KindaSkolarly wrote:
“In the last few weeks we have seen the left for who they really are, who they always have been.

Hi KindaSkolarly,

I share your concern with large for-profit corporations taking over the role of censors of public speech. It looks to me as if we're facing something new here, with near-monopoly private individuals exercising powers that in the past were dangerous even in the hands of elected governments.

Is this what Sheldon Wolin called "inverted totalitarianism"? Whatever it is, there is a lot that will have to be worked out.

And I'm glad that earlier you quoted Noam Chomsky's warnings on the matter. I am a big fan of his.

With that in mind, the only thing I would like to quibble about is attributing this problem to "the Left." Maybe the whole use of Left/Right terms has broken down in recent years, in America, anyway. Conservatives seem to be radicals, and the Liberals seem to be idolizing the FBI, and the whole world is topsy-turvy. However, the people I consider to be really truly Left (as opposed to mainstream Democrats) are also very concerned about recent censorship. Glenn Greenwald, Chomsky, and a dozen others whom I follow on Twitter, etc., are as horrified as you by the thought that Zuckerberg or Bezos or such people will be acting as thought-police.

Maybe we just need all new labels. But for the record, I am a Lefty, and I also oppose censorship by corporations.

KindaSkolarly wrote: Pedophilia is the glue that holds the global establishment crowd together.

Well, it certainly is gluing a lot of cracked pots together these days. Did you hear about the ring operating out of a pizza parlor? Fortunately, one of the good guys put a stop to it.

It has all the necessary ingredients: anyone involved has an incentive to cover it up, it shows complete disregard for societal norms and individual rights, and it makes it into the news from time to time as a disgusting eruption from a nether world that most of us are completely unaware of.

I'm not saying pedophilia is okay. For all I know, some of the accusations bear some remote connection to reality. I'm just saying that the paranoid mind could not find a better fear to target.

Belaqua wrote:

KindaSkolarly wrote:
“In the last few weeks we have seen the left for who they really are, who they always have been.

Hi KindaSkolarly,

I share your concern with large for-profit corporations taking over the role of censors of public speech. It looks to me as if we're facing something new here, with near-monopoly private individuals exercising powers that in the past were dangerous even in the hands of elected governments.

Is this what Sheldon Wolin called "inverted totalitarianism"? Whatever it is, there is a lot that will have to be worked out.

And I'm glad that earlier you quoted Noam Chomsky's warnings on the matter. I am a big fan of his.

With that in mind, the only thing I would like to quibble about is attributing this problem to "the Left." Maybe the whole use of Left/Right terms has broken down in recent years, in America, anyway. Conservatives seem to be radicals, and the Liberals seem to be idolizing the FBI, and the whole world is topsy-turvy. However, the people I consider to be really truly Left (as opposed to mainstream Democrats) are also very concerned about recent censorship. Glenn Greenwald, Chomsky, and a dozen others whom I follow on Twitter, etc., are as horrified as you by the thought that Zuckerberg or Bezos or such people will be acting as thought-police.

Maybe we just need all new labels. But for the record, I am a Lefty, and I also oppose censorship by corporations.

A few days ago PragerU was being heavily censored by Facebook. Many of its conservative videos were removed, flagged as "hate speech"
When PragerU went public about the censorship, Facebook apologized for the "mistake"

Facebook often makes the same kind of censorship "mistakes" with other conservative news sources.
Has Facebook ever mistakenly censored any liberal news sources?

Ironically, even the clown Bill Maher is against the Alex Jones ban.


http://thehill.com/policy/technology/te ... s-to-speak

KindaSkolarly wrote: . . .“In the last few weeks we have seen the left for who they really are, who they always have been. Anglophopic pedophile degenerates that have been hiding behind this mask of diversity. A word they cleverly employed to hide their true natures. The satanic practice of inversion that has served them so well. And now that the mask is off, it’s only natural that the gloves would follow.... We have exposed the left for who they are and now they are lashing out not only because we see who they are and are disgusted but because we act as a mirror that reveals their true form to themselves. And like the feral dopamine addicted animals that they are they only see one choice and that is to break the mirror....”
blackpilled.com/2018/08/are-you-ready-f ... the-purge/

One of the unspoken rules in fiction writing is "show, don't tell." After seeing a minute or two of this video, I am unconvinced of the truth of "Anglophopic (sic) pedophile degenerates" or the "Authoritarian left." I say, show, don't tell. Because, from my perspective, this propagandist video is sheer insanity without any facts to back up its claims. Show me proof of the "Deep state." Show me one iota of proof that Bill Clinton raped a boy. Isn't this more of the same that gave us: Hillary Clinton runs a pedophile ring out of a pizza place in Washington DC?

