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Greenwald: The New Religion of the Left- Censorship

And 100% accurate here. Funny how that can still happen.
Greenwald writes-
It is not hyperbole to observe...


His whole existence is in promoting hyperbole

And to claim that Democrats are moving towards authoritarianism when the last Republican President literally tried to void the results of an election he lost, and has received sympathy/support in doing so from a large contingent of Republican politicians…
FAUlty never met a dipshit grifter hypocrite that he didn't love. (See his former obsession with Jimmy Dore).

 
^ LOL. Tell me you have no idea about free speech and the First Amendment limits on government without saying you have no idea about free speech and the First Amendment limits on government.
Maybe you missed the point. I'm not suggesting that Google, FB, etc. have broken any laws. What I'm saying is one of the pivotal platforms our country was founded on was the ability of each and every American to speak freely whether anyone agrees with him/her or not is not the point. If you don't agree with someone or someone proves themselves to be unreliable we all have an option to ignore them but we should NEVER censor them. What appears today to be false may ultimately prove factual. Remember Galileo being called a heretic? Or what about the origins of covid being a lab leak, or cloth masks were a folly all true statements all wrongly condemned to censorship.
 
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Do you think it crosses a line when the White House or members of Congress pressure those platforms to remove objectionable content?
Simple pressure? Not really, that’s something that’s been going on for decades if not longer. They, as well as celebrities, Uber-rich, etc have always pressured the media to not run certain stories or put a specific slant on others. What crosses the line is when they propose and/or vote for legislation that would FORCE them to.
 
Simple pressure? Not really, that’s something that’s been going on for decades if not longer. They, as well as celebrities, Uber-rich, etc have always pressured the media to not run certain stories or put a specific slant on others. What crosses the line is when they propose and/or vote for legislation that would FORCE them to.
In fact one Donald J Trump is a prime example of your post.
 
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Only a leftist could try and justify censorship by using the free market to do it. Censorship is censorship.
This statement is unbelievably ignorant.

Actionable censorship can ONLY happen through GOVERNMENT action. Government action is required. 7th grade civics. The private sector - businesses, individuals - can refuse to publish whatever it deems proper - by definition, that is NOT censorship.

edited to add "actionable" to the term "censorship" in order to convey the distinction as it applies to rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. The poster's contention that "censorship is censorship" is misleading and erroneous.
 
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If there was ever a "both sides" issue that actually had validity, it's censorship. The only difference is Democrats are doing it by using the free market, Republicans are trying to legislate it. Which one of those is unconstitutional?
Do you consider Dems trying to ban anonymous political support to be unconstitutional like the ACLU and SCOTUS did last year? And I know it's Canada but the reason Jordan Peterson became famous was that he refused to be told what pronouns he has to use. Do you really think there aren't Dems that would try to control our language through legislation if they could, as they have in Toronto?
 
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This statement is unbelievably ignorant.

Censorship can ONLY happen through GOVERNMENT action. Government action is required. 7th grade civics. The private sector - businesses, individuals - can refuse to publish whatever it deems proper - by definition, that is NOT censorship.
Lol. There is zero chance you actually believe this
 
This statement is unbelievably ignorant.

Censorship can ONLY happen through GOVERNMENT action. Government action is required. 7th grade civics. The private sector - businesses, individuals - can refuse to publish whatever it deems proper - by definition, that is NOT censorship.
It is when the businesses/individuals are protected from liability for things posted on their platforms.
 
Rogan and Malone aren't being censored. These artists are just refusing to share a platform with them. It's a boycott nothing more. Telling Spotify they're not going to make a nickel from me or people I influence.
 
This statement is unbelievably ignorant.

Censorship can ONLY happen through GOVERNMENT action. Government action is required. 7th grade civics. The private sector - businesses, individuals - can refuse to publish whatever it deems proper - by definition, that is NOT censorship.
Nonsense. Have you never heard of TV Censors? The NBC Censors work for NBC and decide whether or not material is something they want put out over their airwaves. Plenty of comedians, writers and directors have both quit and been fired due to them being forced to conform to their own censors. Nothing to do with the government.
 
Yeah...and you wished an entire building of children and teachers caught on fire and died...because of their religion. What should we think of you in comparison?
HAHA! I bet you were SO close were you to that valedictorian status, FAUlty. Your reading comprehension grades must have been tremendous. You definitely strike us all as someone who wasn't struggling to avoid riding the short bus.
 
