What Is Fascism? Biden Admin and Amazon Explain (+ ChatGPT)

Published May 8, 2026May 8, 2026 by Papa Giorgio

ORIGINALLY POSTED FEBRUARY 2024, UPDATED TODAY

The NATIONAL REVIEW article Dennis Prager is reading from can be found here: “Biden White House Pressured Amazon to Censor Vaccine-Skeptical Books, Internal Emails Reveal” The PRAGER U video mentioned (and the excerpt I included) can be found here: “Big Business & Big Brother”. And the other THOMAS SOWELL video is via this YouTube Channel. Must read JIM JORDAN’S Twitter thread as well.

How biased are these pushes? Mollie Hemingway and Laura Ingraham explain:

‘The Federalist’ editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway discusses NewsGuard’s global disinformation index categorizing right-leading media outlets as ‘risky’ and left-leaning outlets as ‘least risky’ for disinformation on ‘The Ingraham Angle.’

UPDATE!

Remember, Fascism is the marriage of the corporation with Government to suppress freedom of thought, speech, movement. It is a corporate attempt to curb freedom, broadly.

Here is Thomas Sowell showing the clash of views as perpetrated by Democrats and leftists:

Although the free market is clearly the antithesis of state control of the economy, such as fascists advocate, the left-right dichotomy makes it seem as if fascists are just more extreme versions of “conservatives,” in the same sense in which socialism is a more extreme version of the welfare state. But this vision of a symmetrical political spectrum corresponds to no empirical reality. Those who advocate the free market typically do so as just one aspect of a more general vision in which government’s role in the lives of individuals is to be minimized, within limits set by a need to avoid anarchy and a need to maintain military defense against other nations. In no sense is fascism a further extension of that idea. It is in fact the antithesis of that whole line of thinking. Yet much talk in terms of left and right suggests that there is a political spectrum which proceeds from the center to conservatives to “far right” neo-fascism to fascism itself.

The only logic to such a conception is that it allows disparate opponents of the vision of the anointed to be lumped together and dismissed through guilt by association.

(A chapter from his book, The Thomas Sowell Reader)

And this is the “dummy” report of a much larger Committee finding:

… After reviewing tens of thousands of emails and nonpublic documents between the Biden White House and Big Tech, the Committee’s report reveals:

Big Tech changed their content moderation policies because of the Biden White House
The Biden White House’s censorship targeted true information, satire, and other content that did not violate the platforms’ policies
The Biden White House’s censorship campaign had a chilling effect on other speech
The White House had leverage because the companies had other policy concerns involving the Biden Administration
The Biden White House pushed censorship of books, not just social media

While the Biden White House’s pressure campaign largely succeeded, its effects were devastating. By suppressing free speech and intentionally distorting public debate in the modern town square, ideas and policies were no longer fairly tested and debated on their merits.

The First Amendment prohibits the government from “abridging the freedom of speech.” Thus, “any law or government policy that reduces that freedom on the [social media] platforms . . . violates the First Amendment.” ….

(House Committee findings, lite)

In an Atlantic article (ARCHIVED) I somewhat agree with, in conversation with CHAT-GPT, the breakdown of the article is thus:

… The article does not give a single dictionary-style sentence definition, but it strongly implies a working definition something like this:

Fascism is an authoritarian political system or movement characterized by extreme nationalism, suppression of dissent, centralized power, coercive social control, and the subordination of individual rights to the state or national collective.

Hamid’s broader point is that:

fascism is more than just “politics I dislike,”
it involves actual systems of domination and repression,
and the term loses meaning when used casually.

The article also leans on the idea that fascism historically involved:

one-party or highly centralized rule,
mass propaganda,
enforced ideological conformity,
state repression,
~~and aggressive nationalism~~.

It contrasts this with modern American political rhetoric, where “fascist” is often used as a generalized insult rather than a historically grounded category. …

One useful way to summarize the article’s implied distinction is:

The article is basically warning against “definition drift” — where fascism becomes so broadly applied that the word stops distinguishing between ordinary democratic conflict and genuinely authoritarian systems. …

Democrats tic all the boxes except nationalism. They have a proclivity to substitute the ill-gotten idea of the World Worker or other ideals their allegiance is proffered to. In continuing discussion with AI, I got these two worthwhile paragraphs as well as the attached graphic:

A modern left-leaning progressive often shifts allegiance away from nationalism understood as a shared historical, cultural, or civic nation-state identity and toward a more universal moral framework centered on humanity, equity, and transnational justice. In this view, the highest loyalty is not primarily to a particular nation, people, heritage, or constitutional tradition, but to principles such as inclusion, human rights, anti-discrimination, environmental stewardship, global cooperation, and protection of marginalized groups. The moral community becomes broader than the nation itself — sometimes described as cosmopolitan, multicultural, or internationalist. As a result, solidarity is increasingly organized around shared ethical commitments and identity categories rather than solely around citizenship, ancestry, or national continuity. Critics like Hayek and Sowell argue that this shift can weaken civic cohesion by replacing a common national identity with competing ideological or group-based loyalties, while progressives generally argue the opposite: that universal human dignity and inclusive pluralism create a more just and humane basis for solidarity than older forms of nationalism rooted in ethnicity, tradition, or exclusion.
Many 20th-century totalitarian movements also presented themselves not as naked quests for domination, but as moral projects aimed at building a better, fairer, more unified society. Whether framed in terms of class equality, national renewal, social harmony, liberation from oppression, or protection of the common good, these systems frequently justified the expansion of state power through utopian promises. Mao’s Great Leap Forward was promoted as a path toward collective prosperity and equality; Soviet communism claimed to emancipate workers and eliminate exploitation; fascist movements often promised national unity, social coordination, and an end to corruption, decadence, or class conflict. In each case, the state portrayed itself as acting on behalf of a higher moral vision that transcended ordinary individual interests. Critics such as Hayek and Sowell argue that this is precisely where danger emerges: when political systems claim moral authority to engineer society toward an ideal future, dissent increasingly becomes treated not merely as disagreement, but as obstruction to justice, progress, or humanity itself. The result, they argue, is that utopian goals can gradually justify coercion, centralized authority, censorship, and the subordination of individual liberty in the name of achieving a supposedly higher collective good.

RESOURCES FOR THE DISCUSSION:

As well as some books:

The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (Thomas Sowell)
The Nazi War Against Capitalism (Nevin Gussack, PDF)
The Road to Sefdom (F.A. Hayek)

In finishing the conversation, I asked:

So, this should be the final question comparing the above: what is fascism?

Taking the full conversation together — the historical material, Hayek, Sowell, the nationalism papers, and the OpenStax distinctions — a careful working definition of fascism would probably look something like this:

Fascism is a totalitarian form of collectivist politics that subordinates the individual to a centralized state organized around a myth of national, cultural, or civilizational unity and rebirth, enforced through authoritarian power, mass mobilization, suppression of dissent, and state-directed social coordination.

More simply:

Fascism is collectivism organized around nation and identity rather than class.

That distinction matters because:

communism typically organizes society around class struggle and economic equality, while
fascism organizes society around national destiny, unity, strength, or ethnic/cultural identity.

But your broader conversation also uncovered why Hayek believed these systems could converge structurally.

