FREE SPEECH BS cancel gag silence
11 24 mebbe redumbdent
note several related/similar
jdv and rogan
see attempts to stop disinfo crc bs
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an ah 10 25
During former President Joe Biden's four years in the White House, "Real Time" host Bill Maher and "The View's" Sunny Hostin had some major disagreements on "wokeness" and "cancel culture."
Maher, who is a scathing critic of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement but also has an intense disdain for "political correctness," attacked "wokeness" and "cancel culture" as detrimental to the left and a departure from traditional liberalism. But Hostin objected to Maher using the word "woke," which originated in the African-American community, in a negative way and argued that "cancel culture" was really "consequence culture."
Following the fatal shooting of Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, many MAGA Republicans argued that retaliation against people who criticized Kirk wasn't "cancel culture," but rather, "consequence culture" — the same term liberal Hostin had used during the Biden years.
Quite a few Trump critics, both Democrats and right-wing Never Trump conservatives, are accusing Republicans of hypocritically promoting the type of "cancel culture" they accused liberals and progressives of. But The New Republic's Liza Featherstone, in an article published on October 24, stresses that the Trump Administration's assault on free speech is much worse than the "cancel culture" that came from the left in the past.
"The New York Times reported that in seeking to punish offensive speech, Republicans were 'trying to rebrand a practice they once maligned,'" Featherstone explains. "Former President Barack Obama made a similar comparison after Jimmy Kimmel was suspended amid the Trump Administration's threats to retaliate against media outlets. 'After years of complaining about cancel culture,' Obama wrote on X, 'the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level.'"
Featherstone continues, "Obama is right that the Trump Administration's attacks are 'new and dangerous,' but where he’s wrong — perhaps in a clumsy attempt to be evenhanded — is that they don't even belong in the same conversation as 'cancel culture.' This is organized state repression, veering crassly and thuggishly into a reign of terror."
Featherstone describes "cancel culture" of the past as "the prosecutorial and puritanical style of liberalism that became popular on the internet during the second half of the Obama Administration and intensified during Trump's first term."
"It was a bad vibe," Featherstone recalls. "Discursive mistakes — insensitive jokes, ill-conceived tweets — could attract a mob of internet denunciation. The term could be overused, at times seeming to imply that people were out of line in criticizing celebrities and other powerful people for abusive behavior. But at its worst, cancel culture undermined solidarities, encouraged the bullying of some vulnerable people, and drove others to the right. Even worse, some of its targets lost their livelihoods."
Featherstone continues, "As misguided as 'cancel culture' was, though, that’s not what Trump and his minions are up to today…. 'Cancel culture' never involved the machinery of the federal government, yet Trump's defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is banning journalists from the Pentagon who won't agree to government-imposed restrictions on their reporting, and has deemed these new rules — rejected by every legitimate news outlet — necessary to regulate a 'very disruptive' press. Speaking of the Pentagon, Hegseth is also presiding over McCarthyite investigations within the agency to root out employees who aren't fans of Charlie Kirk. Then there is the misuse of law enforcement powers to punish anti-Trump public figures."
Featherstone emphasizes that while "it's not outlandish to suggest that aspects of left 'cancel culture' contributed to what we're seeing today," Trump's war on the First Amendment is considerably more dangerous.
"Conservatives are now using the liberal term 'consequence culture' to argue that irresponsible speech should have dire consequences for offenders' lives," Featherstone warns. "But to equate Trump’s current repression with 'cancel culture' is to trivialize it. While cancel culture was intolerant and unpleasant, Trump's policies are making complaints about it seem quaint."
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AN 10 25
In right-wing media, the term "woke" is often used to attack political opponents of the left. And some people who vote Democrat have a negative view of "wokeness" as well, including "Real Time" host Bill Maher and veteran Democratic strategist James Carville.
When CNN's Jake Tapper asked Maher to define "woke," he
and argued that it is contrary to the spirit of traditional liberalism. The "woke," Maher complained, are so obsessed with language policing that traditional liberal causes fall by the wayside.
Maher, however, is also a scathing critic of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, and often attacks the far right for language policing and "cancel culture" as well.