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Nonsense. Have you never heard of TV Censors? The NBC Censors work for NBC and decide whether or not material is something they want put out over their airwaves. Plenty of comedians, writers and directors have both quit and been fired due to them being forced to conform to their own censors. Nothing to do with the government.
Are you saying that NBC can prohibit ABC from carrying something it finds immoral or not worth publishing/ broadcasting?
 
Are you saying that NBC can prohibit ABC from carrying something it finds immoral or not worth publishing/ broadcasting?
No. I'm saying the censors at NBC can prohibit the talent at NBC from putting something out over the NBC airwaves if they wish. And this is called an act of censorship.

How has this simple concept that has been around since Lucy couldn't say "toilet", evaded you people?
 
No. I'm saying the censors at NBC can prohibit the talent at NBC from putting something out over the NBC airwaves if they wish. And this is called an act of censorship.

How has this simple concept that has been around since Lucy couldn't say "toilet", evaded you people?
Well it isn't the 1950's anymore either. Plenty of options to get out your content. Liberals aren't attempting to Lenny Bruce Rogan here.
 
No. I'm saying the censors at NBC can prohibit the talent at NBC from putting something out over the NBC airwaves if they wish. And this is called an act of censorship.

How has this simple concept that has been around since Lucy couldn't say "toilet", evaded you people?
If a person can take their content somewhere and broadcast/publish it is not censored. Its in the public domain, correct?

Back when Lucy was on you may have had a point when there were 3 broadcasting companies that depended upon the government for a license. Today that is not the case.. In modern times there are countless ways for stuff to get out into the public domain.
 
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Didn't Dems try to void results of 2016 election with the bought and paid for Steele Dossier?
Trying to remember when Hillary called a state SoS asking to find votes. Or Democrats storming the capitol carrying Hillary flags. Amongst about 1000 things to counter your stupid false equivalency. You guys are SOOOOOOOOOO good at them.
 
FAUlty never met a dipshit grifter hypocrite that he didn't love. (See his former obsession with Jimmy Dore).

Wait...I just read this again. Jimmy Dore? How in the fvck was obsessed with Jimmy Dore? You must be thinking of someone else. I found TWO whole posts of me ever mentioning Jimmy Dore. And looking back, you've said this before. You have an obsession with wrongly accusing me of having obsessions.
 
Trying to remember when Hillary called a state SoS asking to find votes. Or Democrats storming the capitol carrying Hillary flags. Amongst about 1000 things to counter your stupid false equivalency. You guys are SOOOOOOOOOO good at them.
So you're not denying using a fabricated intelligence report was trying to undermine and overcome a duly elected President. Cool.
 
No. I'm saying the censors at NBC can prohibit the talent at NBC from putting something out over the NBC airwaves if they wish. And this is called an act of censorship.

How has this simple concept that has been around since Lucy couldn't say "toilet", evaded you people?
Johnny Fever was fired for saying "Booger" for god's sake!!
 
Nonsense. Have you never heard of TV Censors? The NBC Censors work for NBC and decide whether or not material is something they want put out over their airwaves. Plenty of comedians, writers and directors have both quit and been fired due to them being forced to conform to their own censors. Nothing to do with the government.
My fault, I should have included the term "actionable" with censorship. The point being that private entities may prohibit or otherwise restrict content ("speech") as they see fit without violating any constitutionally protected right.
 
This statement is unbelievably ignorant.

Censorship can ONLY happen through GOVERNMENT action. Government action is required. 7th grade civics. The private sector - businesses, individuals - can refuse to publish whatever it deems proper - by definition, that is NOT censorship.
You're applying a First Amendment test to the broader idea of censorship. Only the govt can violate your First Amendment rights.
 
Do you think it crosses a line when the White House or members of Congress pressure those platforms to remove objectionable content?

Serious question: What line?

It certainly doesn’t make them state actors if that’s where you are going with it.

Also not a fan of when it happens on either side of the aisle.
 
This statement is unbelievably ignorant.

Censorship can ONLY happen through GOVERNMENT action. Government action is required. 7th grade civics. The private sector - businesses, individuals - can refuse to publish whatever it deems proper - by definition, that is NOT censorship.
Was the ACLU a forbidden resource at your middle school?

Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups. Censorship by the government is unconstitutional.
 
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Only a leftist could try and justify censorship by using the free market to do it. Censorship is censorship. America was founded on the belief that everyone has a right to free speech and freedom of religion but today the left's own "free market companies" have shredded the concept of free speech. Then they say "we aren't the goverment" There is a reason our founders embraced free speech for all and the fact that some are now trying to create ways to eliminate it says all you need to know about today's anti American left.
Well ,it wasn't long ago, we had separation with church and state, also. It looks like that is gone.
 