Despite their different moral narratives, both fascist and communist systems historically tended toward:

centralized authority,
weakened constitutional restraints,
suppression of opposition,
mass propaganda,
state direction of economic life,
ideological conformity,
and subordination of individual liberty to collective goals.

So fascism is not merely:

“strong nationalism,”
“authoritarian conservatism,”
or “politics people dislike.”

Nor is it adequately defined simply as:

“the merger of corporations and the state.”

Historically, fascism was a revolutionary mass movement that sought:

total social coordination,
national regeneration,
and political unity through centralized power and collective identity.

This is why fascist movements often spoke in utopian language:

overcoming division,
transcending selfishness,
ending decadence,
unifying society,
protecting the vulnerable national community,
and creating a “new man” or renewed civilization.

In practice, however, critics like Hayek and Sowell would argue that such movements became dangerous precisely because:

they treated the collective mission as morally supreme,
viewed dissent as sabotage,
and justified expanding coercive power in pursuit of an idealized social future.

So the deepest synthesis from all the material might be:

Fascism is not defined merely by being “right-wing” or “left-wing,” but by the elevation of collective political destiny above the liberty of the individual, combined with centralized power claiming authority to morally organize society.

… AND ….

Whether recent Democratic lawmakers or Biden administration officials “fit a definition of fascism” depends heavily on how narrowly or broadly the term is defined.

There is evidence that some federal officials pressured or significantly encouraged social media companies to suppress certain categories of speech, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that several agencies and officials likely violated the First Amendment through coercion or significant encouragement of censorship. (Reason.com)

That is a serious civil-liberties concern.

However, calling that “fascism” requires another step — and historically, fascism means more than government-private sector cooperation or censorship alone.

Historically, fascism involved:

one-party or near one-party domination,
mass nationalist mobilization,
cults of leadership,
suppression of political opposition,
centralized state coordination of society,
ideological conformity,
and subordination of the individual to a collective national mission.

So the stronger and more precise argument would probably be:

Some recent actions by government officials reflected authoritarian or illiberal tendencies — particularly attempts to pressure private corporations to suppress protected speech — and these tendencies resemble mechanisms historically present in totalitarian systems.

That is historically defensible.

But:

“Democrats are fascists”

is a much broader and less precise claim.

The comparison becomes more plausible in one specific sense discussed earlier:

when governments coordinate with large corporations,
media platforms,
NGOs,
or financial institutions
to shape permissible speech or public participation,
critics argue this resembles corporatist or soft-authoritarian arrangements historically associated with fascist or totalitarian systems.

Hayek’s concern is relevant here:

centralized moral or political management tends to expand beyond formal state power into quasi-public institutions.

And Sowell’s critique also fits:

elite institutions often justify speech control as necessary for protecting society, combating misinformation, or advancing moral goals.

Still, there are important differences between modern American politics and classical fascism:

competitive elections still exist,
opposition parties operate openly,
courts sometimes rule against the government,
dissent remains widespread,
independent media still function,
and political power regularly changes hands.

Those distinctions matter historically.

A more careful formulation might be:

Certain censorship pressures and government-corporate coordination in recent years exhibited authoritarian characteristics that critics argue are structurally similar to tactics used in historical collectivist or totalizing systems — even if they do not fully constitute fascism in the classical historical sense. (Reason.com)

I added these articles to the mix in order to aske some questions:

I asked for a paragraph summery of them:

Taken together, these articles present a growing critique of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as an institution that has moved beyond merely monitoring extremism into exercising significant influence over government agencies, tech platforms, and public discourse. The Off the Press article argues that major technology firms increasingly relied on SPLC classifications to guide moderation and deplatforming decisions, leading critics to accuse the organization of ideological bias and of labeling mainstream conservative or religious groups as “extremist.” (Off The Press) The Federalist piece goes further, alleging close coordination between the Biden DOJ and SPLC leadership even as federal prosecutors accused the organization of secretly funding informants embedded within extremist groups. (The Federalist) Meanwhile, the Reason/Volokh article focuses more narrowly on the legal dimensions of the federal indictment, outlining allegations that SPLC paid more than $3 million to informants tied to extremist organizations while allegedly obscuring aspects of those operations from donors and financial institutions. (Reason.com) At the same time, multiple counterarguments appear in coverage from AP, The Guardian, and legal commentators, who note that the SPLC claims these informants were part of longstanding intelligence-gathering efforts against violent groups and that the prosecution may itself be politically motivated. (The Guardian) In the broader context of your earlier questions, these articles reinforce concerns about the concentration of moral and informational authority in interconnected networks of government agencies, NGOs, media organizations, and technology companies — especially when those institutions participate in defining extremism, regulating speech, and shaping public legitimacy.

Then I asked this:

Doesn’t that fit well with Hayek’s and Sowell’s critiques?

This is the response:

Yes — at least conceptually, these controversies align quite closely with several of Hayek’s and Sowell’s central concerns about concentrated moral authority, elite institutional coordination, and the expansion of informal systems of social control.

Hayek warned that modern societies could drift toward soft forms of coercion not only through direct government force, but through interconnected institutions that collectively shape what is permissible to say, believe, publish, or economically support. His concern was that when political and moral goals become centralized, formal state power often extends outward into quasi-private institutions:

universities,
media,
corporations,
advocacy groups,
and administrative bureaucracies.

From a Hayekian perspective, the troubling issue is not merely censorship itself, but:

the emergence of coordinated systems of influence that narrow acceptable discourse while claiming moral necessity.

That concern maps fairly directly onto allegations that:

government officials,
major tech firms,
NGOs like SPLC,
and financial/payment systems
worked in overlapping ways to classify, suppress, or delegitimize certain viewpoints.

Sowell’s critique fits even more directly.

In The Vision of the Anointed, Sowell argued that elite institutions often:

assume moral superiority,
frame opponents as socially dangerous,
treat disagreement as evidence of ignorance or malice,
and become insulated from meaningful accountability.

One of his deepest themes is that intellectual and bureaucratic classes frequently justify expanded control through claims of protecting society from harm:

misinformation,
extremism,
hate,
instability,
inequality,
or social disorder.

Critics of SPLC’s influence are making a structurally similar argument:

that moral labeling systems can evolve into mechanisms for institutional exclusion rather than neutral public safety tools.

And importantly, both Hayek and Sowell would likely focus less on whether the intentions were sincere and more on:

incentives,
institutional power,
feedback loops,
and unintended consequences.

That said, there’s also an important caution consistent with their thinking:

not every coordination between government and private institutions equals fascism,
not every anti-extremism effort is authoritarian,
and democratic societies still legitimately attempt to counter violence and criminal activity.

The real Hayek/Sowell concern emerges when:

dissenting but lawful viewpoints become conflated with extremism,
moral gatekeeping becomes centralized,
and institutional power becomes difficult to challenge because it is dispersed across mutually reinforcing elites rather than concentrated in one obvious authority.

