She has a lot of crazy left [...]]]>
She has a lot of crazy left ideas for how she would act as president, one of the worst being gutting the First Amendment with a fascist cadre of speech police.
Fortunately, Warren’s poll numbers are falling, so it’s unlikely she will be the Democrat candidate.
Tucker Carlson opined on Wednesday that candidates tend to become more truthful when they are losing. Maybe, but I tend to think they are just grasping for something different to say, anything that might perk up unimpressed voters.
Democrats weren’t always this horrible — what happened? Is it the constant reaction to 24-7 media where candidates have to one-up whatever was just said, making their responses increasingly extreme?
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: The upside of collapsing political campaigns is they tend to be pretty honest. Once they sense they’re losing, a lot of candidates decide to say what they actually think — what the hell? Why not?
That apparently is where Elizabeth Warren is tonight. With her chances of becoming President having assumed that trajectory of a plane crash, Warren has decided to go full fascist because that’s who she is and has always been.
Today, Warren released a plan that demands criminal penalties for anyone who posts “disinformation online, designed to sway voters.”
Now, try to ignore the redolent irony here. This is the person who for years posted false claims online that she was a Cherokee Indian to sway voters. This is the candidate who pretended she’d lost a job for being pregnant and their kids went to a public school.
Now, this very same person is threatening to send you to prison for telling tall tales. The most florid liar in the race, someone the New York Times once euphemistically described as a gifted storyteller, says she’s going to criminalize lying.
Paging Dr. Freud. That is more than hypocrisy. It’s a sickness.
But let’s take Elizabeth Warren’s plan seriously for a moment. What exactly is this disinformation she intends to ban? If you guess the answer has something to do with Russia, pour yourself another vodka.
According to Warren’s press release today, “The same tactics employed by the Russian government are just as easily accessible to domestic groups seeking to promote or oppose candidates and political or social issues.”
Okay. But what does that mean? Well, it means that when people say things that Elizabeth Warren doesn’t like or that impede her attempts to accumulate power, they should go to jail.
Warren isn’t the first person to fantasize about this, of course, all megalomaniacs dream of running their own ministries of truth. The founders of this country understood that well, and that’s why they protected us with the First Amendment.
Warren doesn’t care. As many on the left have explained, the First Amendment is racist. It was written by slaveholders — shut up and obey! As President, Warren would order tech companies to share information about you so that she can determine who has been saying things she doesn’t want said, and then they can be punished.
Warren has also promised a Global Summit on disinformation so that other fascist governments could coordinate their efforts against speech more efficiently. No word yet on whether North Korea has joined Warren’s budding coalition. Of course, they’re a natural partner in this.
None of this will actually happen, of course, at least not soon. Voters don’t like Elizabeth Warren enough to give her more power.
But what’s amazing is that the press still takes Elizabeth Warren very seriously. They love her. Warren won the New York Times endorsement for President just the other day.
So the question is, are the media on board with her plan to shut down the First Amendment? Don’t take our word for it, see for yourself.
If the media don’t denounce this idea within the next few days, you’ll know they are for it.
Democrat 2020 candidate Joe [...]]]>
Democrat 2020 candidate Joe Biden recently demanded that TV networks stop booking Rudy Giuliani which gives a hint about what sort of president he would be regarding the First Amendment.
Similarly, D-candidate Kamala Harris has called for Twitter to suspend the president’s account because of his tweets against the mysterious unnamed “whistleblower” who has accused him of impeachable acts.
These Democrats are picky about the sort of speech they would permit.
On Monday, Tucker Carlson discussed the decision of New York City to ban certain words and phrases — one being “illegal alien” which is the correct legal term. Badthink persons who utter the truth about foreign invaders will be punished severely with a quarter-million-dollar fine.
As Tucker observed, “This is how it begins” — fascism, that is.
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: New York City is a sanctuary city and that means federal immigration law is ignored there, so the officials do their best to protect illegal aliens, even the criminals from deportation.
New York has created its own category of immigration laws that target not people who are here illegally, but people who are born here like you.
For example, a new decree from the New York Human Rights Commission says that ordinary people can be fined up to a quarter of a million dollars if they use language that illegal immigrants don’t like.
Some of the banned words include asking employees to speak English, threatening to call ICE on illegal building tenants or even using the phrase “illegal alien” which is an official U.S. government phrase, by the way, in a quote, “derogatory way.”
Seth Barron is Associate Editor at City Journal. He joins us tonight.
Seth, the First Amendment, I think it’s right in there in the Bill of Rights. But it’s not operative in the biggest city in the country now?
EDITOR SETH BARRON: Well, it’s still there. But you know, they’re working on it, Tucker. They are working on it.
As you know, the left, they want to control language, because if you can control language, you can control thought, you can control behavior. Now, technically speaking, the new guidance that the Human Rights Commission put out really pertains mostly to, you know, housing, employment and public accommodations. But that’s not how they’ve put it out there.
They have put it out, as you said that using the word “illegal alien”, in a very broad context, is illegal and could get you fined.
CARLSON: But I don’t understand. I mean, how can — I mean, the First Amendment has been interpreted repeatedly by the Supreme Court and definitively in 1967 to protect all speech, except imminent calls to violence. So how in the world does New York get around that?