Maybe you missed the point. I'm not suggesting that Google, FB, etc. have broken any laws. What I'm saying is one of the pivotal platforms our country was founded on was the ability of each and every American to speak freely whether anyone agrees with him/her or not is not the point. If you don't agree with someone or someone proves themselves to be unreliable we all have an option to ignore them but we should NEVER censor them. What appears today to be false may ultimately prove factual. Remember Galileo being called a heretic? Or what about the origins of covid being a lab leak, or cloth masks were a folly all true statements all wrongly condemned to censorship.

Thank you for your explanation.

Governments censor. Not private companies.

You mentioned one response to speech you don’t like - ignore it. But you left out the other option that this Nation was founded on - which is responding to speech you dislike with your own counter speech.

(But if you are talking counter speech on a social media platform, you don’t have the right to use that platform as you see fit. The platform is free to not post what you want, or edit what you post).
 
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Do you consider Dems trying to ban anonymous political support to be unconstitutional like the ACLU and SCOTUS did last year? And I know it's Canada but the reason Jordan Peterson became famous was that he refused to be told what pronouns he has to use. Do you really think there aren't Dems that would try to control our language through legislation if they could, as they have in Toronto?
WTF are you talking about? They are asking for the option to put whatever pronouns they want to put on legal documents like a drivers license. They aren't going to legislate that you have to call them by that. That won't stop them from thinking you're an asshole, but you will still be able to do it. It's not even a free speech issue.

And yes, there should not be anonymous political support. Everyone should be able to see who or what is financing the politicians. And despite the single worst decision in Roberts career and is in large part responsible for where the country is right now, money is not free speech.
 
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Only a leftist could try and justify censorship by using the free market to do it. Censorship is censorship. America was founded on the belief that everyone has a right to free speech and freedom of religion but today the left's own "free market companies" have shredded the concept of free speech. Then they say "we aren't the goverment" There is a reason our founders embraced free speech for all and the fact that some are now trying to create ways to eliminate it says all you need to know about today's anti American left.
Oh cry me a f**king river and figure out that the Constitution only prevents the government from doing it. The pansy asses crying about being held accountable for being a gaslighting asshole would be hilarious if we didn't have this same debate every friggin day.
 
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Trying to remember when Hillary called a state SoS asking to find votes. Or Democrats storming the capitol carrying Hillary flags. Amongst about 1000 things to counter your stupid false equivalency. You guys are SOOOOOOOOOO good at them.
Nah she just threatened the woman accusing her husband of rape....no big deal
 
Constitutional illiteracy to the side, the “hate speech” framework for justifying censorship is now insufficient because liberals are eager to silence a much broader range of voices than those they can credibly accuse of being hateful. That is why the newest, and now most popular, censorship framework is to claim that their targets are guilty of spreading “misinformation” or “disinformation.” These terms, by design, have no clear or concise meaning. Like the term “terrorism,” it is their elasticity that makes them so useful.

When liberals’ favorite media outlets, from CNN and NBC to The New York Times and The Atlantic, spend four years disseminating one fabricated Russia story after the next — from the Kremlin hacking into Vermont's heating system and Putin's sexual blackmail over Trump to bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, the Biden email archive being "Russian disinformation,” and a magical mystery weapon that injures American brains with cricket noises — none of that is "disinformation” that requires banishment. Nor are false claims that COVID's origin has proven to be zoonotic rather than a lab leak, the vastly overstated claim that vaccines prevent transmission of COVID, or that Julian Assange stole classified documents and caused people to die. Corporate outlets beloved by liberals are free to spout serious falsehoods without being deemed guilty of disinformation, and, because of that, do so routinely.

This "disinformation" term is reserved for those who question liberal pieties, not for those devoted to affirming them. That is the real functional definition of “disinformation” and of its little cousin, “misinformation.” It is not possible to disagree with liberals or see the world differently than they see it. The only two choices are unthinking submission to their dogma or acting as an agent of "disinformation.” Dissent does not exist to them; any deviation from their worldview is inherently dangerous — to the point that it cannot be heard.

