Originally Posted by First Amongst Daves
The entire deplatforming concept is weird. Twitter is still filled with pro-Trump voices. It as only Trump himself who got banned. Fox and its affiliates are still out there blasting away. And now you have Truth. Where is the deplatforming?

On a slight tangent, I have not spent any time at all in rural America, but I imagine that most of the ideological discussion in such places do not take place on Facebook or whatever. They take place in newspapers and local media, and churches.

"The globalist/socialist Left is making a full-court press in nations worldwide to overthrow democracies, and replace them with one-party authoritarian socialist governments."

OK, this is weird. Where has this happened?

Uh.... I thought I just gave a long list of nations that has happened to.

Canada most alarmingly springs to mind, with its Covid lockdowns, and freezing of bank accounts of dissenting political protesters.
Have you not seen the protests in the Netherlands in the last few weeks, where the government there is trying to crush family farmers and drive them bankrupt? They are protesting to save their lives.
Venezuela went hardcore Marxist roughly 20 years ago. Previously the most oil-rich nation in Latin America, with the highest per capita income. Now reduced to eating out of garbage cans, they are so improverished by their marxist government.

Argentina has gone Marxist/Left.
Brazil is fighting for its life against a pending Marxist takeover as well. and If the Marxists win, they will likely imprison those of the current Bolsanaro administration, and create a permanent leftist state, so that they never lose another Brazilian election. The same as the Democrats are trying to do in the U.S.

I already linked details in another topic about Australia taking away guns, and also using excessive police force against Australians just peacefully protesting against Covid-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates they dissent from. And how in at least one case, they imprisoned a protester in a psych ward. Not for any crime, but just for disagreeing with Australian federal policy. Now, that obviously isn't happening in every state of Australia, but it should disturb your own sense of freedom that it is happening anywhere in Australia. It has terrified me for the last 2 years what Democrat lunatic governors have done in New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and California. And even though I'm currently safe in Florida, I know they would do the same instantly if a Democrat were to become governor of Florida. Look up the name Andrew Gillum, and see the bullet we dodged in 2018, we are so lucky to have Ron DeSantis, the best of the 50 U.S. state governors. And the corruption could easily have won in Florida too in 2018, several corrupt elections supervisors in Dade and Broward counties have been fired, only to have the next be just as corrupt and try to pull the same thing. They certainly did their damnedest to rig that Florida election.


Similar protests have been violently put down in multiple countries of Europe. Protesting the same kind of marxist/socialist/authoritarian over-reach by European governments, trying to use Covid lockdowns and mandates to advance their authoritarian collectivist dreams.

I understand that in Austria, you cannot work or go outside unless you'e received Covid vaccination. And that's after in nations worldwide, the vaccines and boosters have been proven to not be effective in either preventing the Covid virus or eliminating spread of the virus.

Likewise, at least 40,000 U.S. soldiers, some of the best trained, brightest and best, have been forced out of the military, even dishonorably discharged, for being unwilling to receive Covid vaccination. The NIH and CDC yesterday ended all mandates. But no discussion of giving these people back their jobs. Or jobs back to the doctors, nurses, pilots, defense contractors, and other private-sector employees who also refused the mandate for a now proven ineffective and unsafe vaccine. Millions of jobs and lives destroyed and diminished. Triggering loss of income that caused millions of home foreclosures.
All to advance a Marxist/socialist revolution in these nations, under the guise of protecting these nations from Covid. When the real goal all along was the revolution itself, not the medical emergency of the pandemic. The pandemic was just the pretense. And when that pretense has proven to be scientifically unsound, there is no attempt to undo the damage and help the people hurt by those policies. The revolution itself was the goal, and they hurt and displaced their political opposition as planned, exactly who they wanted to, never mind that the narrative for it all has collapsed.


Regarding the internet, I have always disliked Facebook and Twitter, but most politically active people I know use them. It is further intertwined in their often having businesses that are also on Facebook and Twitter, or Youtube and so forth. Some who have been de-platformed for political reasons, have lost their ability to continue their online businesses as well. I've also seen professional or amateur journalists, who had all their articles on their user pages, suddenly lose all their past work as well.
It's very arbitrary and unfair, and cancellation almost never has any explanation, other than a vague "you've violated our terms of service", which could be twisted to maliciously target any conservative speech they don't like.



As I've raised in topics on media bias for years, the news media (that I first learned of from 30-year CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg's 2002 book on the subject, BIAS) polls for 50 years consistently show 80% of media reporters nationwide self-identify as either "liberal" or "very liberal".
https://www.mrc.org/media-bias-101-what-journalists-really-think-and-what-public-thinks-about-them
(And 93%, among the most influential Washington DC based reporters.) https://ricochet.com/88333/political-views-of-journalists-my-feud-with-eric-alterman-part-2/
So there is a long-standing liberal media bias, in the U.S., and no doubt even more so outside the U.S.
Both G-man and I have posted stuff about the unapologetic bias of the BBC and other British news, about the coverage of the Iraq War, the W. Bush and Trump administrations, and so forth.
Back in 2004, then-still-respected Charlie Rose interviewed a Bush policy advisor named Robert Kagan, asking him "Why is there no popular support for the U.S. in Europe regarding the Iraq War?"
To which Kagan responded "Because nowhere in the European media is there a pro-American perspective voiced."

At least in the U.S., while 80% liberal, there is still about 20% of the media who, while a minority, at least voice an opposing conservative point of view.


