Tag: wrongthink

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.”

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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.”

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Targeted for Beliefs: How a Trump Supporter and a Christian Activist Became the Victim of Biden’s Weaponized DOJ and DHS

On February 2nd of 2020, I protested a “Drag Queen Story Hour” at the Exeter Community Public Library. Along with the Catholic group and a couple of friends who showed up to voice our displeasure with what was seen as an affront to our values.

In case you were wondering where the drag supporters stood, the drag queen’s “stage name” was “Annie Christ.” This was not just leftist performance art but a deliberate affront to the Christian majority who lived there.

Along with the protestors there was a ring of “counter protestors” consisting of antifa in “black bloc” some with their faces covered some not. The small town must have had most of their police officers present in one form or another.

They did their best to keep both sides separated but seemed extra concerned that us right-wingers were going to try and block the driveway into the venue as they would pounce if we so much as set one toe on the pavement.

There was one counter protester who seemed really interested in us. Watching us with his arms folded just a couple of feet away from us. He quizzed us on our political beliefs and beliefs about native Americans.

At one point he asked if we were “Proud Boys.” We mocked him and the event ended but it was not the last that I would see of him.

The Threats

Soon afterward, I received a private message on my Telegram app. The message was a picture taken of me at a rock concert months prior and a cryptic message that “your life is about get a lot more interesting.”

I blocked the account and went about my life until I received another message from a different account linked me to a Twitter thread created by a known antifa member named Christian Exoo, who posts under the screen name “Antifash Gordon.”

The thread included my name and hometown as well as directions on how to find more detailed personal information.

Soon after, I received a letter from Discover warning me that someone had stolen my identity and attempted to open a credit card in my name.

After freezing my credit accounts, I called the non-emergency number for my local police department and made my report to Officer Jared Knauss of the Bethlehem Township Police Department. Little did I know that Officer Knauss may have had an ulterior motive…

The Harassment

On January 26th, 2021, just days after Joe Biden’s inauguration, while I was at work, two police officers rang my family’s doorbell and told my mother that they had received a 911 call and wanted to enter the home.

While my mom tried to explain that there was no 911 call from the house a stream of federal agents pushed their way past her while shouting “FEDERAL SEARCH WARRANT!”

Once the dust cleared, I found out the raid was the result of a search warrant for a solvent trap that had been ordered to the house months ago.

The warrant was approved by a judge that was appointed by Joe Biden in the FIRST WEEK of his presidency! To reiterate, these federal agents executed a warrant to raid a right-wing activist’s home for what amounted to a minor paperwork crime, and they waited until a sympathetic President appointed a sympathetic judge.

To drive home the political nature of this raid, the pretrial discovery that was provided to me included pictures the federal agents took of Trump memorabilia and Christian lecture CDs.

Federal agents also visited other relatives and would ask them what my views on LGBTQ issues were. How this was relevant to a firearm investigation was never explained to me.

After the raid, my family endured a year of harassment in the form of phone calls where someone would leave a message asking, “Is Joseph there?”

Over and over as well as people just breathing hard into the phone. We also captured security footage of individuals wearing all black skulking around the property and photographing the license plates of our vehicles.

On February 7th, 2022, as I parked my car in the workplace’s parking lot and walked toward the entrance a PA State Police SWAT team disembarked from an unmarked Sprinter van, and within seconds, I was staring down the barrel of about half-a-dozen M4s wielded by state troopers in full battle rattle.

After being put on the ground and having my hands zip-tied, two DHS agents emerged and took all my belongings. This was far from the end of my ordeal.

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Great Britain Cracks Down On “Non-Crime Hate” Speech, Including Playground Taunts

In my book, The Indispensable Right, I discuss how free speech is in a free fall in Great Britain, where officials continue to crack down on an ever-widening array of viewpoints. Some of these actions are designated as “non-crime hate” but are still the subject of law enforcement actions. According to the Daily Mail, they now include children who have been pulled in for calling other children schoolyard names like “retard” or saying that other children smell “like fish.”

According to the Daily Mail:

“A nine-year-old child is among the youngsters being probed by police over hate incidents… Officers recorded incidents against the child, who called a fellow primary school pupil a ‘retard’, and against two schoolgirls who said another student smelled ‘like fish.’ The youngsters were among multiple cases of children being recorded as having committed non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs), The Times discovered through freedom of information requests to police forces.”

“Non-crime hate” was introduced in 2014 as part of the Hate Crime Operational Guidelines.

It is chilling in its ambiguity and scope. It only requires the perception of either a victim or a third party that a statement is motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person’s race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or transgender identity.

The HCOG stresses, “The victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception. Evidence of the hostility is not required.”

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