Tag: censorship

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education and schooling ideological culture

Totalitarians Gloat

The Odyssey, Ulysses

For generations, even millennia, boys read The Iliad with admiration for Achilles, and men referenced the clever Odysseus from that other Homeric epic, The Odyssey. 

By my day, neither were required reading. If I’ve read The Odyssey, it was the same version the Coen Brothers referenced when concocting their terrific film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) — the Classic Comics version.

Nowadays, teachers gloat, online, about expunging the poem from the canon.

Rod Dreher, in “Cancel Cult Comes For Homer,” explains the context for this latter development: the politically correct “intersectionalism” of public school teachers in the “#DisruptTexts” movement. “‘Be like Odysseus and embrace the long haul to liberation (and then take the Odyssey out of your curriculum because it’s trash),’ tweeted Shea Martin in June. ‘Hahaha,’ replied Heather Levine, an English teacher at Lawrence (Mass.) High School. ‘Very proud to say we got the Odyssey removed from the curriculum this year!’”

Why? All that ancient racism and sexism.

Expelling the classics from schooling is absurd, of course, exposure to a diversity of ideas and historical achievements being what we used to call a “liberal education.” But today’s canon controllers are not liberal activists. They are, Dreher insists, totalitarian ones.

And they are quite emboldened — their ground-up, crowdsourced movement gets the usual pat approval by tax-funded educational institutions. It’s not a conspiracy if they boast about it on Twitter.

Here is a fun fact about The Odyssey: Samuel Butler, author of Erewhon (1872) and The Way of All Flesh (1903), conjectured that the real author of the poem was a woman. Yes, an “authoress.”

Nevertheless, that would not likely convince woke cultists to put The Odyssey back on your kids’ reading lists.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights Internet controversy

Ron Paul vs. Fauci, YouTube vs. You

Ron Paul, Fauci, Covid, censorship, free speech, 1st Amendment

It’s new news but also, unfortunately, old news.

Tech-giant providers of forums for public discussion keep banning discussion of the issues of the day. The latest victim: Ron Paul, medical doctor, former congressman and presidential candidate, father of U.S. Senator Rand Paul.

Alphabet/Google/YouTube has pulled a video from Dr. Paul’s YouTube channel in which he criticized Fauci for, among other things, reversing his advice about wearing masks to combat COVID-19. YouTube warns of further suppression if this kind of thing (debate, I guess) continues. You can still watch the video, since there are competitors to YouTube (and we hope there will be many more). SoundCloud has it.

Paul linked to an image of the YouTube communiqué. “Your content was removed due to a violation of our Community Guidelines. . . . Medical misinformation.”

“If this happens again,” Paul’s channel will be hobbled for a week.

And if even then he still speaks freely, like any red-blooded American would? Still more sanctions, presumably.

Alas, there are many examples of these obnoxious policies.

We’ve recently complained about YouTube’s removal of a Mises Institute talk — once again, for failure to follow the pandemic panic party line. We’ve also complained about how WordPress buzz-sawed The Conservative Treehouse blog for nebulous violations of policy, violations suddenly discovered after years of hosting the blog.

We could go on. We probably will. Like the proverbial “broken record.” 

When’re we gonna stop?

Well, right after the tech giants stop their accelerating efforts to suppress debate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights international affairs

The Censors’ Conceit

censorship, propaganda

Is it okay to stop people from talking to prevent them from saying things that are possibly incorrect?

A New York Times article about Chinese censorship of discussion of COVID-19 seems to imply that the Chinese government would have been justified in choking off discussion to “debunk damaging falsehoods.”

A mass of government documents recently obtained by hackers “indicate that Chinese officials tried to steer the narrative not only to prevent panic and debunk damaging falsehoods domestically. They also wanted to make the virus look less severe — and the authorities more capable. . . .”

The government’s efforts included hiring hundreds of thousands of people to publish party-line posts on social media as well as detaining people “who formed groups to archive deleted posts” about the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, who had warned about COVID-19.

The Chinese government has also issued endless instructions to providers of nominally private social-media platforms to control what people say about the pandemic.

Thank the Gray Lady for the report confirming the known details about Chinese censorship. But how do you draw a line between censorship “only” to “debunk falsehoods” and censorship to spread official lies and suppress the very appearance of truth? You can’t.

Discussion itself helps us determine what is true and what is false.

The notion that the government (or any society-wide institution obeying the government) can neatly and unilaterally shape discussion to prevent only “bad” discussion — without inflicting massive damage on “good” discussion — is itself false.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights

Signs of the Times

Donald Trump, sign, censorship

Texas A&M University’s Student Code of Conduct office is harassing a student for posting pro-Biden signs on campus last November.

Don’t believe it? 

Well, ya got me. The signs were pro-Trump, not pro-Biden.

I committed this small and fleeting deception to make a point. The fact that posting of signs, announcements, etc., on a university campus, including the Texas A&M campus, is nothing unusual. The kids these days (along with those of the last umpteen centuries) have always engaged in political debate on campus, trying to promulgate their views.

