Censorship is not harmless folks. When they control the narrative to the point where the only thing you can hear is their version of things, then we’re well on our way.
Before we get into today’s discussion, remember to tune in Thursday evening, Nov. 1st at 8PM to www.facebook.com/frontsightpress. I’ll be on the show with Mike, and probably Julie, talking about guns, civil war, home protection and a host of other things. While I’m no fan of facebook, it is where the studio publishes its internet content, so it is, what it is. It should be some fun, and maybe we can learn something. Check it out.
Okay, the censorship is getting to the point of a socialist nation. Not long ago, James Corbett did a good report about China’s individual Social Credit scoring system. As Business Insider puts it; The Chinese state is setting up a vast ranking system system that will monitor the behavior of its enormous population, and rank them all based on their "social credit."
The "social credit system," first announced in 2014, aims to reinforce the idea that "keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful," according to a government document. The program is due to be fully operational nationwide by 2020, but is being piloted for millions of people across the country already. The scheme will be mandatory.
At the moment the system is piecemeal — some are run by city councils, others are scored by private tech platforms which hold personal data.
Like private credit scores, a person's social score can move up and down depending on their behavior. The exact methodology is a secret — but examples of infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online.
Penalties are pretty severe. A bad score can keep you off planes and trains. They can throttle your Internet. They can keep you out of hotels, they can take your pets away from you, and ultimately, cut you off from your own banking.
It sounds like something out of Orwell’s 1984. In fact, it might be worse. Why do I say that? Because people are in a lot of ways like sheep. If “he’s” doing something, maybe “I” should do it too. They might not even know why, but they join in.
You can examine that theory just about anytime you want. Simply stand on a busy sidewalk, keep looking up and mutter “wow” or “Holy crap”. Sure enough people will start to glance up, and eventually you’ll get people that literally stop and begin to look for what you’re supposedly seeing. We’ll get back to this in a minute.
So, here in the good ole US of A, where freedom of speech is supposed to be one of our biggest virtues, Conservatives, Pro lifer’s, Christians, and just about anyone that tends to lean to the right are being censored across the Internet. At first it was just the really big guys like Alex Jones. But no, it wouldn’t stop there.
Remember the articles I wrote about “chokepoints?” Basically, because everything you do relies on someone else, you’re vulnerable to being shut down. For instance, you might need gas. But if the only station in town has been directed by authorities not to sell it to you, you’re in trouble. Likewise, if you sell guns; and Twitter, facebook, paypal, etc, don’t like guns, they switch off your access.
It’s hard to do business when the credit card companies won’t allow you to be a merchant. Likewise, even if you think Facebook is Satan’s spawn, it does allow small business to reach tens of thousands of people otherwise unreachable. If Facebook shuts you down, you’re down.
I was waiting for the ripple out, and it’s in full bloom. A handful of people have gone out and created their own social networking platforms. It was almost like I set the kitchen timer. It was simply a matter of time before one of the chokepoints shut them down, and sure enough it’s happening. Consider Gab.
The guy that runs Gab, set it up for freedom of speech, where you could talk about any topic you wanted. You could opine about just about anything, without being blocked. As long as you weren’t threatening violence against someone, it was open season to vent.
Well sure enough, Gab was gaining a lot of traction, and then “boom” their internet hosting company pulled their plug. Someone said something on the platform that some snowflake at the hosting company found offensive, and they kicked Gab off their servers.
We do not have freedom of speech folks. Only if you’re a card carrying member of the lunatic left do you have freedom to say anything you want and get a pass. Oh, or if somehow you’re an illegal, or a Muslim.
Consider this, the media is somehow trying to blame Trump for the gunman that opened fire in a Jewish synagogue. Several people trying to show how absurd that is, have had their twitter feed shut down. Yet good old screwy Louis Farrakhan has no such censoring, despite preaching enormous volumes of Jew hate. Consider the following from his “Saviour’s Day speech:”
"Satanic Jews have infected the whole world with poison and deceit. Jews were responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out, turning men into women and women into men…. White folks are going down. And Satan is going down. And Farrakhan, by God’s grace, has pulled a cover off of that Satanic Jew, and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through."
Where’s the uproar? Where’s the twitter/facebook/Youtube bans? No where.
See, if you’re on the left side of the fence, you’re gold. But if you lean toward the right, you’re a threat. Enter Lifesite…
On its website, LifeSite describes itself as a “non-profit Internet service dedicated to issues of culture, life, and family,” launched by the pro-life Campaign Life Coalition in 1997, which “emphasizes the social worth of traditional Judeo-Christian principles but is also respectful of all authentic religions and cultures that esteem life, family and universal norms of morality.”
Morality? Christian principles? Oh my! That’s surely to get you shut down and sure enough that’s just what happened. Their web hosting company gave them no forward warning, they just pulled their plug. Evidently talking about morality, or Christian principles is offensive to the snowflakes.
Anyone with any following that’s trying to push for people voting republican, have targets on their back. Dilly, Laura Loomer, etc, have all gotten shut down or throttled. Usually the message starts like this: "We've detected abusive behavior on your account and are limiting your visibility to only your followers for the next 24 hours."
It’s always the chokepoints that scare me. Not too many people have the means to run their own ISP, and must rely on the platforms to get their message out. But those platforms have the ability to shut you off in a heartbeat, and that’s exactly what they’re doing. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton just made a racist “joke” during an interview, and not a single peep about it was heard from any main stream media. Imagine that.
But what really frightens me, is how docile people are about this. We are well onto the same path as China’s social credit system, where if you don’t follow the party lines, and act a certain way, and think a certain way, you’re going to pay the price. Yet no one sees it. ( naturally some do, but you get it)
Consider this from a Chinese citizen about the social scoring system: A 32-year-old entrepreneur, who only gave his name as Chen, told Foreign Policy: "I feel like in the past six months, people's behavior has gotten better and better.
"For example, when we drive, now we always stop in front of crosswalks. If you don't stop, you will lose your points.
"At first, we just worried about losing points, but now we got used to it."
Censorship is not harmless folks. When they control the narrative to the point where the only thing you can hear is their version of things, then you’re in the old Soviet Union, or China, or North Korea, etc. And we’re well on our way.