Free Republic

The revelation that the Capitol mob - covered in emblems of extremist groups - included off-duty law enforcement officers possibly assisted by working police is escalating pressure on sheriffs and police chiefs nationwide to root out staff with ties to white supremacist and far-right armed groups. Law enforcement leaders have faced criticism in the past for failing to police their own officers’ involvement with extremist groups. However, the selfie photos that off-duty officers took inside the Capitol during the violent siege, which left one police officer dead and dozens of others injured, were a wake-up call for many who have...

After only three days in office the Biden administration has disabled comments on all thirteen videos posted to the official White House YouTube channel, erasing thousands of comments in the process. The White House channel has been under relentless negative commentary from the American people to the point that downvotes were being manipulated to make the Biden videos appear more popular. While the downvotes still wildly exceed the upvotes, all commenting and live chats are now gone.

Facebook is giving the FBI data on users who took part in the Capitol Hill riot, including their private messages, as many of the events that took place on January 6 appear to have been organized on the social media platform. A criminal complaint filed on Wednesday against New York resident Christopher M. Kelly reveals that a search warrant was issued on his Facebook account, according to a report by Forbes.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) will see his book published after all. Washington-based Regnery Publishing confirmed to The Epoch Times on Jan. 18 that it will publish Hawley’s book, after Simon & Schuster canceled its publishing contract following Hawley’s objection to electoral votes from two states earlier this month during a joint session of Congress. “As a publisher, it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat,” the New...

Former Facebook insider Alex Stamos tells @brianstelter: "We have to turn down the capability of these Conservative influencers to reach these huge audiences... There are people on YouTube for example that have a larger audience than daytime CNN."

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the President of Mexico, plans to form a coalition with other national leaders to fight back against big tech censorship after the platform banned President Donald Trump and at least 70,000 of his supporters last week, comparing it to the Spanish Inquisition, a report from the Associated Press reveals.“I can tell you that at the first G20 meeting we have, I am going to make a proposal on this issue,” López Obrador told the AP. “Yes, social media should not be used to incite violence and all that, but this cannot be used as a...

On the heels of the breach of the U.S. Capitol, Big Tech companies have swiftly censored the President, the emerging social media platform Parler was effectively shut down, and there are growing calls for no-fly lists. Does the assault on the Capitol warrant such a response? “We’re living in a gigantic lie that is reminiscent of the Reichstag fire,” argues talk show host Dennis Prager, founder of Prager University. This is American Thought Leaders, and I’m Jan Jekielek.

Investigative journalism nonprofit (Project Veritas) on Thursday released a leaked video that appears to show (Twitter) CEO (Jack Dorsey’s) internal discussions before President Donald Trump’s account was banned on the social media platform following the breach of the U.S. Capitol building.[snip] Project Veritas suggested in a Twitter post that the video leak is evidence of (“censorship gone wild.”)“You should always feel free to express yourself in whatever format manifestation feels right,” Dorsey (said in the clip), purportedly secretly filmed by a Twitter “insider whistleblower.”

WARSAW, Poland, January 14, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — The prime minister of Poland has delivered a blistering denunciation of Big Tech censorship, following the recent ban of President Donald Trump and others by virtually all social media giants. On Tuesday afternoon, Mateusz Morawiecki, 52, published a post defending internet freedom in both Polish and English on Facebook. He said that Poles are “so attached to freedom because we know what it is like when someone tries to limit it.” “For close to 50 years we lived in a country in which censorship was practiced, in which Big Brother told us how...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, not a strong supporter of President Trump over the past four years, recently described the decision by Twitter to ban Trump’s account on the digital platform as “problematic.”According to Merkel’s spokesman, “The right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance … Given that, the chancellor considers it problematic that the president's accounts have been permanently suspended.”Jens Zimmermann, a member of the German Parliament, described the situation in similar terms.“It [the Twitter ban] is problematic because we have to ask on which basis was it made, on which laws and what does it mean for the...

Political elites worldwide have criticized big tech companies for banning President Donald Trump from their social media platforms. At present, the president has been banned from Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat, Reddit, and Instagram. Twitter permanently removed Trump’s account, saying that his recent posts were in violation of the “Glorification of Violence Policy.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Twitter’s ban on Trump “problematic,” and said that freedom of opinion is an essential right of “elementary significance,” her spokesperson, Steffen Siebert, said on Jan 11. “This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined...

"Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack has been slammed for using a controversial phrase on racial injustice, which Labor (the “progressive” Australian Labor Party) has blasted as “beyond disgusting”. Mr McCormack told reporters “all lives matter” on Tuesday, a phrase criticised for detracting from the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and the fight for racial justice. The Nationals leader, who is filling in for Scott Morrison while he’s on holidays, used the phrase as he rejected criticism for comparing pro-Trump rioters’ attack on Washington’s Capitol to anti-racism demonstrations across the US last year." cf https://freedom-demokrasi-and-civilised-humanity.com/2020/09/06/respecting-the-police-its-a-two-way-street/

President Donald Trump is considering moving to another social media platform or creating his own after he was permanently banned from Twitter Friday. “As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me,................”

Twitter is being controlled by "Islamist nations and Chinese propaganda", the Bollywood actress tweeted a day after Twitter ban on Donald Trump. Sharing a 2015 tweet of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut on Sunday slammed Jack accusing him of showing intolerance "for anything". The tweet comes a day after the micro-blogging platform permanently banned US outgoing President Donald Trump's personal handle @realDonaldTrump and @TeamTrump and deleted some recent posts of @POTUS handle. Kangana quoted an old tweet of Jack where the CEO had said Twitter stands for freedom of expression and asked him to stop preaching. "We...

The trial of Austrian anti-Sharia activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff for “denigrating” Islam has major implications for free speech in Europe. (Also read Michael Ledeen: "Islamophobia") The “hate speech” trial of the Austrian housewife and anti-Islam activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff resumed at a Vienna courthouse on January 18, following a two-month break in the hearings. Sabaditsch-Wolff, who has been charged with “incitement of hatred” and “denigrating religious teachings” after giving a series of seminars about the dangers of radical Islam, faces a possible three year prison sentence. Her case, which is eerily similar to the one involving the Dutch politician Geert Wilders,...

Alexey Navalny, a Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist, warned that dictators will use Twitter’s decision to permanently ban President Donald Trump from its platform as a pretext to silence their political opponents. Navalny would know. When the Russian government prosecuted him for embezzlement, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the cases violated Navalny’s right to a fair trial, but Russia prevented him from running for president of Russia in 2018 due to these convictions, anyway. Navalny claims his name cannot be mentioned on Russian television. Russian President Vladimir Putin refuses to refer to Navalny by name and...

When people with experience of political corruption and repression warn Americans about danger signs in the current efforts to shut down dissidents, we should take note. The democratically elected leaders of 2 major Latin American countries are speaking up and warning Americans about the efforts to censor and repress skepticism about the legitimacy of an election. They are joined the leader of Russia’s opposition, the bête noire of Vladimir Putin, in whose pocket Donald Trump supposedly resides.Ryan Saavedra of The Daily Wire reports on the leader of Mexico, a country with a history of political corruption and questionable elections:Mexican President...

YouTube has removed Steve Bannon’s podcast channel, The War Room. The removal happened fast on the heels of the latest episode featuring President Trump’s personal lawyer, and former Major of New York, Rudy Giuliani. YouTube claimed that the podcast violated its terms of service. It appears it did not like that Giuliani speculated on where Capitol Hill protesters came from. “Most of them hadn’t come there with implements to do it and also led on by people from, you know, groups that are experts at it,” Giuliani said on the podcast. “Believe me, Trump people were not scaling the wall....

As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great... ...also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future. We will not be SILENCED! Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH. They are all about promoting a Radical Left platform where some of the most vicious people in the world are allowed to speak freely... President Trump...

As my listeners and readers can hopefully attest, I have been on a lifelong quest to understand human nature and human behavior. I am sad to report that I have learned more in the last few years, particularly in 2020, than in any equivalent period of time. One of the biggest revelations concerns a question that has always plagued me: How does one explain the "good German," the term used to describe the average, presumably decent German, who did nothing to hurt Jews but also did nothing to help them and did nothing to undermine the Nazi regime? The same...