Free Republic

Oh, the irony. And in progressive Seattle, no less! Thanks to the quick-thinking decision of a driver in the Pacific Northwest, the man who covered his face while terrorizing this woman for driving a Tesla should be rather easy to find. And perhaps he can answer why he feels justified in lecturing others abut vehicle choices when he drives a car that makes Gaia cry and Greta Thunberg snarl: ... A mother says she was harassed and cut off by another driver for driving a Tesla, an incident she described as terrifying and unprovoked. The confrontation, which was caught on...

Woke capitalism is alive and well. Don’t be fooled by American companies’ public statements suggesting they’re abandoning identity-based diversity, equity and inclusion policies in favor of merit and diversity of thought. I’m here to prove it: I’ve been canceled. Again. This time, bounced from a conference boasting a theme of “breaking down walls.” Five months ago, Peer 150, a networking group for top human resources executives, asked me to speak at one of its events. I was pleasantly surprised: I’m pretty well known at this point as being aggressively non-woke. In 2020, I was the only C-suite executive in a...

Twice-failed presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton said the quiet part out loud during an appearance on CNN on Saturday. Hillary Clinton appeared on CNN to discuss social media regulations. Clinton said social media platforms must censor content or else “we lose total control.” “We should be in view repealing something called Section 230 which gave platforms on the internet immunity because they were thought to be just pass-throughs that they shouldn’t be judged for the content that is posted. But we now know that is an overly simple view that if the platforms whether it is Facebook or Twitter/X or Instagram...

Joe Rogan shared an ominous prediction about the state of free speech if Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz win the November election, arguing the Democratic ticket poses a grave threat to the First Amendment. Rogan offered his thoughts on the troubling trend of censorship in the US in a conversation with former Navy Seal, ex-CIA contractor and podcaster Shawn Ryan in an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” released Thursday. “I don’t think it turns around if Kamala Harris gets into office,” Rogan said of the censorship trend, “I think they clamp down more.” “I...

Nearly two-thirds of Americans conceal their political opinions on contentious issues in public, according to a new Populace Research/YouGov survey. Most Americans, 58%, said they cannot express their private opinions publicly, and 61% admit to “self-silencing” their political views, according to the survey. At the same time, Americans publicly claim to have higher trust in our institutions than they do in private. Only 36% of Democrats publicly said that they trust the government to tell the truth, but only 5% agreed with the statement in private, according to the survey. Similarly, 42% of Democrats publicly report that they trust the...

Kamala Harris' veep should learn something about the First Amendment.Now that Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz has become Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate, it is ostensibly time for the media to scrutinize his record and past statements. (Emphasis on ostensibly.) To say the mainstream coverage of Walz has been fawning thus far would be quite an understatement; The New York Times described him as "a one-man rejoinder to the idea that the Democrats are the party of the cultural and coastal elite." The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel merrily aided media efforts to portray Walz as a lovable, folksy paternal figure,...

One of the hallmarks of a totalitarian government, either established or nascent, is the propensity of its denizens to rat one another out. For example, I learned during a church mission trip to Cambodia that members of the Khmer Rouge often found themselves incarcerated in the very cells they used to guard because someone accused them of treason, wrong-think, or some other crime. For another excellent example, read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s unnerving account in "The Gulag Archipelago" of the man who was unguarded enough to be the first person to stop clapping after one of Stalin's speeches.

A recent analysis conducted by The Economist suggests The New York Time’s bestseller list is politically biased against conservatives, a point many on the right have long argued. Books released by conservative publishers are, on average, 7 percent less likely to make it onto the paper’s weekly bestseller list, even if the books sell at a comparable rate to work released from other publishers, the analysis found. While big names on the right don’t face as much of a challenge getting on the list, lesser known authors that are right of center do, The Economist notes. Books that are not...

https://twitter.com/newstart_2024/status/1787852468828643457

You are undoubtedly familiar with many efforts of the fascist left to use its control of government offices, bureaucracies, and other institutions to delegitimize and silence mainstream conservative speech: things like the Censorship Industrial Complex, otherwise known as pressure by government functionaries to induce social media platforms to shut down wrongthink on topics ranging from Covid to climate change to Trump; de-monetization of perfectly reasonable sites like PJ Media or Watts Up With That; the political prosecutions of presumptive Republican nominee Trump, including locking him in a courtroom to prevent him from campaigning; and many more such. This week along...

