Axios: Books Become Free Speech Battleground

I’ve changed my mind about what to call this.

A few years ago, I was calling it “progressive liberalism,” but that term now strikes me as a bit dated. Woke progressivism is illiberal. These people have embraced violence, censorship, ritual shaming, state repression and economic blacklisting as tactics. They call you a “fascist” and an “authoritarian” while demanding that Amazon wield its power as a monopoly to censor “offensive” and “immoral” books.

Axios:

“The free speech debate that has engulfed social media platforms is now extended to any information gatekeeper, even those not obligated to host anyone’s speech.

The big picture: More books have been canceled recently by publishers wary of the potential blowback they could face for giving controversial figures or ideas a platform. Some publishers are facing pressure from frustrated employees to censor controversial authors or ideas.

Driving the news: Employees at Simon & Schuster have filed a petition demanding that the book publisher cut ties with authors associated with the Trump administration, the Wall Street Journal reports. …

Between the lines: The book industry has been forced to reckon with the role it plays in publishing content that could be offensive or immoral in the wake of the Capitol siege and the Black Lives Matter movement. …”

This new ideology has hatched out of progressive liberalism. It is based on critical social justice. We used to call it political correctness, but it has mutated into a far more virulent strain.

You can get banned from social media now for your offline behavior. There are hall monitors at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Technology who have created a blacklist of their enemies to ban from the internet. Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL is currently demanding that the World Federation of Advertisers use its economic power to deplatform Tucker Carlson and FOX News.

Reuters:

“(Reuters) – Earlier this month, Twitch announced it would start banning users for behavior away from its site.

The move by Amazon Inc’s live-streaming platform involved hiring a law firm to conduct investigations into users’ misconduct, a new twist in the latest prominent example of tech companies acting on “off-service” behavior. …

“This isn’t content moderation, this is conduct moderation,” said Corynne McSherry, legal director at the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, who said she was concerned about platforms that struggle to effectively moderate content on their own sites extending their reach. …

Facebook Inc’s rules ban users they deem dangerous, including those involved in terrorist activity, organized hate or criminal groups, convicted sex offenders and mass murderers. People who have murdered one person are mostly allowed, a spokeswoman said, due to the crime’s volume. Last year, Facebook expanded the list to include “militarized social movements” and “violence-inducing conspiracy networks” like QAnon. …

Looking beyond their own sites has helped companies remove extremists and others who have “learned the hairline cracks” in site rules to stay online, said Dave Sifry, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Technology and Society, which has pushed for major platforms to incorporate this behavior into decisions.”

Murderers are not banned from Facebook.

If you have the wrong politics though like the president of the United States or virtually the entire Populist Right, you can catch a ban. It isn’t “fascism” or “authoritarianism” when your offline political behavior is being surveilled by hall monitors who blacklist you from social media platforms. “Authoritarianism” is ordinary people mocking our corrupt elites on YouTube. “Misinformation” is expressing a contrary opinion online that dissents from the sacred narrative.

Note: We have a party line now like in the old Soviet Union. Even fake late night comedians are all parroting state propaganda now.

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

14 Comments

  1. As Jews have controlled European publishing houses since the 1600’s I suspect many, many historical books have been disappeared or rewritten. The only difference is the internet. Google is rewriting science history as I type.

  2. As someone who regularly receives the incredibly distorted and bellicose anti-Gentile ADL notices in his e-mail box, I have come to regard Mr. Greenblatt as a very serious threat to The American Way, or, to cut deeper, the health and welfare of all those with European Gentile blood, living in this country.

    Worse yet, he is only the tip of a very significant web of cultural, economic, and political potentates, many of whom do not have a drop of Jewish in them.

    Politically, culturally, and economically, we are going to have to beat him, and them, and in such a way that they will not recover – otherwise we are not going to recover.

    I am sorry that they present themselves in such a way, or, perhaps, better said, foist themselves on society in such an aggressive way, that the vast menu of interacting with our fellow humans is reduced to 2 choices – conquer or be conquered.

    We are not going to get through this without some serious scratches.

    History tells us that there will not be a draw; that someone is going to win and that the fate of the loser is going to be bad.

    As someone with Jewish blood, I not only detest that Mr. Greenblatt’s actions might be construed to me, I cannot live in a country with his constant bullying of my White Gentile brethren or those of us whose political opinion runs counter to the latest incarnation of the misanthopick Judeo-Bolshevik strain.

    It’s simply unacceptable.

    Segregation now and segregation forever, or, perhaps better put, secession now and secession forever.

    How The North feels I don’t know, but, the South cannot live with Mr. Greenblatt.

  3. “We have a party line now like in the old Soviet Union”

    You’re exactly right. It’s just marxism, in a different guise.
    Brought to us by the same ‘people’.

    On the path to global domination and enslavement.

    • It’s more insidious than that. Bolshevism was ‘Judaism without the synagogue.’ THIS is now the RELIGION OF ANTICHRIST. Which makes sense, since the Jews are the seed (sperma in Greek) of Satan, per the Bible.

      You pagans and Christophobes may laugh, but what other than a religion can you call the Corona Scamdemic, the Woke Culture, and the Antifa as the Jesuits of the Jews? (I know, oxymoron)

  4. Henry Ford wrote about his problem back in his day. You publish article they don’t like they go for the newspaper that runs them, the newspaper holds fast, they go for the companies that provide the ink, paper, press machinery and delivery services, then the banks that finance them. It would not surprise me in the least if people start having their utilities cut. Isn’t the “free market” wonderful?

  5. The free speech debate that has engulfed social media platforms is now extended to any information gatekeeper, even those not obligated to host anyone’s speech.

    When radio station banned the Dixie Chicks for their opposition to the Iraq War, there was widespread free speech-based denunciation of the moves by liberals and leftists and even pseudo-cons like John McCain and W himself. AFAIK, those radio stations were private entities “not obligated to host anyone’s speech.’

    Michael Tracey wrote at length the other day about the Dixie Chicks controversy:
    https://mtracey.substack.com/p/why-media-liberals-have-to-lie-about

      • @Spahn…

        Thank you for the continuing good pro-Southern vibes from you.

        And, no, as you probably have guesst, there ain’t nuthin’ ‘Dixie’ ’bout the erstwhile Dixie Chicks.

        Better if they were named, ‘Scalawag Hussies’..

  6. The media lies are very similar to communist propaganda. The media knows they’re lying, we know they’re lying, and they know that we know they’re lying. Everyone on all sides is aware that it is all lies, but they continue lying anyway. Because it’s less about convincing people of the lies than it is enforcing compliance and subordination.

    • That’s right: itz all about (((them))) exercising naked power & force now. They’re doing it because they now think nobody can stop them.

      We’ll see.

  7. Liberalism is just centralization.
    Fools believe it’s freedom because they’re temporarily liberated from near authority figures by those far away.

    Locke didn’t believe in civil rights, he thought you should clap as the government murdered your family.

    That is christian secularism.

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