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This article was previously published on April 5, 2021 and has been updated with new information.
March 23, 2021, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders diverted from party lines and spoke out against Twitter’s ban of former President Trump, saying “yesterday it was Donald Trump who was banned and tomorrow it could be somebody else who has a very different point of view.” He also noted that it is risky to have a “handful of high tech people” controlling speech in America.1
Indeed, Trump is far from alone in being censored these days, but Sanders is not telling the whole truth when he lays all of the blame for censorship on Big Tech. Disturbingly, a number of elected government officials are using their positions of power to actually pressure tech platforms into silencing voices of the opposition, or simply those whose speech they don’t agree with. As reported by Jonathan Turley:2
“… Sanders’ … view … is in sharp contrast to his Democratic colleagues who celebrated the ban and called for more censorship. One of the leading voices of censorship in the Senate is Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) [who] chastised Big Tech for waiting so long to issue such bans: ‘The question isn’t why Facebook and Twitter acted, it’s what took so long and why haven’t others?’ …
Democrats have abandoned long-held free speech values in favor of corporate censorship … When Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey came before the Senate to apologize for blocking the Hunter Biden story before the election as a mistake, senators pressed him and other Big Tech executive for more censorship.”
Public Officials Call for Selective Elimination of Free Speech
Other public officials calling for the selective elimination of free speech include:
- Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, who pressed Facebook and Twitter to make their bans of Donald Trump permanent
- California U.S. House Democrats Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, who went so far as to demand a dozen cable, satellite and streaming TV companies censor or remove entire news networks (Fox News, Newsmax and OANN)3
- Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman Mike Doyle, who asked Facebook and Twitter to remove a dozen accounts, including mine, from their platforms during a House hearing on disinformation and extremism4
- Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, who urged Twitter to expand its censorship categories to prevent the sharing of “climate denialism” views5
See how quickly things escalate? In less than a year, we went from massively censoring COVID-19 treatment information, the origin of the virus and COVID-19 vaccine information, to censoring election disputes and conservative news networks, to now calling for the censoring of climate information. And, believe me, it will not stop there either. It’ll go on and on until all bases of human thought are covered.
Doyle isn’t the only one calling for the illegal elimination of my First Amendment rights. A dozen state attorneys general are also urging social media platforms to remove my content,6 and this based on the opinions of two small, mysterious groups that no one knows anything about. As reported by The Hill, March 27, 2021:7
“Public health officials have been warning about the dangers of vaccine misinformation as the country seeks to inoculate enough Americans to reach herd immunity. Just this week the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter were questioned before Congress on their responsibility to combat disinformation spread on their platforms …
Ahead of the hearing, a group of 12 state attorneys general sent a letter to Facebook and Twitter calling for ‘immediate steps to fully enforce your companies’ guidelines against vaccine misinformation.’
A recent report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate and Anti-Vax Watch found that most of the anti-vaccine content circulating online can be tied to 12 people, several of whom are figures in the health and wellness spheres.”
Journalism Has Died an Ignoble Death
The Financial Times also published a hit piece citing the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) report:8
“Social media companies are facing renewed pressure to clamp down on a small but dedicated group of anti-vaccine campaigners that researchers blame for flooding platforms with misinformation.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate has urged Facebook, Google and Twitter to ban 12 people it has found are responsible for about two-thirds of online anti-vaccine content, among them Robert F Kennedy Jr … and the alternative medicine entrepreneur Joseph Mercola …
Mercola, the most prolific among them, has 3.6m followers across his Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, all of which are active.
In one of the sample posts highlighted by the CCDH, Mercola wrote on Instagram: ‘Forced vaccination is part of the plan to ‘reset’ the global economic system.’ Mercola’s office did not respond to a request to comment.”
Standard practice in journalism has always been to contact the person you’re writing about and give them an opportunity to respond to accusations. Of all the news outlets that published the CCDH’s accusations, only the Financial Times reached out to us for comment — 30 minutes before publication.
