Tag: wrongthink

Spotify Purges Dissident Voices In Latest Censorship Escalation

Multiple American podcasters who speak critically of the political status quo in their country are reporting that their channels have been shut down as the censorship campaign against Russia-backed media continues to escalate. These include Moment of Clarity with Lee Camp, The Politics of Survival with Tara Reade, and By Any Means Necessary on Radio Sputnik.

“My podcast ‘Moment of Clarity’ has been removed from Spotify,” Camp tweeted Wednesday. “Let it be known – you can do anti-women, anti-trans or racist content on Spotify but you can’t be anti-war. That’s not allowed.”

“Without explanation or notice, Spotify has removed By Any Means Necessary from their platform, but we’re not going anywhere!” said the program’s Twitter account. “There’s a clear effort in motion to suppress anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist voices, join us in the fight by spreading the word!”

“You can still find my podcast on other platforms even though Spotify inexplicably removed it,” tweeted Reade.

This comes as Spotify closes its office in Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

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Google suppresses America’s Frontline Doctors in search results

More evidence is emerging of Google manipulating algorithms powering its mammoth and highly influential search service to give certain results (much) more visibility than others.

And now, reports say, Google is not even trying to hide that this is the case, as America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) has been informed its reach on the internet is being artificially limited.

This organization says it is dedicated to improving doctor-patient relationships that are jeopardized by what it calls politicized science and biased information. The AFLDS would also like to provide patients with access to “independent, evidence-based information” that will inform people’s decisions regarding their healthcare choices.

Well, meeting that goal might prove to be quite difficult since Google Search, on which a huge majority of US-based users rely for their internet queries, says it is deliberately deranking information coming from the AFLDS.

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California weighs punishing doctors for challenging ‘contemporary scientific consensus’ on COVID

Disagreement with the “contemporary scientific consensus” on COVID-19 issues could be deemed “unprofessional conduct” for California doctors.

Democratic Assemblyman Evan Low’s AB 2098 “may” be the subject of a March 17 hearing in the Assembly Committee on Business and Professions, where it was referred last week, according to the legislative history.

The bill, which was cowritten by five other California Assembly and Senate members, goes beyond regulating how California doctors can treat their own patients. It opens their statements about COVID — public or private — to review by the Medical Board of California and the Osteopathic Medical Board of California, with possible sanctions to follow.

“Existing law requires the applicable board to take action against any licensed physician and surgeon who is charged with unprofessional conduct,” according to the legislative counsel’s summary, and the bill would “designate the dissemination or promotion of misinformation or disinformation” about COVID as “unprofessional conduct,” without specifying what’s prohibited.

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The Neoliberal War on Dissent in the West

When it comes to distant and adversarial countries, we are taught to recognize tyranny through the use of telltale tactics of repression. Dissent from orthodoxies is censored. Protests against the state are outlawed. Dissenters are harshly punished with no due process. Long prison terms are doled out for political transgressions rather than crimes of violence. Journalists are treated as criminals and spies. Opposition to the policies of political leaders are recast as crimes against the state.

When a government that is adverse to the West engages in such conduct, it is not just easy but obligatory to malign it as despotic. Thus can one find, on a virtually daily basis, articles in the Western press citing the government’s use of those tactics in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and whatever other countries the West has an interest in disparaging (articles about identical tactics from regimes supported by the West — from Riyadh to Cairo — are much rarer). That the use of these repressive tactics render these countries and their populations subject to autocratic regimes is considered undebatable.

But when these weapons are wielded by Western governments, the precise opposite framework is imposed: describing them as despotic is no longer obligatory but virtually prohibited. That tyranny exists only in Western adversaries but never in the West itself is treated as a permanent axiom of international affairs, as if Western democracies are divinely shielded from the temptations of genuine repression. Indeed, to suggest that a Western democracy has descended to the same level of authoritarian repression as the West’s official enemies is to assert a proposition deemed intrinsically absurd or even vaguely treasonous.

The implicit guarantor of this comforting framework is democracy. Western countries, according to this mythology, can never be as repressive as their enemies because Western governments are at least elected democratically. This assurance, superficially appealing though it may be, completely collapses with the slightest critical scrutiny. The premise of the U.S. Constitution and others like it is that majoritarian despotism is dangerous in the extreme; the Bill of Rights consists of little more than limitations imposed on the tyrannical measures majorities might seek to democratically enact (the expression of ideas cannot be criminalized even if majorities want them to be; religious freedom cannot be abolished even if large majorities demand it; life and liberty cannot be deprived without due process even if nine of out ten citizens favor doing so, etc.). More inconveniently still, many of the foreign leaders we are instructed to view as despots are popular or even every bit as democratically elected as our own beloved freedom-safeguarding officials.

