Wednesday, August 8, 2018

The Banning of Alex Jones: It's Complicated


By Robert Wenzel

In a stunning 48 hours, Alex Jones and Infowars have been for the most part completely banned from Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify and, yes, LinkedIn.

Jones had warned on his network just prior to July 4th that a civil war was about to be launched by Leftists on the 4th. Perhaps, his warning resulted in a one month delay in the first attack, for in terms of an infowar, he is clearly now under severe attack.

It makes you wonder just what was discussed exactly two months ago when the Bilderberg group met in Turin, Italy and "The 'post-truth' world"  was on the agenda.

I see discussed in some comments in posts here at Target Liberty the topic of whether the platform operators that banned Jones are private organizations and should be able to ban whomever they choose or are in fact agents of the government and that therefore a counterattack using government tools such as antitrust laws should be used against them. It's more complicated than that.

It does appear that the attack was coordinated. But it should be remembered that this Silicon Valley group is a pretty tight group. They meet to discuss BIG questions. I was made privy to the details of a meeting that was called by a founder of one of these operations who wanted to discuss "what his position should be on the second Iraq war," just before Bush, the kid, gave the launch go ahead with that attack. I'll just put it this way, I hope a comedy of that discussion is at some future date turned into a major motion picture.

So we don't know what was behind the co-ordination. Did these mostly lefties call a meeting and decide to attack Jones or was government muscle involved behind the scenes or was it outside pressure by extreme leftists? Or a combination of all three factors?

As I consider the founders and leaders of these various organizations, I can guess that some would be more than willing to work with government to shut down Jones, where others, taking a lay of the land, probably realized that it was best to go along to protect their companies---if government was behind the takedown.

I do not see a Howard Roark in this crowd that would be willing to burn his platform down rather than buckle to government.

This move by a U.S. Senator might have pushed some to go along with the takedown:

All this said, on one level what is even more concerning is the suspensions on Twitter of Daniel McAdams and Scott Horton and the permanent banning by Twitter of the 24 year State Department employee Peter Van Buren.

The suspensions and banning took place during the same general time period as the bans on Jones. I ask you to listen to the discussion that these three reasonable men just had, Behind The Scenes At The Twitter Purge, and contemplate that their ability to communicate via a major platform has been halted.

Jones taken down is one thing, outrageous as it is, but that it has spread to three non-connected men is deeply concerning. It has the appearance that something greater is afoot.

I understand those who call for a legal attack on the banning organizations or those who call for the launch of a new truly free speech platform, but what must be realized here is that we are up against operators who don't play by the rules. Whether they are government players or extreme leftists or a combination, they are driven by a philosophy of "by any means necessary" to gain power and eliminate those who are a challenge to gaining that power.

If there are any deep thinkers behind the operators, and I suspect there is at least one (a very bad guy), they/he would have thought about the obvious counter moves of legal attacks and alternative platforms. They are at least 2 steps ahead of freedom advocates and ready for the counter-attack. In other words, the censorship will likely intensify and the likelihood of an alternative platform succeeding is very low. It would be shut down somehow, using some bogus excuse, in some manner the minute it is determined to be a serious threat.

So it may not be a special platform that will provide the outlet for the brave who are unafraid to speak as the censorship becomes harsher. It will be the drive of those who must write and speak truth for their own reasons deep in their souls. This is a lesson we know from the samizdats of the Soviet Union. Truth revealing writing cannot be stopped. Censorship only reveals the evil ways of the censors. It only red pills more normies. We will get the message out even if it means a return to samizdats. The takedown of the Soviet Union was aided by the samizdats. It will help in the takedown of the Left, if that is the method by which we must shout.

Bring it on clowns. "We have not yet begun to fight."-Jones.

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of  EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty.
He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of
The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Ban .and most recently
Foundations of Private Property Society Theory: Anarchism for the Civilized Person
Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn.
His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics.
The Robert Wenzel podcast is on  iphone and stitcher.

28 comments:

  1. Outside of a very few unpopular commenters, I didn't hear any of the readers here voicing concerns over this type of behavior when the Daily Stormer was banned from the clear web. Now that lolbertarians are feeling the same wrath, we're supposed to give a shit? LOL. Womp womp.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @Paul,

      That was exactly the point I made in an earlier post here. The fact that a completely legal web site, the Daily Stormer, was hounded from the internet by an unholy alliance of domain registrars, ISPs and incredibly enough, trusted SSL CAs. The fact that almost no one spoke up is the reason, I think, that they now feel emboldened to go after any site that is even mildly right wing. InfoWars is just the beginning.

      Delete
    2. My neighbor scooped a dog turd off of his yard yesterday.

      No one complained.

