Posted on 09/04/2024 6:37:51 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Do we actually lead the free world in standing up for free speech, or do we accept the authoritarianism we claim to detest so much?
American politicians speak constantly about the indispensable role of the United States in leading the free world against authoritarianism. If that is true, why is the White House so silent in the face of new global threats to free speech?
In January, American citizen Gonzalo Lira died in a Ukrainian prison for posting YouTube videos; the State Department didn’t lift a finger to help. Last week, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France for the crime of insufficient content moderation.
Now Brazil has banned X for resisting the diktats of a tyrannical judge, who salivates over the possibility of jailing @elonmusk. The EU is one step behind, with Eurocrat Thierry Breton pursuing a criminal investigation against Elon for “platforming disinformation,” which Breton defines to include a conversation with Donald Trump.
In the UK, the government of Keir Starmer imprisons critics of open borders with more zeal than it prosecutes violent crime. In Canada, Justin Trudeau crushed a trucker protest against vaccine mandates by asserting sweeping new powers to freeze bank accounts.
At no point has the White House expressed concern about this new iron curtain that seems to be descending across the West. Quite the contrary, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that the Biden-Harris administration repeatedly pressured Meta to censor during COVID. Worse, the FBI primed Facebook to censor true stories about Biden Family corruption by suggesting that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation (even though the FBI knew it was authentic).
Barring court intervention, TikTok will shut down in the U.S. on January 19, 2025 thanks to a new power authorized by Congress to ban websites and applications that the president determines are subject to the influence of a foreign adversary. X may not be far behind if liberal elites and deep state apparatchiks like Robert Reich and Alexander Vindman get their wish. They have called for the U.S. to adopt Brazil’s and the EU’s approach and “rein in” Elon Musk.
Hypocritically, the same voices demanding this crackdown are also the loudest in proclaiming the West to be engaged in a “war on authoritarianism” against countries like Russia and China. But whatever their other sins, Russia and China are in no position to deprive American citizens of their free speech rights; only our own government can do that.
Similarly, if Western leaders truly wanted to prevent authoritarianism, the easiest place to start would be at home, protecting the civil liberties of their own citizens. Instead, they seem obsessed with deflecting the public’s attention onto foreign enemies, as Orwell depicted in the Two Minutes Hate in 1984.
As this battle over free speech heats up in an election year, where do the candidates stand? Donald Trump has declared his support for free speech whereas Kamala Harris has said nothing and can be expected to continue her administration’s policy of tacit approval of creeping censorship. In just two months, Americans will decide. Do we actually lead the free world in standing up for free speech, or do we accept the authoritarianism we claim to detest so much?
Vote against the authoritarian censorship of Kamunism.
What free world?
Most wearing the label "Democrat" do not believe in free speech, and that percentage gets bigger as people distance themselves (like RFK jr, Gabbard, Naomi Wolf, etc.) from what that party has become. For that matter, those wearing the "Republican" label who don't believe in free speech may be a smaller percentage, but greedily keep their rat claws on power (like McConnell, etc).
What many call the Uniparty.
The installation of Lula in Brazil had help from DC. A lot of suspicion Durov was also arrested by the quiet request of DC.
Note the pattern of Brazil, Venezuela, and the US in the wake of their most recent gubernatorial "elections". I'll throw in Ukraine as well.
There is common element, and it points to two areas in DC--Truman's Regret and the State Department.
They are all part of the same Global Cabal. We have been successfully occupied and enslaved by foreign threats by proxy.
“What free world?”
Yep... That is the true bigger picture. That frog has done boiled.
Yes, Trump and Orban are portrayed as dictatorial tyrants while the left imprisons citizens for political speech.
Even Stalin cried out in pain when he stubbed his toe.
Those who seek to rule over us (not govern…..rule) know that they are humans just like the rest of us.
They no longer pretend to be children born from a sun god.
How then do they reconcile their own humanity with their disregard for other humans?
They can’t.
They try to ignore it.
They can’t ignore other people yelling at them, though.
So those people must be silenced.
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Russia is freer than France or Britain.
We're the ones with rigged elections and thousands of political prisoners.
The West’s real enemy is its embedded “elites”.
Many on this forum are our worst enemy and some of them arent even those intentionally so.
I was recently on a thread were a long time member was humble bragging about the money they made investing in a company that is one of the known deep state front organizations and then on another claiming that they deserved certain entitlements and then claiming that they didnt understand how entitlements worked.
Tell me, is it really possible for someone to hang around here for a decade or more and not know many of these types of things? This is the same stuff we have been discussing since this forum started, not actually new information. A new kid you can excuse but a seasoned citizen with decades on this forum?
Sometimes people know but refuse to accept that they have believed moronic things all their life.
“Every blockhead is thoroughly persuaded that he is in the right, and every one who is all too firmly persuaded is a blockhead, and the more erroneous is his judgment the greater is the tenacity with which he holds it.” - Baltasar Gracián 1647
Throw in the correct stimulus like an appeal to patriotism for why someones rights should be diminshed and youll have a full day reading ignorant replies telling you how little you understand about conservatism. Its even worse that these people dont fall for it once, its over and over again on the same thing.
Its obvious that many dont actually even have an opinion other than what they have been told to recite. Remember that you get double bonus virtue signal points if you blurt something out first regardless of how hypocritical.
That seems to be the motivation for so many to come to places like this. Its the need to find faster ways of earning community brownie points rather than the desire to understand how any of this works (the gatekeepers certainly dont help). Since they didnt start with a firm footing when a problem appears there is no obvious and certainly no straight path toward the solution. According to them where they actually land on the far shore of the stream of thought is of no real significance as it was the intended destination when they embarked that was of importance.
It really doesnt matter what issue you choose, there will always be someone so sure that they are the ones carrying the torch of freedom while unwittingly assisting the liberals.
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