Still, we sent them a response before the deadline was up. As you can see, they claim we didn’t, which is a blatant lie. They asked us to comment on the report, and we sent them our thoughts about the group that produced the report, the CCDH. Obviously, they chose to not include it, and to lie instead. This way, we end up looking “guilty.” This is beyond exceptionally dishonest journalism, but that seems to be the norm these days.
Overall, the fact that multiple news outlets published the report of a tiny, obscure group, on or about the same day, without asking any questions about the group itself, is a surefire indication that a PR company such as Publicis Groupe or a similar group is directing this censorship campaign. (Publicis is a partner of the World Economic Forum that represents numerous major pharmaceutical companies.)
That’s what PR companies do — they craft the messaging and coordinate the timing of the publication of that information. Reporters, meanwhile, have surrendered to this top-down dissemination of “news” and ceased to even pretend that they’re following journalistic standards.
CCDH Is a Tool for Global Technocracy
The CCDH is a one-man organization with undisclosed funding and highly suspect connections to the global “deep state.” You cannot even access the group’s “About” page unless you go through the extra step of doing an online search for “CCDH and Imran Ahmed,” the CCDH’s founder CEO.9
Aside from Ahmed, the CCDH consists of a single “Patron,” British TV personality and Countdown host Rachael Riley,10 and a seven-person board of directors that “supports and scrutinizes” Ahmed’s work. And, while funding is stated as coming primarily from “philanthropic trusts,” no specific trusts are listed.
Digging into the composition of the board of directors provides us with some interesting clues as to what the CCDH really is, though. Through the connection of co-founder Morgan McSweeney — who left the CCDH for a chief of staff position with U.K. Labor Leader Keir Starmer — we can deduce that the CCDH is connected with the technocratic hub that is the Trilateral Commission, where Starmer is a serving member.11
The group can also be linked to other technocratic centers within the globalist network through its board chairman Simon Clark and board member Kirsty McNeill.12
Clark is a senior fellow for the policy think-tank Center for American Progress and chairman of Foreign Policy for America, other members of which include Stephen Grand, a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, and Avril Haines, former deputy director of the CIA and a participant in Event 201.13
Simon also served as the first director of web services for Reuters, one of the three global news agencies responsible for curating a vast majority of the world’s news.
McNeill, meanwhile, is a member of the European Council of Foreign Relations — another key player behind the Great Reset — and director of policy for Save the Children Fund, which is funded by the Gates Foundation and a partner of Gates’ GAVI Vaccine Alliance.
Another board member is Damian Collins, a member of the British Parliament and former chair of the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. Collins also founded Infotagion, which “seeks to fight the disinformation contagion about COVID-19.”14
What Real Extremism Looks Like
The CCDH works with an equally obscure group called Anti-Vax Watch, which recently put on a demonstration outside the halls of Congress. Ironically, while the CCDH claims to be anti-extremism, you’d be hard-pressed to find a clearer example of actual extremism than this Anti-Vax Watch demonstration, illustrated in this Tweet.15
Illegal for Government Officials to Threaten Free Speech
The fact is, the government officials calling for censorship are committing an illegal act. Twelve state attorneys general, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — which recently warned me to stop writing about vitamin D for COVID-19 prevention — and elected officials in Congress are all breaking the law.
They’re trying to wield the power of monopolistic Big Tech platforms to further their own personal interests, which is illegal. As noted in the First Amendment, which governs our freedom of speech:16
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Our speech is the expression of our thoughts. To end free speech is to end the individual, which is the totalitarian end-game. Our top priority must therefore be to defend ALL speech. You simply cannot single out certain speech for elimination. It’s a slippery slope that can only end in one way, and that is in totalitarianism where all freedoms and rights of the individual are taken away.
You may think that some views are “wrong,” but the correct way to address “wrong-think” is to present the counter-arguments and the data to support those arguments. When it comes to vaccines, simply saying “everyone has to get vaccinated in order to reach herd immunity” is not a universally valid argument that cannot be countered.
Many counter-arguments can be made, and they must be allowed to be made, if we want to preserve public health. Public officials should be listening to both sides, in order to find the best middle-ground. Instead, they are using their political power to influence tech monopolies to shut down all counter-views, and that’s some really dangerous territory.
