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The Soft Totalitarianism of the Political Class

Published

4 months ago

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Reason.com - Free Minds and Free Markets

From Reason

By J.D. Tuccille 

Officials pursue an anti-liberty agenda through unofficial pressure and foreign regulators.

It’s no secret that governments around the world are chiseling away at people’s liberties. Rights advocates document a nearly two decade decline in freedom. Civil liberties activists warn of a worldwide free speech recession. And while American restrictions on government power hold the line better than pale equivalents elsewhere, the political class seems determined to end-run those protections and impose creeping totalitarianism by leveraging the authority of allies in other countries.

“Obrigado Brasil!” Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general, wrote this week to thank that country’s authoritarian Supreme Court for its recent ban on the X social media platform.

The court demanded X censor political views it called “disinformation” and appoint a new legal representative to receive court orders—after threatening the previous one with arrest. Importantly, the ban threatens ordinary Brazilians with hefty fines if they evade the prohibition on the social media network. Nevertheless, demand for blockade-piercing VPNs surged in Brazil after the court decision.

Ellison serves alongside Minnesota’s Gov. Tim Walz, who is the Democratic candidate for vice president and has falsely claimed “there’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech.” He’s also not the only prominent politician to have a real hate-on for X and its CEO, Elon Musk.

“Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X,” Robert Reich, Labor Secretary in the Clinton administration and one-time adviser to President Barack Obama, huffed in The Guardian. He cited the recent arrest in France of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov as a precedent. “Like Musk, Durov has styled himself as a free speech absolutist,” Reich sniffed.

But the animus doesn’t stop with X, Telegram, and their bosses.

“For too long, tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability,” former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claimed in 2022. “The EU is poised to do something about it. I urge our transatlantic allies to push the Digital Services Act across the finish line and bolster global democracy before it’s too late.”

Leveraging Foreign Authoritarianism for Domestic Purposes

Why would a former U.S. presidential candidate cheerlead for European speech regulations?

“The Digital Services Act will essentially oblige Big Tech to act as a privatized censor on behalf of governments,” Jacob Mchangama, founder of the Danish think tank Justitia and executive director of The Future of Free Speech, warned in 2022. “The European policies do not apply in the U.S., but given the size of the European market and the risk of legal liability, it will be tempting and financially wise for U.S.-based tech companies to skew their global content moderation policies even more toward a European approach to protect their bottom lines and streamline their global standards.”

Now in effect, the law is used to squeeze online speech, including as an end-run around U.S. protections for expression. It’s not the only overseas bypass of U.S. law, either.

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina “Khan can’t get Congress to pass her antitrust agenda and is losing in U.S. courts, so now she’s leaning on foreign governments to do the anti-business work for her,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board noted last year about Khan’s reliance on European regulators.

Behind-the-Scenes Pressure for Censorship

But attempts to impose control and stifle dissent in the absence of legal authorization or in defiance of constitutional protections also occur here at home. Days after Telegram CEO Durov’s arrest in Paris, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed what had already been revealed by the Twitter and Facebook files—that the government leaned on private companies to suppress dissent and criticism of officialdom.

“Senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire,” Zuckerberg told the House Judiciary Committee. He also admitted to suppressing reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop and its incriminating contents under pressure from the FBI.

That implicates not only incumbent President Joe Biden, but also Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president. Harris has complained in the past that social media companies are “speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation.”

Oversight, it seems, is now applied through back-channel pressure, and regulation by governments in countries that lack serious protections for free speech. The result is to endanger the role of the United States as a haven for free speech and other liberties in a world growing ever-more authoritarian.

The Political Class Embraces an Increasingly Authoritarian World

“Global freedom declined for the 18th consecutive year in 2023. The breadth and depth of the deterioration were extensive,” Freedom House cautioned in its 2024 annual report. “Political rights and civil liberties were diminished in 52 countries, while only 21 countries made improvements.”

“Today, we are witnessing the dawn of a free-speech recession,” Justitia’s Mchangama mourned two years ago. “Liberal democracies, rather than constituting a counterweight to the authoritarian onslaught, are themselves contributing to the free-speech recession.”

This erosion of protections for free speech and other rights occurs with the encouragement of American officials who want more control over our lives but have been (partly) stymied by American protections for liberty. In a world of global platforms and international travel, these officials are applying extra-legal pressure and relying on overseas friends to punish people for activities that are legal in the U.S.