BARRON: Well, they would say that this is implicit discrimination. So if you’re an employer, and you want to, you know, make sure that your employees or applicants are truly citizens, or truly have work authorization that that would be a kind of a disparate impact.
It’s a wide ranging assault, I will agree with you there.
CARLSON: It’s fascism. So what if I take the train up to New York tomorrow and just stand in Times Square with a bullhorn using the phrase “illegal alien”?
BARRON: That would probably actually get you in trouble because part of the law does cover — I can’t remember exactly what the term, it is like threatening intent or something, basically, discriminatory intent. So yes, if you’re posing any kind — if someone could interpret that as a threat to their safety or a threat of violence, then you could get in trouble.
CARLSON: Right. So this is how it begins. The left conflating speech with violence. I don’t agree with what you’re saying, therefore, I feel threatened, therefore, you’re not allowed to exercise your First Amendment right. I mean, that’s authoritarian.
BARRON: You’ve heard the Drop the I Word campaign. I mean, this has been going on for a while and they have been pushing it. They want the word “illegal alien” stricken from vocabulary, even though as you pointed out, it’s part of the Federal Code.
CARLSON: We should fight this and I don’t care if every HR department in every big company in America signs onto this, which of course they will, we should fight back. Because what’s at stake here is the most basic of all freedoms, which is the freedom to think what you want.
BARRON: Agreed.
CARLSON: Yes. Agreed. Seth, great to see you tonight. Thank you.
One person testifying was Dennis Prager, whose website PragerU has suffered many instances of censorship by Google with no explanation.
PragerU takes on liberal shibboleths, such as the “Nation of Immigrants” myth, which may [...]]]>
One person testifying was Dennis Prager, whose website PragerU has suffered many instances of censorship by Google with no explanation.
PragerU takes on liberal shibboleths, such as the “Nation of Immigrants” myth, which may anger the far left. (Actually, we are a nation of citizens.)
The educational five-minute videos are aimed at a young audience to fill in the historical gaps left by the liberal education establishment, but the restrictions placed on some items are nonsensical: Mr. Prager learned from the first witness, a spokesman from Google, that the video about the Ten Commandments was put under restriction because it mentioned murder — negatively, of course, but those algorithms are strict!
Seriously, you would think that a major web publisher like PragerU would get responsible human attention.
]]>DENNIS PRAGER: I will take just a moment because my opening comment is under five minutes just to respond on the issue of the Ten Commandments video that was a placed on the restricted list by Google; the representative from Google mentioned that a reason that it would be on the restricted list was that it contains mentions of murder, so I was thinking, I have a solution that will I think appeal to Google. I will re-release it as that the Nine Commandments. That should solve the problem of including murder in my discussion of the Ten Commandments.
And as regards the swastika, yes, there is a swastika; it is again in the commandment of do not murder wherein I show that murder — there are people who believe murder is all right even today, and I use the swastika and the hammer and sickle as two examples. I would think we would want young people to associate the swastika with evil; that was why I had a swastika.
It is an honor to be invited to speak in the United States Senate, but I wish I were not so honored. Because the subject of this hearing — Google and YouTube’s (and for that matter Twitter and Facebook’s) suppression of internet content on ideological grounds — threatens the future of America more than any external enemy.
In fact, never in American history has there been as strong a threat to freedom of speech as there is today.
Before addressing this, however, I think it important that you know a bit about me and the organization I co-founded, Prager University, PragerU as it often referred to.
I was born in Brooklyn NY. My late father, Max Prager, was a CPA and an Orthodox Jew who volunteered to serve in the US Navy at the start of World War II. My father’s senior class thesis at the City College of New York was on antisemitism in America. Yet, despite his keen awareness of the subject, he believed that Jews living in America were the luckiest Jews to have ever lived.
He was right. Having taught Jewish history at Brooklyn College, written a book on antisemitism, and fought Jew-hatred my whole life, I thank God for living in America.
It breaks my heart that a vast number of young Americans have not only not been taught how lucky they are to be Americans but have been taught either how unlucky they are or how ashamed they should be.
It breaks my heart for them because contempt for one’s country leaves a terrible hole in one’s soul and because ungrateful people always become unhappy and angry people.
And it breaks my heart for America, because no good country can survive when its people have contempt for it. I have been communicating this appreciation of America for 35 years as a radio talk show host, the last 20 in national syndication with the Salem Radio Network, an organization that is a blessing in American life. One reason I started PragerU was to communicate America’s moral purpose and moral achievements, both to young Americans and to young people around the world. With a billion views a year, and with more than half of the viewers under age of 35, PragerU has achieved some success.
My philosophy of life is easily summarized: God wants us to be good. Period. God without goodness is fanaticism, and goodness without God will not long endure. Everything I and PragerU do emanates from belief in the importance of being a good person. That some label us extreme or “haters” only reflects on the character and the broken moral compass of those making such accusations. They are the haters and extremists.
PragerU releases a five-minute video every week. Our presenters include three former prime-ministers, four Pulitzer-Prize winners, liberals, conservatives, gays, blacks, Latinos, atheists, believers, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and professors and scientists from MIT, Harvard, Stanford and a dozen other universities.
Do you think the secretary-general of NATO, or the former prime-ministers of Norway, Canada, and Spain, or the late Charles Krauthammer, or Philip Hamburger, distinguished professor of law at Columbia Law School, would make a video for an extreme or hate-filled site? The idea is not only preposterous; it is a smear.
