Ron Paul blocked from posting on Facebook
twitter.com
twitter.com
So much for "I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It."
Very much of the following situation...
First they came for ...Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
I feel like I can almost always personally do the right thing in life, take actions that I later will feel good about. Elite monied interests apparently don’t have any sort of social consciousness or conscience.
Please don’t cancel my life and career for trusting the integrity of the math behind cryptographic hashing more than black box voting machines.
Facebook knows regulation is on the horizon. They also know their best bet to stay alive is to kiss up to the new administration and turn the issue into a partisan one. By banning political competitors they're buying themselves four more years of time.
We are in a new era, and our disasters won't look like theirs. People who shrug away this kind of censorship with the magic words "private company" are in a dangerous form of denial.
From Techdirt:
Moderation is a platform/service owner or operator saying “we don’t do that here”. Personal discretion is an individual telling themselves “I won’t do that here”. Editorial discretion is an editor saying “we won’t print that here”, either to themselves or to a writer. Censorship is someone saying “you won’t do that anywhere” alongside threats or actions meant to suppress speech.Or did you not notice that Parler and its hundreds of thousands of users had literally been systematically erased from the internet yesterday by hounding their service providers?
It's bizarre to see the liberal left I grew up with now defending a kind of insane market fundamentalism and corporate control of the commons of free speech without even blinking at the contradiction. I think that liberal left I grew up with is dead.
We need a name for what it has become, and where they are taking us.
We could also go with Wikipedia's "Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe" if you're down with crowd-sourced definitions.
If you're not, there's historian Kevin Passmore's more verbose one: "Fascism is a set of ideologies and practices that seeks to place the nation above all other sources of loyalty, and to create a mobilized national community. Fascist nationalism is reactionary in that it entails implacable hostility to socialism and feminism, for they are seen as prioritizing class or gender rather than nation. This is why fascism is a movement of the extreme right."
And, of course, we could go right to the source. Benito Mussolini wrote, "Granted that the 19th century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the 20th century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century."
If you really want to argue with the claim that fascism is a far-right, authoritarian movement, have at it, but that claim has a whole pile of evidence on its side.
The fascists were strong feminists, they supported women suffrage long before it was legal in the USA.
They also supported progressive tax system, minimum wages and strong labor laws.
> The policies contrasted starkly with the evolution of women's rights and gender equality under the Weimar Republic
> Women in Nazi Germany were subject to doctrines of Nazism by the Nazi Party (NSDAP), which promoted exclusion of women from the political life of Germany as well as its executive body and executive committees.
> the Nazi regime only permitted and encouraged women to fill the roles of mother and wife; women were excluded from all positions of responsibility, notably in the political and academic spheres.
That's the whole point.
If the USA is capitalist but loves bailing out banks doesn't mean bail outs are a attribute of capitalism.
The literal definition of fascism is an socialist economic system characterized by state run private enterprise. China is probably the closest modern example of true fascism in the literal sense.
No seriously fascism means none of the things people attribute to it today.
Read the about writings of giovanni gentile -- the karl marx of fascism -- if your interested in what literal fascism means.
https://fee.org/articles/facebook-suspends-ron-paul-followin...
https://reason.com/2021/01/11/ron-paul-says-hes-been-locked-...
You've got Kathy Griffin tweeting photos a decapitated Trump head (https://twitter.com/kathygriffin/status/1323893513226870786) which gets no penalty or ban. This isn't glorifying violence?
Yet, people on the right are being banned daily without explanation for things much less egregious.
EDIT: if you disagree, maybe try having a conversation instead of downvoting.
Imagine if Trump had tweeted a photo of any Democrat's decapitated head, do you think the reaction would have been the same?
They do, though. (or rather, they did... I honestly have no idea what state their rules are in today, but they've changed some things) It's the only reason Trump was allowed to stay on Twitter as long as he was, and Twitter were transparent about that. [1]
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/world-lea...