Trump’s “Lies” as Catalogued by the Washington Post | FLASHBACK

Published January 23, 2026January 23, 2026 by Papa Giorgio

I have — over the years — collected responses in my Microsoft Word to a myriad of topics. The Washington Post’s article used often by Lefties and Democrats is an example of this: “In four years, President Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims” (WaPo | The HILL)

I am about to offer my services in a discussion on the “inter webs” and I can see into the future [foreknowledge] this may be mentioned. Just guessing. If not, this is a good slight refreshing of a response written back in March of 2021. Keep in mind, this was a response to a person in debate a half decade ago:

Originally written 3-28-2021, with a slight update today (January 2026)

WAPO DATABASE

You are going off of WaPo’s numbers which other news orgs (CNN, ABC, etc.) use (actually one guy did most of the “fact chacking” –Glenn Kessler [DAILY CALLER]) — and the public assumes is proven by this widespread dissemination of WaPo’s database. Many “misleading claims” or what people mistaken for lies are just typical grandiose statements almost all politicians make:

★ TRUMP: Among the most repeated false claims that Trump spread was that he was responsible for the greatest economy in history. As the Post notes, former Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson and Clinton all were responsible for larger economic growth than Trump when using modern metrics.

★ BIDEN: “I said I was running to unite the country. And generically speaking, all of you said no, you can’t do that,” the president told the press. He still believes this, he added, but with caveats. “I’ve not been able to unite the Congress, but I’ve been united in the country, based on the polling data.”

BIAS CONFIRMED

But WaPo has already said – unlike it immediately did with Trump — The Post said it does “not have plans to launch a Biden database at this time” (NEWSBUSTERS | FOX) … This is bias by omission Ross. (FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE)

LOOKING INTO THE “LIES”

For instance, WaPo lists over 30,000 false, or misleading statements made by Trump in 4-years. You are basing your claims on the many media sources using this database by them. Here is one example from when that database reached the 5,000 mark:

The Post attributed nearly 140 of the 5,000 lies to Trump claiming the Russia investigation was made up or a hoax. It claims a report from the intelligence community had “’high confidence’ it was correct.” (AIM – now a disappeared article)

This is just one example that would kill 140 off the 5,000 list. (Now over 30,000: WASHINGTON POST | SEATTLE TIMES ) In a “lie” from the newer list of over 30,000 is this one:

“We also built the greatest economy in the history of the world…Powered by these policies, we built the greatest economy in the history of the world.”

This was repeated 493 times. Oh no, say it isn’t so! *Gasp* — that is so unlike a politician. And, may I say, many of these are arguable. Another example looked at two statements made by Trump said to be lies but were in fact not. These would remove 63:

Together, these two statements would remove 63 from Trump’s total of lies, leaving him 62 short of the 5,000-mark. (AIM – now a disappeared article)

ADMINS: TRUMP vs. OBAMA

So, for instance, to COMPARE. Trump exaggerated the crowd size of his inauguration. Is this out the realm of a politician? Let alone a braggadocious one?

IRAN

…Ben Rhodes, the man who majored in creative writing and then ended up the Deputy National Security Adviser for President Obama, told The New York Times about the “echo chamber” he was able to create and feed:

In the spring of last year, legions of arms-control experts began popping up at think tanks and on social media, and then became key sources for hundreds of often-clueless reporters. ‘We created an echo chamber,’ [Rhodes] admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. ‘They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.’

“The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. … They literally know nothing,” Rhodes bragged.

And the know-nothing millennials loved him for it. And, apparently, they still do….

(RPT)

That calculated political lie did more harm to the nation than any “lie” Trump told, like, crowd sizes.

OBAMACARE

Remember these?

“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Because nothing should get in the way of the relationship between a family and their doctor.”
His specific language varied on the stump, but Obama promised that his health care plan would reduce premiums “up to $2,500 a year per family” or “an average of $2,500 a year per family.” (and, Deductibles would go down)

OBAMA’S MOMO’S BATTLE w/INSURANCE

Here is another one you probably have not heard about:

… Barack Obama repeatedly said that his mother, Ann Dunham, fought with insurance carriers to pay her medical and hospital bills as she lay dying from cancer. Obama told this story repeatedly during the 2008 campaign, as well as after he became president, when making the case for Obamacare. After all, if the dastardly insurance companies battle a woman with a doctorate and her son with a law degree from Harvard, imagine what insurance carriers will do to you.

During the campaign, Obama said: “She was 52 years old when she died of ovarian cancer, and you know what she was thinking about in the last months of her life? She wasn’t thinking about getting well. She wasn’t thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality. She had been diagnosed just as she was transitioning between jobs. And she wasn’t sure whether insurance was going to cover the medical expenses because they might consider this a pre-existing condition. I remember just being heartbroken, seeing her struggle through the paperwork and the medical bills and the insurance forms.” He also said: “For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”

But ex-New York Times reporter Janny Scott wrote a flattering book about Obama’s mom. Scott describes Obama’s mom’s “battle” with insurance carriers quite differently. Scott said Dunham had employer-provided health insurance that “covered most of the costs of her medical treatment. … The hospital billed her insurance company directly, leaving Ann to pay only the deductible and any uncovered expenses, which, she said, came to several hundred dollars a month.” The only quarrel was over a disability policy Dunham had, but her pre-existing condition disqualified her. So much for the mean old insurance company, but Obama’s tale helped get Obamacare passed…

(LARRY ELDER: “If Trump Is ‘Liar-In-Chief,’ What of Obama’s Lies?”)

MORE

I think these lies did waay more harm to the country. Even the lies made before the FISA Court to jump start the Russian Hoax against Trump!

See Larry Elder’s article for more clarity: “Biden’s Versus Trump’s ‘Lies’ — What a Difference an Administration Makes”
And a REAL CLEAR POLITIC’s article is helpful at the “20,000 Lie” mark: “No, Trump Hasn’t Made 20,000 ‘False or Misleading’ Claims”
And lastly for the reader, this “Washington Post ‘Fact-Check’ Of Trump’s Election Integrity Claim Is A Ragbag Of Lies”

Also, here are some lies the “WaPo Database ‘reporter’” made himself:

NBC News Reporter Caught Lying about Michael Cohen Testimony on Trump and WikiLeaks (PJ-MEDIA)
Washington Post Caught Red Handed Peddling Anti-Trump Fake News (IBD, Archived)
Why the Washington Post Has No Credibility (TOWNAHALL)
Washington Post Caught Blatantly Lying To Their Readers Yet Again (Jimmy Dore Show, YouTube)

I also compiled a list — again, a long while back — responding to the “lies” thing again, with a slight update (a linked FEDERALIST article). BTW, I always truncate names as to not malign a person, but Miss Fiene was a salty-bitch if memory serves:

I wish to note that the DOJ has agreed with me and not with you. What do I mean? Here is a Tweet and a pic of the official report:

they said he [Biden] was too old and decrepit [memory loss] in 2015 for a jury to think he could have knowingly and willingly done these actions. (pic included)

Are they dropping the same charges against Trump for the same reasons? No. You want to know why? Because he [Trump] has a good grasp on reality and a good memory. Trump doesn’t “Spins Yarns That Often Unravel” – as the New York Times says of Biden. Like,

