Tag: wrongthink

Germany’s Gun-Grab? Saxony-Anhalt Begins Disarming AfD Members

Authorities in Germany have begun withdrawing gun ownership licenses from Alternative for Germany (AfD) members, who are deemed a “danger to public safety.”

So far, five AfD members have received a notice that their gun license would be revoked, while another member voluntarily returned his license after a revocation procedure was initiated. Another 51 cases are currently being examined by authorities, according to data released by the Saxony-Anhalt Interior Ministry in response to a request for information from the Left Party.

Hunters and sport shooters will also have their gun licenses canceled by authorities. In total, there are 74 members of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt that hold a firearms license, with 49 registered as sport shooters and 25 as hunters.

The revocation of gun licenses comes after the Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s powerful domestic intelligence agency, classified the AfD as “certainly right-wing extremist.” With this designation, AfD members suddenly faced a litany of problems. For one, authorities could spy on their communications without any warrant; however, authorities could also seize their firearms, and members could also face issues with government employment.

The efforts to disarm AfD members won praise from the Left Party’s parliamentary group leader Eva von Angern.

“The first revocation notices show that, after individual examination, these people pose a threat to public safety,” she said to German news outlet Mitteldeutsche Zeitung.

Keep reading

Top 10 Thought Crime Stories Of 2024

We look back on the craziest stories in 2024 of people being punished for their wrong think.

  1. Chapelle resisted reeducation

Back in April, comedian Jim Breuer claimed that Dave Chapelle told him he was once “visited” by an unnamed elite group of people and told to ‘correct’ his views.

The apparent visit took place in 2005 after Chapelle’s TV show became highly popular and before the comedian opted out of fame for close to a decade.

This goes some way to explaining Chapelle’s continued refusal to bow to the woke mob.

  1. Elon Musk is Australia’s number one thought criminal

In April, an Australian Senator called for X owner Elon Musk to be jailed for life for refusing to adhere to the Australian government’s demands to remove a video of the brutal attack on a Christian Bishop in Sydney by a Muslim extremist.

Musk warned that no country should be able to demand national, let alone global content bans. 

The X owner continued to resist Australia’s authoritarian demands much to the ire of the government and the Prime Minster there.

Ultimately Elon, and freedom of speech, prevailed.

Keep reading

Civil Service Commission Rules Boston Mayor Wu’s Administration Lacked “Just Cause” for Wrongful Termination of Police Officer Over January 6 Tweets

In a major victory for free speech and a stinging defeat for political retribution, the Massachusetts Civil Service Commission overturned the termination of Joseph Abasciano, a former Boston Police Department (BPD) officer accused of misconduct related to tweets he posted on January 6, 2021, while attending the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C.

The unanimous decision allows Abasciano to retire medically, with his federal lawsuit against the city still pending.

Officer Abasciano, a former U.S. Marine with commendations for his service in Iraq and over a decade of distinguished work in Boston’s toughest neighborhoods, found himself under scrutiny not for his actions but for his conservative political views.

Abasciano’s case arose from a series of tweets on his anonymous account, @mailboxjoe, that neither identified him as a BPD officer, where he described attendees as “patriots” and referred to the Vice President as a “traitor.”

“I sent out some anonymous tweets while traveling home. Apparently, I was not so anonymous. It appears my conservative activism and attempts to expose (Democrat) union corruption exposed me and my anonymous Twitter account,” Abasciano told The Gateway Pundit.

He was terminated in 2023 following a second investigation into anonymous tweets he posted while returning home from the January 6 rally.

Notably, the Commission highlighted that Abasciano did not participate in any violent activities during the Capitol riot. Internal investigations initially cleared him of misconduct.

Keep reading

Activists Tried Cancel a Record Number of Campus Events in 2024

This past year, a record 164 speakers and events were targeted by campaigns to be disrupted or canceled, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment group. This is slightly higher than 2023’s 154 deplatforming attempts. More than half of 2024’s attempted cancelations were related to the Israel-Palestine conflict, up from about a third of 2023’s platforming attempts.

In all, 2023 and 2024 saw a significant increase in attempted deplatformings of campus speeches and events from the years prior (though it’s worth noting that FIRE records attempted cancellations of events with multiple speakers as separate attempts). Meanwhile, 2022 and 2021 had just 81 and 56 attempts, respectively. Around half of 2024’s attempts resulted in the event being canceled, the speaker’s invitation being revoked, or the event being substantially disrupted. 