In a blistering video posted by the New York Times on October 19, Stephanie Shen and Alexander Stockton make the same argument, accusing MAGA Republicans and the Trump Administration of using the same "woke" tactics they accuse the left of.
"The truth is: wokeness is actually alive and well," Shein argues in the video. "Now, wokeness just wears a MAGA hat. This is the woke right. They're now going around policing people's language. They've limited what federal agencies are allowed to mention in their documents, such as these dangerous words."
The "dangerous words" that the video mentions range from "LGBTQ" to "socioeconomic" to "underprivileged." And Shein notes that journalists who use "Gulf of Mexico" rather than "Gulf of America" are "getting their credentials rescinded because the woke right loves telling people what to say."
The video also accuses MAGA Republicans of practicing the very "cancel culture" they claim to oppose and makes that point by showing clips of Vice President JD Vance and Fox News host Jesse Watters calling for government retaliation against anyone who criticizes the late MAGA activist Charlie Kirk.
Shein warns, "So, they're protecting free speech by revoking the visas of numerous international students…. If you do commit any crimes the language police deems a threat to society, like criticizing anything MAGA, they will try to cancel you. And it's not just the lefty celebrities. They've canceled respected four-star Gen. Mark Milley by removing his portrait from the Pentagon."
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an 10 25
Politico reports Australia’s highest court has refused to grant MAGA influencer Candace Owens a visa, claiming she failed a “character test” according to that nation’s standards.
The Australian Constitution does not explicitly protect free speech, reports Politico, and High Court Justices Stephen Gageler, Michelle Gordon and Robert Beech-Jones jointly ruled that implied freedom of political communication “is not a ‘personal right,’ is not unlimited and is not absolute.”
In its unanimous decision, the court added that Australia’s Migration Act, which covers temporary and permanent visas, protects the Australian community from visitors who might “stir up or encourage dissension or strife on political matters.”
“Ms Owens’ … submissions should be emphatically rejected,” High Court Justice James Edelman said in a separate judgment.
Owens, who has claimed the wife of French leader Emmanuel Macron is a man, among other assertions, applied for a visa to enter Australia last year as part of a speaking tour. However, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke rejected her application through the character requirements clause of the country’s Migration Act.
Owens petitioned the country’s High Court to reverse Burke’s rejection, arguing that Burke’s determination went against the Australian constitution.
Politico reports that Australia’s Department of Home Affairs defines “good character” as showing “enduring moral qualities of a person.” And in his decision, Burke said Owens had made “extremist and inflammatory comments towards Muslim, Black, Jewish and LGBTQIA+ communities which generate controversy and hatred.”
“In the current environment where the Australian community is experiencing heightened community tensions, as per the advice of Australia’s security apparatus, I find that there is a risk that [Owens’] controversial views will amplify grievances among communities and lead to increased hostility and violent or radical action,” Burke said, according to Politico.
Read the full Politico report at this link.
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crc is root of bs?
Reid Hoffman and Disinformation -Capital Research Center
November 15, 2021
reid Hoffman and Disinformation
Michael Watson on Newsmax
Jenn Pellegrino interviews Michael Watson on Newsmax on November 3, 2021.
November 15, 2021
Good Information is a project backed by big liberal donors, including George Soros and Reid Hoffman. Hoffman has a history of Democratic political causes and disinformation efforts, including American Emergent Technologies, which ran a fake news campaign modeled on tactics Russian government cutouts allegedly used during the 2016 presidential election. Good Information looks like another disinformation project in the Left’s war on the free speech rights of conservatives.
See also:
- “Onetime Disinformation Donors Back Left-Wing Propaganda Targeting Disinformation” by Michael Watson, October 21, 2021.
Tags: disinformation, George Soros, Good Information, Reid Hoffman
Michael is Research Director for Capital Research Center and serves as the managing editor for InfluenceWatch. A graduate of the College of William and Mary, he previously worked for a…
ref
oct 2021
on Tuesday, political media outlet Axios reported on the latest project of controversial Democratic operative Tara McGowan, best known as head of the ACRONYM network of Democratic-aligned political committees and political investment vehicles including Shadow, which created the phone-voting application that crashed during the Iowa Democratic Party presidential nominating caucuses in 2020. McGowan will head Good Information, a nominally for-profit “public benefit corporation” venture “to fund and scale businesses that cut through echo chambers with fact-based information” and “to invest in local news companies.” The venture supersedes an earlier reported effort to create a nonprofit along the same lines.
