Tag: wrongthink

German Citizens’ Forum Proposes Criminalizing “Disinformation”

A citizens’ council – established by Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser to help combat what she sees as “fake news,” has come up with a number of recommendations, including criminalizing whatever the authorities decide to consider to be the “spread of disinformation.”

The proposal is in line with Faeser’s own policies, which opponents see as strongly pro-censorship (and that includes trying to ban a magazine critical of the government).

No surprise also that Faeser’s ministry is open to the suggestions – a statement said it would be “analyzed.” Furthermore, the Interior Ministry will “examine the extent to which (the recommendations)” can be incorporated into its work.

All this is already being interpreted in the context of the previous conduct of Germany’s government, which critics say is not only free speech and media freedom-unfriendly – but is also, while declaratively fighting disinformation, giving a leg up to those media outlets that actually spread disinformation (the implication being, the kind of disinformation that suits the government.)

In a world where war is peace, freedom is slavery, etc., Faeser’s council’s full name is, “Forum against Fakes—Together for a Strong Democracy.” But it’s questionable how German democracy could benefit from an even more draconian clampdown on speech than what is currently happening.

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UK Using Terrorism Law To Silence Journalists, Protestors Who Commit ‘Speech Crimes’

British police and prosecutors are relying on a recently adopted “speech crime” provision in terrorism legislation to target journalists, commentators, activists, and protesters.

The crackdown accelerated after Israel launched its genocidal campaign against Palestinians following the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Among the most well-known examples of this crackdown is the case of British-Syrian journalist and commentator Richard Medhurst. 

Medhurst, the son of two United Nations peacekeepers, was arrested on August 15 by counter-terrorism police after his plane landed at London’s Heathrow airport. He was due to participate in a panel at the Better Days Festival in Devon.

“Something in my gut told me something was up,” Medhurst told The Dissenter, because there was an “unusually long gap” after the plane stopped and the doors opened. 

The pilot said that they were waiting for a plane to move out of their spot, but this turned out to be false. “One of the flight attendants said, ‘can Richard Medhurst please come to the front of the plane?’ I was literally in the front row.”

Officers, who were not in uniform, initially refused to answer any questions as to who they were and what they wanted and declined to identify themselves. Police demanded to know where Medhurst’s bags were and then took him and his property away. After he was taken to a small room, he was searched, placed in double-lock handcuffs in a painful manner, and transferred to a police station.

Medhurst, who is a member of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) as well as the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), is well-known for his coverage of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition case as well as his reporting on geopolitics as it relates to West Asia.

This is the first known example of British authorities invoking section 12(1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000 to justify arresting and interrogating a journalist, which was passed in 2019 as part of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act.

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Hillary Clinton Calls Free Speech ‘Propaganda’, Wants to Jail Americans for Speaking

Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told bespectacled lesbian Rachel Maddow on MSNBC that Americans who post news and other information she doesn’t like, or that goes against her political agenda, are posting foreign propaganda and should be dragged in front of kangaroo courts for civil and criminal proceedings.

Hillary Clinton told Rachel Maddow this week on MSNBC that the US government needs to use a “deterrent,” like suing citizens into oblivion or throwing them in prison to crackdown on free speech and regain a firm grip on the national cultural and political narrative.

“There are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda,” Clinton told Maddow as she called for mass censorship.

“And whether they should be civility or even in some cases criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrent,” she said.

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Are New-World-Order Elites Plotting to Use AI to ‘Deprogram’ So-Called Conspiracy Theorists?

Might the New World Order use biased, pre-manipulated artificial intelligence programs to try to “deprogram” those with unpopular opinions by persuading them that their logic does not compute?

A recent study on that subject underwritten by the John Templeton Foundation might give so-called conspiracy theorists one more thing to be paranoid about, according to Popular Science.

Critics have already sounded the alarm that leftist radicals in Silicon Valley and elsewhere were manipulating the algorithms used to train AI so that it automatically defaulted to anti-conservative biases.

The next step may be programming any verboten viewpoints into the realm of “conspiracy theory,” then having powerful computers challenge human users to a battle of logic that inevitably is stacked against them with cherrypicked data.

The study, titled “Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI,” attempted to counter the common view that some people will not change their minds, even when presented with facts and evidence.

Addressing the problem of “widespread belief in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories,” researchers postulated that conspiracy theories can, contrary to the scientific narrative, be countered by way of systematic fact-checking.

Among those theories tested were more traditional conspiracies such as those involving the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the possibility of alien landings that were known to the United States government.

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Kamala Says Quiet Part Out Loud: Government ‘Oversight’ Needed to Police the Internet and Rein in Thought Crimes

The global crackdown on free speech continues unabated, and if you think it’s relegated to countries like China, Cuba, and North Korea, think again.

A Brazilian Supreme Court panel on Monday upheld a decision to suspend Elon Musk’s social media platform X in the country.

Last Friday, Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the platform blocked.

Since the decision, Musk and his supporters have tried to paint de Moraes as a renegade and an authoritarian censor of political speech. But Brazil is no outlier. The European Union is also cracking down on free speech with its Online Service Act, and we have our own free-speech haters here in the United States.

In fact, one of them is a candidate for president.