Taught Classes At The University Of Pennsylvania;
Visited Ground Zero Day After 9/11;
Half his House ‘Almost Collapsed’ After a Fire;
House Burn Down with My Wife In It — She Got Out Safely;
Claims He Convinced Strom Thurmond To Support The Civil Rights Act;
He Began Career as Civil Rights Activist;
Saw Pittsburgh Bridge Collapse;
Ended Cancer;
Appointed To The [U.S. Naval] Academy In 1965;
Son Died in Iraq;
He Formed the Quad Alliance;
Born in the Same Hospital Where His Grandfather Died;
Was ‘Involved’ in Civil Rights Movement;
Went to a Black Church as a Teen;
Biden Says He Attended HBCU;
Biden Claims He Has Cancer (“That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up [with] have cancer”);
Wrote Law Review Articles About Right to Privacy (claimed he had written “a number of law review articles” about the right to privacy referenced in the now-overturned Roe v. Wade decision)
Was A ‘Full Professor’ At The University Of Pennsylvania;
Grandfather Died In The Hospital I Was Born In Six Days Before He Was Born;
Offered A Job by An Idaho Lumber Company;
Used To Drive An 18-Wheeler;
Visited Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue After The 2018 Massacre;
Chatted With an Amtrak Conductor in His Seventh Year As Vice President, When The Guy Retired 15 Years Before;
Detained By South African Authorities While Trying To Visit Nelson Mandela In Prison In The 1970s.

Etc., Etc., Etc. I left out the many political lies because all politicians try to spin the economy, inflation, debt, etc. I chose those because they are lies that show cognitive dissonance. Even after staff telling him to zip it this stuff never happened, he told some again months down the road. What THE FEDERALIST does is list Biden’s lies… but does not count multiples of the same ones like WaPo did: “Here’s The Authoritative List Of Lies Joe Biden Has Told As President: 439 And Counting”

Neil Young All Of a Sudden Believes In Free Speech?

Published April 12, 2025April 12, 2025 by Papa Giorgio

A year ago Joe Rogan said this:

This is a partial excerpt of an excellent article by NEWSBUSTERS…

I will reproduce the WaPo article that is behind a paywall following the Newsbusters piece:

…. Young eventually returned his music to Spotify. Time has been kind to some of Rogan’s “problematic” pandemic views.

Meanwhile, Young said nothing about the media’s misinformation campaign tied to COVID-19. Remember how the jab would prevent the recipient from getting the virus and spreading it?

What about the six-foot rule? [article below – JUMP] St. Anthony Fauci? The serial attacks on the lab leak theory?

Young stayed mum through it all, even though he was outraged by Rogan’s so-called lies.

It gets worse.

In recent years, Young has said nothing publicly while Cancel Culture ravaged the arts. “Sensitivity readers” sliced and diced novels by Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie. Comedians watched what they said for fear of career repercussions.

The Twitter Files scandal found a major tech platform silenced right-leaning Americans. Competing platforms booted a former President from their digital shelves.

The Biden administration, along with the disinformation czar dubbed “Scary Poppins,” vowed to censor more “misinformation” (like the Hunter Biden laptop story).

Where was Young during this crisis? Some free speech hero.

Now, Young is warning us that President Donald Trump might prevent him from touring stateside due to his negative comments about the 47th president.

“If I talk about Donald J. Trump, I may be one of those returning to America who is barred or put in jail to sleep on a cement floor with an aluminum blanket…That is happening all the time now.”

His proof? He has nothing save innuendo from a UK punk outfit who lobbed similar complaints without backing them up with facts.

Suddenly, Young cares about free speech again. That’s all well and good, but his silence during the Cancel Culture years and eagerness to shut down Rogan tell a different story.

He’s a fraud, a partisan who only pipes up when it suits his self-interests or political ideology. ….

Until just a few days ago saying some of these things could get you BANNED from Twitter, Facebook, or Youtube for spreading “COVID misinformation”—and now the experts are finally admitting many of the claims they originally dismissed as “conspiracy theories” were true all along.

In March of 2021, Rachel Maddow aired a segment about the COVID vaccines that was chock full of misinformation and outright deceptions, as the MSNBC host alleged that vaccines prevented both infection and transmission — statements that did not reflect the science at the time nor have they been borne out by subsequent research. Yet the segment remains viewable on social media platforms and Maddow faces ZERO consequences for perpetuating these blatant lies.

Jimmy shares his disgust with Maddow’s duplicity.

See the NEW YORK POST’S: 10 myths told by COVID experts — and now debunked

WASHINGTON POST (via ARCHIVE) June 2024

In The Pandemic, We Were Told To Keep 6 Feet Apart. There’s No Science To Support That.

In a congressional appearance, infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci characterized the recommendation as “an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data.”

The nation’s top mental health official had spent months asking for evidence behind the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social distancing guidelines, warning that keeping Americans physically apart during the coronavirus pandemic would harm patients, businesses, and overall health and wellness.

Now, Elinore McCance-Katz, the Trump administration’s assistant secretary for mental health and substance use, was urging the CDC to justify its recommendation that Americans stay six feet apart to avoid contracting covid-19 — or get rid of it.

“I very much hope that CDC will revisit this decision or at least tell us that there is more and stronger data to support this rule than what I have been able to find online,” McCance-Katz wrote in a June 2020 memo submitted to the CDC and other health agency leaders and obtained by The Washington Post. “If not, they should pull it back.”

The CDC would keep its six-foot social distance recommendation in place until August 2022, with some modifications as Americans got vaccinated against the virus and officials pushed to reopen schools. Now, congressional investigators are set Monday to press Anthony S. Fauci, the infectious-disease doctor who served as a key coronavirus adviser during the Trump and Biden administrations, on why the CDC’s recommendation was allowed to shape so much of American life for so long, particularly given Fauci and other officials’ recent acknowledgments that there was little science behind the six-foot rule after all.

“It sort of just appeared, that six feet is going to be the distance,” Fauci testified to Congress in a January closed-door hearing, according to a transcribed interview released Friday. Fauci characterized the recommendation as “an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data.”

Francis S. Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, also privately testified to Congress in January that he was not aware of evidence behind the social distancing recommendation, according to a transcript released in May.

Four years later, visible reminders of the six-foot rule remain with us, particularly in cities that rushed to adopt the CDC’s guidelines hoping to protect residents and keep businesses open. D.C. is dotted with signs in stores and schools — even on sidewalks or in government buildings — urging people to stand six feet apart.

Experts agree that social distancing saved lives, particularly early in the pandemic when Americans had no protections against a novel virus sickening millions of people. One recent paper published by the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank, concludes that behavior changes to avoid developing covid-19, followed later by vaccinations, prevented about 800,000 deaths. But that achievement came at enormous cost, the authors added, with inflexible strategies that weren’t driven by evidence.

“We never did the study about what works,” said Andrew Atkeson, a UCLA economist and co-author of the paper, lamenting the lack of evidence around the six-foot rule. He warned that persistent frustrations over social distancing and other measures might lead Americans to ignore public health advice during the next crisis.

The U.S. distancing measure was particularly stringent, as other countries adopted shorter distances; the World Health Organization set a distance of one meter, or slightly more than three feet, which experts concluded was roughly as effective as the six-foot mark at deterring infections, and would have allowed schools to reopen more rapidly.

The six-foot rule was “probably the single most costly intervention the CDC recommended that was consistently applied throughout the pandemic,” Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, wrote in his book about the pandemic, “Uncontrolled Spread.”

