14 Signs of Totalitarianism

We all know the cons of Twitter, but one of the pros is discovering new and interesting people.

One of my favorite new follows is Benjamin Carlson, a public relations guru and former editor at The Atlantic. Carlson’s tweets are among the best you’ll find on Twitter, and he clearly has a keen understanding of the intersections between media and government, power and propaganda (both current and historically).

One of his recent tweets caught my eye, and I share an adaptation of it below.

1. Dissent is equated to violence

2. Media is controlled

3. The legal system is co-opted by the state

4. Power is exerted to quash dissent

5. State police protect the regime, not the people

6. Rights—financial, legal, and civil—are contingent on compliance

7. Mass conformity of beliefs and behaviors is demanded

8. Power is concentrated in inner ring of elite institutions and people

9. Semi-organized violence is permitted (in some cases)

10. Propaganda targets enemies of the state regime

11. Entire classes singled out for persecution

12. Extra-legal actions are condoned against internal regime opponents

13. Harsh legal enforcement against unfavored classes

14. Private and public levers of power are used to enforce adherence to state dogmas

The list is a bit troubling. At the very least, some of these techniques are playing out before our eyes. This is certainly not to say that the US is a totalitarian state, however.

There are many definitions of totalitarianism, and I don’t believe one can seriously argue that the United States has arrived there. But authoritarianism is certainly in the air, and it emanates most strongly from our nation’s capital.

While both the political Right and the political Left accuse each other of harboring tyrannical ambitions, the philosopher Karl Popper offered a clue as to when a legitimate government crosses the line and becomes a tyrannical one.

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Shameful: National Guard informs troops last paycheck before Christmas will be late as Biden admin sends billions to Ukraine

The National Guard Bureau “is currently working the issue with DFAS time now,” the letter read, “we would hope the issue is rectified today or tomorrow.”

On Friday it was revealed that the Biden administration failed to pay numerous National Guard troops their final year end pay on time during the week of Christmas. The failure came after approving a contoversial additional $45 billion aid package to Ukraine, and the House passing a $1.7 trillion spending plan.

“Hello gents,” began a letter sent to members of the National Guard, obtained by The Post Millennial, “if you have been tracking, the pay issue that has been plaguing the unit and the division as well.” Reports came in from Pennsylvania, Georgia, and South Carolina from troops angered and upset that their pay hadn’t yet come through.

“You are probably already tracking there are pay issues. Many soldiers were due pay today. They received LES but did not receive funds.” An LES, or a Leave and Earning Statement, is simply a pay stub, but it was not accompanied by funds.

The letter revealed that this is a “nation wide” issue, and that this issue “seems to be at DFAS [Defense Finance and Accounting Service] and is related to the CR.”

“NGB [National Guard Bureau] is currently working the issue with DFAS time now,” the letter added, stating that “we would hope the issue is rectified today or tomorrow.”

“This is unfortunate and can cause serious issues and aggravation across the formation which are understandable. Especially 2 days before Christmas,” the letter stated. “I think the messaging is important that it’s understood the issues are at the highest levels and that everyone in the Division and State are pushing for immediate resolution.”

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Marijuana Law Reached Peak Absurdity in 2022

Banning a plant with hundreds of industrial and medical uses was never going to work out well, but 2022 saw marijuana prohibition reach peak absurdity, not to mention peak confusion for consumers and new businesses trying to make sense of it all.

At first glance, cannabis reform appears to be humming along smoothly. Maryland, Missouri and Rhode Island approved legalization initiatives in 2022 as states such as New Mexico and New York raced to establish regulations for legal recreational sales. New laws in mostly blue states expunged cannabis arrests from criminal records for thousands of people. President Joe Biden made moves to pardon federal marijuana prisoners and reconsider the federal “scheduling” of marijuana, a baby step toward potentially ending federal prohibition administratively. Lawmakers debated cannabis reform bills in Congress, even if the vast majority were never passed into law.