Yet, Google, which owns YouTube has restricted access to 56 of our 320 five-minute videos and to other videos we produce. “Restricted” means that families that have a filter to avoid pornography and violence cannot see that video. It also means that no school or library can show that video.
Google has even restricted access to a video on the Ten Commandments, as we have seen. Yes, the Ten Commandments.
We have repeatedly asked Google why our videos are restricted. No explanation is ever given. But, of course, we know why. Because they come from a conservative perspective.
Liberals and conservatives differ on many issues. But they have always agreed that free speech must be preserved. While the left has never supported free speech, liberals always have. I therefore appeal to liberals to join us in fighting on behalf of America’s crowning glory – free speech. Otherwise, I promise you, one day you will say, “first they came after conservatives, and I said nothing, and then they came after me. And there was no one left to speak up for me.”
Thank you.
Below, the face of America’s Pol Pot: in 2015 communication professor Melissa Click at the University of Missouri called for “muscle” to eject a badthink student [...]]]>
Below, the face of America’s Pol Pot: in 2015 communication professor Melissa Click at the University of Missouri called for “muscle” to eject a badthink student journalist from her protest zone — she was later fired.
President Trump recently pledged to cut federal funding to universities if they don’t support free speech, which will set up major ideological stresses, as Victor Davis Hanson pointed out in a discussion with Tucker Carlson. But there is big money involved, so the academy will be forced to adjust somewhat by using weasel words but certainly with no change of heart.
Audio version:
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I am proud to announce that I will be very soon signing an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research dollars.
TUCKER CARLSON: That was the President over the weekend at CPAC. American colleges once had the freest speech in the world and that was directly related to the fact they were the best in the world. Now American higher education is increasingly dominated by fascists who tolerate but a single set of ideas. The President’s executive order presumably will seek to change that. It’s unclear exactly what it will say. Well, obviously we’ll follow it.
In the meantime, Victor Davis Hanson is a college professor himself. He is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of the new book, “The Case for Trump,” which is out tomorrow. He joins us tonight. Professor, thanks very much for coming on. Congrats on the book.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Thank you very much, Tucker.
CARLSON: So what do you think this executive order is likely to say? What should it say?
HANSON: Well it’s trying to restore some balance on campuses and it functions, I think at two levels. Politically it sort of forces the parents of free speech and that’s what the Democratic Party says they are going back to the Berkeley free speech era and the ACLU.
It says you have to be for free speech, but if you’re going to follow Trump’s executive order, that you have to be for Trump. They can’t be for Trump, but anything Trump says, he’s for they’re against. But to be against Trump is against free speech, so how do they square that circle?
I think the way they do it is through Orwellian language, so what they mean is free speech is hate speech because you could be cruel to some group and censorship is called trigger warnings, segregation as safe spaces and having some skepticism that man-made global warming is sort of creationism or denialism.
So in their way of and I’m saying they’re going to make these efforts, Tucker, because there’s $26 billion dollars at stake in federal support for higher education, so they’re going to be for free speech. It’s just not what you and I and most Americans call free speech.
CARLSON: So, I am a little bit confused. So obviously, higher education is destroying the country. It’s feeding this poison into the bloodstream making young people hate themselves, hate the country, not educating people and leaving everyone in debt, so it’s a disaster. Why wouldn’t the President unilaterally to the extent he could you just shut down federal funding for it until they do this and a lot of other things to make it a serious sector once more?
HANSON: They will and I think he will try to do that and I’m thinking, I’m hoping he’s successful like you are, but I think what they’re going to say is, “Oh we believe in free speech,” but people who want to engage in free speech say mean things, so we can’t let them hurt people and we believe — we don’t believe in censorship, but Mark Twain can be insensitive, so we’re going to trigger warning or not read certain passages or we believe in integration of course in the Civil Rights Movement, but we feel that it’s too hurtful for people so they have separate racially segregated dorms and that’s how they operate.
They change the language and they think that by changing the language, they change reality, so then they come back to Trump and they think, we solved the problem. We can beat for free speech and we can be against Donald Trump because that isn’t really free speech. It’s trigger warnings and micro aggressions and safe spaces and denialism. That’s what they do and I don’t think they’re going to be able to pull it off, but they’re in a very bad predicament, Tucker.
This is the party of the left that is going to have to oppose a motion to ensure free speech.
CARLSON: Well, it’s bewildering to those of us over 40; I hope they push this really hard. Professor, thank you for joining us tonight and again, congrats on your book.
]]>There is plenty of online pushback against the Southern Povs’ malevolence: for example, the Spring 2018 issue of The Social Contract focused on the SPLC, and included my article, In the War to Defend Western Civilization from Jihadist Islam, the SPLC Sides with the Enemy.
Mark Krikorian of CIS appeared with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday to discuss CIS’ lawsuit plans and opportunity.
In the conversation below, a successful plaintiff against SPLC was mentioned although not by name: he is Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz who won over $3 million from the SPLC hucksters.
Of course, other people are hopeful that the SPLC gets a major smackdown for the enormous harm it has caused.
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: You’ve heard of the SPLC. It’s a phony anti-hate group that exists to crush people they don’t like, to tar Conservatives organizations as fellow travelers with the KKK or whatever.