In January, Indiana University canceled an exhibition from a Palestinian-American artist over her pro-Palestentian social media posts. In April, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D–Md.) was shouted down during a physics department lecture at the University of Maryland. In the spring, speakers ranging from United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield to CNN’s Michael Smerconish had their invitations to deliver commencement speeches revoked following student or community outrage. In November, a symposium on the Israel-Palestine conflict including Judith Butler was forced off the campus of the University of Florida after administrators objected to the event.

Keep reading

Texas AG Ken Paxton Reveals Multiple Instances of Debanking Amid Political and Legal Challenges

Texas Attorney-General Ken Paxton has spoken at a Turning Point USA event to detail a series of unjust obstacles he has been facing since taking office, one of those being debanking.

According to Paxton, as many as four different banks denied him their services, which was followed by a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit, attempts to revoke his law license, and an FBI investigation.

This was happening during the last four years of the Biden-Harris Democrat administration, suggesting that the reasons were political, but it went all the way to “a Republican split”: while the state House tried to impeach Paxton – the Senate later acquitted him in the impeachment trial.

The takeaway here is that democratic norms and the principle of due process are at this point considerably compromised and highly vulnerable to political influence.

And Paxton is by no means the only high-profile individual to become the target of debanking. When the new administration took over after President Trump’s first term in office, his wife Melania, and son Barron were denied banking services.

Keep reading

New Jersey Mom Targeted by Military and Homeland Security for Questioning LGBTQ+ Poster at Elementary School

Within the spectrum of overreactions, few can rival what unfolded in New Jersey when Angela Reading, a mother and former school board member, dared to question a poster at her daughter’s elementary school.

The poster, innocuously crafted during a “Week of Respect” event, celebrated “LGBTQ+” themes, including the term “polysexuality.”

That’s a term describing an attraction to multiple genders — though the seven-year-olds likely gleaned little understanding of this.

What they did glean, however, was enough for Reading’s daughter to come home curious, which set off a chain reaction of Facebook posts, military involvement, and, yes, counter-terrorism reports.

Angela Reading’s ordeal is a cautionary tale of how questioning the wisdom of mixing elementary school art projects with complex identity politics can snowball into government surveillance, a federal lawsuit, and a First Amendment debate that feels like it was pulled from the pages of Orwell.

The Poster That Launched a Thousand Emails

It all started with a simple question. During the North Hanover Township school’s celebration of acceptance and respect, students created posters featuring LGBTQ+ flags and terms, one of which included the word “polysexual.” When Reading’s daughter innocently asked what it meant, Reading did what many parents might: she turned to Facebook to vent her frustrations.

Describing the content as “inappropriate for young children,” Reading argued that elementary school wasn’t the place for discussions about sexuality. Her post, written as a private citizen, quickly gained traction. And like clockwork, the backlash began.

Keep reading

Meta’s Re-Education Era Begins

Like law enforcement in some repressive virtual regimes, Meta is introducing the concept of re-education of “citizens” (users), as an alternative to eventually sending them to “jail” (imposing account restrictions).

But this only applies to “first-time offenders,” that is, those who have violated Meta’s community standards for the first time, and if that violation is not considered to be “most severe.”

The community standards now apply across Meta’s platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads – while the new rule means that instead of collecting a strike for a first policy violation, users who go through “an educational program” can have it deleted.

There’s also “probation” – those who receive no strike for a year after that will again be eligible to participate in the “remove your warning” course. This applies to Facebook profiles, pages, and Instagram profiles.

Meta first introduced the option for creators last summer and is now expanding it to everyone. In announcing the change of the policy, the tech giant refers to “research” that showed most of those violating its rules for the first time “may not be aware they are doing so.”

This is where the “short educational program” comes in, as a way to reduce the risk of receiving that first strike, and Meta says the program is designed to help “better explain” its policies.

Keep reading

UNESCO’s New Mission: Train Influencers About Combatting Online “Misinformation”

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is now incorporating teaching influencers how to “fact check” into its activities.

UNESCO claims that influencers have become “primary sources of news and cultural information” around the world – which prompted it to carry out a survey into how these online personalities verify the “news” they present.

Citizens in UN member-countries may or may not be happy that this is how their taxpayer money funding the world organization is being spent these days. But UNESCO is not only conducting surveys; it is also developing a training course for said influencers (which are also interchangeably referred to as content creators in press releases).