Kamala Harris came out in 2019 and admitted in the wide open that she wants to see the same type of state-sponsored censorship implemented in the United States as what we now see taking shape in Brazil.

The government, Harris believes, should have ultimate control over what you and I are allowed to post on the internet, as well as more control over what we are allowed to see and hear. She doesn’t trust us to decide for ourselves as to the truth or accuracy of what we see or read online.

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Behind Closed Doors: The UK and US Plot Global Speech Crackdown

America First Legal (AFL) has pulled back the curtain on yet another government meeting that makes “free speech” sound like some quaint idea from the past. AFL has released documents from a 2021 interagency get-together where the UK’s top experts on “disinformation” offered a master class in censorship, all under the guise of “protecting democracy.” And because nothing screams transparency quite like a secret strategy session on silencing opposing voices, the revelations come with just a hint of irony.

On August 10, 2021, the Biden-Harris National Security Council (NSC) hosted a cozy little chat with the United Kingdom’s “Counter Disinformation Unit” (CDU). The occasion? An instructional session on how to manage—read: censor—COVID-related speech in the US. But why stop at the pandemic when there’s so much more to control? This wasn’t just about virus talk; it was a step-by-step guide on how to choke off the flow of any inconvenient truth that might muddy the government’s preferred narrative.

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California Attorney General Bonta Pressures Top Social Media and AI Executives to Address “Misinformation”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has penned a letter to major social media and “AI” companies. And Bonta’s not urging them to “do better” on innovation, competition, and the like.

No – the letter is all about “election misinformation.”

It’s becoming almost pathological at this point, but the entire ruling apparatus in the US (and that includes not only officials but also politically and ideologically affiliated media outlets) is hammering in the message of that being an actual “threat to democracy.”

As if the largest companies in the said industries didn’t hear all this already dozens of times, Bonta goes out of his way to repeat the message to Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Open AI, Reddit, TikTok, X, and YouTube – (wouldn’t that one fall under the Alphabet category? But Bonta lists the video platform separately).

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

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FLASHBACK: Kamala Harris vows to use DOJ to ARREST people exercising FREE SPEECH

Daily Mail political reporter Charlie Spiering has unearthed a speech of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, vowing to have the Department of Justice(DOJ) move against “misinformation” and “hate” on social media platforms.

During a 2019 speech at the NAACP Fight for Freedom Dinner in Detroit, Michigan, Harris promised that, if given the power, she would hold social media companies responsible for spreading what she termed “misinformation” using the DOJ as a key tool.

The resurfacing of the said video on X, formerly Twitter, came amid a growing number of free speech advocates raising the alarm over what the vice president would do to censor social media platforms if she wins the election.

“We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy,” Harris said, emphasizing the DOJ’s role in enforcing accountability. “We’ll put the Department of Justice of the United States back in the business of justice. We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy.”

She told technocrats that she would double the Civil Rights Division and direct law enforcement to address the spread of extremist ideologies and misinformation. “If you profit off of hate, if you act as a megaphone for misinformation or cyber warfare, if you don’t police your platforms we are going to hold you accountable as a community,” Harris added.

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Bill Gates Wants AI-Based Real-Time Censorship for Vaccine “Misinformation”

Microsoft founder Bill Gates continues with his crusade, as part of the mission of the Gates Foundation, to not only proliferate the use of vaccines but find new justifications to in effect, force them onto those skeptical or unwilling.

One of the methods Gates has clearly identified as helpful in achieving this goal is hitching his “vaccine wagon” to the massive, ongoing scaremongering campaign and narrative around “misinformation” and “AI.”

Gates spoke for CNBC to reveal he may be a vaccine absolutist – but not a free-speech one. He also didn’t sound convinced that America’s Constitution and its speech protections are the right way to go when he brought up the need for “boundaries” allowing some new “rules.”

Gates’ argument incorporates all the main talking points against free speech: misinformation, incorrect information (aka, fake news), violence, and online harassment. And, he sneaked in vaccines in there, while making a case for “rules” in the US as well.

“We should have free speech, but if you’re inciting violence, if you’re causing people not to take vaccines, where are those boundaries that even the US should have rules? And then if you have rules, what is it?” Gates is quoted as saying.

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J6 Defendant Treniss Evans Testifies: J6 Political Prisoners Were Offered Classes in Jail on: Trump’s Big Lie, Trump’s Crimes, Trump’s Attacks on Democracy

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) led a special live hearing on Monday morning titled, Unusually Cruel: A Continued Investigation Into the Treatment of J6 Political Prisoners.

The Gateway Pundit reporter Cara Castronuova testified today at the hearing along with several others including investigative reporter Yehuda Miller, J6 defendant Treniss Evans, Jessica Rivera, Brandy Bowen, Eden Quainton, and attorney Jonathan Gross. Cara spoke about her reporting on J6 political prisoners as well as Trump supporter Roseanne Boyland’s death that day.

MTG has been a passionate voice for J6 political prisoners since the Pelosi insurrection on January 6th.

Last fall The Gateway Pundit was informed that political prisoner John Strand was being tortured in isolation after he entered prison. We encouraged our readers to write the prison warden’s assistant and demand the isolation end immediately.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene retweeted our report on John Strand and demanded the prison stop their abuse.

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