In the 60s and 70s, for a brief time, Americans experimented with freedom and rebellion, with movements for peace and civil rights, as well as women, gays, African Americans and Native American rights, until the Empire fought back with repression. The left never recovered. The increasing austerity meant that very few had the time to engage in political activity and the solidarity of the freedom struggles was turned into identity politics, which served to divide instead of unite.
But then, for a few years in the 2010s, social media allowed a kind of networking the world had never before known. People from all over the world used the platforms of the social media companies to share information and news with each other, horizontally, without running it through the filter of the major "news" corporation of the imperial world media.
Ever since radio, and then TV, were invented, the "news" was beamed into each house or car, individually, top down, with no way for each recipient to fact check the information, or to find out what other people thought it. There was no way to share our feelings, our skepticism or our ridicule, with anyone but the people around us, who probably would say "Shut up! I can't hear what they are saying".
But with Facebook and Twitter, we could post our take on whatever talking points the talking heads were spewing each day. We could counter it with facts from other sources, point out flaws in logic or common sense, and laugh at the memes that clever people immediately made when the "news" was particularly scorn-worthy. Google made it possible to easily find other information and YouTube made it possible for anyone to become a talking head, and intelligent and informed people gained large followings.
I think that social media was supported by our rulers, at first, as a way to monitor our reactions and finetune ways to make their propaganda more believable. They were shocked, shocked! when people turned it around and used it to overcome the propaganda and spread counter-information.
They began complaining about the freedom of the internet, increasing exponentially during the 2016 election season, when people in the US began compiling evidence of the stolen Democrat primaries, and posting it online, where others spread it to their friends.
People in high places began talking about "Fake News" and "undermining democracy". It is an impudent reversal of the truth for our rulers to tell us that access to information and lively debate about issues of importance are undermining democracy, when it has been understood for centuries that democracy is impossible without access to all facts and opinions, hashed out in the marketplace of ideas.
The Democrats were particularly incensed when Wikileaks published DNC emails, leaked to them by a DNC insider, Seth Rich, who was murdered shortly afterward.
Clearly, social media cannot actually overcome the power of the legacy imperial media, with its worldwide reach, still into each house and car, as well as public places. Even my gas station pump feeds me propaganda, as I wait for the gas to flow.
The imperial media, (as Chris Hedges points out in the meme beginning my post), told us that Russia was responsible for the leaked information, and the 24/7 Mighty Wurlitzer of propaganda managed to turn the vast majority of Americans' attention away from the contents of the leaks (which showed that the primaries were stolen from Bernie Sanders). More seriously, they used the fake news of Russiagate to push for censorship of social media, which started in early 2017, with the changing of Google algorithms to push mainstream sources and censor sources which offered countervailing information. Alternative news sources reported an immediate drop in traffic to their sites.
But that was not enough for our ruling overlords. (I didn't invent that term, I got it from the Onion, which shows how irreverent memes can be spread horizontally).
People still insisted on rebelling against the constant pro-war propaganda spread by the imperial media. The attack on Syria, for instance, was stymied by ordinary people sharing information from the citizens of Syria, as well as westerners who traveled to Syria and reported from there. The imperial reporters, who stayed in hotels in Lebanon and "reported" what press releases were given to them by NATO sources, were being undermined by citizens of the world sharing the truth horizontally, instantly and without censorship.
Furious, the ruling class stamped its feet and put out lists of Forbidden Truth Websites. The more compliant among the subjects obediently refused to even look at the heresy, but the rebellious deliberately checked out that they were told to avoid.
So, in 2018, the censors struck harder, and entire libraries of information were struck from YouTube, pages with millions of followers were removed from Facebook, and people were banned from Twitter.
When they came for Alex Jones, you knew they were serious. He had a vast following, which started even before social media. Taking down Alex was a major free speech test. It was like the Niemoller saying "First they came for the socialists...." Only the most hardcore First Amendment people spoke out.
Now Facebook is banning more and more people from posting for long periods of time. The purpose is to strike fear into the others, and encourage self-censorship.
They have tried, for over two years now, to stop people from using social media to spread news horizontally. They have warned us of dire consequences, harangued us about Fake News, told us it was our Moral Duty to Quit, dragged out "Hi, I'm a Facebook Founder, but now I have seen the Light, and I want you to stop", and still we persist.
They have disappeared whole pages, with millions of followers, and permanently banned influential voices.
What is the point of the capricious enforcement of Secret Rules? To spread fear and paranoia, no doubt.
This is Cointelpro Two, in action.
Conintel Pro used murder and imprisonment to silence people, but they also used suspicion and paranoia.
And that is what these bans do, sow suspicion and paranoia, as well as cause people to endlessly speculate about what magic words or phrases or ideas triggers the censorship.
Rather than spell it out, they encourage us to self-censor, trying to ward off the punishment arbitrarily handed out to skeptics and truth-spreaders.
Like knocking on wood, or throwing salt over our shoulders, or never, ever saying the words "It sure is quiet" in the ER, we avoid certain ideas, certain words and certain pushbacks to ruling class agendas and propaganda. But we have no way of knowing why some individuals are targeted and some are not, even if they post the same things. Therefore, I can only conclude that it is arbitrary, like snipers picking off random people in a crowd in Ukraine or Syria, in order to sow terror among the survivors.
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