> It's the only reason Trump was allowed to stay on Twitter as long as he was
But here we have the data point of Kathy Griffin's tweet staying up while Trump's tweets are taken down and blocked. So I'm saying that datapoint, that tweet by Kathy Griffin staying up, does not fit your "Twitter lets leaders get away with more" explanation. That tweet from Kathy Griffin should have been removed faster than Trump's tweets, but it's still there.
In contrast we cannot choose to stop using the US government. Would you really prefer to have the US government decide what can and cannot be censored?
Seems fair- after all it is voted by all citizens, not just by the ones that make more noise. Also, there are the citizens' representatives in the parliament, who openly discuss issues and try to establish widely agreed-upon rules.
This is mostly targeted at users with a larger following...
As as example if you have a diff opinion, or say something then you might get suspended or banned. Even so when others on the platform are more violent, and encouraging violent acts. Look at twitter accounts of Iran, China, and all the accounts for antifa for example. They use twitter to cause and incite violence, yet they remain.
A few come to mind phrases come to mind that may get you banned on FB/Twitter:
“#Hydroxychloroquine is a safe drug.
"Eric Ciaramella"This is not cultural censorship. Facebook is finally waking up to the reality that lies about our elections are well on their way to starting a civil war. With that display on the 6th, that rhetoric is now over the line. They let it go, right up until the consequences (as heinous as they are predictable) were clear.
Politicians, including the incoming regime, are at their mercy and ought to be careful not to step on any toes.
for the past 4 years the media spun a narrative of Russian collusion, one that largely proved to be false and filled with fabricated stories.
Nanci Pelosi tweet May 2017: Our election was hijacked. There is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy & #FollowTheFacts.
https://twitter.com/speakerpelosi/status/864522009048494080?...
it's pretty fact-based and in plain sight
probably normal HN bias?
No, the media spun the narrative of Russian interference, with possible collusion, something that turned out to be true (interference) and collusion was left uncertain (Muller stated quite clearly that if he could show Trump didn't collude, then Mueller would have said so, but that he was not going to say so).
"'The president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed,' Mueller told the House judiciary committee, adding that Trump could theoretically be indicted after he leaves office." [1]
Then the Trump DOJ didn't release the summary of the report, but their edited version, leaving plenty out, in order to get people like you to write what you just did. Mueller was so outraged at how the DOJ spun the report, that he immediately did a press conference about it, an unprecedented step.
Here is Mueller's letter to Barr on exactly this [2].
Once Trump is out of office, and several years have gone by without charges, then maybe you can claim these concerns were false, but they most certainly were not fabrications or lies.
[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/mueller-refutes-trumps-no-co...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2019/05/01/719004457/read-muellers-lette...
i'd strongly beg to differ. fake news was at its peak during the first two years of "Russia-gate" with networks reporting on hearsay and drawing wild conclusions irrespective of hard evidence. journalistic integrity was thrown to the wind.
it seemed as if every week a "we got him" story broke only to fizzle as it turned out to be false.
the linked article below offers some examples of these fake news stories about Trump. and I do recognize that the second quote is written by Barr, not Mueller.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-mill...
Also, given current events, here’s a fun quote from the linked article:
> The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years, with votive candles sold in his image and Saturday Night Live cast members singing “All I Want for Christmas is You” to him featuring the rhymey line: “Mueller please come through, because the only option is a coup.”
You might as well cite any fringe blogger. Your proof is like some idiot writing Trump is an Alien Unicorn on a personal wordpress site then claiming mainstream news was calling Trump an Alien Unicorn.
No wonder you're convinced of wild things.
I'm done with this level of dishonesty.
Rolling Stone is not The Economist but I have a hard time understanding the way you seem to be trying to characterize Taibbi.
Can you point to the specific 'wild things' and/or dishonesty in the Taibbi piece?
> You might as well cite any fringe blogger. Your proof is like some idiot writing Trump is an Alien Unicorn on a personal wordpress site then claiming mainstream news was calling Trump an Alien Unicorn.
> No wonder you're convinced of wild things.