Readers will notice that most if not all these officials are Democrats. Much ink has been spilled in recent years—rightly—about the authoritarian drift of the Republican Party. GOP vice presidential hopeful J.D. Vance wants to punish ideological opponents and advocates that his allies “seize the administrative state for our own purposes” and that they “seize the assets of the Ford Foundation, tax their assets, and give it to the people who’ve had their lives destroyed by the radical open borders agenda.”

But as illiberalism rises across the political spectrum, Democrats are leapfrogging authoritarianism to embrace a soft totalitarianism enforced by unofficial pressure and foreign allies subject to minimal restraints on their power. They ignore legal constraints and display contempt for this country’s protections for liberty in their quest to leave no refuge for dissent.

If liberty has a future in this country, it will be despite the best efforts of the political class.
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Internet

Gov’t memo admits Canadians are shifting to independent news due to distrust of media, not Russian ‘bots’

Published on December 23, 2024

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

A memo from Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs admits that the rise of ‘alternative’ news sources is not due to Russian interference, as some members of the Trudeau Cabinet have claimed, but likely reflects ‘decrease in trust among traditional outlets.’

The explosive growth of Canadians shifting to alternative non-legacy media to obtain their news is not due to Russian “bots,” as some in the government and left-wing media claim, but reflects people’s distrust of entrenched media outlets, at least one government agency admitted.

A memo titled Foreign Interference And Right Wing Politics: The Canadian Context from Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs said that the growth of so-called “alternative and far right ‘news sources’” is not due to Russian bots but is likely due to Canadians’ suspicion of “traditional outlets.”

Analysts put to rest claims made by some far-left media outlets that bots are somehow to blame for the rise of independent news media sites in Canada popular today, which include the Post Millennial, Rebel News, True North, LifeSiteNews, as well as a host of others.

According to foreign interference monitors at the Rapid Response Mechanism office, or RRM Canada, run by the department, “they tried and failed to corroborate allegations that conservative media in Canada were stoked by offshore agents,” according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

“RRM Canada observed no indication of false amplification and assesses the increased popularity of these sources is very likely both organic and domestic in nature,” read the memo.

The memo stated that the while the nature of the content is “domestic, the move away from traditional news sources may indicate a decrease in trust among traditional outlets among right leaning Canadians.”

“No such increased popularity has been observed among alternative or far left media outlets,” noted the memo.

The memo noted that sites such as the Rebel News Network had a larger social media footprint than established outlets such as the National Post or the Globe & Mail.

When looking to find claims that foreign agents were behind the rise of alternative media, the RRM analysts found no evidence that this is the case.

“While these stories are not necessarily inaccurate, Rapid Response Mechanism Canada notes foreign interference and covert influence campaigns exploit narratives from across the political spectrum.”

The memo of note was filed with counsel for Canada’s ongoing Commission on Foreign Interference.

Overall, the memo contradicted claims made by the cabinet of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Russian agents were the ones increasing messaging critical of the government.

In 2020, Canada’s then-Public Safety Minister and now-Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc quipped to reporters that “Trolls and bots are dispatched to stoke anxiety and in some cases inflame debate around sensitive issues,” saying, “Their main goal is chaos.”

“We have seen how hostile state and non-state actors use information technologies to manufacture reality,” he claimed, adding, “Fake news not only masquerades as the truth, it masquerades as legitimate political debate.”

Canadian figures who are critical of the Trudeau government have been accused of being bankrolled by Russia. As reported by LifeSiteNews, Dr. Jordan Peterson recently demanded an apology from Trudeau after the Canadian prime minister accused him of being funded by Russian state media.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Trudeau claimed U.S. media personality Tucker Carlson and Peterson are being funded by the state media outlet Russia Today. He also blamed Russia for “amplifying the chaos” surrounding the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests.

Trudeau made the claim last Wednesday under oath during testimony at the Foreign Interference Commission after he was asked about Russia’s alleged role in the Freedom Convoy.

The Foreign Interference Commission was convened to “examine and assess the interference by China, Russia, and other foreign states or non-state actors, including any potential impacts, to confirm the integrity of, and any impacts on, the 43rd and 44th general elections (2019 and 2021 elections) at the national and electoral district levels.”

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Censorship Industrial Complex

UNESCO launches course aimed at ‘training’ social media influencers to ‘report hate speech’

Published on December 13, 2024

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Tim Hinchliffe

UNESCO’s bills its new ‘training’ initiative as empowering participants to be more credible and resilient while simply turning independent content creators into talking heads for the establishment.

UNESCO and the Knight Center for Journalism launch training courses, e-books, and surveys on disinformation and hate speech for influencers and content creators, big and small.

