February 24, 2021 at 4:20 p.m.
America has arrived at a very dangerous place
America has arrived at a very dangerous place
Wolf asserted that the U.S. was turning into a totalitarian state right before our eyes.
"That is not a partisan thing," she told Carlson. "(It) transcends everything that you and I might disagree or agree on. That should bring together left and right to protect our constitution."
Since the November election, conservatives have being protesting loudly against the surge of censorship of their views on major social media platforms, the banishment by Twitter of Donald Trump being only the most obvious example.
But what made Wolf's statements important is she is not a conservative at all. She's a life-long Democrat and liberal, not to mention a well-known feminist author who was a leader of the so-called third-wave of the feminist movement, and a former advisor to Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
What's more, just months ago she voted for Joe Biden for president, a move she quickly regretted.
"If I'd known Biden was open to 'lockdowns' as he now states, which is something historically unprecedented in any pandemic, and a terrifying practice, one that won't ever end because elites love it, I would never have voted for him," she wrote on Twitter.
Wolf's concern is about what she has called Covid fascism, but it is part of a broader arc of totalitarianism and censorship that has moved forward with lightning speed since the November election.
The speed of the new McCarthyism shouldn't be surprising, and neither should be the primary agents of it: the Democratic Party and its now dominant wing of neoliberal leftists - in other words, the woke crowd - as opposed to the traditional left that anchored its liberalism in a steadfast adherence to civil liberties and due process as the true path toward social justice.
With the rise of Biden to the presidency, the anti-free speech Democratic Party has now effectively merged with big business - particularly Big Tech and Big Pharma - to crush dissent and free expression with an explicit power never before harnessed in this country.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald, another stalwart of the left, who won a Pulitzer Prize for publishing stories on U.S. domestic surveillance of its citizens from information leaked by Edward Snowden, and who supported Bernie Sanders for president, is also sounding the alarm.
Here's how Greenwald describes the current Democratic Party: "And it's so ironic they (the Democrats) spent four years claiming they are fighting fascism and authoritarianism, and what are they trying to do now? They're trying to harness corporate and monopoly power to silence everyone who disagrees with them, the very hallmark, the epitome of the fascism they claim to be fighting, but which in reality they embody."
So just what is this fascism they are pushing? It goes back a ways. As we have previously reported in this newspaper, Barack Obama used the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers a record eight times. Prior to last year's election, Facebook and Twitter censored a New York Post story about Hunter Biden, though none of the information in the stories was false.
There was Trump's ban, too, and then the gang-up by Apple, Google, and Amazon to remove the Twitter competitor Parler from the internet completely, ostensibly because of the role the platform played in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. That's rich, because prosecutorial documents showed Facebook and other social media played a far greater role as a platform for the organizers, with Parler way down on the list.
It's not just the right that's being censored by the way. As Greenwald points out, Socialist Worker Party accounts in the U.S. and elsewhere have been disabled because they don't walk the company line. No one is safe.
Some say these are mostly private companies, and they can do what they want, but that's not an accurate assessment of the situation. As we write this today, House Democrats have summoned Big Tech executives to Washington - this makes the third time - to demand even more censorship of views they don't like.
Then, too, in the latest hearing Wednesday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee focused on the "traditional media's role in promoting disinformation and extremism." And Democrats are targeting not just Facebook and Twitter and Google and Amazon but cable companies.
On Feb. 22, for example, Democratic House members Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney wrote to cable network providers, asserting that "right-wing media outlets, like Newsmax, One America News Network (OANN), and Fox News all aired misinformation about the November 2020 elections."
They asked the cable providers a blunt question: "Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN ... both now and beyond any contract renewal date? If so, why?"
Of course, what is one's misinformation is another's opinion, and that's what makes all this so dangerous. For example, Democratic Party-aligned Media Matters cited this as an example of COVID-19 denialism and misinformation being spread: "Laura Ingraham encourages viewers to gather for the holidays. (The Ingraham Angle, 12/16/20)"
For that the Democrats believe she should be kicked off the air.
And the Democrats make clear they want action: "Some broadcasters' and cable networks' increasing reliance on conspiracy theories and misleading or patently false information raises questions about their devotion to journalistic integrity," said Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-New Jersey) and Communications and Technology subcommittee chairman Mike Doyle (D-Pennsylvania). "We look forward to hearing from media experts about what is being done and what more can be done to address this growing problem moving forward."