      Delete
    3. Re: Paul Hansen,

      ── I didn't hear any of the readers here voicing concerns over this type of behavior when the Daily Stormer was banned from the clear web. ──

      Moral of the story: you aren't entitled to a free platform provided by private entities.

      Delete
    4. So Evan and Francisco, it sounds like you are both ok with the silencing of people you disagree with? Let's hope neither of you engage in any BadThink. You could be next.

      Delete
    5. Don't expect liberturds to do anything but roll over for Big Brother.

      Fighting for freedom takes courage, tenacity and a strong will. Liberturds don't have any of that, and the proof is everywhere. It's why they aren't really even a thing anymore.

      Delete
    6. The Daily Stormer lost its domain name that it paid for. That's private property, retard.

      Delete
    7. @Robert What?

      If they want people to host their content, then maybe they shouldn’t produce trash content.

      Delete
    8. Robert What?

      ── So Evan and Francisco, it sounds like you are both ok with the silencing of people you disagree with? ──

      Removing trash from your own Gawd-damned premises is not the same as silencing the trash. Silencing someone is what the government does, be it a leftist government or a Trumpista government, i.e. the *other* left.

      Delete
    9. Re: Paul Hansen,

      ── The Daily Stormer lost its domain name that it paid for. ──

      That's what courts are for, to seek compensation.

      Delete
    10. Re: Twerking Stultified,

      ── Fighting for freedom takes courage, tenacity and a strong will. ──

      You mean the courage, the tenacity and the strong will of letting the government do stuff (like violating people's right to voluntarily engage in commerce with foreigners) you can't stomach doing yourself? Yeah, you're some warrior, Twerk.

      Delete
    11. @Francisco it is truly astounding how utterly clueless you are. You actually think any court in the country would take up the case of the Daily Stormer, never mind InfoWars? The game is truly rigged. You are fine with it because it is rigged in a way that you approve of. The Daily Stormer and InfoWars engaged in BadThink so they must be silenced. I assume you'll applaud when TL and EPJ become deplatformed as well. You are nothing but a tool. Evan too.

      Delete
    12. @Robert What?

      Did you just equate RW with Stormfront?

      Delete
    13. @Robert What?

      It doesn’t require some grand conspiracy theory to explain why people might not want to be associated with white supremacist national socialists. It might just be because most people are mostly decent. You know, Occam’s Razor.

      If RW ever starts ranting about how butthurt it makes him to breath the same air as blacks and Jews, then I probably won’t care if he gets de-platformed either. If I wanted to hear that perspective, I’d talk to the crazy homeless guy in the liquor store parking lot. But until that happens, you’re committing false equivalence by mentioning the two in the same breath.

      Delete
  2. https://lionoftheblogosphere.wordpress.com/2018/08/06/its-time-for-big-tech-to-be-regulated/#comments

    A new law should require that big companies like Google/YouTube, Facebook/Instagram, and Twitter are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of political viewpoint or any other type of speech (other than pornography because everyone hates pornography), and that if there is any denial of service for any reason, the user is entitled to fair notice and a hearing just like when the electric utility turns off someone’s electricity. And this includes fair access to searching and discovery. No more shadowbans and other nefarious algorithmic suppression of speech based on political orientation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So like the fairness doctrine, and net neutrality, and the civil rights act? Because those worked out so well?

      Delete
    2. No, government regulation is never the right answer.

      Delete
    3. Re: The Lab Manager,

      ── A new law should require that big companies like Google/YouTube, Facebook/Instagram, and Twitter are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of political viewpoint ──


      Why am I not surprised that the solution proposed by Trumpista Fascists is more government intrusion on private affairs?

      Delete
  3. Most people believe deeply in individual rights when they are about to be lynched and just as deeply in majority rule when they want to lynch someone.

    They believe in private property when they want to discriminate and in public access when they are being discriminated against.

    The call it education when they are teaching and propaganda when their enemies teach.

    I think the game was lost about a century ago when our grandparents voted for government education, the IRS and the Federal Reserve. A hundred years of brainwashing, extortion and counterfeiting have done their work. Our culture is the result.

    I keep wondering what to do to change the outcome. How do you play chess with people who kick the table over when they start to lose? How do you argue with the screaming gunslingers of law enforcement?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Although I am certainly not the person to do it, I agree with Scott Horton's solution and I wonder if the technology of bitcoin - the block chain - can be combined with a social platform such that there is no centralized "hub" being monitored or controlled by anyone.

    Further, if I could create such a thing, I would allow all speech - even threats of violence. Those who did not wish to read such could block it, while others might wish to read it as a warning. Hearing angry threats is a form of information too. The principle is simple. There is NO speech which is harmful. It is all just noise (or light).