The data proving a deeply radical authoritarian strain in Trump-era Democratic Party politics is ample and have been extensively reported here. Democrats overwhelmingly trust and love the FBI and CIA. Polls show they overwhelmingly favor censorship of the internet not only by Big Tech oligarchs but also by the state. Leading Democratic Party politicians have repeatedly subpoenaed social media executives and explicitly threatened them with legal and regulatory reprisals if they do not censor more aggressively — a likely violation of the First Amendment given decades of case law ruling that state officials are barred from coercing private actors to censor for them, in ways the Constitution prohibits them from doing directly.

Democratic officials have used the pretexts of COVID, “the insurrection," and Russia to justify their censorship demands. Both Joe Biden and his Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, have "urged” Silicon Valley to censor more when asked about Joe Rogan and others who air what they call “disinformation” about COVID. They cheered the use of pro-prosecutor tactics against Michael Flynn and other Russiagate targets; made a hero out of the Capitol Hill Police officer who shot and killed the unarmed Ashli Babbitt; voted for an additional $2 billion to expand the functions of the Capitol Police; have demanded and obtained lengthy prison sentences and solitary confinement even for non-violent 1/6 defendants; and even seek to import the War on Terror onto domestic soil.

Given the climate prevailing in the American liberal faction, this authoritarianism is anything but surprising. For those who convince themselves that they are not battling mere political opponents with a different ideology but a fascist movement led by a Hitler-like figure bent on imposing totalitarianism — a core, defining belief of modern-day Democratic Party politics — it is virtually inevitable that they will embrace authoritarianism. When a political movement is subsumed by fear — the Orange Hitler will put you in camps and end democracy if he wins again — then it is not only expected but even rational to embrace authoritarian tactics including censorship to stave off this existential threat. Fear always breeds authoritarianism, which is why manipulating and stimulating that human instinct is the favorite tactic of political demagogues.

And when it comes to authoritarian tactics, censorship has become the liberals’ North Star. Every week brings news of a newly banished heretic. Liberals cheered the news last week that Google's YouTube permanently banned the extremely popular video channel of conservative commentator Dan Bongino. His permanent ban was imposed for the crime of announcing that, moving forward, he would post all of his videos exclusively on the free speech video platform Rumble after he received a seven-day suspension from Google's overlords for spreading supposed COVID “disinformation.” What was Bongino's prohibited view that prompted that suspension? He claimed cloth masks do not work to stop the spread of COVID, a view shared by numerous experts and, at least in part, by the CDC. When Bongino disobeyed the seven-day suspension by using an alternative YouTube channel to announce his move to Rumble, liberals cheered Google's permanent ban because the only thing liberals hate more than platforms that allow diverse views are people failing to obey rules imposed by corporate authorities.

It is not hyperbole to observe that there is now a concerted war on any platforms devoted to free discourse and which refuse to capitulate to the demands of Democratic politicians and liberal activists to censor. The spear of the attack are corporate media outlets, who demonize and try to render radioactive any platforms that allow free speech to flourish. When Rumble announced that a group of free speech advocates — including myself, former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, comedian Bridget Phetasy, former Sanders campaign videographer Matt Orfalea and journalist Zaid Jilani — would produce video content for Rumble, The Washington Post immediately published a hit piece, relying exclusively on a Google-and-Facebook-aligned so-called "disinformation expert” to malign Rumble as "one of the main platforms for conspiracy communities and far-right communities in the U.S. and around the world” and a place “where conspiracies thrive," all caused by Rumble's "allowing such videos to remain on the site unmoderated.” (The narrative about Rumble is particularly bizarre since its Canadian founder and still-CEO, Chris Pavlovski created Rumble in 2013 with apolitical goals — to allow small content creators abandoned by YouTube to monetize their content — and is very far from an adherent to right-wing ideology).


Plenty more
Remember when the left loved Greenwald when he was going after the GW administration?

He hit the shit list real quick when he went after the Obama era drone campaign.
 
WTF are you talking about? They are asking for the option to put whatever pronouns they want to put on legal documents like a drivers license. They aren't going to legislate that you have to call them by that. That won't stop them from thinking you're an asshole, but you will still be able to do it. It's not even a free speech issue.

And yes, there should not be anonymous political support. Everyone should be able to see who or what is financing the politicians. And despite the single worst decision in Roberts career and is in large part responsible for where the country is right now, money is not free speech.
I think you’re arguing about things I’m not talking about. I’m referencing the Canadian Human Rights Act that criminalizes calling someone by the wrong pronoun.
 
And Dr. Seuss. I was asking my kids if they had seen the butter battle book (one of my faves), and they said Dr. Seuss got taken out of their school library so they didn't have it.
Why was that particular book removed?
 
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