Doing so doesn’t typically cause big problems with officials of U.S. universities. Unless — and, alas, increasingly — the message being promulgated contradicts approved establishmentarian political themes.

According to a CampusReform.org report, Dion Okeke, president of Students for Trump, received a letter from the school’s Student Conduct Office saying he’d better meet with the Student Conduct office about posting the signs. Otherwise, he could face charges of improper student conduct, and his registration could be placed on “administrative hold.”

Universities doubtless have rules about sign placement. Okeke’s sign-posting sounds like a minor infraction at worst.

If it even was an infraction at all.

Are the veiled and not-so-veiled threats in the letter signed by Jessica Welsch, assistant coordinator of the Student Conduct Office, a proportionate response to any alleged sin by Dion Okeke? No.

Meanwhile, a Texas A&M student who perpetrated a hoax about alleged racism last summer is not in any trouble with the school.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Cry No More

Jordan Peterson, censorship

And the children sing: “you can’t always get what you want.”

It’s a Rolling Stone song, and its album version does actually feature a children’s chorus (over adult singers).

I mention it not because I’ve just listened to the non-choral version put up in April by the famous rock group, a special pandemic recording. Though I just did. And perhaps it’s on my mind because the song was used by Donald Trump on his way to the White House, and at the present moment it sure doesn’t look like he’s going to get a second term.

“No, you can’t always get what you want want./ But if you try sometime, you just might find/ You get what you need.”

A silver lining for Trump voters?

No. It just came to mind when I learned that employees at Penguin broke down in tears when they learned that the huge publishing company was going to publish Jordan Peterson’s follow-up to his 2018 best-seller, 12 Rules for Life.

There was weeping, and it wasn’t for joy.

You see, the young people in the company said that Peterson is “an icon of hate speech and transphobia.” Oh, and he’s also “an icon of white supremacy,” and the lamenter admitted that “regardless of the content of his book, I’m not proud to work for a company that publishes him.”

It is really hard to sympathize. A major publishing company in an open society must be expected to publish a wide variety of material. So, buck up, as Peterson likes to say. Unless you own the place, you can’t always publish what you want.

More importantly, note that word: icon. That’s an image that stands for something by looking like that something.

How does Peterson look like a white supremacist or transphobe? 

By imputation. By ignoring his arguments. And by treating his fans as wholly other and as a unified mass.

Who can be hated and denied ever getting what they want. 

But such desired censorship is certainly not what we need.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Buzz-Sawing the Conservative Treehouse

Big Tech, censorship, free speech, first amendment,

“They’re really showing their hand now, aren’t they?” 

That is how one blogger puts it. And the “They” are the leftward tech giants that provide platforms on which all of us can (in theory) have our say.

“They” — Google, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress — have provided these platforms in a country where freedom of speech is protected, if imperfectly, by the First Amendment and allied ideas, institutions, habits, and sensibilities.

But the First Amendment cannot, by itself, protect speakers of speech from having the rug yanked out from under them by these service providers. With increasing frequency and brazenness, the tech giants are de-platforming speakers they disagree with despite past assurances of being open to all comers (not using speech to do anything illegal).

In this case, “they” means WordPress, which has notified a popular political blog, The Conservative Treehouse, that its days are numbered. Because “your site’s content and our terms” are incompatible, “you need to find a new hosting provider and must migrate the site by Wednesday, December 2.”

It took many years and, apparently, the (apparent) election of Joe Biden for WordPress to discover this “incompatibility.”

Says the Treehouse: “After ten years of brutally honest discussion, opinion, deep research and crowdsourcing work” by the site, WordPress can cite no violation of any term of service “because CTH has never violated one.”

So, what’s the upshot? At a minimum, if you’re using a big-tech platform but aren’t toeing the big-tech ideological line, seek alternatives. Pronto.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Latest Fake Mystery

alt tech, social media, MeWe, Gab, Parler

We Americans want to have our say, speak our piece — we do not wish to be gagged. No mystery to that. No puzzle. No strange, arcane, unexpected turn of our temper.

But that’s how it must seem to Nathan Bomey, author of “Parler, MeWe, Gab gain momentum as conservative social media alternatives in post-Trump age,” gracing the pages of USA Today.

“America’s crisis of political segregation — we increasingly don’t live alongside, associate with or even marry people who think differently from us — is increasingly leading conservatives to congregate together on social media outlets designed specifically for people who think like them.”

This is a passage of surpassing dumbness.

To pick one fundamental ideological divide at random: capitalist twitterers have never had any problem with posting tweets “alongside” socialist twitterers. The problem is the growing censorship of tweets that officials and employees at tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, and Google happened to dislike or disagree with for any reason.

This censorship was revved up during the recent election.

Bomey does mention claims of censorship by the persons being censored, but treats these as the ravings of “the extremist crowd.” He adds: “Experts on political polarization say [the rise of alternative social media] is a natural outgrowth of our divided culture. . . .”