Backers
Axios’s reporting indicates that McGowan’s project will be funded by major Democratic donors including George Soros. That is not surprising, but another name said to be funding this “anti-disinformation” effort should raise eyebrows because he has supported purveyors of disinformation in the past: Reid Hoffman, billionaire founder of LinkedIn.
Since 2016, Hoffman has provided substantial funding to Democratic political causes, among them McGowan’s ACRONYM, through his Investing in US vehicle. But one of those causes should give the lie to Hoffman’s claims of concern about disinformation. Investing in US funded American Emergent Technologies, one of a handful of Democratic groups that allegedly ran a literal fake news campaign modeled on the tactics Russian government cutouts allegedly used to influence the 2016 presidential election in order to defeat a Republican candidate in an Alabama race.
While Hoffman denies having known that American Emergent Technologies was engaging in a disinformation operation, the fact that he funded a group that would consider doing such a thing should be a giant red flag against Good Information’s and McGowan’s claim that they will provide “fact-based information.”
Courier, New
As part of the creation of Good Information, the group is acquiring McGowan’s former liberal agitprop network, Courier Newsroom. Courier Newsroom was a front for ACRONYM, operating what the left-leaning OpenSecrets called “a network of websites emulating progressive local news outlets. Courier has faced scrutiny for exploiting the collapse of local journalism to spread ‘hyperlocal partisan propaganda.’” As CRC president Scott Walter described:
Courier’s Wisconsin site UpNorthNews can lightly rewrite a Democratic candidate’s press release, and then the real money kicks in as the disinfo machine advertises the fake news story across multiple social media sites, in hopes of swaying Badger State voters who assume they’re reading news, not a political ad. Tobias Hoonhout reported for National Review on a number of such efforts and found that “at least 74 percent of the group’s spending has been allocated to boosting vulnerable Democrats competing in 14 competitive House races.”
McGowan reportedly told Axios that Good Information “could make investments in entities across the political spectrum,” citing Bill Kristol’s The Bulwark, which I recently characterized as a repository of liberal cable-news-contributing former Republicans who seemingly exist solely to support whatever the liberalism of the moment demands, as “as an example of the type of center-right news outlet [Good Information] could fund.”
The Greater “Disinformation” Trojan Horse
Billionaire liberals who have backed disinformation in the past supporting a “efforts that tackle disinformation” is not new. In his piece describing how Courier false-flags national Democratic press releases as “local news,” Walter described the “Commission on Information Disorder,” the Aspen Institute project that placed PACRONYM donor Kathryn Murdoch and Katie Couric in charge of “combating America’s urgent mis- and disinformation challenge.” Couric recently admitted omitting liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s interview comments critical of Colin Kaepernick’s anti-national anthem protests.
Also targeting supposed “disinformation” is Frances Haugen, the “Facebook Whistleblower.” In fact, her campaign has all the hallmarks not of whistleblowing but of political public relations: *Politico*reported that Pierre Omidyar (a notable funder of Kristol’s network of anti-Trump and anti-conservatism advocacy groups) funded Whistleblower Aid and Center for Humane Technology, both nonprofits working with Haugen. Center for Human Technology’s public relations flack is Bill Burton, late of the Obama White House. Haugen appeared on Burton’s podcast. Larry Lessig—a Harvard academic, erstwhile Democratic politician, and critic of the legal decisions that undergird conservatives’ organized political advocacy—has provided Haugen with legal and communications work pro bono.
Taken together, it looks like McGowan, Hoffman, and Soros’s latest effort for “Good Information” over “disinformation” is yet another front in the Left’s war on conservative speech rights.
It probably is exactly what it looks like.