Mark Krikorian is Executive Director at the Center for Immigration Studies. His group just sued the SPLC for designating them as a hate group. Finally, someone is fighting back against this. What is the basis of this lawsuit, Mark?
MARK KRIKORIAN: Our attorneys decided the way to go was to file a RICO lawsuit, under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which is used in the criminal part by, you know, against the Mafia or whatever, by the government.
But there are civil parts where private individuals can file suit. And the basis of the claim is they are committing wire fraud, by falsely describing us as a hate group in order to do harm to my organization.
CARLSON: Has it done harm to your organization being designated?
KRIKORIAN: It’s done some. I mean, we have a reputation and a body of work that makes it hard to plausibly call us a hate group. And we’ve testified before Congress more than a 100 times. We’ve been cited in Supreme Court decisions, published real professors, the work of professors from legitimate universities. Nonetheless, it has, in fact, had an effect. One example that we mentioned in the suit, Amazon has this program where you can designate a non-profit group to get a small amount of revenue every time you buy something.
We were removed from that program. And the person who communicated that to us made the mistake of actually saying what the reason was: in print, he said, we just get our list from the SPLC.
CARLSON: So, that’s what’s remarkable to me; the SPLC is just the Praetorian Guard of the Democratic Party, obviously, fighting for the status quo, seeking to crush anyone who stands in the way of power. But they still seem to be taken seriously by media outlets, and by companies like Amazon. Why?
KRIKORIAN: It’s good question. I’m not sure why. I mean, this is a kind of thing you see a lot in the tech industry, for instance, where they just assume that Progressive political views are just the normal political views, and anybody who doesn’t hold them, somehow, is weird and to be shunned.
And I think that’s part of what it is. You see the same thing with journalism where a lot of media simply cite the SPLC’s hate group designation as just sort of a fact. You know, this person is this old, he’s wearing a blue suit, and he’s been designated as a hate group by the SPLC.
That’s starting to change because they really have overreached, and they’ve gotten slapped down a couple of times. There was a Muslim reformer, a liberal Muslim anti-extremist; they labeled him as an extremist. And he sued. They settled because they knew they were going to lose for $3 million plus. I don’t expect them to go quite that easily in this case. But I think we have a pretty strong case.
CARLSON: You have a very strong case. And I looked at the accusations they leveled against you, because you’re a guest on this show and I was interested, and there’s no basis for saying that about you. It was shocking. It was, I think, it’s libel. But we’re rooting for you, of course.
Still, this has not been a good year for the SoPovs, since former jihadist Maajid Nawaz won a $3.375 million settlement and apology after the SPLC had listed him in their fake “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.” Calling a Muslim an EX-extremist can put a target on his back from the genuine bad guys, so the categorization was far worse than the SPLC’s everyday slander.
Below, Maajid Nawaz won a legal fight against the SPLC.
For more about thugs in suits, see my article in The Social Contract, In the War to Defend Western Civilization from Jihadist Islam, the SPLC Sides with the Enemy.
Even the Center’s devoted pals in the liberal media have begun to notice the accumulation of lies and arrogance. In August 2017, the New York Times asked, Why Is the Southern Poverty Law Center Targeting Liberals? That opinion piece was written by Somali reformer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was also included on the SPLC list of Anti-Muslim Extremists. Politico posed another question in a lengthy piece in July 2017 that revealed the big money: Has a Civil Rights Stalwart Lost Its Way? The Week commented upon The Sad Hysteria of the Southern Poverty Law Center about its attack on a variety of inappropriate targets, calling the SoPov “trigger happy.”
Keep in mind that some of us attend conferences about illegal immigration and other such touchy topics, where important connections are made. The internet is uniquely useful of course, but there’s nothing like a group meeting to move the agenda forward.
Back to the current Hyatt controversy, Robert Spencer of JihadWatch.org has made some remarks on that subject.
His talk was largely taken from an earlier article:
]]>Robert Spencer: HuffPo Ecstatic as Hyatt Hotels Ban Foes of Jihad Terror, By Robert Spencer, Geller Report, October 5, 2018
HuffPost was the first to report on the Hyatt Regency’s decision to host Act for America, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated a hate group,” and now the Huffington Post’s veteran pro-jihad smear merchant, Christopher Mathias, is spiking the football, as the Hyatt Hotel chain has announced that it will no longer host groups that oppose jihad terror.
Now wait a minute, Spencer, you’ll say. Hyatt said they were going to stop hosting “hate groups,” not “groups that oppose jihad terror.”
Indeed. But why has the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) designated Act for America (as well as Jihad Watch and other groups that oppose jihad terror) a “hate group”? Mathias sums it up with his usual vicious arrogance and tendentiousness: “Although it bills itself as the ‘NRA of national security,’ it mainly focuses on vilifying Muslims, spreading baseless conspiracy theories and lobbying legislators to pass discriminatory laws.” Mathias actually gives some examples of “vilifying Muslims,” which we will examine. “Spreading baseless conspiracy theories” likely refers to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Explanatory Memorandum, which lays out its plan for “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.” See how much of a “baseless conspiracy theory” that is here. “Discriminatory laws” refers to anti-Sharia laws, but since Sharia denies the equality of rights of women and non-Muslims, it would be more accurate to say that Act is opposing, rather than lobbying for, discriminatory laws.