A look under the hood, however, reveals regulatory chaos in a nation where marijuana remains illegal at the federal level. For many people, 2022 will be remembered as the year “legal THC” hit the shelves, including in almost every state still under prohibition. The hemp industry, which previously brought us non-inebriating CBD in countless forms, leveraged sketchy chemistry and legal loopholes to evade regulation and sell various synthetic THC products that will absolutely get customers high regardless of where they live, making a mockery of what remains of prohibition.

Unlike traditional cannabis sold in legalized states, researchers know little about the potential risks of using synthetic THC, but “legal THC” products are now commonly sold online and in convenience stories. Sales are booming in states where traditional marijuana remains illegal, particularly among novice consumers and medicine seekers who prefer to avoid running afoul of the law. While the hemp industry has expanded access to cannabis edibles that can relieve conditions such as pain and insomnia, unregulated vapes and powerfully psychoactive synthetics are raising public health concerns.

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ANOTHER NASTY SURPRISE: GOP Sellouts Gave Biden Regime $11 MILLION to Target Gun Owners in Repulsive Omnibus Bill

We all are accustomed by now to the GOP treating conservatives like Chip Diller in Animal House (Thank you sir, may I have another!). So naturally the RINO sellouts in Congress decided to hand our God-given 2nd Amendment rights over to the most anti-gun regime in American history.

Gun Owners of America went through the 4,000+ page omnibus package and uncovered $11 million worth of weaponry to oppress law-abiding gun owners. 

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Pastor Who Is Friends With NYC Mayor Eric Adams Arrested By Feds

Federal officers arrested New York Bishop Lamor Whitehead and brought charges against him alleging he conned a 56-year-old congregant of her life savings, bullied a businessman for $5,000, and lied to the FBI.

US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams stated: “As we allege today, Lamor Whitehead abused the trust placed in him by a parishioner, bullied a businessman for $5,000, then tried to defraud him of far more than that, and lied to federal agents.”

Bishop Whitehead has been a friend of NYC Mayor Eric Adams and in 2015 while Adam’s was running for Brooklyn Borrugh President he introduced Whitmore on stage asa “good friend and good brother.”

As a repsosne to Whitehead’s arrest Mayor Adams’ spokerpserson released an email from Adam’s stating “While these allegations are troubling, I will withhold further comment until the process reaches its final conclusion.”

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3, 6, 9 And Why the Numbers Mattered to Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla is undoubtedly one of the greatest human beings to walk this Earth. He was a genius, inventor, and pioneer. He came up with inventions and ideas long before anyone else could imagine them. And when I speak about Tesla, I like to say that he lived way ahead of his time. In fact, we have to thank Tesla for much of what we use today. One of his most famous inventions was, undoubtedly, the first alternating current (AC) motor.

However, he also developed AC generation and transmission technology. In the 1890s, Tesla invented electric oscillators, meters, improved lights as well as a high-voltage transformer which became known as the Tesla Could. He invented the radio, even though the invention was credited to Marconi. Two years before Marconi, Tesla piloted a radio-controlled boar in a small pool in Madison Garden. Everything we have to say about this man is worthy of praise.

But Tesla had his obsessions and did display what is perhaps ritualistic behavior. At one point during his life, Tesla said that “if you only knew the magnificence of the numbers 3, 6, and 9, then you would have a key to the universe. What exactly he meant by this remains an enigma. Still, many of his followers and historians believe it had great significance, not only for Tesla but for the future of mankind.

Tesla, for example, would walk around a block exactly THREE times before he decided to walk into a building. He wore gloves and was afraid of germs. He would wash his dishes with exactly 18 napkins since this number is divisible by the numbers 9, 6, and 3.

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NY Times Goes Mega-Karen Over Formerly-Banned Twitter Discussion

The New York Times‘ Stuart. A Thompson, who covers ‘misinformation and disinformation’ for the once-respected rag, has gone full ‘Karen’ over free speech on Twitter.

So, what are people freely discussing on the platform?

“Covid-19 misinformation and vaccine doubts“

Karen please.

Other topics that Stuart and the Times feel should be verboten;

“Election fraud”

and…

“QAnon”

“On Twitter, reinstated users have returned to familiar themes in QAnon lore, raising questions about prominent Democrats and their association with Jeffrey Epstein, a former financier who was charged with child sex trafficking and is a central figure in QAnon conspiracies,” Thompson writes.