It’s meant to teach them not only to “report misinformation, disinformation and hate speech” but also to collaborate with legacy media and these outlets’ journalists, in order to “amplify fact-based information.”

The survey, “Behind the screens,” was done together with researchers from the US Bowling Green State University. 500 influencers from 45 countries took part, and the key findings, UNESCO said, are that 63 percent of them “lack rigorous and systematic fact-checking protocols” – but also, that 73% said they “want to be trained.”

This UN agency also frames the results as showing that respondents are “struggling” with disinformation and hate speech and are “calling for more training.”

Keep reading

NYC Mayor Eric Adams staffer tasked with ‘bridging cultural divides’ rips down hostage posters, allegedly assaults witness

A staffer from the office of Mayor Eric Adams who has been tasked with helping to “bridge cultural divides” with events in the Big Apple was caught on video ripping down Israeli hostage posters in New York and allegedly assaulting a witness to her actions. 

Nallah Sutherland, 25, who is a staffer in the Mayor’s Office of Special Projects and Community Events, was caught on video this month as she was riping down the hostage posters, per the New York Post. The video was posted earlier this month by the account Stop Antisemitism, which asked viewers to identify the girl in the video. 

The individual with the camera asked Sutherland why she was tearing up the posters, to which she did not respond verbally, but hit his phone in an attempt to stop the man from recording. The man then accused her of assault in response. 

“That’s assault actually. You know that, right?” the man tells Sutherland. She simply smiled and walked away after his comment. Sutherland reportedly only got a slap on the wrist for the incident. She had to take a “multicultural training” course and got a disciplinary memo, a source told the outlet. 

The New York City government website states that Sutherland’s team in the Mayor’s Office of Special Projects and Community Events “organizes, plans, and executes public or private events and special projects that embraces and rejoices in the extraordinary cultural richness and range of our City” and has a mission to “bridge cultural divides, cultivate enduring connections or strategic partnerships, and support key City initiatives that help provide a source of strength, unity, and resilience to New Yorkers across all communities within the five boroughs and beyond.”

Keep reading

FinTech CEOs Expose How Feds Colluded In ‘Debanking’ Schemes After Andreessen ‘Opened The Floodgates’ On Rogan

Last week Marc Andreessen sat down with Joe Rogan for three hours, where the billionaire investor and founder of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz dropped an aerial bombardment of redpills on the general public – spanning everything from the US government’s designs to completely control AI, to a weaponized government effort to secretly ‘debank’ 30 tech founders in an effort to destroy political opponents, particularly those in crypto.

Following the interview, former PayPal president, Facebook executive, and Coinbase board member (2017-2018) David Marcus revealed on Friday how political pressure and red tape led to the demise of Facebook’s cryptocurrency project, Libra (later rebranded as Diem).

Libra was an advanced blockchain paired with a stablecoin aimed at solving global payment inefficiencies at scale. Despite extensive efforts to address regulatory concerns, including financial crime prevention, reserve management, and consumer protections, the project was ultimately derailed—not by legal obstacles but by political opposition.

“Prior to announcing the project, we spent months briefing key regulators in DC and abroad. We then announced the project in June 2019 alongside 28 companies. Two weeks later, I was called to testify in front of both the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee, which was the starting point of two years of nonstop work and changes to appease lawmakers and regulators,” Marcus writes on X.

According to Marcus, the turning point came in 2021 after having “addressed every last possible regulatory concern across financial crime, money laundering, consumer protection, reserve management, buffers, and so much more” in advance of launch. 

Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell appeared ready to greenlight a limited pilot of the project, but Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen allegedly intervened. In a private meeting, Yellen reportedly warned Powell that supporting Libra would be “political suicide,” a move that Marcus describes as the definitive blow. Shortly thereafter, Federal Reserve representatives discouraged participating banks from moving forward, effectively intimidating the financial institutions into withdrawing their support. For Marcus, this marked not just the end of Libra but also a disheartening realization about the political dynamics within the U.S. financial system.

“Shortly thereafter, the Fed organized calls with all the participating banks, and the Fed’s general counsel read a prepared statement to each of them, saying: “We can’t stop you from moving forward and launching, but we are not comfortable with you doing so.” And just like that, it was over.” -David Marcus

Marcus emphasized that there was “no legal or regulatory angle left for the government or regulators to kill the project. It was 100% a political kill—one that was executed through intimidation of captive banking institutions.”

Keep reading