Free Republic

A mathematics professor at the University of California, Davis, has faced significant pushback for criticizing university-mandated “diversity statements,” testimonies that purportedly help determine the degree to which job applicants will be able to advance and promote diversity on campus.

After NBC News published a hit piece on news outlet the Epoch Times and its association with the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement persecuted by China’s government, the Wikipedia page for the outlet was vandalized and filled with attacks sourced to the piece. One editor involved has a history of attacking Falun Gong and defending Chinese communist figures such as Mao Zedong. The editor also contacted an Antifa-supporting socialist editor with a similar history, which included downplaying the oppression of Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province. Other Wikipedia articles associated with Falun Gong have also been subject to smears from...

Authorities in Los Angeles launched an investigation on Wednesday after a video emerged online showing several high school students covering their faces with dark paint and using racial slurs. The video, originally posted to Snapchat and later shared on Twitter, documents a group of predominantly female students laughing as one male teenager’s face is coated with a dark paint.

Facebook monitors the offline behavior of its users to determine if they should be categorized as a “Hate Agent,” according to a document provided exclusively to Breitbart News by a source within the social media giant. The document, titled “Hate Agent Policy Review” outlines a series of “signals” that Facebook uses to determine if someone ought to be categorized as a “hate agent” and banned from the platform. Those signals include a wide range of on- and off-platform behavior. If you praise the wrong individual, interview them, or appear at events alongside them, Facebook may categorize you as a “hate...

(Note: "XRW" = Extreme Right Wing) Can you get the high score..? Who HERE will be the lucky first to scream BINGO..? ELITES ONLY - Did you score a BLACKOUT..?

Social media posts from the University of Illinois campus police are encouraging students to report “acts of intolerance” to the school’s Bias Assessment and Response Team. At least one officer for the University of Illinois is a member of the school's bias response team. This certainly conflates physical safety with being uncomfortable around non-politically correct individuals. So what is bias, according to the Bias. Assessment and Response Team? They define it as “actions or expressions that are motivated, at least in part, by prejudice against or hostility toward a person (or group) because of that person’s (or group’s) actual or...

You will not believe what Jacqueline Hart of Patreon's Trust and Safety council thinks of this whole affair. Dramatic Re-enactment, very funny, but troubling as it shows what Patreon is doing to destroy free speech rights of creators.

The U.S. Coast Guard says it “removed” a member from its Hurricane Florence response team Friday after he made an “OK” hand gesture on live TV that the service branch deemed “offensive.” The unidentified team member was caught looking into the camera and then swiftly making the hand gesture, prompting a backlash on social media. The hand signal was seen in the background of MSNBC’s live interview with Sector Charleston Commanding Officer Capt. John Reed, who was providing an update on actions taken by the Coast Guard in response to Hurricane Florence. Many social media users called for the firing...

Actor and filmmaker Mark Duplass has apologized for initially praising the right-wing pundit and Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro on Twitter and encouraging his followers to consider following Shapiro, stating that the tweet was a “disaster on many levels.” “I’m really sorry,” Duplass tweeted Thursday morning. “I now understand that I need to be more diligent and careful. I’m working on that. I want to be clear that I in no way endorse hatred, racism, homophobia, xenophobia or any such form of intolerance.” Duplass said the tweet was meant to encourage unity, but admitted “sometimes I move too quickly when...

As PJ Media is reporting, “YouTuber Calum Long-Collins announced he would be effectively shutting down the channel EnglishShooting, a YouTube channel that racked up more than 15,000 subscribers and more than 12 million views in the past four years. Long-Collins said the police had marked his YouTube channel as a ‘forum of extremism,’ and that he had to ‘show the police that I am a fit character to own firearms within the U.K.'” Here’s the video that Long-Collins made confessing his sins in a last ditch attempt to placate the British authoritarians authorities and convince them to let him keep...

