This is what we warned about last year, at least those of us who are not in the pockets of Wall Street and giving lap dances to the affluent and influential, when Facebook and Twitter started deplatforming people who committed the crime of stating opinions that were politically intolerable to policy makers, corporate media denizens and 33% of the electorate. While many on the “left” were celebrating the erasures of Donald Trump, Alex Jones and carnival barkers on the “other side”, we defended the very people we found to be indefensible because we believe in free speech and more importantly know that censorship which targets individuals and groups on the fringes quickly metastasizes and starts to attack anyone who does not share the dogmas of the establishment.
It took less than a year before our predictions became reality; over the past couple of months, Facebook, Twitter and Google have lowered the hammer on independent journalists across the spectrum in what can only be attributed to a coordinated campaign to eradicate opinions that are contrary to conventional wisdom and silence non-corporate journalists. It’s been happening at an alarming rate, every day truth-seekers who refuse to be poodles of the very people they are supposed to check are being kicked off social media platforms they have used for years—in some instances more than a decade and a half—as their followers are wiped out and the content they painstakingly curated at the push of a button. As always, fascists cover their pernicious actions with the blanket of “the public good” only to place the pillow of suppression over society’s face to suffocate our privacies and our rights.
Facebook deleted more than 1.3 billion �?fake’ accounts in 2020's final months https://t.co/8ajxjscxmz
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) March 22, 2021
There are some who defend the rights of media corporations to store or delete content as they please; but Facebook, Twitter and Google are not just businesses hawking consumer goods, they have attained such a level of monopoly on the sharing of information that they are effectively the modern day public square. Reverting to the predilections of Stalin and erasing the existence of “the undesirables” should be treated as the threat to civil liberties that it is. A growing totalitarianism that is ignored by many incubates slowly as it radiates outward; one day people who have been mocking those of us who have been warning of tyranny will wake up and find themselves enveloped in the abyss of absolutism. This is a lesson Italians learned as they went from praising Mussolini for making the trains run on time to being run over by the locomotive of state-sponsored campaigns of coercion.
I don’t write this as a detached observer of this unprecedented campaign to destroy free speech in America; over the past eleven days, I’ve had my Facebook and Twitter accounts permanently suspended for committing the crime of being a free-thinker. In both cases, the rationale given for abolishing my accounts was that I violated their ever nebulous “community standards”. People who read my writing, even those who detest my perspective, agree that my articles—though contrary to popular opinion—are not in any way extremist nor do they espouse violence or hatred of any sort. To the contrary, my missives are rooted in unity and the notion of universal justice. Though I am passionate when it comes to condemning injustice and those who commit it, the last thing I am is demagogue who incites emotions for the sake of attention.
And that is precisely why I, along with other independent journalists who advocate solidarity and compassion for folks who don’t look or think like us, are being systematically targeted by corporate censors. Two weeks ago, Vanessa Beeley was booted off YouTube even though she is part of a dying breed of journalists who report from the font-lines of America’s never ending wars of terror. Vanessa has courageously done live broadcasts in Middle-East conflict zones, mostly in Syria, where she countered the lies of mainstream media with these pesky things called facts. Instead of acting the part of a stenographer for the CIA, Vanessa insisted on questioning media narratives and pushing back against propaganda. While she honored the spirits of muckrakers, she offended political minders at Google who decided to shutter her YouTube channel while preserving accounts that broadcast some of the most disturbing videos and advocate strife.
The same thing happened to Whitney Webb in December as her Patreon account was all the sudden extirpated and the only reason given was that she “violated community standards” by reporting on factual matters related to the Covid-19 mRNA experimental “vaccines”. A platform that was started to empower independent journalists like Whitney by matching contributors with content creators and promised a free exchange of ideas quickly nullified an exemplary independent journalist who insisted on doing her job by questioning the insane logic of “vaccinating” everyone to address a pandemic that has a mortality rate of less than 0.5%, a number that drops appreciably when one considers a significant number of people who caught Covid-19 were asymptomatic and recovered without ever knowing they contracted the virus. But who has time for truth when there is public panic to stoke; Whitney, Vanessa and countless other independent journalists are being censored not because they advanced dangerous positions but because they persist in telling kings that their clothes are made of oxygen and calling out poppycock narratives.
What has been done to others happened unto me; over the past two weeks, both Twitter and Facebook unceremoniously dumped me from their network and went one step further towards creating a society Orwell would have never dreamed off when he wrote 1984. Make no mistake about it, the censoring of independent journalists and the expunction of their content is the 21st century’s version of Nazi book burnings. Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai are endeavoring in a practice preferred by every tin pot dictator and fascist despot; instead of keeping true to their corporate missions that alluded to connecting people, safeguarding free-speech and championing democracy, they are going in the other direction as they sever non-conformists, demolish independent thinking and bludgeon communities to appease their corporate masters.
Most Americans do not have any idea what it feels like to live under pervasive duress and fear the excesses of their government; too many think high gas prices and long lines at Starbucks are forms of repression. I know the other reality borne by billions around the world who are brutalized by juntas who rule with impunity. I grew up in Ethiopia until the age of eight; in fact, I was born the year Marxist thugs overthrew Haile Selassie and went on to commit a genocide against 500,000 innocent men, women and children. I remember how the citizenry were conditioned to turn in their neighbors, friends and family alike under the lie of keeping Ethiopia safe. America is quickly headed down the path that my birthland went through in 1974 and is still enduring to this day.
We are witnessing in real time Germans’ lived experiences during the heyday of Hitler; tyranny never comes for the masses, it always starts by demonizing people who hold unpopular viewpoints and silencing their voices. Journalists have always been viewed as a clear and present danger to those who labor to protect the public’s interests and highlighting corruption. Napoleon Bonaparte once noted that four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets. The ruling class and the opinion leaders who prop them up do not like it when sojourners threaten to expose their criminal behaviors; using crises as a pretext, the civil rights of independent journalists are being decimated. While the public is being distracted with the bread and circus of our politics, those of us who are raising red flags are being banished to the hinterlands.
Wow! 11 days ago, #Twitter permanently suspended my account for the crime of being an independent journalist. Today #Facebook followed suit & disabled my account for going against their Orwellian "community standards". Social media corps are colluding to censor free-speech. pic.twitter.com/lxwIBHQzDT
— Teodrose Fikremariam (@Teodrose_Fikre) March 22, 2021
More and more people are realizing this oppressive Big Brotherism as their accounts are being suspended and altogether deleted because they posted something that is not deemed acceptable by corporate minders. The only differences between America and North Korea are the number of McDonald’s available to poison children and the illusions of freedoms that are being chipped away each day. I truly believe that the level of censorship we are seeing these days is directly related to the upcoming mass-deployment of the Covid-19 experimental “vaccines”. The ruling class are in a rush to turn human beings into hardware that need periodic technology refreshers, those of us who warn of this eventuality are being Control+X’d in an effort to control humanity. Wake up and rise up to this creeping despotism before you join the rest of us who have been excommunicated for being heretics who challenged the orthodoxy of the establishment. We are the canary in coal minds who should serve as a warning to everyone else; ignore our plight at your peril because tyranny is birthed by abortionists who terminate the voices of independent journalists. #WeAreTheCanary Click To Tweet
The ruling class can continue burning books but they can never torch facts because truth is fireproof::
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Interesting. I must follow you more