“How long can we allow convenience, safety, and security to enable centralized authoritarian systems to shut down communication and free speech?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n “What is the nature of this new centralizing authoritarian system?”<\/em><\/p>\n “What is the misanthropy that lies at the heart of a discourse that believes our speech needs to be controlled?”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n “Where is the moral authority that is entitled to make those decisions on our behalf?”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n That is what Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger have been brave enough to dare to ask and even braver, to answer, in the following videos of the pair joining Russell Brand in London for a live discussion of The Censorship-Industrial-Complex (joined by Tim Robbins and Stella Assange).<\/p>\n Shellenberger began by laying out the many governments enacting previously unthinkable laws encroaching on your free speech rights (and more) driven by\u00a0‘The Elites’ desire “to censor the authentic voice of the people.”<\/strong><\/p>\n As he ended his initial thoughts, emotions began to well up as Shellenberger explained:<\/p>\n “The most painful thing – and there’s a lot of painful things that one goes through – is losing almost all of your friends as a consequence of using your speech.”<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Something many on the right can empathize with.<\/p>\n But there is hope, as he noted:\u00a0“The only positive thing to come out of this is to make new friends. It is not the most obvious thing you expect to lose all of your friends in your late 40s, but the ones you keep are so dear.”<\/em><\/p>\n Shellenberger turned to his ‘new’ friend Matt Taibbi, they embraced, and the legendary investigative reporter began… by noting that he had written 1000s of words for his opening statement but would instead cherry pick the most notable (since his friend Michael had done such a good job) –\u00a0you can read Taibbii’s full note here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Several points stood out from Taibbi’s summary including the day – during their Twitter Files discovery – that:<\/p>\n it became “clear that the idea behind the sweeping system of digital surveillance combined with thousands or even millions of subtle rewards and punishments built into the online experience, is to condition people to censor themselves…<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n …What Michael and I were looking at was something new, an Internet-age approach to political control that uses brute digital force to alter reality itself.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In fact, he went on to warn ominously:<\/p>\n “…after enough time online, users will lose both the knowledge and the vocabulary they would need to even have politically dangerous thoughts.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n What Michael calls the Censorship-Industrial Complex is really just\u00a0the institutionalization of orthodoxy, a vast, organized effort to narrow our intellectual horizons<\/strong>.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Citing a company called Graphika, Taibbi explains the causation:<\/p>\n \u201cThis continual process of seeding doubt and uncertainty in authoritative voices leads to a society that finds it too challenging to identify what\u2019s true or false.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The point he makes is if there is no ‘middle’ – you are either defined as ‘approved’ or ‘unapproved, or as Orwell put it ‘good’ or ‘ungood’ – individuals will naturally self-sort and self-homogenize,\u00a0“and this is happening all across society.”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n What happens to a society that doesn\u2019t square its mental books when it comes to facts, truth, errors, propaganda and so on?<\/em><\/p>\n There are only a few options.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Some people will do what some of us in this room have done:\u00a0grow frustrated and angry, mostly in private.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Others have tried to protest<\/strong>\u00a0by frantically cataloging the past.<\/em><\/p>\n Most however do what\u2019s easiest for mental survival. They learn to forget.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n This means living in the present only. Whatever we\u2019re freaking out about today, let\u2019s all do it together. Then when things change tomorrow, let\u2019s not pause to think about the change, let\u2019s just freak out about that new thing. The facts are dead! Long live the new facts!<\/em><\/p>\n We\u2019re building a global mass culture that sees everything in black and white, fears difference, and abhors memory.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sadly, Brand notes that\u00a0the framing of ‘free speech’ as only being an enabler of hate speech continues to dominate the narratives<\/strong>, and both Shellenberger and Taibbi reflected on the disappointing realization that despite all the ‘truths’ exposed by The Twitter Files, it has done little to shift the mainstream (in fact, it has done the opposite with the MSM directly targeting the reporters, and downplaying\/normalizing the censorship (self-defined or imposed) we all live with every day.<\/p>\n But we offer some hope, as we wonder did last week’s ruling blocking government’s direct intervention with social media companies mark the beginning of the end of the Censorship Industrial Complex? Or simply pushed the dark arts further underground?<\/p>\n As\u00a0Michael Shellenberger wrote at his Public Substack this week<\/a>,\u00a0the censorship denialism by the New York Times is a sign that the totalitarians are on the defensive<\/strong>. Its doublespeak is becoming laughably obvious.<\/p>\n The July 4 ruling that the federal government must not demand censorship by social media companies is a major setback in the war on disinformation,\u00a0reports the New York Times<\/a>\u00a0yesterday. The reason, says The Times, is that the Trump-appointed judge and other\u00a0Republicans have fallen prey to a conspiracy theory that a Censorship Industrial Complex exists.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Most dangerously, reports the Times, \u201cThe judge\u2019s preliminary injunction is already having an impact. A previously scheduled meeting on threat identification on Thursday between State Department officials and social media executives was abruptly canceled\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In other words, there\u2019s no Censorship Industrial Complex \u2014 no conspiracy by the US government and social media companies to censor disfavored speech. At the same time, it\u2019s a tragedy that the US government isn\u2019t able to meet secretly with Facebook to censor disfavored speech. Got that?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/s3\/files\/inline-images\/2023-07-07_07-27-52.jpg?itok=kKtJ59sw\")
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