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The Mind Control Police: The Government’s War on Thought Crimes and Truth-Tellers

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”— George Orwell  

The U.S. government, which speaks in a language of force, is afraid of its citizenry.

What we are dealing with is a government so power-hungry, paranoid and afraid of losing its stranglehold on power that it is conspiring to wage war on anyone who dares to challenge its authority.

All of us are in danger.

In recent years, the government has used the phrase “domestic terrorist” interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.” The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.

In the government’s latest assault on those who criticize the government—whether that criticism manifests itself in word, deed or thought—the Biden Administration has likened those who share “false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information” to terrorists.

The next part is the kicker.

According to the Department of Homeland Security’s latest terrorism bulletin, “These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence.”

You see, the government doesn’t care if what you’re sharing is fact or fiction or something in between. What it cares about is whether what you’re sharing has the potential to make people think for themselves and, in the process, question the government’s propaganda.

Get ready for the next phase of the government’s war on thought crimes and truth-tellers.

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Biden DHS Declares Terrorism Threat Due to ‘False and Misleading Narratives’ and ‘Conspiracy Theories’ Online

Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declared a heightened terrorism threat due to “several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories.”

In other words, any speech or opinions of which the DHS doesn’t approve is now a “terrorism threat.”

Read the tyrannical DHS National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin released on Monday:

The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors.

These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence. Mass casualty attacks and other acts of targeted violence conducted by lone offenders and small groups acting in furtherance of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances pose an ongoing threat to the nation.

While the conditions underlying the heightened threat landscape have not significantly changed over the last year, the convergence of the following factors has increased the volatility, unpredictability, and complexity of the threat environment: (1) the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions; (2) continued calls for violence directed at U.S. critical infrastructure; soft targets and mass gatherings; faith-based institutions, such as churches, synagogues, and mosques; institutions of higher education; racial and religious minorities; government facilities and personnel, including law enforcement and the military; the media; and perceived ideological opponents; and (3) calls by foreign terrorist organizations for attacks on the United States based on recent events.

In response to these major “threats” of unsanctioned speech, the DHS said it’s “working with public and private sector partners, as well as foreign counterparts, to identify and evaluate MDM, including false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories spread on social media and other online platforms that endorse or could inspire violence.”

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Graphika: The Deep State’s Beard for Controlling the Information Age

Graphika is the toast of the town. The private social-media and tech-intelligence agency that tracks down bots and exposes foreign influence operations online is constantly quoted, referenced and profiled in the nation’s most important outlets. For example, in 2020, The New York Times published a fawning profile of the company’s head of investigations, Ben Nimmo. “He Combs the Web for Russian Bots. That Makes Him a Target,” ran its headline, the article presenting him as a crusader risking his life to keep our internet safe and free. Last year, business magazine Fast Company labeled Graphika as among the 10 most innovative companies in the world.

There is no doubt that Graphika leans into this cool and dynamic corporate image. From its beginnings in 2013, the company has expanded to employ dozens of people at its trendy Manhattan office. Describing themselves as “cartographers of the internet age,” the company puts out investigation after investigation about foreign influence operations online, especially concentrating on Russian, Chinese or Iranian attempts to manipulate social media. A layperson could certainly be blinded by its science and impressed by the complex and innovative graphs and charts. Yet when it comes to similar but far larger U.S. government programs, the intelligence and analysis agency is silent.

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Biden’s FCC Commissioner Nominee Gigi Sohn Wants To Nuke Right-Leaning Broadcasters From Air

President Joe Biden’s nominee for commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission hates Fox News and wants the federal agency to regulate conservative broadcasts because she disagrees with them.

The White House first announced Gigi Sohn as Biden’s FCC nominee in October.

“Gigi is one of the nation’s leading public advocates for open, affordable, and democratic communications networks,” the Biden administration claimed. “For over thirty years, Gigi has worked to defend and preserve the fundamental competition and innovation policies that have made broadband Internet access more ubiquitous, competitive, affordable, open, and protective of user privacy.”

Sohn’s inclination towards censorship and partisan regulation, however, torpedoed her chances of confirmation. Biden re-nominated Sohn at the beginning of the year but her chances of gaining Republican support are once again slim considering her history of criticizing and painting TV networks she disagrees with as threats to our democracy that need to be punished.

In one 2019 tweet, Sohn hinted that Fox News should be scrutinized because they “have played their own role in destroying democracy.”

“I agree that scrutiny of big tech is essential, as is scrutiny of big telecom, cable & media. And trust me, the latter have played their own role in destroying democracy & electing autocrats. Like, say, Fox News?” she tweeted.

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