Censors Everywhere We Look

Authored by Lori Weintz via The Brownstone Institute,

“It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be.”

O’Brien, Officer of the Inner Party                                                                                           
1984, by George Orwell, Berkley/Penguin p. 225 

“We’re letting you know that we’ve permanently removed [your] content…An external report flagged the content for illegal or policy violations. As a result, our legal content and policy standards team removed the content for the following reason: unwanted content.”

Google Groups email sent to me
June 27, 2024

On the morning of the June 27, 2024, Presidential debate between Trump and Biden, I noticed an announcement on a Substack post that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr was going to join the debate, even though CNN had excluded him based on technicalities. Powered by Elon Musk’s X, the Real Debate would be broadcast at the same time, with Kennedy giving his answers after Biden and Trump.

Despite CNN’s claim that he didn’t qualify for the Presidential debate, and the Democrat Party’s continual barriers to RFK’s name appearing on state ballots, he is running for President of the United States and has significant popular support. To every normal American, it’s obvious there is a benefit to hearing from all viable candidates running for President, regardless of one’s political leanings. In that spirit, I sent out a few texts and a notice in a Google Group, with a link to The Real Debate website.

Some commentary on the debate went back and forth in the Group. Thirty minutes after my first post, I received the following email from Google Groups stating that they had “permanently removed” my content because “an external report flagged the content for illegal content or policy violations.”

My post was removed “for the following reason: unwanted content,” and I was informed, “You may have the option to pursue your claims in court.”

I clicked on the link, to see what was deleted, which opened to the screen below notifying me that the content was unavailable:

For the first time, I was censored by Big Brother for sharing an idea, without even being informed what my thoughtcrime was. I’m not on social media, so I have only been informed by others of the rampant censorship surrounding posts about January 6, election integrity, and the official Covid response, among other taboo topics.

Five years ago, if you had been told you needed to watch what you said on social media and in public in the US, no one would have believed it. It would have seemed a tongue-in-cheek reference to Orwell’s 1984, or an absurd comparison to totalitarian states where freedom of speech is not a thing.

So which group are you in? The group that thinks freedom of speech is alive and well in the US, and that our Constitutional rights are firmly protected? Or are you in the group that has watched the erosion of every civil liberty and human right over the past five years as an increasingly totalitarian machine censors discussions about topics deemed “unwanted” by…Someone?

After being censored, I learned that in addition to monitoring private groups for “unwanted” speech, Google labeled emails and social media posts about The Real Debate as “dangerous,” and discouraged clicking on any links contained within, as shown below:

Who initiated the “external report” that prompted Google to surveil a private conversation and remove “unwanted content?”

Google isn’t about to answer that question, but the case Murthy v Missouri provides a possible answer.  As can be read in the June 26, 2024 ruling from the Supreme Court, during the pandemic social media companies were harangued by various White House officials and the US Surgeon General’s Office. The platforms were pressured to remove posts, and even delete whole accounts, that were deemed “unhelpful” by the government. Section 230 of the United States Code provides immunity to online platform services for content generated by their users. The White House threatened the removal of that protection if the social media platforms didn’t comply with Big Brother’s wishes. Obviously, the removal of Section 230 protection would potentially expose the platforms to financially crippling liability lawsuits.

Through the Twitter Files, various court cases, Freedom of Information Act documents, and Congressional hearings, it has come to light that there are many organizations monitoring your online posts, your searches, and as evidenced by my own experience, even your private email correspondence. Are you good with that?

In October 2011, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia testified in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Scalia explained that what sets America apart from all other nations, is not the Bill of Rights, noting that “Every Banana Republic, and every president for life (dictator) has a Bill of Rights.” Justice Scalia said what sets the US apart from all other countries is a Constitution that prevents the centralization of power in one person or in one party. Without that, a Bill of Rights is nothing more than a “parchment guarantee,” meaning, no better than the paper it was written on. (This particular line of thought starts at about the 18-minute mark in the video.)

The Constitution has carried us this far, but there has been a gradual and insidious merging of government power. Something the Founding Fathers did not foresee was the rise of the Bureaucratic State. We live in a time when unelected heads of Federal and state agencies wield enormous power and money, often for decades, while elected officials come and go.