    I suspect this solution is simple to create and I predict that it will be invented soon. It requires no big server farms or big money investments. It's just an application. I understand there are now hundreds of block chain currencies being launched. Obviously it's not that hard. I wish I was a developer.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The block chain for Bitcoin is already incredibly cumbersome from my understanding. Now imagine adding media to it. This is probably not feasible.

      Delete
    2. Viable competitors just aren't feasible at the present moment. Gab is the best out there, and it is still really lacking.

      Delete
  5. ── But it should be remembered that this Silicon Valley group is a pretty tight group. ──

    That may be so but they also walk a very tight rope, Robert. Remember Microsoft? Remember how the company was dragged to a kangaroo court for being too successful? Companies are interested in making MONEY, not in making a point. If hosting a nut-job like Alex Jones affects their bottom line, these companies will feel justified to drop the guy like discarded toilet paper.

    IT SUCKS. I recognize that. I wish everyone could have a completely free platform from where to say all the things each of us wants. But that is not possible. Each of us has to make a trade with owners of capital, as IT SHOULD BE, and abide by their terms and conditions.

    This point has to be clear: some commenters here are peddling the notion that these providers should be treated like public utilities and regulated by a government that is, so far, sympathetic to their own views. Justifications for this idea go from the fact that these companies were funded by the Fed's easy credit, to being specially protected by the government or that this is not a true free market, blah, blah, blah, which are ridiculous iterations of the "You Didn't Build That!" canard, the favorite platitude of Statists and Fascists.

    It is true that these actions against Jones set a dangerous precedent as it is very difficult to close the floodgates and stop groups with an ax to grind and outrage peddlers from pushing to ban other sources of free expression or ideas, but the point is that attacking private companies for acting rationally is NOT the solution; it merely reinforces the notion in the minds of Leftists, Trumpistas and other Fascists that capitalism and markets are corrupt, anti-patriotic or anti-minorities or whatever.

    Nevertheless the Market is making its power be felt; extra-market efforts are not required:
    http://reason.com/blog/2018/08/08/apple-alex-jones-ban-infowars-app

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Before making money companies are interested in investors' funds. Funds which are often due to federal reserve money printing. Even after they begin making money they are still beholden to those who got them started.

      Delete
  6. I have a problem with the idea of passing yet another state-enforced law that forces private companies to be "fair." Everybody knows Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple, etc. push "progressive" politics and what happened to Jones was inevitable. I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier. I dumped both Facebook and Twitter before this purge began. If you stay on corporate social media and hold libertarian views, you're going to get the ax eventually. It makes more sense to be a refugee.

    ReplyDelete
  7. One of the points made in the McAdams – Horton – Van Buren conversation was that one of the good things about twitter is that it was a platform that everyone was on level ground in that a relative no name like Horton could comment on a tweet by a reporter from the NYT. We want them to be on the same platform as the main stream so their contradictions are not segmented away to some obscure twitter replacement that only freaks like us follow.

    Let’s face it. The twitter population that follows the likes of Daniel McAdams, Scott Horton or Peter Van Buren is relatively minuscule. The treatment of them or even Alex Jones by twitter is not going to cause more than a ripple in the twitter ocean or the facebook, and youtube oceans.

    The reality is these huge social media outlets have decided that they don’t like some people and will not allow them say the same exact and or similar things as they allow those that they do like (or at least do not dislike) say; and there is very little we can do about it. If this censorship goes far enough alternative media platforms will be used. It is possible but unlikely that these alternatives will be accessed by more than people like us that read the sites such as this one.

    The cool chaos of social media/alternative media having equal access for all is gone. If they are no longer going to allow Pravda and Samizdat on the same platform we will just have to seek the platforms that allow Samizdat.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Mr. Wenzel, why are you in such a panic? The people who banned Jones are delusional. Their hubris tells them that in banning Jones, they have forced their views onto everyone who wanted to freely associate with Jones. It is delusion. It is hubris. Jones's believers, and moreover, those dismayed by Jones's banning, which is a much bigger crowd, did not just magically disappear. All such collectivism is an exercise in magical thinking. I don't think this latest exercise in "bare-knuckles politics" is going to go the way those who instigated it think it will. I'm not so pessimistic about alternative ventures. If the mysterious and legendary "they" had so much omnipotence, no big firm would ever end up being supplanted by competitors.

    Complexity theory teaches that it is not so much the known variables in a system but the unknown variables, which control the outcome. I think that the tech giants are going to find that the demon they have whistled up to serve them, is quite happy, perhaps even moreso, to serve their enemies as well, and it will not be put down as easily as it was invoked. Watch what happens.

    ReplyDelete