Even by the standards of the post-Patriot Act Orwellian world we live in, what has taken place over the past couple of years is truly alarming. More and more Americans, and the world writ large, are slowly being shaken out of cognitive dissonance and coming to the awful realization that we are besieged by a corporate totalitarian state. Our freedoms are being slowly bled out by a ruling class that cannot be bothered by our grievances—we are citizens of the United Stasi of America.
What we once took for granted, the freedom to speak our minds and to express our opinions, are being shredded daily by a mix of thought policing and a clandestine censoring campaign that is making it impossible for independent journalists and non-corporate voices to be heard. This is how liberty is lost, America will not become a tyrannical state overnight, rights will be lost small chunks at a time—with each act of veiled despotism being normalized—until we wake up one day and realize we are living in a blatantly fascist state.
Let me focus on the censorship campaigns that are taking place right before our eyes, part two of this article will deconstruct the thought policing and gas-lighting that are delimiting public discourse. When Alex Jones was deplatformed by Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google and YouTube, all working in concert to nullify his speech, I warned about the dangers that await as “progressives” cheered his demise. To be sure, I was not the only one who spoke out against the silencing of Alex Jones; authentic journalists across the political spectrum likewise cautioned against the corporate mob justice that Alex Jones was treated to.
I've been accused countless times over the past 24 hours of "defending Alex Jones" — again, it's so much easier to scream about how horrible he is than to grapple with the grave implications of his sudden cross-platform banishment https://t.co/hrObdp7ya5
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) August 7, 2018
My reticence to embrace Jones’s censoring was not borne out of affection for his brand of yellow journalism. I always saw Jones for what he was, a clown who trafficked in sensationalism and wacky conspiracy theories for the sake of clicks and ad revenues. One second he is pitching sensational theories about Qanon and the next second he hawks some vitamin pill—Jones is a model snake oil salesman. The only difference between Jones and Creflo Dollar is that the former leverages politics to make money while the latter leverages Jesus to make fortunes.
Yet, as much as I was, and am, repulsed by Jones, I always saw it as an unwise move to diminish his reach by fiat. I’ll admit, it’s a tough call; our freedoms, after all, end the minute we impede the freedoms of others. However, I also saw how Jones’s erasure could normalize corporate censorship and eventually serve as a pretext to go after less controversial and serious minded independent journalists. That is precisely what has taken place; over the past year, a slew of non-corporate media sources have been expunged from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
It’s like we are living Niemöller’s poem in real time. First they came after Jones, we didn’t say anything, then they came after Telesur and we didn’t say anything. Yesterday, Facebook effectively banished Zero Hedge from their platform for going against their “community standards”. As the folks at Zero Hedge noted, they were never warned about what the offending post was and they were never told how they violated the Orwellian sounding “community standards”. Zero Hedge only found out about their sanction after users complained about not being able to share their articles. Facebook reinstated Zero Hedge this afternoon without nary an explanation for why they were censored to begin with.
Heard rumors about this all day - it’s apparently true. Zero Hedge has been banned by Facebook. I’ve given up trying to convince legacy reporters to care about these removals, which are getting scarier all the time. https://t.co/VQrc9pqGqD
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 13, 2019
Two months ago, the Guardian reported that Facebook and Twitter announced, on the same day, that they have taken down thousands of accounts, pages and groups in an attempt to combat “fake news”. None of these accounts that were wiped out were considered mainstream (corporate) media, all of them were independent sources of news that were eradicated because they deviate from “acceptable narratives”. Moreover, the fact that Facebook and Twitter both announced their act of corporate censorship on the same day reveals that big tech companies are working in tandem to eliminate competition. In the court of law, this is called collusion.
Social media conglomerations are the public squares of our time; instead of facilitating free and open conversations, they are coordinating their actions to stifle free press and silence divergent ideas.
Corporations are not working independently to marginalize non-corporate sources of news; September 11th was used as justification by the Federal government to carve out a presence within every telecommunications and social media corporation. Hindsight is the most amazing professor; when I was working as a project manager at Sprint Government Systems Division, I overheard management discussions on how Sprint would allow the government to place equipment within the IP backbone and have access to Central Offices. If you have access to the IP backbone and have a presence at telecom Central Offices, you have a backdoor to every network and application that traverses it. The only encryption devices that are effective under this paradigm are hand written notes.
What I know now is that the government has near total access to every bit and byte of data that is transmitted over the internet and through the airwaves. Orwell, if he was tripping off acid, could have never imagined the time we live in. The line between corporations and the Federal government has been erased, the latter is owned by the former and the rest of us are products being exchanged as goods. I’m not reverting to hyperbole when I say this, the incestuous relationship between private interests (corporations) and public serpents (that was not a typo) has turned a supposed Republic into a bigger kleptocracy than the societies of Nero and Caligula. Elected officials trade access for cash and corporations dole out donations for preferred policies; as the vast majority of Americans are being subsumed by financial anxieties or outright poverty, the principals who hold power live like royalty.
The reason why the corporate-state complex has lost its damn mind and pivoted from soft suppression to explicit censorship are two-fold. One, the establishment fear truth-tellers who can’t be bought and who insist on shining a light on the malfeasance of the ruling class and their plutocrat owners. Even though six corporations own more than 90% of the information Americans consume, the oligarchy want a total monopoly for one reason. It takes a vast fortune to make people believe lies but truth needs little financing—it just needs to be told. As more and more Americans are turned off by the yellow stream journalism of CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Washington Post (Langley Times), New York Times et al, they are turning to independent outlets like this one for relief.