The fact is that Act, and Jihad Watch, and the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the Center for Security Policy are on the SPLC’s “hate group” list for opposing jihad terror and Sharia oppression. The proof of this is the fact that there is no significant group that opposes jihad terror that isn’t on the SPLC’s list: in other words, they don’t identify some supposedly reasonable response to the jihad threat, and then claim that Act and AFDI and Jihad Watch et al have gone beyond reasonable bounds. Instead, they stigmatize and demonize anyone and everyone who dares mount the slightest and most tepid opposition to the global jihad as a “hate group” and as “anti-Muslim,” another smear — was it “anti-German” to oppose the Nazis? And there are, meanwhile, no Islamic jihad groups on the SPLC’s hate group list, no terror-tied Islamic charities, nothing.
Mathias claims that “Brigitte Gabriel, Act for America’s founder, has repeatedly made bigoted comments about Muslims. She has stated, incorrectly, that ‘practicing Muslims, who believe in the teachings of the Quran, cannot be loyal citizens of the United States of America.’”
“Incorrectly,” the imam Mathias assures us. But on what basis he does not say. The Qur’an says to beat a disobedient woman (4:34), that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man (2:282), to be ruthless to unbelievers (48:29), to behead unbelievers (47:4), and to make war against “the People of the Book” (i.e., Jews and Christians, and a few other groups) until they pay a special tax and submit to Islamic hegemony (9:29). There is much more, but even on the basis of those passages, there is a problem between the Qur’an and the Constitution. Mathias and his cohorts have never addressed this; instead, they’ve waved away those who point it out, defaming them as “Islamophobic.”
Mathias also claims that Gabriel “has said that Muslims are a ‘natural threat to civilized people of the world, particularly Western society.’” I very seriously doubt that Gabriel said this of all Muslims; that is almost certainly Mathias’ vicious misrepresentation. Meanwhile, would he himself deny that jihadis are a threat to civilized people? He is so clueless and compromised that maybe he would.
Ultimately, the SPLC/Mathias characterization of Act for America, as well as others that the SPLC smears as “hate groups,” is a matter of opinion, not of objective fact. Should Hyatt Hotels or any other business really be denying service to any group based on the judgment of a private organization about that group? The SPLC is anything but an objective or unbiased source. Imagine how Mathias and the HuffPo would howl if the Hyatt chain started refusing to host groups based on the evaluation of, say, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, or the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The willingness of corporations to validate the SPLC and treat it as if it were a reliable arbiter of what constitutes a “hate group” and what doesn’t is short-sighted and unwise, and sets a dangerous precedent: if your group, or the favorite charity of Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian, ends up on the SPLC’s list tomorrow, you’ll see what I mean.
As an Armenian, Hoplamazian should be ashamed of himself for caving to this pro-jihad intimidation, and setting this dangerous precedent, which will lead ultimately to the denial of hotel accommodations to all those whose political opinions are deemed unacceptable. That’s the kind of thing that happens in totalitarian states. And thanks to Mark Hoplamazian, Christopher Mathias, the Huffington Post, and above all the Southern Poverty Law Center, we’re well on the way there.
I’m sure Hoplamazian and the Hyatt brass will be glad to hear that I will never stay at a Hyatt again as long as this totalitarian policy is in place, and will recommend to everyone I know that they should boycott the Hyatt chain. They don’t want people who have been smeared by the SPLC around? That’s easy to arrange.
Dr. Epstein (@DrREpstein) discussed the issue on the Tucker Carlson show on Friday, but it was not quite as alarming as his earlier appearance in March where he revealed the frightening extent of Big Tech’s secret powers of persuasion:
DR. ROBERT EPSTEIN: Tucker, I’ve been studying this very carefully now for more than five years with multiple randomized controlled experiments around the world for national elections, and I can tell you that we should be paranoid because what Google and Facebook can do is really mind-boggling.
If, for example, if Mark Zuckerberg on Election Day last year, if he had chosen to press the Enter key in early morning and just sent out a message to Hillary Clinton supporters, only saying go out and vote, a go-out-and-vote reminder, that would have sent her an additional 450,000 voters that day with no one knowing that this had occurred — and that’s just Facebook.
What Google can do is really off the scale: our experiments show that Google can can take a 50/50 split among undecided voters and change it into a 90/10 split with no one knowing that they have been manipulated and without leaving a paper trail for authorities to follow.
Spare audio:
Now back to Friday: as Tucker pointed out, the Democrats are still harping over their overwrought conspiracy theories about Russian meddling in the 2016 election, while a more genuine threat resides in Big Tech’s ability to meddle in secret.
Plus, it’s alarming how some citizens can have their voting decisions swayed by rather small influences piped in from the internet.
TUCKER CARLSON: How about the threat of Facebook itself or other tech giants? Representatives from about a dozen tech companies including Facebook and Twitter held a secret meeting today ostensibly to discuss how to resist the manipulations of these platforms, but could it be that these companies themselves are manipulative? Could they and not the Russians be imperiling our democracy?
Nobody has studied this more carefully than Robert Epstein; he’s the senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research, and he joins us tonight. Dr. Epstein, thanks very much for joining us. I just want to say at the outset I have no idea what your politics are; I don’t think you’re a conservative; I don’t think it matters. You care about democracy. Tell us, should we be concerned potentially about the manipulation of our democracy by the tech companies?