Tags: ACRONYM, Center for Humane Technology, Commission on Information Disorder, Courier Newsroom, disinformation, election integrity, Frances Haugen, George Soros, Good Information, Investing in US, Iowa, Kathryn Murdoch, Katie Couric, PACRONYM, Reid Hoffman, Whistleblower Aid
//
Deception & Misdirection
Transgender medical symposium showcases radical quackery
by Parker Thayer on October 7, 2025
Deception & Misdirection
The Southern Poverty Law Center is biased — and extraordinarily wealthy
by Robert Stilson on September 22, 2025
Deception & Misdirection
The top financiers of the U.S. Intifada
by Ryan Mauro on September 16, 2025
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AN 7? 25
'Banning people for speech': US State Dept. revokes English punk duo’s visa after Glastonbury chant
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AN 7 25
Progressive firebrand and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan recently debated "20 far-right Republicans" as part of the Jubilee series "Surrounded." One of them went way beyond identifying as conservative and admitted to being an outright "fascist."
When Hasan asked Connor, who goes by "Pinesap" online, if he considered himself a fascist, he replied, "Yeah, I am."
Connor also told Hasan he supports "autocracy" and said, "I, frankly, don't care being called a Nazi at all."
READ MORE:This White House lie shows they know Trump is in trouble
According to the Daily Beast's Ewan Palmer, Connor says he was fired from his job after publicly making those statements and "has launched a fundraising page on GiveSendGo, a Christian crowdfunding site" that has "faced criticism for hosting extremist causes."
On his GiveSendGo page, Connor writes, "I'm raising money as an emergency fund and for other expenses while I look for a new job. Unfortunately, voicing fully legal traditional right-wing political views results in real consequences. This is cancel culture and political discrimination on full display."
Connor's fundraising campaign is drawing a lot of responses on X, formerly Twitter.
Attorney Ari Cohn wrote, "The pathetic grifty crybabyness of 'I said I am a fascist and lost my job, give me money' is just wild. So f—————— soft. Have fun not getting any insurance/benefits from the government because you're too busy begging for handouts instead of applying for a new job, loser."
READ MORE:The implications of Rupert Murdoch toppling Donald Trump are head-spinning
X user Chris America mockingly posted, "OPer: I was fired for going on Jubilee and saying that I was a facist! My first amendment rights! Business: Thanks to the same GOP, we can fire you for any reason to protect ourselves. GOPer: The woke people did this to me! I need to raise money now! Grift. Grift. Grift."
X user Keith Edwards tweeted, "The literal fascist who got exposed on Jubilee has been fired from his job. Love that for him."
Edwards also wrote, "he doesn't believe in the First Amendment, so."
Another user Stanislav Birko posted, "This loser coming out as fascist on television thanks to Hasan and then raising more than 20 grand (seemingly in much less than a day) due to getting fired perfectly encapsulates the political moment we are living in."
X user Kennedy Pivnick wrote, "Ok but the actual answer is that unless he worked for the government or a company running a company town, no it isn't First Amendment stuff."
Similarly, Rob Braun posted, "First Amendment protects your right to free speech, he won’t be arrested or jailed. But most states are at will employment and can fire you for any reason they see fit."
READ MORE:'Frantic' Karoline Leavitt suggests new scapegoat to take the fall for Trump’s Epstein mess
*Watch the Mehdi Hasan video below or at this link.
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ny post
wASHINGTON — “Twitter Files” journalist Matt Taibbi sparred with former President Joe Biden’s onetime “disinformation czar” Nina Jankowicz during a Tuesday hearing about government censorship on Capitol Hill, ripping the past administration’s content moderation efforts for having undermined Americans’ free speech.
The House Foreign Affairs South and Central Asia Subcommittee heard testimony from both about the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), which was set up under former President Barack Obama to counter foreign disinformation and misinformation — but had begun targeting US social media users under Biden.
“GEC officials were largely concerned with domestic, English-language accounts — people with no ties to terror groups or relationships with adversary nations like Iran, China or Russia,” Taibbi said about his extensive review of internal Twitter, now X, records in 2023.
“The American government has no role in protecting citizens from speech,” he went on. “The whole idea of the system that was designed by Jefferson and Madison is that the American people view each other as adults who are capable of sorting out the truth for themselves.