It’s still not clear who at the CDC settled on the six-foot distance; the agency has repeatedly declined to specify the authors of the guidance, which resembled its recommendations on how to avoid contracting the flu. A CDC spokesperson credited a team of experts, who drew from research such as a 1955 study on respiratory droplets. In his book, Gottlieb wrote that the Trump White House pushed back on the CDC’s initial recommendation of 10 feet of social distance, saying it would be too difficult to implement.

Perhaps the rule’s biggest impact was on children, despite ample evidence they were at relatively low risk of covid-related complications. Many schools were unable to accommodate six feet of space between students’ desks and forced to rely on virtual education for more than a year, said Joseph Allen, a Harvard University expert in environmental health, who called in 2020 for schools to adopt three feet of social distance.

“The six-foot rule was really an error that had been propagated for several decades, based on a misunderstanding of how particles traveled through indoor spaces,” Allen said, adding that health experts often wrongly focused on avoiding droplets from infected people rather than improving ventilation and filtration inside buildings.

Social distancing had champions before the pandemic. Bush administration officials, working on plans to fight bioterrorism, concluded that social distancing could save lives in a health crisis and renewed their calls as the coronavirus approached. The idea also took hold when public health experts initially believed that the coronavirus was often transmitted by droplets expelled by infected people, which could land several feet away; the CDC later acknowledged the virus was airborne and people could be exposed just by sharing the same air in a room, even if they were farther than six feet apart.

“There was no magic around six feet,” Robert R. Redfield, who served as CDC director during the Trump administration, told a congressional committee in March 2022. “It’s just historically that’s what was used for other respiratory pathogens. So that really became the first piece” of a strategy to protect Americans in the early days of the virus, he said.

It also became the standard that states and businesses adopted, with swift pressure on holdouts. Lawmakers and workers urged meat processing plants, delivery companies and other essential businesses to adopt the CDC’s social distancing recommendations as their employees continued reporting to work during the pandemic.

Some business leaders weren’t sure the measures made sense. Jeff Bezos, founder of online retail giant Amazon, petitioned the White House in March 2020 to consider revising the six-foot recommendation, said Adam Boehler, then a senior Trump administration official helping with the coronavirus response. At the time, Amazon was facing questions about a rising number of infections in its warehouses, and Democratic senators were urging the company to adopt social distancing.

“Bezos called me and asked, is there any real science behind this rule?” Boehler said, adding that Bezos pushed on whether Amazon could adopt an alternative distance if workers were masked, physically separated by dividers or other precautions were taken. “He said … it’s the backbone of trying to keep America running here, and when you separate somebody five feet versus six feet, it’s a big difference,” Boehler recalled. Bezos owns The Washington Post.

Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, confirmed that Bezos called Boehler and said the Amazon founder’s focus was the discrepancy between the U.S. recommendation and the WHO’s shorter distance. The company soon said it would follow the CDC’s six-foot social distancing guidelines in its warehouses and later developed technologies to try to enforce those guidelines. “We did it globally everywhere because it was the right thing to do,” Nantel said.

Boehler said he spoke with Redfield and Fauci about testing alternatives to the six-foot recommendation but that he was not aware of what happened to those tests or what they found. Fauci declined to comment. Redfield did not respond to requests for comment.

But challenging the six-foot recommendation, particularly in the pandemic’s early days, was seen as politically difficult. Rochelle Walensky, then chief of infectious disease at Massachusetts General Hospital, argued in a July 2020 email that “if people are masked it is quite safe and much more practical to be at 3 feet” in many school settings.

Five months later, incoming president Joe Biden would tap Walensky as his CDC director. Walensky swiftly endorsed the six-foot distance before working to loosen it, announcing in March 2021 that elementary school students could sit three feet apart if they were masked. Walensky declined to comment.

The most persistent government critic of the social distancing guidelines may have been McCance-Katz, who did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Trump’s mental health chief had spent several years clashing with other Department of Health and Human Services officials on various matters and had few internal defenders by the time the pandemic arrived, hampering her message. But while her pleas failed to move the CDC, her warnings about the risks to mental health found an audience with Trump and his allies, who blamed federal bureaucrats for the six-foot rule and other measures.

“What is this nonsense that somehow it’s unsafe to return to school?” McCance-Katz said in September 2020 on an HHS podcast, lamenting the broader shutdown of American life. “I do think that Americans are smart people, and I think that they need to start asking questions about why is it this way.”

What Was the Biggest Lie Exposed from Thursday’s Debate?

Published June 29, 2024July 4, 2024 by Papa Giorgio

To tell you how different – typically, speaking from my own “in house” experience – men and women absorb the world; my wife gets sad when she sees Biden in the state he is: “What if that was your family member/loved one”, she said, watching clips I was playing (here, here, here, and here, for example). She gets upset at “nurse Jill,” for her abuse of Joe, but she ultimately feels sadness.

a) She is not a “politico” like me, and b) even though she [my wife] is tough as nails, us raising two Mil-Boys, she is a good Christian woman who has hidden pockets of care and concern (especially for her boys, me included) for innocent pawns in peoples power plays. So-to-speak.

Me?

I have followed or learned of Joe Biden’s destructive past and his almost anti-Christ secular worldview that so corrupts the Left.

I do not have that kind of compassion for a political leader.

Truth is my weapon, and I love to bludgeon those who fight against it.

THE BIGGEST LIE from Thursday?

Probably the biggest lies by those around Joe is just how sick he is.

Everyone saw the “cheap fake” in real time.

All these people would rail against Reagan when it was made known about his cognitive decline.

When they actually SEE IT, crickets and excuses.

One long time Democrat donor spoke his mind about this, brought to my attention via Gateway Pundit:

Billionaire hedge fund manager and longtime Democratic Party donor Bill Ackman has blasted the Democrat party and fake news mainstream media outlets for lying and misleading the country about Joe Biden’s health and mental acuity.

[….]

However, big-time lefty and longtime Democratic donor Bill Ackman, who previously said he was open to voting for Trump, has publicly blasted the Democratic party and mainstream media for misleading the country about Joe Biden’s mental acuity and health.

In a scathing post on his X account, Ackman wrote:

“As much as last night was an indictment of the Democratic Party for misleading party members and the country about the mental acuity and health of the president, the media deserve far more derision and scorn.

I and others were repeatedly criticized by the media for questioning the competency of the president. Among other false accusations, I was accused of spreading misleading videos which clearly showed Biden’s deterioration.

Do you remember the heavily excerpted and edited President Biden 60 Minutes interview where the interviewer covered for the president by saying he was ‘very tired?’

60 Minutes knew.

The New York Times knew.

CNN knew.

MSNBC knew.

Left wing media have had total and complete access to the president, his staff, and his administration.

They all knew, but they told you otherwise. They outright lied to you.

(READ IT ALL, and HERE TOO)

Red State writes similar sentiments when they note that Biden did not fail/fall alone on this past Thursday. But that he took the press with him:

…. All of these voices in the media today are in defiance of the very same media voices yesterday. What was witnessed Thursday night confirmed everything the press denied — for weeks, for months, and for the past four-plus years. The journalists currently declaring Biden’s condition was blatant and needing to be addressed were just days ago bleating that this exact same video evidence was fake.

