And the Beatdown Goes On
The Uni-Party Cult is a suffocating censorship system that has grown like a cancer for at least 50 years.
Make No Mistake. You Are Living Under the Perfect Censorship. | Human Events | by Armando Simón
FTA: …With reflection, it is evident that the template for a “perfect dictatorship” has… been applied in other countries such as Turkey, Venezuela, and Russia: either the same leader—Erdogan, Maduro, Putin—gets “re-elected” while opposition candidates are hamstrung. Alternatively, as in the case of Iran, clones of the same kind of leader cycle through the office. Though these regimes are a deviation from the traditional style of brutal military dictatorship (where power is seized by force), they are dictatorships nonetheless: despite the performance of periodic elections, power is nevertheless held by a single leader or group with little or no tolerance for political pluralism or independent media.
Upon further reflection, it is also clear that many western (ironically, democratic) countries now face a similar condition—not necessarily in terms of their elections, but in terms of other freedoms that democratic electorates have grown accustomed to. Western democracies are now under perfect censorship. This process has been going on for many years, and is on the verge of being perfected in the United States...
The enthusiasm that leftist leaders have for censorship is trickling down to the local level as well. It speaks volumes that this year Glenbrook South’s chapter of Turning Point USA was canceled by orders of Democratic politicians because the group put up a poster criticizing China’s Communist Party. That tells you everything there is to know about the future of free speech in a Democrat-controlled world. It’s a little scary to think what all these individuals would do if it wasn’t for the First Amendment. It’s likely one of the reasons that Democrats are desperate to pack the Supreme Court with totalitarian-minded “progressives.” After eliminating “hate speech,” they would then outlaw the Republican Party (even though it is mostly composed of eunuchs), something that they have openly advocated.
Nor is it just politicians. American universities are teeming with sophists who have argued in favor of censorship; so have journalists. (The irony being that these two groups have been strong opponents of censorship). Just look at the catalog of acts of censorship in schools found in The College Fix, Campus Reform, and Samizdat 2020. It is fascinating reading the intellectual gymnastics undertaken by the intellectual left to justify censorship.
The First Amendment protects Americans from censorship by the government, but has no say in preventing censorship by private institutions, such as social media (YouTube, Google, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook), newspapers (e.g., New York Times, The Boston Globe, Washington Post), and network news (CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, NBC). In the past four years, I have personally collected hundreds of instances of censorship by these entities, ranging from outright deliberate falsehoods (“fake news”) to news blackouts to removal and demonetizing internet channels. After I finished writing this essay, President Biden called on Facebook to censor “misinformation” on its site, even more aggressively than it already does, just like YouTube. Since the politics of the Democratic Party and Silicon Valley are congruent, Facebook and its peers will no doubt comply.
We may have the First Amendment, but free speech in America is hanging by a thread.
Modern Day Cassandras
It is not just censorship that is worrisome. And here we truly come to the crux of the problem. Present-day censorship is a manifestation of totalitarianism. Only someone who is very obtuse will fail to recognize that we are in the midst of a totalitarian movement.
I come from Cuba, and I have Russian and Ukrainian friends; what is happening in the United States has a disturbing familiarity.
In schools and universities, ideological indoctrination and rigid conformity are taking place. Everything has become politicized, from television to businesses to advertisements to the military. People are afraid to speak their minds. Comedy is under attack (and isn’t it interesting that the Soviet Union never had comedy? In my research, I have never come across any comedy in Soviet films or television. There was never any comedy in Communist countries, which I guess is why circus clowns were so popular in the Soviet Union). The Radicalization Awareness Network recently published a report attacking humor, as it is applied to dogma, to political parties, to governmental policies, or any of an assortment of leftist sacred cows. It makes recommendations on how to eliminate humor.
Meanwhile, resistance to censorship is minimal and ineffective.
I come from Cuba, and I have Russian and Ukrainian friends; what is happening in the United States has a disturbing familiarity. We are experiencing déjà vu. We who have lived in communist countries—Vietnamese, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Cubans, Chinese, Romanians, Czechoslovakians—recognize all the signs. We have seen it before. We are frantically sounding the alarm to an unresponsive citizenry—the barbarians are inside the gates—but we are dismissed as alarmists, as engaging in “hyperbole.” We are modern-day Cassandras, who are disturbing the tranquility of the readers.
In the words of Pastor Artur Pawlowski, “We were warning Americans and Canadians—Westerners—about what is coming. We could smell it for many years. People were laughing at us. ‘Oh, you’re just making this stuff up. You’re blowing this out of proportion. You conspiracy theorist.’ However, it’s here.”
I wonder if Winston Churchill felt the same way.
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