Students at the University of Michigan, beware. If you say anything politically incorrect or out-of-line with the political and social orthodoxy on your campus, you may get a knock on your dorm room door from the university’s equivalent of the Thought Police, and be forced into a re-education camp. Or you may be suspended or thrown out of school, potentially damaging your educational prospects and your entire future professional career. If this sounds like an exaggeration, consider a new lawsuit filed in federal court in Michigan by Speech First, Inc., against the president of the University of Michigan, other...

The Church of England is torn over plans by the The Episcopal Church (TEC) in the United States to efface the terms “husband” and “wife” – as well as references to “procreation” – from its marriage liturgy. The change is meant to make the church’s marriage ceremonies more “gay-friendly.” Gay and lesbian Episcopalians have complained that the language of the current liturgy is offensive and exclusionary. The move prompted a critical response from Church of England Secretary General William Nye last October, strongly urging the TEC to reconsider. The letter threatened to cut ties with the U.S. church if it...

Fox's The Simpsons is under fire for the way in which the show responded to controversy around one of its most recognizable and oldest characters, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. The outcry over the stereotypical portrayal of Springfield’s Kwik-E-Mart owner, voiced by Hank Azaria, was addressed Sunday night in the episode “No Good Read Goes Unpunished" when Marge Simpson reads a book to daughter Lisa that has been changed from its original version to something not so controversial. “Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?,” says Lisa. The show then panned to...

For his return after a 3 week whirlwind tour in California where a lot of things were going on, John's message this week concentrates mostly on Israel, Syria and the Middle East where "A Lot is Going On." From Israel finally admitting that they took out the Syrian nuclear reactor over 10 years ago, to the rapid progression of Turkey into an enemy of Israel and NATO, John looks at the latest issues that are coming to the forefront of this week's prophetic outlook. Oh, yeah..and he briefly mentions the new "Youth Movement" headed up by the foul-mouthed David Hogg,...

A student Resident Advisor (RA) at Providence College has reportedly been threatened with rape after posting a flyer that expressed a traditional view on marriage. According to LifeSiteNews, RA Michael Smalanskas has faced severe student backlash since displaying the poster on a bulletin board in early March, with upset classmates gathering outside of his dorm room and endangering his safety.

The online publishing platform Medium has suspended the accounts of prominent far-right figures Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec and Laura Loomer. Medium spokesperson Sandee Roston told The Hill that the company does “not comment on individual accounts.” Roston did point to a Feb. 7 post detailing an update to its rules. “We have all seen an increase and evolution of online hate, abuse, harassment, and disinformation, along with ever-evolving campaigns of fraud and spam,” Medium's rules update reads. “We have strengthened our policies around this type of behavior.” “We do not allow calls for intolerance, exclusion, or segregation based on protected...

The free speech wars are getting worse, but it seems that none of the warring factions quite grasp the character of the dispute — or precisely what's at stake. At the figurative center of the clash is the norm of near-absolute freedom of speech and expression, which its defenders like to treat as the American default. A number of ideological challenges have arisen in recent years to overturn this norm. On many college campuses, groups of left-leaning students insist that free speech should be conditional on speakers adhering to explicit standards of diversity and avoiding the infliction of emotional harm...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc will change the ranking of its News Feed to give priority to trustworthy news sources above those that its users do not consider trustworthy, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday.

British police forces arrested at least nine people a day for “offensive” online comments last year. Figures obtained by The Times through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that 3,395 people across 29 forces were arrested last under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, which makes it illegal to intentionally “cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another”, in 2016. The true figure is likely to be significantly higher, as thirteen police forces refused to provide the requested information and two did not provide usable data. Around half of the investigations were abandoned before being brought to prosecution, which...

John Haller is in Facebook prison. Clearly, he must be saying the right things. Help spread the word and get his message out. We may be experiencing to advent of two classic novels in our lifetime. Were Orwell and Rand modern day prophets? Consider this: In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell, the Thought Police (Thinkpol) are the secret police of the superstate Oceania, who discover and punish "thoughtcrimes" which are defined as personal and political thoughts unapproved by "the Party." Thinkpol used criminal psychology and omnipresent surveillance to monitor and arrest all citizens of "Oceania" who would commit...