People noting the videos of Biden’s decrepitude were branded as liars and trafficking in “cheap fake” propaganda. Thursday night was a 90-minute presentation of “cheap fake” evidence, except it was live, uncut, unedited, properly framed, not “taken out of context,” or devoid of any other excuse journalists spat out to describe fully accurate presentations. Chuck Todd, unintentionally, admitted to this being the case.

At the end of the day, Joe Biden looks like the caricature that conservative media has been painting. And there were no clips tonight, right, this was – you saw it before your eyes.

What Chuck just did in this quote is prove out all of the media prevarications. They told us these descriptions of Biden were a caricature. They claimed the videos of his decline were manipulated and misrepresentations. It was entirely a slander campaign concocted by conservative media. All of that – all of it – was a complete lie told by the press corps. ….

Yep.

The biggest liar that came out of the debate was “Nurse Jill’s” power craze and the media obfuscating the real issue.

Biden’s health.

I am gonna do a series on CNN’s “lies list” from the debate., but the below is worth your while:

Alley Cat Morals

Larry Elder filled in for Dennis the day after the debate, and I clipped this and added to it in “RPT” fashion. Enjoy!

Joe “Alley Cat” Biden

I think Joe Biden is a liar about every aspect of his life. At least the stories he expects the voting public who kept him in office to believe is true. For instance, the Republican National Committee put a list together recently of this in their “Rapid Response” section:

Here are 21 made-up stories Biden has told about himself as president.

1. Biden claimed multiples times he spoke to the “inventor” of insulin.

Multiple scientists are credited with discovering insulin; two died before Biden was born and there is no evidence Biden met the others.

2. Biden claimed — on multiple occasions — he “used to drive” an 18-wheeler — sometimes with a woman he calls “Big Mama.”

Biden **rode** in an 18-wheeler once nearly 50 years ago. He’s never driven one.

3. Biden claimed he “had a house burn down with my wife in it” and said they “almost lost a couple firefighters.”

In 2005, Biden’s house had a “small” fire that was contained to the kitchen and “there were no injuries.”

4. Biden claimed he was “raised in the Puerto Rican community” of Delaware.

There is no evidence of this, of course. In Delaware in 1970, only 2,154 people — 0.39% of the state population — were of Puerto Rican descent.

5. Biden claimed he served as a “liaison” to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during the Six-Day War.

Biden was plagiarizing fellow students at Syracuse law school during the war and Meir wasn’t even prime minister.

6. Biden said he remembered “spending time” and “going to” the Tree of Life synagogue after the 2018 shooting.

The synagogue said Biden never visited.

7. Biden claimed his “first job offer” came from Boise Cascade, an Idaho lumber company.

The company said they have “no record of President Biden’s application or of him having worked for the company.”

8. Biden said after he was elected VP, he awarded his Uncle Frank with a Purple Heart.

Biden’s uncle — who was not a Purple Heart recipient — died in 1999 and Biden wasn’t elected VP until 2008.

9. Biden claimed he “was appointed to the [Naval] Academy in 1965.

There is no record of Biden being nominated to the Naval Academy, and Biden graduated from the University of Delaware in 1965 — making it impossible.

10. Biden claimed at least seven times that he had a conversation with an Amtrak conductor in 2012 or 2013 about traveling over 1 million miles on Air Force Two.

The conductor retired in 1993, passed away in 2014, and Biden didn’t hit 1 million miles on AF2 until 2015.

11. Biden claimed oil refinery pollution is the reason “I and so damn many other people I grew up have cancer.”

Biden doesn’t have cancer. He *had* skin cancer, but the cause was sun exposure — not pollution. Biden also previously blamed oil refineries for why he had asthma.

12. Biden frequently claims to have been a “full professor” at the University of Pennsylvania after being VP.

Biden took nearly $1 million from UPenn over a two year time frame when average undergraduate tuition increased by 8 percent, but he didn’t teach a single class.

13. Biden claimed his “great-grandpop was” a coal miner — something he has been saying for decades.

He wasn’t, a fact which Biden even admitted back in 2004.

14. Biden claimed his grandfather was an “All-American football player” at Santa Clara University.

Santa Clara and NCAA records show no evidence of Biden’s grandfather being an All-American.

15. Biden claimed he “could have been an All-American” football player.

Biden played on the *freshman* football team for part of *one* semester in college. That’s it.

16. Biden claimed he almost walked on to an unnamed NFL team and thought he “could make it in the pros.”

There is no evidence of this. Biden barely played any college football before his father forced him to quit the team because of bad grades.

17. Biden claimed he hit a ball 368 feet “off the wall” at his second Congressional baseball game.

Biden actually went 0-2, according to a 1974 newspaper article.

18. Biden claimed he was “shot at” overseas — something he also lied about in 2007.

It never happened.

19. Biden said that when he was a County Council member, a woman once asked him to remove a dead dog from her lawn — but instead of removing it, Biden claimed he left it on her doorstep.

When Biden told the same story a year earlier, he said he removed it. So, which is it?

20. Biden repeatedly claimed he was “involved” in the civil rights movement.

None of that is remotely true. Biden even admitted in 1987 he was “not an activist.”

21. Biden claimed “the first time” he “got arrested” was at a civil rights protest.

There is no evidence Biden has ever been arrested (despite repeatedly claiming he has been), and he was not a civil rights activist.

There are a lot of lies via Biden… but even egregious enough to get Chris Christy in a tizzy! (I uploaded this on April 2021)

See more here:

Nobody, I Mean Nobody, Lies Like Joe

The FBI Just Admitted in Court That Hunter Biden’s Laptop Is Real

Published June 6, 2024 by Papa Giorgio

Kanekoa The Great notes that the FBI just confirmed, in court, that the laptop truly belongs to Hunter Biden. Something we all knew.

Before sharing the 20 minutes of Joe Biden, U.S. intelligence officials, and the American media claiming that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation”, Kanekoa posted the following on TWIX:

The FBI just admitted in court that Hunter Biden’s laptop is real.

Here are 20 minutes of Joe Biden, U.S. intelligence officials, and the American media claiming that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.”

The FBI has had possession of Hunter’s laptop since December 2019.

Leading up to the 2020 election, Twitter and Facebook censored the Biden laptop story because the FBI warned them of a potential hack-and-leak operation targeting Hunter Biden.

The FBI knew that Hunter’s laptop was real the entire time.

In October 2022, @MarcoPolo501c3 published a 640-page Report on the Biden Laptop (AMAZON) that meticulously documents 459 crimes involving the Biden family and their associates.

The report provides evidence of Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) violations, money laundering, and tax fraud found on Hunter’s laptop.

It also exposes how federal law enforcement agencies, influenced by politics, protect the Biden family from prosecution while targeting President Biden’s primary election opponent, Donald Trump.

Shame on all of these people for lying to the American people, rigging our elections, and destroying the integrity of our nation.

Our “A.I. Overlords” Are Racist! (Plus Some RPT Creations)

Published February 23, 2024February 23, 2024 by Papa Giorgio

The first 20-minutes is about the A.I. issue and Google pausing it’s use of Gemini. Elon Musk re-Tweeted (re-Xed?) an isolated portion of this on X.

Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Google’s new AI program just launched this week and it’s already attempting to erase white people from history. Our woke dystopian future has arrived. Also, the Biden Administration tries to buy more votes with yet another “student loan forgiveness” scheme. A major cellular outage affects thousands of Americans. Is there something sinister behind it? And the National MS Society fires a 90 year old volunteer for failing to put her pronouns in her bio. It sounds like a Babylon Bee headline but it’s real.

Ep.1318

Leftists Smear 9-Year Old As a Racist

Published November 30, 2023December 1, 2023 by Papa Giorgio

(I hope this kid sues!)

UPDATED VIDEO:

“Now things may be changing thanks to the left’s Great Satan, Elon Musk creating community notes. A kid’s life won’t be destroyed. See, Musk created a way to prevent small false smears from taking root. He disabled the one weapon that the left so desperately embraced. Taking something out of context, sharing it with like minded creeps and letting it spread. Musk killed that. No wonder they hate his guts. They should.”

I tried to post this video on Facebook, and it will not allow it — in comments or on a wall. In other words, Facebook is banning a Native-American from dressing and representing his ancestors. They are doing it either to say this is cultural appropriation, and so, Facebook is acting like a SAVIOR of people’s [possible hurt] feelings. Or they are the arbiters of what a Native-American can do publicly. They are the judge in saying an American Indian cannot dress like their ancestors at a football game, but they will allow videos from a dance on a reservation.

[Mmm. Maybe Facebook is trying to minimize their exposure to a defamation lawsuit by the kid?]

‘Outnumbered’ panel discuss a young Chiefs fan attacked for dressing in support of his team

Bubba Armenta and his son Holden join ‘Jesse Watters Primetime’ to discuss a Deadspin reporter smearing the 9-year-old as racist for wearing a Native headdress and ‘blackface’ to a Kansas City Chiefs game.

BONUS!

Essentially, CNN Is Years Behind FOX NEWS’ Reporting

OOPS! CNN sent a reporter to the border, accidentally proved Trump was RIGHT all along after reporter left in SHOCK over open-border:

“They couldn’t believe it!” pic.twitter.com/pgjjKvuftB

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 29, 2023

How Feds ‘Skirted’ Constitution to Censor Content Online

Published September 13, 2023September 13, 2023 by Papa Giorgio

See my previous post on this topic:

Big Win for the 1st / Big Loss for David French

REASON-TV

These two shorter video clips are taken from a longer conversation with Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya and New Civil Liberties Alliance senior counsel John Vechionne.

By focusing their sights on government actors instead of private companies under their boot, the Missouri v. Biden plaintiffs have chosen exactly the right target.

YouTube removed this March 2021 roundtable organized by Florida governor Ron DeSantis because of the views Bhattacharya and others expressed about masking children in school. Was this part of an illegal censorship campaign, as a lawsuit in federal court alleges?

JOHN SOLOMON

(Oct 1, 2022) “Anyone who’s concerned about free speech… this ought to scare you.” John Solomon joins Dr. Gina with his report on a private group that worked with the government to submit requests for censorship online during the 2020 election AND THEY’RE DOING IT AGAIN!

WALL STREET JOURNAL

The WALL STREET JOURNAL writes about the ruling as well:

5th Circuit finds Biden White House, CDC likely violated First Amendment — The three judge panel found that contacts with tech companies by officials from the White House, the surgeon general’s office, the CDC and the FBI likely amounted to coercion

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit on Friday ruled that the Biden White House, top government health officials and the FBI likely violated the First Amendment by improperly influencing tech companies’ decisions to remove or suppress posts on the coronavirus and elections.

The decision, written unanimously by three judges nominated by Republican presidents, was likely to be seen as victory for conservatives who have long argued that social media platforms’ content moderation efforts restrict their free speech rights. But some advocates also said the ruling was an improvement over a temporary injunction U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty issued July 4.

David Greene, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the new injunction was “a thousand times better” than what Doughty, an appointee of former president Trump, had ordered originally.

Doughty’s decision had affected a wide range of government departments and agencies, and imposed 10 specific prohibitions on government officials. The appeals court threw out nine of those and modified the 10th to limit it to efforts to “coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech.”
The 5th Circuit panel also limited the government institutions affected by its ruling to the White House, the surgeon general’s office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI. It removed restrictions Doughty had imposed on the departments of State, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services and on agencies including the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The 5th Circuit found that those agencies had not coerced the social media companies to moderate their sites.

Read the 5th Circuit’s ruling

The judges wrote that the White House likely “coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences.” They also found the White House “significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes, both in violation of the First Amendment.”

A White House spokesperson said in a statement that the Justice Department was “reviewing” the decision and evaluating its options.
“This Administration has promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections,” the White House official said. “Our consistent view remains that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people, but make independent choices about the information they present.”

The decision, by Judges Edith Brown Clement, Don R. Willett and Jennifer Walker Elrod, is likely to have a wide-ranging impact on how the federal government communicates with the public and the social media companies about key public health issues and the 2024 election.

The case is the most successful salvo to date in a growing conservative legal and political effort to limit coordination between the federal government and tech platforms. This case and recent probes in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives have accused government officials of actively colluding with platforms to influence public discourse, in an evolution of long-running allegations that liberal employees inside tech companies favor Democrats when making decisions about what posts are removed or limited online.

The appeals court judges found that pressure from the White House and the CDC affected how social media platforms handled posts about covid-19 in 2021, as the Biden administration sought to encourage the public to obtain vaccinations.

The judges detail multiple emails and statements from White House officials that they say show escalating threats and pressure on the social media companies to address covid misinformation. The judges say that the officials “were not shy in their requests,” calling for posts to be removed “ASAP” and appearing “persistent and angry.” The judges detailed a particularly contentious period in July of 2021, which reached a boiling point when President Biden accused Facebook of “killing people.”

“We find, like the district court, that the officials’ communications — reading them in ‘context, not in isolation’ — were on-the-whole intimidating,” the judges wrote.
The judges also zeroed in on the FBI’s communications with tech platforms in the run-up to the 2020 elections, which included regular meetings with the tech companies. The judges wrote that the FBI’s activities were “not limited to purely foreign threats,” citing instances where the law enforcement agency “targeted” posts that originated inside the United States, including some that stated incorrect poll hours or mail-in voting procedures.

The judges said in their rulings that the platforms changed their policies based on the FBI briefings, citing updates to their terms of service about handling of hacked materials, following warnings of state-sponsored “hack and dump” operations.

[….]

The 5th Circuit ruling reversed Doughty’s order specifically enjoining the actions of leaders at DHS, HHS and other agencies, saying many of those individuals “were permissibly exercising government speech.”

“That distinction is important because the state-action doctrine is vitally important to our Nation’s operation — by distinguishing between the state and the People, it promotes ‘a robust sphere of individual liberty,’” the 5th Circuit judges wrote.

Yet Friday’s order still applies to a wide range of individuals working across the government, specifically naming 14 White House officials, including five who are no longer in office. The order specifically names Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy and another member of his office, three CDC staffers and two FBI officials, including the head of the foreign influence task force and the lead agent of its cyber investigative task force in San Francisco.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is among the White House officials named.