Somehow, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the whole Constitutional system of checks and balances on power was largely disregarded. All of a sudden, a network of 3-letter agencies was calling the shots. The overreaching Executive branch called for a nationwide lockdown, and later for vaccine mandates. CISA decided if your job was essential or not. The CDC decided whether or not landlords could evict tenants. The FDA inserted itself between doctors and their patients, telling doctors not to use certain already approved meds to treat Covid, and pharmacists not to fill certain prescriptions. OSHA required you to wear a mask on public transportation and airplanes. NIH agencies and health departments shut down churches, schools, businesses, and civic, cultural, and sports clubs. They issued directives on how many people could gather in your home, and whether or not you could be with loved ones in hospitals and care centers. The NSC directed a Covid response that was militant, and unconcerned with individual rights.

It went on and on and on, as we were bullied, browbeaten, and manipulated by Executive branch bureaucrats and other unelected officials inserting themselves into every aspect of our lives. The Judiciary and Legislative branches largely stood by or even supported what was happening.

Unfortunately, most people complied. With regard to information sharing, the established Legacy media mainly functioned as a mouthpiece of the government. Dissenting voices moved to social media and alternative news platforms. This was unacceptable to a voracious government that must control the official narrative, and access to information. We can’t have any of that nasty “misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation” going around. That might harm you. Big Brother will let you know what you need to know.

White House officials and the US Surgeon General’s Office threatened and coerced social media platforms to remove information deemed “unhelpful,” even if it was factually true. Dangling Section 230 over their heads, the White House demanded action. The social media platforms learned to obey. Individuals with “strikes” against them learned to self-censor. 

In the Murthy v Missouri ruling on July 26, 2024, the Supreme Court reversed (6-3) an injunction imposed by a lower court that prevented the government from contacting social media companies about the content on their platforms. The majority opinion stated that the plaintiffs “do not point to any specific instance of content moderation that caused them identifiable harm.” The Court invoked a legal term, “standing,” to say that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to retain the injunction. Basically the Supreme Court said, “Well, yeah, the White House did pressure social media companies to remove content, but the platforms might have taken that action anyway, so go ahead and ‘abridge the freedom of speech, and of the press’ for now, White House.”

In the dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito stated that there was more than sufficient evidence to establish standing, which evidence he then cited for some 30 pages. It’s not hard to understand and is worth your time to read. Justice Alito wrote:

This evidence was more than sufficient to establish Hines’s standing to sue…and consequently, we are obligated to tackle the free speech issue that the case presents. The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think…It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so. Officials who read today’s decision…will get the message. If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by.  That is not a message this Court should send. (p. 38) (emphasis added)

Justice Alito also wrote, “This case involves what the District Court termed ‘a far reaching and widespread censorship campaign’ conducted by high-ranking federal officials against Americans who expressed certain disfavored views about COVID-19 on social media…If the lower courts’ assessment of the voluminous record is correct, this is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years.” (p. 36)

So let’s see. On June 26, 2024 the Supreme Court said the Government could keep pressuring social media companies until Murthy v Missouri and other cases that are laboriously and expensively working their way through the courts are fully heard and settled.

The next day, Google Groups removed my post about the upcoming Presidential debate, in which I jokingly asked if anyone wanted to bet on whether or not Biden would be fed answers through some type of electronic/neural device. That evening we saw an age-riddled, confused, doddery, tired old man try to hold his own in a Presidential debate. But the White House had been saying for days that all those videos of Pres. Biden stumbling and stammering were just “cheap fakes.” The day after the debate, at a White House press event, Biden’s press secretary claimed his poor performance was due to a cold.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

 1984, by George Orwell (p.71)

Freedom of speech serves many valuable purposes, but its most important role is protection of speech that is essential to democratic self-government, and speech that advances humanity’s store of knowledge, thought, and expression in fields such as science, medicine, history, the social sciences, philosophy, and the arts.

Justice Samuel Alito
Dissenting opinion Murthy v Missouri
June 26, 2024

Justice Alito wrote in his Murthy v Missouri dissenting opinion, the “White House threats did not come with expiration dates…Facebook did not feel free to chart its own course…rather, the platform had promised to continue reporting to the White House and remain responsive to its concerns for as long as the officials requested.” (p. 35)

It could very well be that my words, typed into a private email exchange, were gathered by AI, and not some lurking agent. But either way, they were gathered. It would appear that these “Officials,” who generate “external reports,” still have “concerns.”

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Republished from the author’s Substack