DR. ROBERT EPSTEIN: Tucker, it’s great to be back. I am NOT a conservative, and we should be extremely concerned because I can tell you the bottom line here is content no longer matters: all that matters is the filtering and ordering of content and that is completely in the hands of Google and Facebook and to a lesser extent Twitter.
CARLSON: So what would happen — I know that you’ve gamed this out to some large extent — how would a company potentially like Facebook or Google manipulate public opinion to achieve a desired result in an election?
EPSTEIN: Well I think they’re doing this all the time actually, because we’re well aware of the fact that they suppress material, sometimes they announce it, sometimes they don’t. We are aware of the fact that Google puts some items higher in search results than other items; well, if search results favor one candidate that shifts votes. I think we’re well aware of the fact that news feeds on Facebook sometimes seem to favor one political point of view over another, and that shifts votes. So I have an article coming out very soon about ten different ways that these big tech companies can shift millions of votes in November, in fact I calculate this November they’ll be able to shift upwards of 12 million votes just in the midterm elections.
CARLSON: If they have the power to do that and they have a demonstrated political preference and a demonstrated willingness to exercise that preference by suppressing information they disagree with, as we both have seen, then why shouldn’t we be terrified that they’re going to subvert our democracy completely?
EPSTEIN: Well I think democracy has been subverted actually because at the moment you see there are no specific rules or regulations that are stopping these companies from exercising the power that they have; so that’s a problem. Another problem is that we have no monitoring systems in place; at the moment I’m working with academics and with business people to build monitoring systems, but until those systems are fully in place, you can’t even really track what it is they’re doing, what it is they’re showing people. So we’ve got some big problems here at the moment. I think the problems can be solved at some point but at the moment I think democracy is in trouble.
CARLSON: So Republicans don’t want to do anything because they’re free market absolutists under the narcotic sway of libertarian religion, and Democrats don’t to do anything because they know that helps them. But without Congress acting would anybody trust our electoral system as honest and on the up and up?
EPSTEIN: I wouldn’t trust it at the moment because in the research I do, you know I found number one, that it’s very easy to shift a lot of votes without people knowing that they’re being influenced, so that’s a problem, and the other problem is that you can do this without leaving a paper trail. So at the moment, I think we’re really in deep trouble, and I think you hit the nail on the head — the Republicans aren’t doing anything about it, and the Democrats aren’t doing anything about it; each for their own reasons.
CARLSON: It’s terrifying. Thank you, Dr. Epstein, for calling attention to this.
Breitbart News has also been reporting on Epstein’s work examining Big Tech’s surreptitious influence and censorship, e.g. Exclusive — Robert Epstein: Who Gave Private Big Tech Companies the Power to Decide What We Can See? which includes a 36-minute audio interview.
]]>Robinson was acting as a citizen journalist to cover a muslim gang-rape trial when police arrested him for “breach of the peace”, but clearly the aim of the [...]]]>
Robinson was acting as a citizen journalist to cover a muslim gang-rape trial when police arrested him for “breach of the peace”, but clearly the aim of the government was to shut down the speech of anyone who disagrees with Britain’s slavish cowering to Islam. He was quickly whisked away to a 13-month jail sentence which could be dangerous since Britain’s jails have no shortage of jihadist muslims. Furthermore, the government slapped a gag order on the press about the case — an example of how every nation that imagines itself to be a home of freedom needs a First Amendment.
Geert Wilders — who has had his own struggles against censorship in the Netherlands — made a statement calling for free speech to be restored:
The Drudge Report had an unusually large headline spread about the case on May 28:
Paul Weston has also tangled with British authorities about censorship: in 2014 he was arrested for quoting Winston Churchill’s 1899 remarks about Islam’s retrograde culture. So Weston is well positioned to judge what the Tommy Robinson matter signifies about the collapse of the British nation:
]]>Paul Weston: Britain is Now a Genuine Police State, GatesOfVienna.net, May 26, 2018
There are a number of court cases taking place in Britain which are subject to reporting restrictions. A good percentage of these — and we really don’t know how many, which I think is rather the idea — relate to Muslim gang-rape trials. Tommy was under a 13-month suspended sentence for previously reporting on a gang-rape trial subject to reporting restrictions. In other words, if he broke the law again he would then serve the jail time as per the initial sentence.
I’m not sure if the trial he was reporting on when he was arrested was yet another “reporting restriction” case, but if it was (which I think it was) the police have a duty to issue a warning before taking action if the warning was ignored. Again, I am unsure as to what happened here.
But the police made no mention of reporting restrictions or contempt of court; they arrested him for “breaching the peace” which would seem to be a total fabrication and therefore unlawful. His immediate hearing and sentencing suggests this was a planned action by the police (and our lovely government) in order to shut him down.
To further reinforce the actions of a totalitarian state, a reporting restriction has now been put into operation with regard to his arrest. Tommy has been “disappeared” in much the same manner as countless others were airbrushed out of existence in genuine totalitarian regimes abroad, but I think this is the first time in England that a citizen has been “disappeared” in such a blatant way.
Even more horrifying is the supine manner in which this grotesque act of totalitarianism has been received by our media and purported civil-liberties merchants, none of whom have raised a murmur of disapproval at the time of this writing.