Stanford Law School professor Daphne Keller said the 5th Circuit’s ruling appeared to allow “a lot of normal communications as long as they are not threatening or taking over control of platforms’ content decisions.”

“But it also says they can’t ‘significantly encourage’ platforms to remove lawful content, so the real question is what that means,” she said.

Friday’s decision came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri who allege that government officials violated the First Amendment in their efforts to encourage social media companies to address posts that they worried could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic or upend elections.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey celebrated the decision as a victory in a statement.

“The first brick was laid in the wall of separation between tech and state on July 4,” he said. “Today’s ruling is yet another brick.”

ACLJ: WILL END UP IN FRONT OF THE SUPES

ACLJ make the point that it will end up in front of SCOTUS.

We’re celebrating a massive free speech victory as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling that President Joe Biden cannot censor conservatives on social media. We also give an update on our newest legal battle on behalf of Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA against digital censorship. We must not allow the Biden Administration to interfere in future elections as it did with President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election by censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Big Win for the 1st / Big Loss for David French

Published September 8, 2023September 13, 2023 by Papa Giorgio

5th circuit – Biden White House, FBI likely violated the first amendment

TWITCHY!

While the Second Amendment is being violated in Arizona, we are getting news tonight that the First Amendment is being honored in the Fifth Circuit court of appeals.

Previously, we told you about Missouri v. Biden. As we said on July 4 of this year when the district court issued an injunction:

This is huge deal. This is potentially a landmark case on how the First Amendment applies in the age of social media[.]

We also covered that case here, here and here.

Generally speaking, it is widely believed that social media is free to censor people as they see fit. We believe there might be some legal arguments that can be made against that, but that is a common belief. ‘They’re just private companies making their own decisions’ is the argument offered by people defending this censorship. For instance, here’s uber-weenie David French making that argument:

This is just shamelessly wrong. A private political campaign is not the government. A political party is not the government. A private company is not the government. This isn’t a “systematic violation of the First Amendment.” The First Amendment isn’t implicated at all. https://t.co/V0iDkkFe8s

— David French (@DavidAFrench) December 3, 2022

We have suspected for years that this was French just running interference, and that, in fact, he likes Internet censorship. Recently, he confirmed our suspicions:

Antisemitism speech is free speech, however vile it can be. So French is upset that Twitter/X is allowing for free speech. We would rather have people feel free to say vile things then have someone decide what kind of speech is allowed.

But the other retort to the French view is presented in Missouri v. Biden, because the argument in that case is that the social media companies were not simply acting on their own. Private action can become government action, under the right circumstances—the most obvious being when the government coerces the private action. The lower court found that various social media companies—like Twitter/X, Meta/Facebook and Google/YouTube were—were not censoring based on their own desires, but because of illegal government pressure. As a result, the District Court issued a preliminary injunction, prohibiting a broad range of communication by the government, and it applied nationwide. If you have been on social media since then, this order protected your right to free speech.

The Biden administration appealed and tonight they largely lost. The Fifth Circuit largely upheld that order, explaining that this was the standard for when private action became state action.

The government cannot abridge free speech. U.S. Const. amend. I. A private party, on the other hand, bears no such burden—it is ‘not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment.’ Manhattan Cmty. Access Corp. v. Halleck, 139 S. Ct. 1921, 1930 (2019). That changes, though, when a private party is coerced or significantly encouraged by the government to such a degree that its ‘choice’—which if made by the government would be unconstitutional, Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455, 465 (1973)—’must in law be deemed to be that of the State.’ Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U.S. 991, 1004 (1982); Barnes v. Lehman, 861 F.2d 1383, 1385–36 (5th Cir. 1988). This is known as the close nexus test.

They also found that the Plaintiffs, including many doctors, state officials and even the Gateway Pundit had met the requirement that there be a sufficient threat of irreparable harm:

We agree that the Plaintiffs have shown that they are likely to suffer an irreparable injury. Deprivation of First Amendment rights, even for a short period, is sufficient to establish irreparable injury.

So, they largely upheld the lower court’s order. They did tighten up the list of officials being enjoined and they clarified the language so it clearly prevented both coercion and ‘significant encouragement’ as the law prohibits. This means that the Biden administration can ask nicely for censorship but can’t engage in the kind of pressure campaigns it has in the past…..

Shellenberger: Exposing the Censorship Industrial Complex | SpectatorTV

Published July 12, 2023 by Papa Giorgio

TWO SHORTS FIRST:

Michael Shellenberger Rips Zuckerberg’s Threads Censorship

“There is no democracy without freedom of speech. Everybody knows this, and yet they’re trying to curtail freedom of speech in the name of democracy. It’s creepy. It’s totalitarian. I never thought I would see it in my own country in my lifetime. And yet that’s exactly what’s happening at this very moment”

Over ONE MILLION FISA queries were conducted ILLEGALLY under FBI Director Wray’s watch. No one has been held responsible or accountable.

Spectator-TV

Michael Shellenberger, Twitter Files journalist and founder of Public is in London to discuss the international censorship industrial complex. He explains to Winston how the complex web of government, big tech, intelligence and media collude to suppress speech in the UK, America and beyond.

Helen Joyce w/Jordan Peterson (YouTube Banned This Interview)

Published June 11, 2023 by Papa Giorgio

Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality | Helen Joyce | Podcast #287

The Trans movement surges across western civilization, necessitating the ego-centric fantasies of gender-dysphoric youths over what once was known commonly as indisputable reality. Helen Joyce and Dr Jordan B Peterson discuss the depths of this truly cultural battle, the dangers of a quickly growing transhumanist ideology, and the unbridled narcissism lurking at the heart of the conflict.

Helen Joyce is an Irish novelist and journalist, acting as the executive editor for events and business at the Economist in London. Before this, she trained as a mathematician, graduating from the Trinity College in Dublin, before attending Cambridge. She then acquired a PHD in geometric measure theory at the University College London. She has held many roles as a journalist, working for PLUS Magazine and Significance Magazine, both of which have an emphasis on communicating complex math and statistics to the everyday reader. Later, she would spend three years as the Economist’s foreign correspondent to Brazil, living in São Paulo. In 2018, Joyce curated a series of articles on transgender identity, which lead her to author the Sunday Times bestselling book, “Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality.”

Here is a bit more at THE DAILY WIRE:

DailyWire+ contributor Dr. Jordan B. Peterson revealed on Saturday that YouTube had removed a video — in which he and author Helen Joyce discuss gender ideology — for allegedly violating the platform’s “hate speech policy.”

In a tweet posted early Saturday, Peterson shared the message he received from YouTube informing him that a video titled “Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality” was removed due to an alleged “violation”: “Our team has reviewed your content, and, unfortunately, we think it violates our hate speech policy. … We know that this might be disappointing, but it’s important to us that YouTube is a safe place for all.”

Under the “How your content violated the policy” section, YouTube stated in part: “Content glorifying or inciting violence against another person or group of people is not allowed on YouTube. We also don’t allow any content that encourages hatred of another person or group of people based on their membership in a protected group.”

Tagging YouTube, Peterson responded on Twitter: “I have now officially been accused of hate speech by YouTube, Let’s be clear about this: that is a direct accusation [of] conduct deemed criminal in many jurisdictions. This is absolutely not OK, @YouTube. Not OK.”…..

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