I’m not writing these things from just first hand experience; talk to any independent journalist, share this article with people like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Caitlin Johnstone and ask them if what I write herein is grounded in reality and they will most likely agree 100%. Not too long ago, one of my tweets was embedded in an RT News article, the next day my Twitter activity took a nosedive. Yesterday, I interviewed a group of Orthodox Jews called Neturei Karta who oppose Zionism and the political state of Israel only for my Twitter activity to slow to a trickle. Speaking up with hatred is rewarded by the establishment, but speaking truth to power is the quickest way to be marginalized. Corporate censorship is a way to suffocate David in the cradle so that he won’t grow up to slay media giants.
However, corporate censorship doesn’t end with giving the Joseph Stalin treatment to independent journalists by erasing our existence. I don’t know this for a certain fact, let’s just say I’m making an educated guess based on my reading of history and the realization that the powerful will do anything to protect their turf. I believe that we are not too far from a massive social unrest. The fact that our nation has not devolved into the abyss of conflict and strife by now actually surprises me. The Great Larceny of 2008—it was not a recession, it was a planned theft by the banking cabal—should have been the year where the whole pyramid scheme fell apart and with it the fabric of our nation torn asunder.
What prevented a social cataclysm was the historic election of Barack Obama and the pernicious policies he enacted during his first term. There is a reason why I call Barack the First Bank President; instead of helping out the victims of Wall Street criminals who bled our economy, he aided and abated the same thugs who stole the life savings of countless millions of Americans. Using monetary scams like Quantities Easing (QE), Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) and multiple rounds of bailouts, Obama “saved” the economy by leveraging his way out of debt and starving the rest of Americans.
It doesn’t take an MBA to realize that you can’t borrow your way out deficits. In fact, taking on more debt to address liabilities only exacerbates the problem. This is precisely what Obama did, he made America’s already tenuous situation even worse by racking up trillions in debt without doing anything to address “too big to fail” or weening us off multinational corporations who have zero allegiance to doing good and have every intention of raising their P/E ratio by asphyxiating humanity.
George Bush once referred to capitalism as trickle down economy, apparently Georgie hated truth as much as he detested broccoli. Ours is actually a choke up economy where wealth is transferred up like toothpaste being squeezed up from the bottom of the tube. In due time, even those who are making six figures will have their turn getting pressed and having their means transferred upward in order to finance the opulence of the 1%. Greed has no bounds; the neo-aristocracy are willing to purvey global suffering in order to squeeze out the next marginal dollar.
Sadly for Wall Street and the rest of us by derivative, this choke up economy is unsustainable. Sooner than later, the house of cards is going to come tumbling down. Don’t let the record highs of Wall Street fool you, in fact those highs should scare the hell out of you. Every economist worth his/her salt will tell you that economic bubbles and irrational exuberance are blinking red lights of an oncoming economic implosion. This happened in 1929 and every recession after that, including the dotcom bubble burst and the “great recession” of 2008. This is what the corporate-state fears: when another downturn comes, the Federal Reserve and the Federal government will be impotent to act.
The usual Keynesian policies that are wielded to give a falling market a soft-landing are off the table. The Federal Reserve can’t lower rates much more than where they are at already, Treasury can’t print their way out of a recession because buyers for T-bills will be scarce if they tried another round of QE and there is zero political appetite for the Federal government to spend trillions to “jump start” the economy. We are potentially facing a dive into the abyss when our economy invariably takes another downturn. When this happens, the outbreak of social unrest that could have occurred in 2008 will be upon us.
We very much could be in the calm before the storm. Why do you think the Federal government is militarizing the police? Why do you think they are going after independent journalists with a vengeance? Why do you think they are turning up identity politics to full blast and agitating Americans to turn on each other? Why do you think the rich are building bunkers that can withstand nuclear bombs? After spending decades targeting civilians overseas and blitzkrieging around the planet, the next targets most likely are us.
I pray that these sets of events do not unfold in this way and that I’m mistaken. But I fear I am right and that even my suspicions don’t grasp the full scope of horrors that await us. There is a reason why I keep preaching unity and pleading with people to stop fighting over our differences and instead work together to defend our common interests. If what I suspect is true, we only have two chances to avert this incoming disaster: 1) the rank and file within the institutions that uphold power disobey orders and turn against their chain of command and 2) all of us disregard our differences and form a broad coalition that matches the power of the ruling class.
Failing both options, what is coming for us is an age of lamentation that will make the Great Depression look like paradise by comparison. I pray that we wake up from this induced coma, we stop bickering with one another and that we realize that the sources of injustice are not the people walking next to us but the powerful who are stepping on humanity. The powerful are hedging their bets as they prepare for the worst; we better do the same or else we will find out what happens to a toad when the water finally boils. Consider what happened today with Facebook going down a dry run, a day will come where the conveniences we take for granted will come to an end; we better prepare for that day or suffer the consequences. #UnitedStasi Click To Tweet
If you appreciated this write up and believe that articles like this should be widely read by others and if you likewise support truly independent journalism, I ask you to support my endeavor. As noted in the Ghion Journal statement of purpose, we are a media entity that disavows corporations and we do not raise ad revenue, we are 100% supported and empowered by our readers and writers.
The donate button at the top goes to the Ghion Journal general funds to offset costs and to grow our capacities, the contribution button found the bottom of each article goes 100% to the respective authors. Contribute you can, but most importantly, continue to share these discussions. We are planting seeds, it is up to the readers to nurture it.
Teodrose Fikremariam
Latest posts by Teodrose Fikremariam (see all)
- A Reflection in a Time of Turmoil - June 4, 2020
- Ethiopia’s Choice: Poverty through Grievance or Prosperity through Unity - September 9, 2019
- Bloody 60s: the Decade that Aborted Leadership in America - August 22, 2019
