Tag: censorship

The Secular State Reinvents the Inquisition

One of my favorite books is The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.

Set in the 1930s when Mexico was still persecuting the Catholic Church (a persecution which the government of the United States consented to), the novel follows the life of a nameless “whiskey priest” who, despite being a drunk and a fornicator with an illegitimate daughter, continues to illegally minister to the people while other more reputable priests have abandoned their ministry out of fear of the punishment by the government.

The whiskey priest is lured to his doom by his sense of duty, as a request for a deathbed confession is communicated to him by a lying Judas-like figure. Despite his suspicions, the whiskey priest goes and is arrested. Sentenced to die, and denied confession by one of those priests who had abandoned ministry, we see into the whiskey priest’s thoughts for a final time in what I consider the most moving paragraph in all of literature:

What a fool he had been to think that he was strong enough to stay when others fled. What an impossible fellow I am, he thought, and how useless. I have done nothing for anybody. I might just as well have never lived. His parents were dead—soon he wouldn’t even be a memory—perhaps after all he was not at the moment afraid of damnation—even the fear of pain was in the background. He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him, at that moment, that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted—to be a saint.

The novel ends with another fugitive priest arriving, and a young boy who had previously been a skeptic greeting him enthusiastically, having been inspired by the martyrdom of the whiskey priest.

Years ago, this novel helped convince me that I could enter seminary despite the heavy realization of my own sinfulness. In 2020, those of us who were trying to get sacraments to people despite being forbidden by tyrants certainly could identify with the sense of duty demonstrated by the whiskey priest. I know of one priest who had to remove his cassock, put on jeans, and pretend to be a grandson in order to bring the sacraments to a woman in the nursing home.

The irony in all of this, however, is that some powerful men in the Church wanted the novel placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. Thankfully this would not occur, and Greene’s account of the conflict includes a useful comparison to totalitarianism:

The Archbishop of Westminster read me a letter from the Holy Office condemning my novel because it was “paradoxical” and “dealt with extraordinary circumstances.” The price of liberty, even within a Church, is eternal vigilance, but I wonder whether any of the totalitarian states…would have treated me as gently when I refused to revise the book on the casuistical ground that the copyright was in the hands of my publishers. There was no public condemnation, and the affair was allowed to drop into that peaceful oblivion which the Church wisely reserves for unimportant issues.

I’d like to suggest that understanding the use (and abuse) of the religious impulse to limit what type of content an adherent consumes can help us to understand the wave of censorship which has taken hold in the West, especially with respect to what began in 2020.

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Brussels Ramps up Investigation Into Elon Musk in First Salvo of Upcoming Transatlantic War Between the US and EU Over Free Speech and Online Censorship

The historic inauguration of Donald J. Trump as 47th US President will usher in a new Golden Age in America in many aspects, including free-speech.

But across the pond, a generation of failed Globalist ‘leaders’ is scrambling to counteract that, and keep things as they are in terms of online censorship to carry their political narratives alive.

So, yesterday (17) Brussels showed their intent to fully unleash its infamous Digital Services Act (DSA) against tech billionaire-turned-Trump trusted advisor Elon Musk.

The DSA has been demonstrated to be a new form of censorship in Europe, incompatible with real European values or the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Furthermore, CIA-linked Newsguard is mentioned to have being heavily involved in the implementation of the nefarious act.

Now, with Musk flexing his geopolitical muscles, ‘regulators’ in thew EU refused to scale down an investigation of social media network X.

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Biden Warns of Tech Oligarchs’ Power in Farewell Speech, Ignoring His Own Role in Expanding Digital Censorship

Outgoing President Joe Biden concluded his presidency with a farewell address on Wednesday night, sharply criticizing what he termed the “tech-industrial complex” while urging tighter accountability for social media platforms. Ironically, Biden’s remarks highlighted the decline of free press and the dangers of “misinformation,” even as his administration has often been linked to censorship efforts and suppression of dissenting viewpoints.

During his speech, Biden drew parallels to President Dwight Eisenhower’s famous warning about the “military-industrial complex.” He stated, “Six decades later, I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well.” His comments painted a picture of concentrated power in the hands of tech oligarchs, whom he accused of enabling an “avalanche of misinformation and disinformation” to flourish unchecked.

The president, leaving office with historically low approval ratings, accused social media platforms of abandoning fact-checking efforts and contributing to the erosion of public trust. “The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking,” Biden said.

Biden’s condemnation of social media fact-checking policies appeared aimed directly at Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose platform recently transitioned away from third-party fact-checking to a “community notes” model reminiscent of the system employed by Elon Musk’s X.

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Court Filings Reveal More Government Lies About Censorship, Seek Deeper Investigation

Joy Pullman over at The Federalist has written an excellent piece on recent developments in our free speech case and another related case, describing what these reveal about government censorship. The article opens:

Government pressure on national communications monopolies to mute Americans’ critiques of government began in Barack Obama’s presidency and continues today, say court documents filed Dec. 23.