Why shouldn’t people be able to talk about prominent Democrats who hung out with a giant convicted pedophile, Stuart?

Nice ratio guys. Way to read the room.

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FBI responds to Twitter censorship allegations, blames “conspiracy theorists” and “misinformation”

Responding to allegations in the Twitter Files that it regularly communicated with Twitter employees, flagging content and accounts that potentially violated the platform’s terms of service, the FBI has suggested that what it did wasn’t censorship as it did not ask Twitter to “take action.”

FBI officials said that they provided information to Twitter so that the platform could make a decision on whether or not to take action.

“We are providing it so that they can take whatever action they deem appropriate under their terms of service to protect their platform and protect their customers, but we never direct or ask them to take action,” the FBI officials said.

The allegations that the FBI and Twitter were in close contact were made in the sixth installment of the Twitter Files, released by independent journalist Matt Taibbi.

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Was Obama the Architect of the FBI and Big Tech Illegal Censoring Machine?

With the release of the Twitter files by Elon Musk, we learned that the FBI was working with Twitter in censoring and managing messaging on the social media site.  From information being gathered in the case between Missouri and Louisiana and the US government, where The Gateway Pundit is the lead plaintiff, we have also learned that this was taking place with other government departments and other Big Tech companies.

Jason Goodman at Crowdsourcethetruth.com reminds us that Barack Obama signed an Executive Order in 2015 that ties all of this together.

In 2015, long after Ayers and Dohrn helped the obscure Illinois State Senator rise to international prominence, President Obama held a technology summit at Stanford University. After delivering remarks on the future of technology and industry, Obama signed Executive Order 13691 Promoting Private Sector Cybersecurity Information Sharing. In it, the President commanded that, “private companies, nonprofit organizations, executive departments and agencies (agencies), and other entities must be able to share information related to cybersecurity risks and incidents and collaborate to respond in as close to real time as possible.” Stanford students in attendance were probably unaware, but this order codified long standing FBI demands to supersede the fourth amendment and investigate anyone they wanted. This paved the way for the Neo-fascism now being exposed in the ongoing releases of the “Twitter Files”.

Making good on his campaign promise, Obama ensured that America would be fundamentally transformed from a Constitutional Republic into a Neo-fascist Technocratic Autocracy. This new authority would be enforced by a digitally enabled Super-Stasi made up of FBI InfraGard members, (https://www.infragard.org/) and other contractors including hundreds, perhaps even thousands of ordinary citizens patrolling on-line as America’s Secret Police.

Such an Orwellian overthrow would be calculated to happen without anyone noticing until it was too late. The merger of government and corporate technological power enabled a class of politically aligned bureaucratic elites to maintain control by monitoring and stifling opposition rather than allowing open debate in a free marketplace of ideas. These traitors have trampled the Constitution and destroyed the most fundamental aspect of American greatness.

EO 13691 states the following [emphasis added]:

Section 1. Policy. In order to address cyber threats to public health and safety, national security, and economic security of the United States, private companies, nonprofit organizations, executive departments and agencies (agencies), and other entities must be able to share information related to cybersecurity risks and incidents and collaborate to respond in as close to real time as possible.

Organizations engaged in the sharing of information related to cybersecurity risks and incidents play an invaluable role in the collective cybersecurity of the United States. The purpose of this order is to encourage the voluntary formation of such organizations, to establish mechanisms to continually improve the capabilities and functions of these organizations, and to better allow these organizations to partner with the Federal Government on a voluntary basis.

Such information sharing must be conducted in a manner that protects the privacy and civil liberties of individuals, that preserves business confidentiality, that safeguards the information being shared, and that protects the ability of the Government to detect, investigate, prevent, and respond to cyber threats to the public health and safety, national security, and economic security of the United States.

One section of this EO states that agencies are required to share assessments of their agency’s activities and provide those assessments to the DHS.   It may be helpful to get ahold of these assessments.

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