“They do not need a nanny state or a guardian or a law enforcement agency to decide for them what’s truth,” he concluded.
“We don’t need a truth squad — and that’s exactly what GEC was designed for.”
Taibbi sparred with former President Joe Biden’s onetime “disinformation czar” Nina Jankowicz during a Tuesday hearing about government censorship on Capitol Hill.house.gov
The “Twitter Files” unearthed emails disclosing an immense pressure campaign to censor The Post’s bombshell scoop on Hunter Biden’s emails introducing his father to foreign business patrons and the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origins, which was later corroborated as the most likely explanation for the pandemic by Joe Biden’s FBI, Energy Department and CIA.
Lower federal courts slapped the Biden administration with injunctions for having pressured Facebook and other social media companies into throttling engagement or removing posts on the controversial subjects, but the US Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, said the plaintiffs lacked standing.
Benjamin Weingarten, an investigative journalist and columnist at RealClearPolitics, noted that the federal district court judge who first heard the case called it “arguably the most massive attack on free speech in US history.”
“The so-called Censorship Industrial Complex is a fiction that has not only had profound impacts on my life and safety but on our national security,” Nina Jankowicz said.house.gov
Having dubbed the feds’ effort “digital McCarthyism” during a March 2023 congressional hearing, the Racket News founder now said he had delved back into the “Twitter Files” and found more evidence of big tech content moderation.house.gov
“Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had that same view. Three Supreme Court justices did as well,” Weingarten told members of the subcommittee. “And while it’s been dismissed, that case, the fact of the matter is that the Supreme Court specifically did not rule on the underlying merits — the thousands of pages of discovery which blew the lid open on this entire regime.”
Having dubbed the feds’ effort “digital McCarthyism” during a March 2023 congressional hearing, the Racket News founder now said he had delved back into the “Twitter Files” and found more evidence of big tech content moderators directly engaging with the government-led campaign against disinfo.
In a Feb. 4, 2020, email, one of the Twitter moderators noted that the GEC seeding media reports about Russian influence driving Sen. Bernie Sanders’ popularity during the Democratic primary was “making me worry a little about how good-faith these players will be through the press into 2020.”
:{:{“The idea behind GEC in particular was finding a way to propagandize American citizens and encourage acceptance of official policy, the way we’ve always done to foreign populations,” the “Twitter Files” scribe testified}:
.CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images}:
Another earlier in the exchange claimed GEC staffers were pushing “sensationalist claims about epidemics of foreign bots.”
“Although many of the most controversial stories about the GEC involve their funding of commercial media-scoring operations that down-ranked conservative news outlets, I also observed the GEC pressuring Twitter about socialist accounts, left-leaning accounts, and independents, as well as conservatives,” Taibbi said.
“They weren’t looking for misinformation and disinformation,” he added. “They were looking for orthodoxy and unorthodoxy, obedience and disobedience. The idea behind GEC in particular was finding a way to propagandize American citizens and encourage acceptance of official policy, the way we’ve always done to foreign populations.”
:{Republican critics have dubbed Jankowicz Biden’s “disinformation czar” and frequently derided her efforts as trying to police Americans’ social media posts.
:
Subcommittee chairman Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) concurred that as vice chairman of the House finance panel, he often sees government agencies using their regulatory pressure as a “cudgel.”house.gov
Jankowicz, who was tapped but later pulled from running a Disinformation Board under Biden, dismissed the entire “premise of this hearing” in her opening statement. She had called October 2020 reports on Hunter’s laptop a “Russian influence op.”
“The so-called Censorship Industrial Complex is a fiction that has not only had profound impacts on my life and safety but on our national security,” she said. “More alarmingly, this fiction is itself suppressing speech and stymying critical research that protects our country.”
The founder of the misinfo-targeting American Sunlight Project then went a step further and accused the Trump administration of having committed “far more egregious violations of our Constitution” in recent weeks than “the imagined actions of the Biden administration.”
Republican critics have dubbed her Biden’s “disinformation czar” and frequently derided her efforts as trying to police Americans’ social media posts.
