put it, is our assessment of the threat “overblown”?
I don’t think you can “over blow” the attack on our privacy. It is as evil as it is relentless.
– Leo H.
What Ronald S. does not seem to realize is that all the problems that he cites as “greater threats” are in fact caused by the meddling of the “Deep State” and its refusal to let market forces (including social referencing to the point of total ostracism) solve these problems.
I can only assume that he has never read Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations) or Ludwig von Mises (Human Action) and does not know the meaning and operation of “laissez-faire.”
– Paul W.
Ronald S. defined the real threats quite well, I think. Ironically, point No. 1 will solve point No. 5 by feeding the ignorant masses increasing amounts of herbicides and pesticides, all of which have been scientifically proven to sterilize the human species in less than two generations. The question is: Will a healthy food supply survive the process? Save your heritage seeds.
– Sam W.
New technology is seriously compromising our personal freedom and our ability to both live and let live. It’s using U.S. revenue sources with little regard to health and welfare, both of which will combine in ways that will grow increasingly vicious.
I am old enough to remember that in the “old days,” although there was plenty of skullduggery around, the average person could get on with their lives and personal choices without too much interference. Most of the food we ate was grass fed, fresh, and wholesome. We were prescribed the minimum of drugs, the newest being penicillin.
It is true that Colgate put sugar in their toothpaste (I never had a filling until a rare dentist visit convinced my Mum that we should brush our teeth). No one used deodorant because we didn’t have TV ads to tell us we should be embarrassed because we stank… We hadn’t noticed till then.
The reality is that we are frogs in a gradually heated saucepan of water. It will be too late when the great unwashed realize that their frog has been cooked. We live in exceedingly dangerous times.
– Ken L.
How far does the Deep State’s “meddling” go? Is our assessment of the threat of its partnership with Silicon Valley really overblown? Let us know at [email protected].
Regards,
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Chris Lowe
August 29, 2018
Lisbon, Portugal