Defending Freedom of Speech from Medical Fascists
In a recent article17 posted on The Unz Review, Mike Whitney ties together the strands of the COVID-19 pandemic response and the subsequent censorship. I would encourage you to read the entire article as it succinctly summarizes the reasons behind the censorship. I actually reached out to Mike to interview him.
He points out that behavioral psychologists have been employed by the government to promote the COVID-19 vaccination campaign and maximize vaccine uptake. And, if behavioral psychologists were used to coerce vaccine compliance, were they also relied upon to devise other pandemic restrictions?
“Were the masks, the social distancing and the lockdowns all promoted … as a way to undermine normal human relations and inflict the maximum psychological pain on the American people?
Was the intention to create a weak and submissive population that would willingly accept the dismantling of democratic institutions, the dramatic restructuring of the economy, and the imposition of a new political order? These questions need to be answered,” Whitney says.18
Moreover, why does the government feel it needs a rapid response team to attack the opinions of those who question the “official narrative”? Why don’t facts and data provide sufficient enough validation to line up for the COVID-19 vaccine? Whitney writes:19
“You might have also heard the term ‘vaccine hesitancy’ … The moniker is clearly intended to denigrate vaccine skeptics by suggesting that they have a mental condition, like paranoid schizophrenia. This is an effective way to discredit one’s enemies, but it also shows the glaring weakness of the pro-vaccine position.
If the proponents of vaccination had something of substance to offer, they would rely on facts and data rather than ad hominin attacks. As it happens, the facts do not support their position.
Besides, ‘vaccine hesitancy’ is not a character flaw or a mental condition, it’s the sign of someone who has taken responsibility for his own health and welfare. Ask yourself this: Why would a normal, rational person be eager to have an experimental cocktail injected into his bloodstream potentially triggering all manner of long-term ailments or death? Is that the choice a normal person would make?”
Even more disturbing, a report by the National Institutes of Health not only focuses on countering objections to the vaccine rather than presenting facts that support vaccination, but it also appears intent on turning anyone who refuses the vaccine into a social outcast.
This is a radical step that harkens back to the Nazi’s four-step process for dehumanizing the Jews,20 — prejudice, scapegoating, discrimination and persecution — a process necessary to get the German people to, by and large, agree with or at least go along with the plan to commit genocide.
“This is very scary stuff,” Whitney writes.21 “Agents of the state now identify critics of the COVID vaccine as their mortal enemies. How did we get here? And how did we get to the point where the government is targeting people who don’t agree with them? This is way beyond Orwell. We have entered some creepy alternate universe.”
Defending First Amendment Rights Is Part of the Answer
While there are no easy answers to the situation we now find ourselves in, defending the freedom of speech is part of it, and that includes defending the First Amendment rights of those with whom we disagree. We all need to call on our political representatives to take a firm stand against all censorship.
Freedom of speech would undoubtedly be more easily secured were it not for tech monopolies having the power to eliminate anyone they don’t want to hear from. The good news here is that a decentralized web is in the works.
I am currently working with some of the brightest minds in the tech space, all of whom are committed to preserving your personal freedoms and liberties. In this Web 2.0, tech monopolies will no longer have the ability to censor or profit from surveillance.22
In the meantime, consider ditching social media networks that erode your civil liberties, and to join those that promote freedom of speech instead. For example, free-speech alternatives to Facebook and Twitter include Gab, MeWe, Gettr, Minds and Parler. Uncensored alternatives to YouTube include Bitchute, Rumble, Brighteon, Banned.video and Thinkspot.
For content creators and alternative news sources that no longer have a social media presence due to censoring, subscribe to their newsletter if available, and/or mark their website in your favorites and check back on a regular basis.
As for the growing pressure to vaccinate or become a second-class citizen, I believe the answer is to stand firm in your belief, resist coercion and expose propaganda. There is strength in numbers, and we’re now dealing with a global, rather than national, phenomenon.
Everyone, all around the world, face this rapidly approaching dilemma, but if large-enough numbers everywhere stand up for freedom, we can still win. And, in the long term, that will protect and benefit everyone, everywhere.
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