The House Foreign Affairs subcommittee also needled her for posting a TikTok video singing a la Mary Poppins about her campaign.
Taibbi countered that even aside from GEC’s efforts, there were further transgressions by Biden’s FBI and White House — the latter of which had a former New York Times reporter kicked off Twitter.
Subcommittee chairman Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) concurred, saying that as vice chairman of the House finance panel he often sees government agencies using their regulatory pressure as a “cudgel.”
GEC, which was closed down, reportedly went through a “rebranding” effort inside the State Department during the final days of Biden’s term.
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The Censorship-Industrial Complex | House Judiciary Committee Republicans
YT link 
House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. ET. The hearing, "The Censorship-Industrial Complex," will examine the Committee's role in uncovering the Biden-Harris Administration's unconstitutional censorship campaign and will examine upcoming threats to free speech including from AI and foreign governments.
WITNESSES:
- Matt Taibbi, Twitter Files journalist; author; Founder, Racket News
- Michael Shellenberger, Twitter Files journalist; CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech, University of Austin; Founder, Public News
- Rupa Subramanya, Canada-based journalist, The Free Press
- Craig Aaron, President and Co-CEO,Free Press Action
Subcommittees
Committee on the Judiciary (119th Congress)
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- Mr. Matt TaibbiTwitter Files journalist and author,Taibbi Testimony [PDF 131KB]Taibbi Truth in Testimony [PDF 142KB]
- Mr. Michael ShellenbergerTwitter Files journalist, author, and environmentalist,Shellenberger Bio [PDF 125KB]Shellenberger Testimony [PDF 38KB]Shellenberger Truth in Testimony [PDF 425KB]
- Ms. Rupa SubramanyaCanada-based journalist, The Free PressSubramanya Bio [PDF 13KB]Subramanya Testimony [PDF 70KB]Subramanya Truth in Testimony [PDF 343KB]
- Ms. Olivia TroyeFormer Homeland Security & Counterterrorism Advisor, Office of Vice President PenceTroye Bio [PDF 92KB]Troye Testimony [PDF 61KB]Troye Truth in Testimony [PDF 313KB]
Supporting Documentation
- An article titled, “U.S. Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Order in Missouri Social Media Lawsuit”, submitted for the Record by Ms. Garcia of TX [PDF 3MB]
- Letter to the CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, and to the owner of X, Elon Musk, signed by multiple members of Congress, submitted for the Record by Mr. Goldman of NY [PDF 695KB]
- An article titled, “CTIL Files #1: US and UK Military Contractors Created Sweeping Plan for Global Censorship in 2018, new documents show”, submitted for the Record by Mr. Massie of KY [PDF 1MB]
- An article titled, “FBI and DHS Directors Mislead Congress about Censorship”, submitted for the Record by Mr. Steube of FL [PDF 641KB]
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ggl 4 25
Testimony by Matt Taibbi on Censorship and Free Speech
House.gov
https://docs.house.gov › meetings › HHRG-119-J...](https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20250212/117881/HHRG-119-JU00-Wstate-TaibbiM-20250212-U2.pdf)
Feb 12, 2025 — Two years ago, when Michael and I first testified, Committee Democrats called us “so-called journalists,” suggested we were bought-off ...
3 pages
[### The Censorship-Industrial Complex
House Judiciary Committee Republicans | (.gov)
http://judiciary.house.gov › committee-activity › hearings](http://judiciary.house.gov/committee-activity/hearings/censorship-industrial-complex)
Feb 12, 2025 — The hearing, "The Censorship-Industrial Complex," will examine the Committee's role in uncovering the Biden-Harris Administration's unconstitutional censorship ...
[### 'Twitter Files' journalist Matt Taibbi spars with Biden's ...
New York Post
https://nypost.com › 2025/04/01 › us-news › twitter-file...](https://nypost.com/2025/04/01/us-news/twitter-files-journalist-matt-taibbi-spars-with-bidens-disinfo-czar-in-censorship-hearing/)
3 days ago — 'Twitter Files' journalist Matt Taibbi spars with Biden's disinfo czar in censorship hearing: 'We don't need a truth squad'. By. Josh ...
[### Hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government
Congress.gov
https://www.congress.gov › event › house-event](https://www.congress.gov/event/118th-congress/house-event/116615)
Witnesses ; Mr. Matt Taibbi Twitter Files journalist and author, Taibbi Testimony [PDF 131KB] ; Mr. Michael Shellenberger Twitter Files journalist, author, and ...
[### A Response to a Member of Congress - by Matt Taibbi
Racket News | Matt Taibbi
https://www.racket.news › a-response-to-a-member-of-c...](https://www.racket.news/p/a-response-to-a-member-of-congress)
23 hours ago — Sydney Kamlager-Dove, Democrat of California, accused me of serial sex offenses in a public hearing, then said my lack of response was "telling.
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an 4 25
Trump criticized on Thursday a court ruling against Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's far-right, who was found guilty of embezzling millions of euros from the European Parliament.
“The Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen is another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech, and censor their Political Opponent, this time going to so far as to put that Opponent in prison,” Trump wrote in a late-night post on his social platform Truth Social.
“It is the same ‘playbook’ that was used against me by a group of Lunatics and Losers,” the president added.
READ MORE: The 'honeymoon might be over': Here’s why Trump 2.0 is flailing
Le Pen was sentenced to four years in prison, with two years suspended, and is also facing a five-year ban on holding office, which takes effect immediately. This restriction would bar her from running in the 2027 presidential election in France, an election she was expected to win, unless she succeeds in appealing her conviction.
Trump's statement about the French politician's case came the same day global stock markets plummeted in response to his decision to impose a series of sweeping global tariffs.
“I don’t know Marine Le Pen, but do appreciate how hard she worked for so many years,” Trump further said in his post, crediting the leader for suffering losses, but continuing her politics.
"And now, just before what would be a Big Victory, they get her on a minor charge that she probably knew nothing about—Sounds like a ‘bookkeeping’ error to me," he added.
The court determined that Le Pen and around twenty other co-defendants exploited the European Parliament as a source of income, misappropriating almost $5 million in parliamentary funds. This misuse allegedly took place over an 11-year span during a time when her party’s finances were critically low.
Tech billionaire and Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk endorsed the president's post about Le Pen's case on his own social platform X.
"Free Le Pen!" he wrote, along with a screenshot of Trump's Truth Social post.
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no lnx
alternet
Trump's Cabinet of horrors exposes his totalitarian drift
President Donald Trump and former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard embrace, joined by Tucker Carlson on stage at a campaign event sponsored by conservative group Turning Point USA, in Duluth, Georgia, U.S., October 23, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Donald Trump nominated an alleged rapist and sex trafficker to be attorney general. He picked a Russian asset to be director of national intelligence. He chose a religious fanatic and Kremlin stooge to be secretary of defense. And for secretary of health and human resources, he selected an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who once had a literal brain worm, and who habitually takes (“legal”) steroids to maintain, at the age of 70, the appearance of a physique of a man half his age.
There are the obvious things to say about this motley crew. Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and Robert F Kennedy Jr are not qualified, respectively, to lead the agencies they have been chosen to lead. None has managed anything larger than an office. None has the expertise required. Gaetz has never worked in law enforcement, Gabbard in intelligence, Hegseth in military leadership or Kennedy in public health. Their only qualification is their loyalty to the man who picked them, and how they look to him when they are on television.
Right now, the discussion seems to be concentrated on the Senate Republicans, who will have majority control of that chamber in January. They will be responsible ultimately for vetting Trump’s cabinet picks. The question is whether they will find the courage to restrain the president-elect or roll over, either by approving them or by letting Trump have what he wants through recess appointments.
Among liberals, the discussion seems to be limited to the absurdities each of these people brings to governance as well as the dangers they pose. “Yes, shake your head at the seeming absurdity of these picks,” wrote MSNBC’s Jen Psaki. “But don’t stop there. These choices aren’t just controversial; they require us to stay vigilant about how each potential new Cabinet member could negatively affect our lives.”
But I think we’re missing the bigger picture. These nominations signal the totalitarian drift that’s coming to Washington and the country. Yes, that’s right. No, I’m not exaggerating. It’s time to start using that word.