Federal documents uncovered by separate litigation on Dec. 19 also show censorship of public discussion about prudent Covid policies began at least by February 18, 2020, a month before unprecedented citizen lockdowns. That contradicts Department of Homeland Security claims its censorship efforts began months later.

These documents also highlight that government employees deliberately violated transparency laws such as the Freedom of Information Act to hide their use of public offices. The Dec. 23 filing from Missouri v. Biden plaintiffs cites a May New York Times article showing “some Defendants, particularly at NIH and NIAID, have intentionally misspelled words in order to avoid production pursuant to FOIA requests; deleted emails; and used private emails.” Given this, the plaintiffs asked the federal district court to expand discovery to include intentionally misspelled keywords.

The filing also says President Biden senior advisor Andy Slavitt, a former Obama official, “continued using his White House email address even after he left government employment, presumably in an attempt to wield the authority of an office that he no longer held.” Slavitt personally “bullied” Twitter into deplatforming journalist Alex Berenson over his skepticism of mRNA injections, the filing notes.

The Missouri plaintiffs are petitioning for greater discovery and depositions in a case the U.S. Supreme Court returned to the district level after declining a preliminary injunction against vast censorship efforts that use taxpayer-funded cutout organizations to mask federal demands. “[T]his case is exceptional,” the plaintiffs argue. “Never before in this country’s history has a government censorship regime coordinated at the highest levels been exposed through litigation.”

Missouri plaintiffs include the states of Missouri and Louisiana, Health Freedom Louisiana co-director Jill Hines and Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft, and internationally recognized research scientists and medical doctors Martin Kulldorff, Aaron Kheriaty, and Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University medical professor who is now President Trump’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health.

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Back to Stick Figures: How Woke Warriors Destroyed Anthropology

Biological anthropology and archaeology are facing a censorship crisis. Censorship can be defined simply as the suppression of speech, public communication, or information, often because it is deemed harmful or offensive. It can be enforced by government agencies or private institutions. Even self-censorship is increasingly prevalent, such as when an author decides not to publish something due to fear of backlash from their colleagues, or the belief that their findings may cause harm.

In these fields, censorship is primarily driven by professional associations like the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the California Society for Archaeology, academic journals (often produced by these associations) such as Bioarchaeology International, universities, and museums, including the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. The focus of this censorship largely involves the suppression of images—including X-rays and CT-scans—of human remains and funerary objects, which are artifacts found in graves.

Biological anthropologists, such as bioarchaeologists (who study human remains from the archaeological record), have historically used photos and X-rays of skeletal remains and mummies to explore disease patterns of past peoples, teach new methods of age estimation and sex identification, and attract new students to the field of biological anthropology. Archaeologists use photos of artifacts to facilitate comparisons with other artifacts, aid in reconstructing past cultures, and explore topics like the peopling of the Americas, prehistoric trade patterns, and the emergence of new technologies. These are just a few of the many ways images have been used in the field.

Yet, in recent years, the use of photos of human remains and artifacts has faced increasing censorship. For example, the guidelines of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) and its journals state: “Out of respect for diverse cultural traditions, photographs of full or explicit human remains are not accepted for publication in any SAA journal.”

Additionally, they add that “line drawings or other renderings of human remains may be an acceptable substitute for photographs.” In other words, they also may not be acceptable! So, the photo on the left would definitely not be accepted in SAA journals, and the image on the right may or may not be accepted.

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Far Left UK Government Proposes BANNING “Controversial” Conversations

The leftist Labour government in Britain has proposed radical reforms to the rights of workers that could include classing ‘sensitive’ topics of conversation in the workplace such as religion, women’s rights, or transgenderism as ‘harassment’.

The proposed legislation would force employers to prevent workers from being subjected to such subjects by third parties, such as customers. 

If they are found to have failed to do so, they could face lawsuits under the legislation.

Watchdog The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has warned that if it comes into the force next year, the proposed law could significantly impact freedom of expression and even be applied to “overheard conversations” such as those between two or more people in a pub.

The EHRC has noted that applying the harassment law in cases involving a “philosophical belief” could lead to problems owing to the fact that many employers do not understand such topics are protected by equality law.

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HHS Secretary Becerra Defends Biden Admin’s Big Tech Censorship, Blames Disinformation for Public Distrust

US Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra is about to step down, along with the rest of the Biden administration. Not only that, but it also seems likely that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will take over that post.

Ouch.

That aside – the exit of Becerra might be the end, and the conclusion of a “synopsis” of this particular political drama – but the start goes way back to 2020, the pandemic, its (mis)handling, and all the wrongs that impacted both people’s physical and mental health, and facilitated rampant online censorship, for many years.

It makes for an interesting read that the Washington Post decided to give Becerra a lot of space to state his case – but less so because of anything the soon-to-be former official actually had to say, or any ideologically heavy narrative the media outlet in question itself, felt the need to peddle in this context, one more time.

(There’s a point in the article where the Covid pandemic is described – now in January 2025 – as merely “receding”?)