Last month, UNESCO published the results of a survey called “Behind the Screens: Insights from Digital Content Creators” that concluded that among 500 content creators in 45 countries that had a minimum of 1,000 followers, 62 percent said they did “not carry out rigorous and systematic fact-checking of information prior to sharing it,” while 73 percent expressed “the wish to be trained to do so.”

And lo and behold! UNESCO and the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas have launched a re-education course to brainwash independent creators into thinking like unelected globalists and the legacy media, whose credibility are at an all-time low:

The journalism industry is on high alert as news audiences continue to migrate away from legacy media to social media, and many young people place more trust in TikTokers than journalists working at storied news outlets

“Respondents to the survey expressed interest in taking UNESCO’s free online course designed to equip participants with media and information literacy skills and knowledge,” the report states.

To get an idea of the make-up of those 500 content creators that were surveyed in the UNESCO study:

  • 68 percent were nano-influencers – those with 1,000 to 10,000 followers
  • 25 percent were micro-influencers – those with 10,000 to 100,000 followers
  • 4 percent were macro-influencers – those with 100,000 to 1,000,000 followers
  • 6 percent were mega-influencers – those with over 1,000,000 followers

Only 12.2 percent of the 500 people surveyed produced content under the category of “current affairs/politics and economy” while the majority covered “fashion/lifestyle” (39.3 percent), “beauty” (34 percent), “travel and food” (30 percent), and “gaming” (29 percent).

Equip yourself to combat online misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, and harmful AI content. Collaborate with fellow journalists and content creators to promote transparency and accountability on digital platforms, empowering your audience with the media and information literacy skills they need to navigate today’s information landscape.

In addition to the survey and the online course called “Digital Content Creators and Journalists: How to Be a Trusted Voice Online,” UNESCO and the Knight Center also published an e-book in October called “Content Creators and Journalists: Redefining News and Credibility in the Digital Age.”

This pyramid of propaganda is billed as empowering influencers to be more credible and resilient, but these efforts are also aimed at turning independent content creators into talking heads for the establishment.

 

Despite their expanding outreach, many digital content creators who work independently face significant challenges including the lack of institutional support, guidance, and recognition. — UNESCO, Behind the Screens: Insights from Digital Content Creators, November 2024

How can an independent content creator remain independent if he or she needs institutional support, guidance, and recognition?

This is an attempt by the United Nations to take independence away from the equation, so that its messaging becomes indistinguishable from mainstream, establishment narratives.

And between the survey and the e-book, there is not one, single, solitary example of disinformation or hate speech – save perhaps the claim that denying official climate change narratives is considered disinformation, but that’s highly debatable.

Threats to collective climate action are often perpetuated not only by individual creators but by industries, like fossil fuels, that actively shape public discourse to their advantage.

Speaking of climate change, the e-book contains a lengthy chapter called “Content Creators and Climate Change” that is entirely dedicated to pushing climate activism while claiming climate change disinformation is often perpetuated by coordinated campaigns from fossil fuel industries.

The UNESCO documents place heavy emphasis on disclosing who’s funding content creators while ignoring its partner, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP), and its alleged influence over UNESCO:

The Chinese Communist Party uses UNESCO to “rewrite history” and to “legitimize the party’s rule over regions with large ethnic minorities.”

When held to a mirror, UNESCO comes off as little more than hypocritical with massive conflicts of interests of its own:

One of the biggest ethical questions is knowing from where content creators derive their income.

 

At the same time, UNESCO points readers towards organizations like factcheck.org, which itself is funded by the likes of the U.S. State Department and the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, the latter of which holds approximately $2 billion of stock in COVID vaccine manufacturer J&J, according to U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie.

In January 2021, UNESCO, the WHO, UNDP, EU, and the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas ran a similar type of propaganda campaign for so-called COVID vaccine disinformation training for journalists as they are now doing for so-called climate change disinformation for content creators.

Another goal of UNESCO and the Knight Center is to create an environment where content creators snitch on one another under the guise of “hate speech”:

Among those targeted by hate speech, most chose to ignore it (31.5%). Only one-fifth (20.4%) reported it to social media platforms. This indicates an area where UNESCO and its partners could provide valuable training for digital content creators on how to effectively address and report hate speech.

In other words, the U.N. is partnering with journalists to teach influencers how to become victims that need protection.

Hey! Content creators. Were you aware that any criticism against the propaganda that we’ve planted within you means that you were a victim of hate speech? No? Well, climb on board and let’s “effectively address and report hate speech!”

Reprinted with permission from The Sociable.

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