Couple this with the video of the woman arrested a few days ago by the police who threatened to break her down if she refused to open it — “DO NOT RESIST US! DO NOT RESIST US!” and I think it is very clear that the government, given the choice of crushing Islam or crushing those who question Islam, have chosen to crush the latter.
So the decent, democratic Britain I was born into has now gone. I warned some years ago of the direction the British police were taking (“Multiculturalism Has Destroyed the British Police”), and it is time to realise Britain is now a genuine Police State.
As the Islamic threat grows via demographics and violence, so the grip of the Police State will increase over the dissidents. Britain has three progressive routes now open to it: First, submit to the State. Second, submit to Islam after the State submits to Islam. Third, engage in revolution within the next decade in order to head off the two former routes.
I don’t think we will, though. I think Britain is finished as a country, culture and people. Our only hope of achieving revolutionary thought is via total economic collapse. When we are hungry and cold we might, just might, become angry enough to revolt. At the moment, however, we can fly abroad to the sun-kissed beaches of Ibiza and get completely trolleyed even as our country and all that is stands for is incrementally stolen from us by 7th century savages in alliance with our home-grown Traitor Class.
Tommy was a threat to the Traitor Class, so they have removed him. He won’t be the last.
Nearly two-thirds of likely voters believe they need to be careful when speaking about “controversial” issues.
Just 28% Think Americans Have True Freedom of Speech [...]]]>
Nearly two-thirds of likely voters believe they need to be careful when speaking about “controversial” issues.
Just 28% Think Americans Have True Freedom of Speech Today, Rasmussen Reports, August 22, 2017
Few Americans think they have true freedom of speech today and think the country is too politically correct.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just 28% of American Adults think Americans have true freedom of speech today. Most (66%) think, rather, they have to be careful not to say something politically incorrect to avoid getting in trouble. (To see survey question wording, click here.) . . .
The national survey of 1,000 American Adults was conducted on August 17 & 20, 2017 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
In addition, a Rasmussen survey from last spring shows the erosion of freedom on campus, where debating challenging ideas was once an accepted part of the educational process. But as I wrote two years ago, Universities Enforce Liberal Censorship in Classrooms, the culture war for America’s founding principles is being lost on campus.
]]>Americans See Free Speech on Campuses as a Thing of the Past, Rasmussen Reports, May 3, 2017
Conservative pundit Ann Coulter recently cancelled a planned speech at University of California, Berkeley, following protests and threats of violence by the students. Americans are now left wondering whether free speech on college campuses is simply a relic of a bygone era.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 44% of American Adults think there is less freedom of speech on U.S. college campuses today than there has been in the past. Twenty-three percent (23%) think there’s more freedom than in the past, while 27% think the level of freedom of speech is about the same. (To see survey question wording, click here.) . . .
The national survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on April 27 & 30, 2017 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
Robert Spencer has been a long-time critic of hostile Islam who has written many fine books, [...]]]>
Robert Spencer has been a long-time critic of hostile Islam who has written many fine books, several of which I have read and found very informative. The JihadWatch Youtube channel has hours and hours of great stuff — hopefully that won’t disappear under the current PC hysteria.
Spencer doesn’t just observe aggressive behavior by Muslims against us infidels: he shows that such bellicosity is a requirement commanded by the Koran, a point he underlined when appearing on Fox, “. . .the jihadis can and do point to the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence.”
Spencer has warned against the open-borders immigration to Europe offered to Muslims by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Unsurprisingly, the Southern Poverty Law Center — an evil propaganda arm of leftist lies — played a big part in besmirching Robert Spencer’s excellent body of work informing the West of jihad dangers. Left-leaning writer Ken Silverstein famously blew the whistle on the SPLC in a 2000 Harper’s magazine piece that emphasized the fraud and money-grubbing. That important article,“The Church of Morris Dees,” may be read here. Later, Silverstein remarked, “. . .the SPLC shuts down debate, stifles free speech, and most of all, raises a pile of money, very little of which is used on behalf of poor people.”
In addition, the Center for Immigration Studies published a report on the sketchy organization in 2010: Immigration and the SPLC.
Yet the disreputable SPLC continues to make millions of dollars by spreading lies: in 2017 it reported its endowment fund to be $319.3 million. Its 2016 financial report shows piles of money and also notes its activity in “protecting immigrants’ rights” — meaning illegal aliens. The SPLC received $2.5 million in donations following the Charlottesville violence — small spuds in the organization’s big financials, which show revenue of $54 million in 2015.
Robert Spencer appeared on Fox News to discuss the current censorship mania from Silicon Valley, and he appeared happy to have won a round against the anti-freedom left.
The ProPublica article that bashed JihadWatch.org (and VDARE.com!) emphasized the business aspect: Despite Disavowals, Leading Tech Companies Help Extremist Sites Monetize Hate. The article cited the Southern Poverty Law Center as a source in its first paragraph.
TUCKER CARLSON: Just a couple of weeks for the left’s newfound distaste for free speech to start spreading into new areas, not just hate groups, but people they just disagree with. After Charlottesville, online payment platform PayPal announced it would deny service to so-called hate groups, so this would cut off service to Jihad Watch, which is not a hate group, not even close. They’re a site that’s worried about radical Islam. Service was eventually restored after there was an outcry online, but it’s not a reassuring sign. Robert Spencer is the man that’s happened to. He founded Jihad Watch and he joins us now. So Robert you were denounced as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center which is a completely ersatz phony left-wing lobby group posing as a human rights organization — totally dishonest — and then what happened next?