These seemingly last-ditch delusional efforts are being made all over the place and this one has Becerra at one point addressing the elephant in the supposedly purely scientific room – what about the rampage of online censorship around Covid?

Believe it or not, it’s the victim card that Becerra chose to play here. “I can’t go toe to toe with social media,” he is quoted as lamenting by the Washington Post, bringing up things like “instantaneous misinformation” as the culprit for citizens now expressing low trust in the outgoing government.

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O’Keefe Media Group Releases Evidence That Mark Zuckerberg Lied About Biden Administration Pressuring Him to Censor COVID-19 Information, Gave Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars in Free Ads to Pro-Vax Groups

James O’Keefe’s O’Keefe Media Group has released new evidence on Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to censor anti-COVID vaccine narratives and promote those that align with the Democrat party. 

This comes as Meta/Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is on an apology tour, shifting all blame to the Biden Regime and claiming to be innocent in the censorship scandal.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, Zuckerberg, in August, admitted in a letter to Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan that the social media giant was subject to government censorship around stories related to COVID and the 2020 election and that he would, in the future, fight such efforts harder than he did previously.

In a recent interview on his apology tour with Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg also claimed that the Biden Administration “forced Facebook” to censor and eliminate content related to COVID-19 Vaccines.

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Celebrities and Tech Leaders Launch Campaign, Asking For Donations To Fund New Social Media Agenda

A coalition of celebrities and tech figures—including actors Mark Ruffalo and Alex Winter, author Cory Doctorow, musician Brian Eno, journalist Carole Cadwalladr, writer and podcaster Akilah Hughes, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales — have launched the Free Our Feeds initiative and are asking for donations to fund their idea. Their mission is to reclaim and expand the AT Protocol, the decentralized framework Bluesky operates on, in an effort to wrestle control from billionaires and corporate interests.

But what do these celebrities have in mind? Free speech? Likely not.

Bluesky, originally conceived within Twitter as a censorship-resistant social media platform, has drifted far from its founding principles. Designed to offer users an open, decentralized space for free expression, Bluesky was intended to prevent centralized control over online discourse. However, it has increasingly been influenced by advocates for stricter content moderation, undermining its foundational goal of safeguarding free speech.

Despite these intentions, the Free Our Feeds campaign might raise some eyebrows. The group is asking for $30 million over three years—starting with $4 million through a GoFundMe campaign—to fund a public-interest foundation. While decentralization is a promising concept, past examples like Mastodon and even Bluesky reveal how these platforms can quickly fall under the sway of those who seek to control speech. Decentralized technologies have been used to censor content and sever connections between platforms that support free speech, raising doubts about how truly independent these systems can remain.

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Yes, Mark Zuckerberg, You Can Shout ‘Fire’ in a Crowded Theater

Mark Zuckerberg has joined a dubious list of prominent Americans—including judges, members of Congress, and even a vice presidential nominee—who believe that you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater. In an interview with Joe Rogan last week, the Meta CEO attempted to justify the company’s pandemic-era censorship policies by arguing that “even people who are like the most ardent First Amendment defenders” know that there is a limit to free speech. 

“At the beginning, [COVID-19 was] a legitimate public health crisis,” Zuckerberg told Rogan. “The Supreme Court has this clear precedent: It’s like, all right, you can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. There are times when if there’s an emergency, your ability to speak can temporarily be curtailed in order to get an emergency under control. I was sympathetic to that at the beginning of COVID.”

The thing is, Zuckerberg is simply wrong when it comes to how the First Amendment works.

The common misconception that it’s illegal to shout “fire” in a crowded theater originates with a hypothetical used by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in the 1919 Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States.

In his opinion, Holmes wrote that “the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done,” adding that “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” Not only was this passage a pure hypothetical used to illustrate Holmes’ larger opinion that the First Amendment didn’t protect the dissemination of anti-draft pamphlets, but Schenck itself was overturned in 1969 by Brandenburg v. Ohio.

“To the contrary, if the theater is on fire, you not only may shout ‘FIRE,’ but indeed, you should do so! The constant misstatement of this famous line from a 1919 Supreme Court decision is significant, because it overlooks the critical, common-sense distinction between protected and unprotected speech,” former American Civil Liberties Union President Nadine Strossen said in 2021. “This old canard, a favorite reference of censorship apologists, needs to be retired. It’s repeatedly and inappropriately used to justify speech limitations. People have been using this cliché as if it had some legal meaning, while First Amendment lawyers roll their eyes”

Zuckerberg’s interview came in the wake of a January 7 announcement that Meta platforms would no longer use third-party fact-checkers to label and restrict content, as well as loosen restrictions on some subjects “that are part of mainstream discourse.” 

“After [Donald] Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy,” Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the change. “We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.”

While this change is a welcome shift from Meta’s previous content-moderation regime, that Zuckerberg is still getting this basic element of the First Amendment wrong hardly bodes well for Meta’s future as a platform friendly to free expression.

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