In other words, government decides what is journalistic integrity, and, when it runs afoul of the party line, the media's lack of "devotion" to the party line must be addressed. So there's no mistaking what they want done, and that's problematic because they regulate those companies, as well as give them liability protections under the law.
And that latter fact makes this more than just private companies deciding what they will allow on their platforms. As court decisions make clear, when a state compels, coerces, or otherwise pressures a company, under the threat of punitive action, to censor what the government cannot censor by itself, the action is considered state action and the First Amendment is violated.
And that's exactly what is happening here - backdoor government censorship and a violation of free speech rights.
For those who think Big Tech might not kowtow to such coercion, think again. After all, Twitter did not ban Trump until the day after the Georgia Senate elections, when Democrats won effective control of the Senate.
Long-time Clinton aide Jennifer Palmieri put it this way in a now viral tweet: "It has not escaped my attention that the day social media companies decided there actually IS more they could do to police Trump's destructive behavior was the same day they learned Democrats would chair all the congressional committees that oversee them."
In these pages, we have called for an end to Section 230 liability protections for Big Tech. But it's a double-edged sword and Democrats are slashing back. Instead of ending liability protections because social media titans are now acting as censors instead of neutral platform providers, Democrats are now threatening to end them if those titans don't censor even more.
A quick look back shows just how threatening all this is. After the 2016 election, it was Democrats who were screaming fraud. Both Hillary Clinton and Jimmy Carter proclaimed that Donald Trump was an illegitimate president, and Democrats pursued a false and outrageous story of Russian hacking and collusion with the Trump campaign.
One of the biggest purveyors of the claim of election fraud was Joe Biden's nominee for the Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden. Among her tweets, she wrote "Why does he lie about this? Because he knows people have intuitive sense Russians did enough damage to affect more than 70k votes in 3 states." In 2018, she wrote, "... hasn't the (Steele) dossier been mostly proven to be true? It's amazing how comfortable the likes of Byron York are happy to run interference for Russians intervening in our elections."
During all these claims of voter fraud, widely reported over and over again on liberal media outlets such as MSNBC and CNN, neither Donald Trump nor Republicans ever moved to censor them and/or remove them from the air, as the Democrats are doing today with political opponents.
Meanwhile, the censorship horse is out the barn door and running hard. As we report today, COVID-19 cases are declining, but concerns about COVID-19 vaccines are rising. Now one can believe the vaccines are safe, or not, or have an open mind about it, but those who question their safety have a right to air their case.
And yet this week we learn the Biden administration is teaming up with Big Tech to suppress "misinformation" - in other words, any dissenting opinions about the vaccines' safety. A senior administration official told Reuters that the Biden administration is asking Facebook, Twitter, and Google to help prevent the distribution of false information about the vaccines.
"Disinformation that causes vaccine hesitancy is going to be a huge obstacle to getting everyone vaccinated and there are no larger players in that than the social media platforms," a White House source told Reuters. "We are talking to them ... so they understand the importance of misinformation and disinformation and how they can get rid of it quickly."
How to get rid of it quickly. In other words, you should not give any platform or voice to anything or anyone who deviates from official government pronouncements about the vaccines. This is a quintessential example of the Democratic state-corporate fascist nexus at work right out in the open.
Then, too, as COVID-19 cases fall, the mainstream media continues to push the worst possible line about the pandemic, if indeed there is still a pandemic. They highlight new deaths and new cases without any context and continue to give play to the need for staying home, double masking, and more.
Again, it's what Wolf calls the Covid fascism.
"The state has now crushed businesses, kept us from gathering in free assembly to worship as the First Amendment provides, is invading our bodies ... which is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, restricting movement, fining us in New York state ... the violations go on and on," she told Carlson.
Wolf has previously spoken about the 10 steps tyrants use to seize power, and now, she told Carlson, the U.S. is at step 10.
"Whether they are on the left or the right, they do these same 10 things, and now we're at something I never thought I would see in my lifetime ... it is step 10 and that is the suspension of the rule of law and that is when you start to be a police state, and we're here. There is no way around it."
Wolf, Greenwald, Carlson, and others are right. We have reached a terrifying point in American history, and to fight back, everyone on both the right and left must - in this one fundamental battle - fight alongside all who still value civil liberties and who are willing to speak up.
"I really hope we wake up quickly because history also shows that it's a small window in which people can fight back before it is too dangerous to fight back," Wolf said.
In an age when believing the wrong things will cost you your job and your very status as a worthy person in society (versus being a deplorable), it is already very dangerous to dissent.
Our window to fight back is short indeed, and growing shorter by the day.
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