Totalitarianism seeks dominion over the individual to the point where individuality is erased. That’s what happened to the Republican Party. Individuals have looked the same, talked the same, acted the same and thought the same for a long time. (The men sometimes literally dress the same as Donald Trump, with a blue suit, a long red tie.) After the election, however, Republican behavior has finally been totalized.
As one GOP congressman said, Trump “is the leader of our party. … His goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it. All of it. Every single word. If Donald Trump says jump three feet high and scratch your head, we all jump three feet high and scratch our heads.”
The objective is forcing the rest of America to conform the way the Republican Party has conformed. This can be seen in the anger expressed by some magas. It wasn’t enough to win. Losers must now shut up and get in line, too. As a Trump attorney said recently: “You’ve got to own when you lose and say: this is America. We have to stand behind President Trump.” Senate Republicans are likely to approve his picks, no matter how bad, because the losers must be taught a lesson.
Totalitarianism also seeks to dominate the individual’s mind by going to war against facts, reason, science and any useful meaning of the word “proof.” In normal times, pre-Trump, we could expect in the Senate a spirited debate over a president-elect’s cabinet nominations, beginning with whether they’re qualified. Such debate is going to be impossible now, because “being qualified” is a meaningless term.
It is a stone-cold fact that Kennedy’s views on vaccines are not only insane, but in direct opposition to the moral principles of public health. But that fact won’t be accepted as fact. It will be taken as evidence of Trump’s enemies trying to sabotage his presidency. And there’s no way to break through this conspiracist mindset, as Lindsay Beyerstein calls it. It is impervious, she said. “When scientists or the government or journalists come forward with evidence that vaccines save millions of lives and prevent untold suffering, the conspiracist answer is: Well, that’s what conspirators to kill our children would say.”
Because there’s no empirical anchor to conspiratorial thinking, totalitarians can make reality into whatever they want. Up is down, left is right – or in the words of the totalitarian regime in George Orwell’s 1984: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
Therefore, the Republicans are likely to see nothing wrong with his picks. His nominee for the law is anti-law. His nominee for national intelligence is anti-intelligence. His nominee for national defense is anti-defense. His nominee for science is anti-science. But there’s no dissonance in the world of conspiratorial thinking. Up is the new down, and the only measure of morality is whether it pleases the dear leader.
The drift toward conformity and away from individualism isn’t limited to the GOP. Thanks to the rightwing media apparatus, which is global in scale, totalizing groupthink has also been growing in the culture at large. The trick is that it comes disguised as subversive individualism.
During his interview with Trump, popular podcaster Joe Rogan said “the rebels are Republicans now. They’re like, you want to be a rebel? You want to be punk rock? You want to, like, buck the system? You’re a conservative now. That's how crazy. And then the liberals are now pro-silencing criticism. They’re pro-censorship online. They’re talking about regulating free speech and regulating the First Amendment.”
If you are listening to liberals directly, you know there are no such efforts. But if you are listening the rightwing media apparatus, or if you just feel the conspiratorial ambiance that it generates, it’s possible to cast yourself as a man who’s bucking the system, as if the party of billionaires is the party of the common man, as if people who look the same, talk the same, act the same and think the same are punk rock.
But the strongest evidence of totalitarian drift is the plain awfulness of Trump’s cabinet picks. They have not earned the right to be called on. They haven’t studied or mastered their disciplines. They haven’t built reputations among leaders, peers and professionals in their fields. They haven’t overcome adversity and hardship. They haven’t reached high and achieved. They certainly haven’t followed the road toward the American dream, which asks us to work hard and play by the rules.
And that’s the point. Totalitarians fear individual excellence, first because they can’t understand it, and second because excellence threatens their goal of totalizing conformity. They are not humble enough to admit that they are mediocre people but they are arrogant enough to believe they can force the rest of us down to their level.
With this cabinet, Trump can pick up where his second campaign left off, which is movement toward “the consistent persecution of every higher form of intellectual activity …” as Hannah Arendt once wrote.
“Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable,” she said. “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty” (my italics).
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