For some reason, I didn’t see it coming. And then, suddenly, last evening, it showed up in my inbox, a note from Facebook, saying I had violated their “guidelines” and would not be able to post anything again until I removed the offending language. Of course these masked censors would not say which of my writings had triggered this extreme action, although they invited me to follow a link to appeal the decision if I wanted. Again, like the goons banging on the door in Orwell’s 1984, they used power rather than reason. Was it my comment that Donald J. Trump was a colossus on our political stage, or that Jan 6 prisoners were being held in conditions that violate the Geneva Convention? Maybe it was suggesting that Merrick Garland was weaponizing the FBI.
I went through the usual stages of coping — laughter, anger, grief. Mostly now I am afraid for our country, furious at all those political leaders — both Republican and Democrat — who have allowed Social Media companies like Facebook to shred the First Amendment. Who empowered those know-nothings in Silicon Valley, whose only job qualification is woke virtue signaling, to decide what opinions I can express? And why don’t my elected leaders, who give such platitudinous and frequent lip service to our Constitution, do something about it?
Make no mistake, Social Media censorship is part of a Far Left strategy to help Dems win the midterm elections in November. Tech giants are silencing us to stem the Red Wave of public opinion. And every time Republicans gloat about their likely victories, I cringe. Baseball great Satchel Paige, who came up in the Negro Leagues and was the first African American to pitch in MLB, was once asked to explain his longevity. “Don’t look back,” he said famously. “Something might be gaining on you.”
These days, track stars are trained to look over their shoulder, to gauge precisely whether anyone is about to overtake them in the race to the finish line. GOP beware.
It’s fascinating to me how deftly Far Left Radicals malign language to win political points. And they’re good at it, by which I mean sneaky. In his dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell called this the regime’s Newspeak. So the Inflation Reduction Act, which even many who voted for it acknowledged would not reduce inflation, was changed to the Climate, Tax & Health Act as soon as Biden signed it. They still haven’t explained of course how a bill by either name will require gun-toting IRS agents to collect our taxes — although they did change the language on the USA Jobs posting to no longer require applicants to “carry a firearms and be willing to use deadly force.” What a relief. Anyway, our media puppets — from cable news to the legacy newspapers — pivoted on a dime, happily going along with the new guidance. And of course those mindless celebrities in Hollywood backed them up with, well, what they’re really good at — awards. Remember the CNN journalist who reported that 2020 riots were “fiery but peaceful protests?” Just nominated for an Emmy.
I mention this because to track how the elite laptop Dems plan to rig, or if you prefer influence, the 2022 election, you have to be attuned to language. For instance, in 2020 the “Electronic Registration Information Center,” founded by Far Left activist David Becker and backed by Mark Zuckerberg’s “Center for Election Integrity” (cue Orwell again), helped states purge 3 million unauthorized voters from their rolls while offering 17 million new ones, likely Dems, for registration. This was more than enough to swing election results in Wisconsin, Arizona and several other states. This year, ERIC is working with 31 states “clean up” their voter rolls.
Also in 2020, just weeks before the election, Twitter suppressed news of Hunter Biden’s laptop, preventing users from sharing the New York Post disclosures that Hunter was giving his father Joe Biden kickbacks of 10% on his corrupt dealings with Ukrainian and Chinese business interests. Why? Twitter claimed sharing this bombshell violated company policy on spreading info obtained via hacking. Of course Twitter did nothing to stop leaked copies of Donald Trump’s tax filings. Only after an uproar by conservatives did Twitter suspend the pro-abortion group Ruth Sent Us for posting home addresses of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v Wade.
Maybe it’s time thinking Americans roared again. This week Twitter announced it is updating its euphemistically-named “Civic Integrity Policy,” activating newly designed labels to warn of “misinformation.” And get this: Twitter said late last year, “we tested new misleading information labels and saw promising results. The new labels increased click through rates by 17%, meaning more people were clicking labels to read debunking content. We also saw notable decreases in engagement with Tweets labeled with the new design: -13% in replies, -10% in Retweets and -15% in likes.”
Dems and their media puppets use tools of suppression because they work. Congress has done nothing to reign in Social Media’s censorship of my speech, and yours, unless you count those ludicrous bits of theater where the Masters of Big Tech troop up to Capitol Hill — or lately call it in via Zoom — to say they are doing everything they can to protect speech. What they mean is their speech, not ours.
I am hardly the most important voice censored by Facebook. I marvel at the tenacity of Chaya Raichik, author of Libs of TikTok, who has imported the craziness that passes for content on TikTok to readers on FB and Twitter. At the height of the flap over Disney’s support for sexualizing children in kindergarten, she found and shared videos from TikTok posted by perverse teachers detailing how they engage children in conversations about their sex lives. I think it was she who found TikTok videos posted by the Biden administration’s briefly-named Minister of Truth, Disinformation Czar Nina Jankowicz, putting her censorship guidelines to a Mary Poppins melody.
Recently Libs Of Tik Tok shared videos that Boston’s famed Children’s Hospital posted about “a full suite of surgical options for transgender teens,” including hysterectomies and vaginoplasties (taking existing male genital tissue to make vaginas). Backlash was so immediate the hospital changed its website to say that such surgeries were only available to those older than 18. As if that made it better.
Please support her — at LibsOfTikTok.substack.com — or my blog, Make Orwell Fiction Again. At a time of censorship and dishonesty, when our voices and our votes are being suppressed, when Congress dithers and media puppets deceive, and when the family and the church are under attack, all we have is each other.
To the future!
I was once a prolific contributor to Quora.com. I had 3,000 followers when I was last banned. I quit the forum for a year and returned in May, 2022. In July I posted a question asking whether anyone in the Federal government had ever posted a PSA suggesting that gay men use protection in order to slow the spread of Monkeypox. That question was removed because it was "Hate Speech". Happily, I have quit Quora again, this time forever.
It might be that in the near future the only way people will be able to share their thoughts will be through Truth Social.
And wouldn’t that be the ultimate sweet irony — Twitter boots Trump so he starts Truth Social, which becomes the go-to place. 💁🏼♀️