And among the U.S. mainstream media (as cited by Bernard Goldberg in his book in 2001), in recent years that liberal-bias ratio has probably risen to over 90%. And anyone who actually identified as a conservative in a typical newsroom would find themselves fired, or at least their advancement opportunities destroyed.
Likewise among those working in Hollywood movies and television.
Likewise among University academics. As early as 2015, I had a client who worked locally as a university administrator, who told me that he was afraid to post his actual political opinions on Facebook and Twitter, because his co-workers would see it, and they were so universally Left that it would either get him ostracized or fired. That was long before the rise of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, or the terms "woke", or "de-platform".

De-platforming isn't depriving someone of having any ability to voice politically dissenting views whatsoever, it is depriving of them of the ability to have a large mainstream audience for their views, to the point that they could persuade a large enough group to actually make a political difference. It's depriving conservatives of the ability to speak publicly at university appearances or booksignings (at least without being threatened), or reaching a large audience or Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other social media.
And even though places like Rumble or Truthsocial still exist, at present they reach a tiny fraction of Facebook and other well-established forums do. Although Facebook and Twitter's obvious bias has clearly lost them market share, to the point that Facebook has tried re-branding as "Meta", and Twitter was almost bought out by Elon Musk, and the battle over that just further exposed Twitter's bias, the hissy-fit its tech employees had about Musk potentially forcing them as an employer to be more unbiased, and also exposing that half their accounts are fake "twitter-bots."
I've often wondered if Musk was ever serious about actually purchasing Twitter, or if he did it just to expose the corruption within Twitter, both political and financial.

And to be clear, It's not just Donald Trump who was cancelled from Facebook and Twitter, there are literally millions of others who have either been shadow-banned, or had their accounts deleted entirely, just for posting pro-conservative/pro-Trump points of view and information.
Literally EVERY conservative Republican and Freedom-Caucus member has either been shadow-banned or completely banned, some only getting their accounts re-opened because of the public pressure they put on Twitter. Rep Jim Jordan, Rep. Jim Banks, Sen. Tom Cotton, Sen. Josh Hawley, Sen. Ted Cruz, to name just a few.

I detailed back in July 2019 how my user-account on Youtube was deleted, for no logical reason. All I posted were links to sources to back up what I was saying. And I think that's the core of it: If you're a conservative and you just hurl insults back and forth, nyah-nyah-nyah you're a Democrat liberal poopy-face, they still let you post. But if you provide sourced facts and information that can persuade others to the conservative perspective, then they want to cancel and de-platform you.

I also posted a link to the lawsuit by OAN against Direct TV and its parent company A T & T, that makes very clear they not only cancelled/de-platformed One America News, but that they sourced clearly and in writing how people in these companies and in other outside Soros-funded groups, many of whom now have appointed seats of power in the FCC, have clearly stated the goal of similarly de-platforming Fox News and Newsmax as well. Power that they now have, to actually do.
https://www.oann.com/wp-content/upl...cTV_and_ATT_Chairman_William_Kennard.pdf

Are you aware also, that even writers and editors at smaller conservative print media and websites, such as DailyCaller, AmericanConservative, National Review, Townhall.com, AmericanGreatness, RevolverNews, Breitbart.com and other sites, are basically algorithm'd out of search engines?
I've seen editors and writers of all these sites interviewed on Fox and Newsmax to talk about how in the year leading up to the 2020 election, they previously all got like 50,000 or so visitors monthly to their websites that were directed from word searches. But now that new traffic has dropped to zero. It is shrinking their audience by abuse of tech media. And it is costing them market share and viewers and advertising revenue. And they can survive maybe a few years, but it is gradually killing them.

Also, regarding any show on Fox News, there are radical leftist groups monitoring every conservative program, particularly those on Fox as the largest and most influential, Leftist groups that wage daily campaigns to slander and twist Fox' actual message out of context (MediaMatters, and MoveOn, to name two). They organize campaigns to contact Fox to demand these programs taken off the air.
They further go after the advertisers on Fox, and try to force programs off the air by depriving them of advertisers. That's what finally caused Fox to take Bill O'Reilly off the air. And they would love to do the same to Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham. They make daily efforts to do so.
That's another line of de-platforming. And intimidation.




Even with Fox and the other conservative news still on cable, the Democrat/Left still dominates broadcast television, and print media, and Hollywood.
And the universities and schools. And the music industry. And social media. And tech media. And search engines.

Add to that the power of government, with a DOJ, FBI, CIA, State Department, and now even the military that have been hijacked and weaponized as another tool to crush and silence conservative America.
Did you see the new spending bill rammed through last week with a 50/50 Senate vote, that a clueless Biden signed into law today? It has a stated environmental purpose, but buried in it is a provision to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to audit Americans. (The entire IRS till now was 78,000 agents, so this more than doubles the number of IRS auditors.) By comparison, tht is five times the size of the entire U.S. border partrol. That would make the IRS larger than of multiple U.S. law enforcement agencies combined.
For wwhat purpose? Except to harass and intimidate political opponents.

And the IRS,like the other above agencies, was already a pretty much 100% Democrat organization, already used to audit and harass Republicans, consistently.
From the days of FDR where he used it to destroy political opponents.
Up through JFK and LBJ.
Up through the Clinton years where folks like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh began enduring annual politically motivated audits,.
Up through the Obama years, when Lois Lerner and Koskinin IRS that met hundreds of times with Obama's White House to strategize targeting of Tea Party and religious conservative groups, to arguably rig the 2012 election. The WSJ editorial page said this after the 2012 election, not just me.

And now under Biden, an already Democrat-owned and weaponized IRS has full license to unleash terror on millions of Americans.

The Democrats are moving beyond "de-platforming" of their Republican opposition, and now going for a political death-blow to the head.