> I'm done with this level of dishonesty.
woah.
setting Taibbi aside, can you not see how news cycles were dominated by a "Russian collusion" narrative the first 3 years of Trump's presidency? a narrative that largely proved to be exaggerated, false, and self-serving (it was great for business).
as recent as July of this year, the NYT published a story filled with anonymous sources and accusations of Russian bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan. within days, the media went into their typical "blitz" with this story and Joe Biden even had an ad ready to air in response to it. this story, like many others not only could not be corroborated by any mentioned parties, but proved to be "less than conclusive" and was later significantly walked back.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/politics/russia-afghan...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/u-s-offic...
Otherwise who do you think "Individual #1" is?
So when Trump is cleared by these indictments in the future I'll admit there was nothing provable in court. Until then we should wait to see what these existing charges do when they hit Federal court.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/11/20/937044524/once-out-of-office-...
Further, none of his “Individual #1” references are related to Russia collusion, even though they arose from things that spun out of that investigation.
Yes, unindicted because it's not clear if you can indict a President. Those are waiting for the day Trump is out of office, when indictments will likely follow.
From the sentencing memorandum [1]: Cohen states he "acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1", which is likely a felony - usually crime bosses dictating lower level people to commit crimes get harsher punishments than the underlings - and this will likely be tested once Trump leaves office.
So "Individual #1" is not merely a mention of a person. It's the label of a person that directed felony activities.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2018/12/7/18130805/michael-cohen-sentenc...
Which...they didn’t do. Republicans blocked having witnesses or documents appear during the Senate impeachment proceedings.
So no, collusion was not largely proven to be false, because once it moved to the Senate, nobody was called to testify under oath since Republicans blocked it. The Mueller report remains largely unvetted, and while its conclusions are weak due to Justice Department policy on what a sitting president can be charged with (or accused of? I am not clear on this distinction), its evidence appears to be strong. We don’t know if it holds up or not. It was never rigorously examined, because Republicans blocked it.
in my opinion, the objective person would likely agree that Trump and his campaign have been rigorously examined both formally (by Mueller and his team) and informally (by the media).
i don't intend to change topics here, but in context of your usage of "never rigorously examined" one could point to Hunter Biden's international dealings as lacking rigorous examination, as stories on this topic have even been actively suppressed.
And that's bullshit. Mueller Report was a damning document that Mueller didn't have the guts to force Barr's hand, and Barr gleefully lied about and declined prosecution.
Furthermore, the objections by many about the election being "hijacked" was not an actual claim to voter-box or voter fraud, but of disinformation and foreign interference.
You should stop posting false whatabouts on HN, it's unbecoming.
as recent as June of 2020 the NYT ran a piece about "Russian bounties in Afghanistan" that was effectively walked back shortly thereafter after it was deemed "less than conclusive".
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/politics/russia-afghan...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/u-s-offic...
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1282646230779285504
i hope you find this more... becoming :)
What's ironic is that people thought he was crazy when he said it would be possible to abolish the IRS, even though he had all the history and facts to back it up.
My take is that he optimistically might almost break into the top 525 most reasonable people in Congress.
> A Nursing Home had Zero Coronavirus Deaths. Then, It Vaccinates Residents for Coronavirus and the Deaths Begin.
http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/20...
I think it more likely that Facebook is finally waking up to the imminent risk of heavy and heavy-handed regulation, possibly destroying its business model. I haven't seen evidence that Facebook cares about anything but Facebook.
You're right, but not for the reason you think.
Oh, I think more of them do than seem to, but some of them are either hedging their bets with regard to the coming regime in case it happens, or outright supportive. Both groups have a strong motivation not to publicly acknowledge the risk.
But I see how quickly and how broadly conservative people are getting muzzled and vilified. I can to some degree see sense in taking away the microphone (and networking apparatus) between now and Jan 20. On the other hand, I can see it becoming the start of a witch hunt. How far are you going to go to shut down conservative voices, and for how long? The fact that it's hitting Ron Paul indicates to me that it is over-reaching reasonable bounds, even for the short term.
Perhaps its just the quality of blackmail the CCP has on them....