ROBERT SPENCER: Well a reporter from ProPublica which is a Soros-funded publication, contacted me, pointed out that Jihad Watch has a donation link via PayPal as well as my books for sale at Amazon.com and Newsmax news links and said what would you do if all this was cut off because you’re a hate group, as according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. And I tried to actually reason with this reporter Lauren Kirchner and tell her the implications of what she was suggesting and saying that if you are allowing that people with unpopular political opinions be cut off from these platforms, you better hope that doesn’t turn on you, and your positions don’t become unpopular sometime in the future. But she published her article. It led off with me, denounced me, noted the Southern Poverty Law Center’s absolutely spurious claim that I’m some sort of hate group leader, and within hours I was notified by PayPal that I can no longer use their platform.
CARLSON: What was so remarkable about the ProPublica piece, the Lauren Kirchner piece that you’re referring to which I just read, is that at no point does it described in any detail the views that are supposedly hateful that you hold. It just described you as a member or the leader of a hate group but it never told viewers or readers what that means. It was by definition propaganda; it was garbage. Did did you write about this?
SPENCER: Yeah sure, I wrote about it on Jihad Watch and pointed out that Lauren Kirchner had not made any effort to verify whether the Southern Poverty Law Center was right or not about whether I’m a hate group: the left seems to consider the Southern Poverty Law Center infallible in matters of who’s a hate group and who isn’t. So who’s watching the Watchmen? What are the biases of this supposed neutral arbiter?
CARLSON: So I actually went to the Southern Poverty Law Center website: it hurt me to do that, but for the purposes of this segment, I made myself and went to the entry on you, and because I wanted to know. I mean, if you’re saying things that I’m appalled by, I don’t want to have you on, or I want to call you on them anyway on the air. I couldn’t find anything in your write-up that was even particularly controversial or out-of-bounds. Do you know what exactly they’re holding up as an example of your hatefulness?
SPENCER: I think that what we have here is the left very common tendency to take statements that are absolutely true that they don’t like and portray them as hateful. One of the main things that I say in my work is that the jihadis are working from real traditions within Islam. They’re not all Muslims by any means and all that not all Muslims are terrorists or believe in what the jihadis believe in, but the jihadis can and do point to the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims.
Now this is an obvious fact that I’ve documented thousands of times on Jihad Watch, but as far as the left goes, if you even suggest that Islam is not a religion of peace or that might not be a religion of peace in every conceivable way, then you’re a hate monger and a bigot and an Islamophobe.
CARLSON: Ayaan Hirsi Ali was also listed on the SPLC website as a hater. This is someone who grew up in Somalia, and was the victim with female genital mutilation, but for criticizing that religion she’s a hater. Really quickly, can you think of any examples of people who criticize — I don’t know — Christianity who are on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website as leaders of hate groups?
SPENCER: Not only do they not have any, but of course leftists in general celebrate that sort of thing. Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist writer, a critic of Christianity, critic of Islam, critic of all religions and religion itself — he was recently disinvited from a speech in California because the organizers found out he criticized Islam. They thought it was great when he criticized Christianity, but criticizing Islam has been set up as the third rail, the thing you must not touch in the American public square.
CARLSON: Why do the elites in our society hate themselves so much and hate our society so much, do you think?
SPENCER: I think that it it comes from the idea of a certain kind of guilt over success, and that the West has been very successful and its culture is celebrated all over the world, and they feel guilty about that and think that we have to apologize and bring in all these other cultures to make up for this.
CARLSON: It’s really sick. I wish Freud were still around for diagnosis. Thank you, thanks so much for joining us, and congratulations on being back among the living.
Robert Spencer used his website Jihad Watch to update the situation:
]]>Victory: PayPal removes ban on Jihad Watch, JihadWatch.org, August 21, 2017
Congratulations, lovers of freedom: your messages to PayPal and your cancellations of your account worked: PayPal has restored the Jihad Watch account. I just received this email:
Dear Jihad Watch:
Effective 08/21/2017, the limitation applied to your account associated with https://www.jihadwatch.org pursuant to our User Agreement was removed. Your services are being reinstated.
PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy in our User Agreement prohibits individuals and groups from using PayPal for activities that promote hate, violence, or racial intolerance. If we become aware of a website or organization using our services that may violate our polices, our dedicated team of professionals conducts a thorough review. Ultimately, a decision is made and communicated to the organization. In this instance, we have made the determination to lift the limitation applied to your account associated with the Acceptable Use Policy.
Sincerely,
Benjamin
PayPal Brand Risk Management
PayPalThe Left, seeing a golden opportunity when a Nazi psychopath plowed his car into a crowd of Leftists in Charlottesville, tried to use the moment as its Reichstag Fire, and crush all dissent from the hard-Left line. And there is no doubt that initiative will continue. But in banning Jihad Watch, PayPal overreached, and encountered a crowd of free citizens.
I have no intention of restoring the PayPal buttons on Jihad Watch. I know where they stand now, and do not intend to place myself at their mercy again. But nonetheless, this is a victory. Free people still exist in the United States, and the fascists who call themselves anti-fascists will not prevail.
Please help us continue our work: donate to Jihad Watch here (not a PayPal link).