I agree with you that Corporate censorship is a frightening development, but that still doesn't change the fact that Alex Jones spews a lot of paranoid nonsense. Why do people want to believe that the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting was a government conspiracy? Thats' the question you should be asking yourself. This particular video is cut from the same cloth.

DWill wrote:Holy mackerel. But I guess I have to say that if people are gonna believe stuff like this, it doesn't matter whether facebook lets it on or not. The internet is open and Jones will get his message to a receptive audience. It looks as though we're a far cry from the literate, educated populace the founders of the U. S. thought a democracy depended upon.

From my limited exposure to Alex Jones, I'd say his rants are a sort of a performance. His anger and paranoia clearly resonate with a certain audience.

KindaSkolarly wrote:If you don’t know what a False Flag event is, you should familiarize yourself:
A Brief History of False Flag Terror
http://mikesheedy.com/wp-content/upload ... Terror.mp4 (Video)
http://mikesheedy.com/wp-content/upload ... Terror.pdf (Transcript)

Not surprisingly, Alex Jones thinks the Boston bombings were a "false flag" event.

geo wrote:

KindaSkolarly wrote:If you don’t know what a False Flag event is, you should familiarize yourself:
A Brief History of False Flag Terror
http://mikesheedy.com/wp-content/upload ... Terror.mp4 (Video)
http://mikesheedy.com/wp-content/upload ... Terror.pdf (Transcript)

Not surprisingly, Alex Jones thinks the Boston bombings were a "false flag" event.

I wonder if he even knows what an actual false flag was used for?

ant wrote: Has Facebook ever mistakenly censored any liberal news sources?

I honestly don't know what "Liberal" means any more.

The left-wing people I know were concerned about the Alex Jones ban -- not because they like him, of course, but because of the precedent.

Probably the most concerning action for us anti-Imperialists was when Facebook banned Telesur twice, without coherent explanations. They are about the only non-US-approved source for news about Latin America that we have. (Not that I can personally vouch for their accuracy. But we know we can't trust State Department announcements.)

There was another case in which a man was banned for posting photos of pro-Nazi graffiti. But he isn't a Nazi; he documents American sponsorship for neo-Nazis in the Ukraine. That may have been a misunderstanding, but it also may have been an effort at continuing to downplay US support for Nazis. He had his page re-instated, but only after appeals.

Other lefties on Twitter have been banned by Twitter for saying critical things about John McCain. They could have been more polite, but it wasn't actually threats of violence. The most prominent has been re-instated, but it is unknown if other less famous people are affected.

I've read accounts that a think tank called The Atlantic Council is working with Facebook on deciding who to ban. This council is officially non-partisan, but it is funded by a worrying assortment of arms dealers and intelligence types. That's what the lefties are saying on line, anyway. I have no personal knowledge, so you shouldn't trust me very far.

Giving anybody in the world the opportunity to publish and be read by perhaps millions of people is the unique gift the internet has bestowed. Now we know the Trojan Horse quality of that gift. Without gatekeepers to inspect the products before publication and have right of rejection, all the owners of Facebook or Twitter can do, if they are suddenly concerned about the social harm of their contributors, is to ban them from submitting/publishing in the first place. This is a more drastic move than receiving a submission and deciding not to use it, as under the old system. Under the old system, Alex Jones could try again and again. Maybe he'd succeed eventually, maybe not. There would have been no question of censorship, though. With Facebook, censorship does arise, because it's presumed that anything Jones says is bad, even though it's not the type of censorship the Constitution forbids.













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geo wrote: From my limited exposure to Alex Jones, I'd say his rants are a sort of a performance. His anger and paranoia clearly resonate with a certain audience.

It appears this is the main thing to get about Alex Jones: it's an act.

In the latest Paul Krugman column, he makes the point that Alex Jones (like much of the Fox News crowd) makes money off of dietary supplements he sells. He has found a formula that appeals to angry, aging couch potatos and has no reason to put truth-telling ahead of that.

And of course the defining characteristic of paranoia is that it "recruits" information to confirm its central fear. We have some pretty clear illustrations on this forum.