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are ‘working to prepare US voters for a possible deepfake onslaught’ Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have launched a campaign in the fight against election misinformation - in their latest move in the world of politics. The Duchess of Sussex has long faced speculation that she could be entering the political sphere, with the couple hiring Obama’s PR guru to work on their team and speaking out about the US election back in 2020. During the last cycle four years ago, feminist activist Gloria Steinem previously told Access Hollywood that Meghan had joined her...

Tweet: Here’s the interesting part about Rishi’s tyrannical new online bill… Yesterday, his government announced that offences under new online laws have kicked in so “criminals can face up to five years behind bars for their demeaning and dangerous actions.” Part of this new law outlines a new “fake news” offence – a false communications offence – that outlaws the intentional sending of false information that could cause “non-trivial psychological” or physical harm to users online.

I was born in the greatest country in the world, perhaps in history, the United States of America. But now, seventy years later, the U.S. is no longer the land of the free or the home of the brave. Today, you are most definitely not free to speak your mind. In fact, you can lose everything you own or hold dear for having the wrong views. But don’t take my word for it, ask Donald Trump. And forget home of the brave. As the Deep State attempts to crucify our former and perhaps future president in new and ever more...

Brussels, Oct 11--The EU's digital chief Thierry Breton warned Elon Musk on Tuesday that his platform X, formerly Twitter, is spreading "illegal content and disinformation", in a letter seen by AFP. The letter said concerns had heightened after the Hamas attack against Israel, and demanded Musk respond to the complaint within 24 hours and contact "relevant law enforcement authorities." As the European Union's commissioner for industry and the digital economy, Breton is charged with regulating internet giants that trade within the bloc and can launch legal action. "Following the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel, we have indications...

Since Elon Musk has taken over Twitter (now X), he relaxed its misinformation policies on the platform and has become increasingly critical of Democrats and the Biden administration, federal agencies have begun probing X, Tesla, and SpaceX, raising questions about targeting of the billionaire’s breadth of companies. Following Musk’s takeover of Twitter last year, his companies have been probed by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission as he has been an advocated for free speech on the platform. The probes include the Justice Department’s Immigrant and Employee Rights division investigating a complaint of employment discrimination from a non-U.S....

Annnd… Here we go. If you have not read the background {Go Deep}, you will not have the appropriate context to absorb the latest revelation about how the Dept of Defense will now conduct online monitoring operations, using enhanced AI to protect the U.S. internet from “disinformation” under the auspices of national security. Gee, who would have predicted that U.S. internet operations would suddenly have a totally new set of enhanced AI guardians at the gateways? 👀 Read Carefully – Eyes Wide Open: The US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has contracted New York-based Accrete AI to deploy software that detects...

In an appeals court Thursday, Helsinki’s top prosecutor said publicly quoting the Bible and publishing a booklet about Christian sexual ethics violates Finland’s “hate speech” law. The appeal escalates this U.S. ally’s prosecution of dissidents from leftist politics, a marker of repressive regimes.The prosecutor has charged Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen and Bishop Juhana Pohjola for writing and publishing, respectively, a booklet supporting natural marriage. “This [case] is a God-given wake up call for Christians and others worried about the direction our society is going,” Pohjola said in a post-court press conference Friday morning U.S. time. He noted convicting a...

The European Union has been accused of creating Orwellian “ministries of truth” that will ensure wrong thoughts are not allowed in a bid to tackle disinformation online. The Mail has the story. It is expected that those in charge of the platforms that must comply with the regulation will prioritise advice given by EU-approved “trusted flaggers” and fact-checkers monitoring information posted online. Cristian Terhes, a Romanian MP and Member of the European Parliament, argued the bloc’s Digital Services Act provides it with enough power to rule on what content is true and false when it appears on the websites of...

Peterson has generated controversy in recent years with several posts calling out transgender ideology, politicians, and other topics. Last year, the psychologist was suspended from Twitter, now X, for rebuking transgender actor Elliot Page. Peterson posted, "Remember when pride was a sin? And Ellen Page just had her breasts removed by a criminal physician." Peterson was let back onto the platform following Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media company. That same year, Peterson also trashed Sports Illustrated for featuring a plus-sized model on its May cover, posting, "Sorry. Not beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to...

YouTube has terminated the account of former US spy Scott Ritter and deleted all of his videos on the platform. According to Ritter, the Google-owned social media giant accused his channel of violating the terms of service. Writing on X (formerly known as Twitter), Ritter stated that his channel, 'The Scott Ritter Show', through which he attempted to "import Russian voices to an American/Western audience," had been flagged for 'hate speech' and taken down without prior warning or any specific examples of the offense. "There was never any hate speech involved in any of the episodes of 'The Scott Ritter...