Again: a major reason the alternatives to Twitter etc. are gaining such traction is the censorship. People are leaving the Big-Tech-sponsored discourse because they are being censored. 

You don’t kick people out of the room and then scratch your head in wonderment, asking, “Gee willikers, why are you guys going away?”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. I have Minds and Gab accounts, but do not use them. Should I start again? I just set up a MeWe account. What alternative social media apps do you use?

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media and media people

Twitter’s Election Interference

Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Twitter, censorship,

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube . . . they sucked us in by pretending to be non-biased platforms for everybody, yet now suppress content that chiefly rubs against one set of clients, supporters of the Democratic Party.

The current case regards the water-damaged computer of (reportedly) Hunter Biden, the content of which reached the New York Post by way of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. But the bigger story is that Twitter won’t allow links to the Post’s reporting, going so far as to lock the Post’s primary account; Facebook has also tried to suppress the story. 

Now it’s blowing up everywhere.

It’s bad for the Bidens: emails suggest the former Vice-President played more of a role than previously claimed in what has always looked improper — no, corrupt — except to most mainstream media.*

No wonder, then, that we hear calls for government regulation of social media.

Shivers down my spine.

But what I have not heard? Giving Democrats a dish of what they love: federal campaign finance law.

Does not social media’s clearly uneven content suppression amount to material support for one set of political candidates over others? Why not stick Democrats with their own beloved regime?

But great minds think alike: while proofreading the above, I found a tweet by Lee Spieckerman, a Texas media specialist: “The @TheJusticeDept should immediately begin investigating @jack [Twitter’s CEO] for illegal in-kind campaign contribution to @JoeBiden.”

While I oppose campaign finance regulation, we must not** let such regulations only be used by one side against the other. 

Yet maybe if we make the threat, social media will come to its senses, and Democrats will see the error of McCain-Feingold.

Too crazy? Or the right amount of 2020 crazy?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* A state-connected Chinese bank and a well-connected Russian woman lathered Hunter up with millions and billions of dollars for only one plausible reason: his father’s position in our government. Hunter Biden joined that Ukrainian oil company board after Joe Biden became point-man for our country’s Ukrainian policy.

 ** In the past, I have addressed this notion of applying bad regulations equally, including campaign finance laws specifically.

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international affairs media and media people

Defying China . . . for Now

China, Hong Kong, Big Tech, censorship, surveillance,

According to a New York Times report, “American Internet giants are struggling to respond” to China’s recent crackdown on Hong Kong.

For now, the outcome of the struggle is that Facebook, Twitter, and Google have stopped sharing data with Hong Kong officials. Doing so has become tantamount to sharing data with the Chinese government.

If this wasn’t clear before China’s repressive new “national security” laws in Hong Kong, it’s clear now. The Chinese government is systematically working to muzzle and punish anyone who threatens “national security” by openly criticizing the Chinese government.

Yahoo has changed its policies as well, so that users are now governed in their dealings with Yahoo by American law, not local Hong Kong law (rapidly becoming synonymous with the mainland’s edicts).

So far, so good. 

Worrying, though, is how inconsistent the tech giants have been. Yahoo once helped the Chinese government to identify and imprison two dissidents, claiming it had “no choice” but to turn over the info. Google and others have worked with China to censor information that the Chinese government doesn’t want its citizens to see.

These companies should never — in no way, shape, or form — help China go after dissidents. 

They should never cooperate, rationalize, compromise. 

It would be better to pack up their services and leave Hong Kong altogether than to “struggle” to find a middle way that “sort of” cooperates with China’s repression — and “sort of” leaves Hong Kongers in the lurch.

To bolster these companies’ new backbones, we had best leverage our power as customers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights Second Amendment rights

Students Fight Back

Austin Tong, David Dorn, Hong Kong

Everywhere, assaults on freedom and free speech are going full blast. Violent True Believers are on the march as others, even if less overtly barbaric, provide cover, an excuse.

For example, the State University of New York at Binghamton has cooperated with left-wing thugs to suppress conservatives.

The mob stole or destroyed posters and the table students were using to promote an appearance by Arthur Laffer, the noted supply-side economist. The same mob also disrupted the lecture itself. A lawsuit brought by the victimized students accuses officials of failing “to take action to defend College Republicans’ constitutional rights” and supporting the “physically abusive actions of the College Progressives.”

Another student under attack is Austin Tong. Recently, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has been going to bat for Tong, a Fordham University student suspended for social media posts.

One is a picture of Tong holding (not pointing) a legally owned rifle, intended to draw attention to the Tiananmen Square massacre. The other shows black police captain David Dorn, who was murdered by looters. Its caption chastises members of the Black Lives Matter movement for apparent indifference to Dorn’s fate.

Before suspending him for “bias” and “threats,” university personnel showed up at Tong’s house to interrogate him about the posts.

Tong is unapologetic, and FIRE says that Fordham has “acted more like the Chinese government than an American university, placing severe sanctions on a student solely because of off-campus political speech.”

Far from isolated cases, unfortunately.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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