Twitter Censorship, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

by Caitlin Johnstone

I've never encountered anyone online with whom I consistently agree, and if you're an independent thinker you won't either. Spend less energy concerning yourself with which individuals are good or bad and more on what information and ideas are true and helpful.

If people truly understood the extent to which mental narrative dominates their experience of life, propaganda, advertising and all other forms of psychological manipulation would be regarded by our society similarly to physical assault or property theft.

It is very telling that Twitter only started censoring Trump for violating terms of service when he promoted violence against Americans. He's been tweeting insanely hawkish threats against people in other nations for years, but they don't count as real people.

FYI if you're more upset by Twitter censoring one of the most powerful people in the world for inciting violence than by Twitter routinely censoring anti-imperialist accounts, it's because you're a mindless partisan hack.

Twitter going to war with Trump benefits ordinary people. If we're lucky Twitter winds up being forced to scale back its censorship protocols. If we're really lucky Trump stops advocating murdering people for looting.

It's so fascinating how liberals think they can just end conspiracy theories by having them censored by a blanket collaboration of shady Silicon Valley tech oligarchs. Says a lot about how little they understand - or want to understand - about other perspectives.

I mean how do they imagine that's going to work exactly? "Oh okay I used to think that 5G was for controlling nanobots injected into us under the pretense of a mandatory coronavirus vaccine, but now all the online posts about that have been removed by an opaque conspiracy of tech billionaires so I guess I'll stop believing that."

The establishment doesn't fear Trump's "populist" base anymore than they fear Trump. They've been easily propagandized into backing longstanding establishment agendas against Iran, China, Venezuela, Russia, Assange, etc. They're as worthless and neutered as Obama's base was.

Support Assange? Okay well we need to extradite him for his safety. Oppose Russia hysteria? Just ignore all Trump's cold war escalations then. Oppose war? Those are Obama's wars, not Trump's. A slight narrative adjustment was all it took to herd them in.

If you believe fighting the deep state has something to do with beating the Democrats and supporting Donald Trump, then you are not actually interested in fighting the deep state. What you are actually doing is called "being a Republican".

Life pro tip: If you find yourself cheering for the same "people's uprising" in a foreign nation that the US State Department is also loudly cheering for, it's because you've been propagandized. Please revise your media consumption habits and critical thinking skills accordingly.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but you will never, ever hate China hard enough to make manufacturing jobs return to America.

People think they're making a profound and important distinction when they say "No I hate the Chinese government, not the Chinese people." As though all the worst warmongers haven't babbled about supporting "the people" of Iraq/Libya/Syria/etc prior to every act of imperialism.

Complete list of arguments I've received against my opposition to cold war escalations with China:

- You love the CCP

- You think they've never done anything wrong

- Commie

- How many yuan were you paid to say this?

- If you love China so much you should move there

End of list.

If people moving too far to the left features anywhere on your list of major imminent threats to our society, you are an asshole.

Trump is not a Nazi Putin puppet, nor is he a populist savior. He's a miserable rich man from a miserable rich family who did what was necessary to become the president of a corrupt bloodthirsty empire, and then had a bunch of gratuitous narratives heaped on that from both sides.

I've never encountered anyone online with whom I consistently agree, and if you're an independent thinker you won't either. Spend less energy concerning yourself with which individuals are good or bad and more on what information and ideas are true and helpful.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

...for bringing clear thinking to US politics at the murkiest time in the nation's history with the most propagandized and thinking-impaired population on the planet.

I've picked from her observations four that resonate loudly in my mind;

FYI if you're more upset by Twitter censoring one of the most powerful people in the world for inciting violence than by Twitter routinely censoring anti-imperialist accounts, it's because you're a mindless partisan hack.

Fact.

It's so fascinating how liberals think they can just end conspiracy theories by having them censored by a blanket collaboration of shady Silicon Valley tech oligarchs.

Satire.

If you find yourself cheering for the same "people's uprising" in a foreign nation that the US State Department is also loudly cheering for, it's because you've been propagandized. Please revise your critical thinking skills.

Fail.

If people moving too far to the left features anywhere on your list of major imminent threats to our society, you are an asshole.

Iconic Truth.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Raggedy Ann's picture

We will hear so many truths, lies, facts, distortions, etc. that it is imperative we research and get our own facts straight in our minds. We also need to consider others perspectives. The only way to come together is to begin considering our fellow human in a loving way.

Things are coming along here - growing has only begun. Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

If you believe fighting the deep state has something to do with beating the Democrats and supporting Donald Trump, then you are not actually interested in fighting the deep state. What you are actually doing is called "being a Republican".

Well, there are some Democrats out there who are, laudably, serious about insisting on accountability, ending disastrous foreign interventions, upholding things like the 1st and 4th, sometimes even 2nd Amendments, but they are thin on the ground in positions of power, and the Dem establishment is ever ready to throw such dissident types under the bus if they become too annoying Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney, Tulsi...). Much as the Republican PTB have been toward people like Ron Paul or Justin Amash.

That said, at the moment, it's Trump who is taking on social media, google and the likewhich is is fine by me. As is his pursuit of the Obamagate matter where he has started to make actual headway - and as that would never happen under any plausible Democratic administration, nor if D's controlled both House and Senate - then I'm in support of Trump and whoever else willing to take on the evil scumbags.

Not that many of Trump's policies aren't bad to appalling, but without rule of law and basic civil liberties there is no prospect of reform. The remaining options, sooner that later would come down to a complete surrender of liberty and privacy or outright, bloody revolution. Both of which I'd kind of like to see avoided, if possible.

Being a small "r" republican is to be inherently anti-Deep State because control of society by elite, unaccountable entities is completely incompatible with the basic principles of a constitutional democratic republic.

Right now, it is mainly House Republicans who are - at Trump's request holding up passage of re-authorization of the most abusive spying provisions of the Patriot Act and Trump who is leading the fight against Internet censorship. And from Public Citizen and Avaas I get requests for money and an invitation to send thank you notes to Jack Dorsey. Yuck.

Ric Grenell (1st openly-gay cabinet member in US history) kicks significant Deep State butt in just 8 weeks as Director of National Intelligence.

Spend less energy concerning yourself with which individuals are good or bad and more on what information and ideas are true and helpful.

Information, ideas and *actions*, no?

Cheers, BR

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lotlizard's picture

@Blue Republic  
All NYC Dems had to offer were time-serving, ethnically factionalized city machine hacks redolent of corruption and contacts to organized crime.

When one is in one’s seventies, one thinks, “As this iteration of life slowly draws to its close, when it comes to choosing among ways to spend the time remaining, probably one of the poorest things to sell one’s soul for, or even just become emotionally overly attached to, would be, as with the other guises of Mammon and the devil, tribal loyalty to a party label.”

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@lotlizard is party loyalty.
I have only hatred for both of them, and have a total indifference to the Green party.
I am going to start restricting loyalty oaths only to essential friends and family!

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

CB's picture

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@CB I should move to Panama while there is still time.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

travelerxxx's picture

@CB

Yeah, that's pretty much fascist shit right there.

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@travelerxxx I just hope they shoot and kill me, instead of beating me to death.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

travelerxxx's picture

@on the cusp

My hope is that video clip will go viral and somehow bore though some think skulls. I'm thinking of Trump cultists, but frankly I'd be satisfied with everyday middle class whites seeing it and realising that street is their street.

I mean, that street looks like EveryStreet, Suburban USA. And there are the Panzers and the Storm Troopers marching. It's not 1933 Germany. It's Minnesota. And they're screaming orders at the houses, firing projectiles at the residents. I read the curfew orders. What they are doing is completely illegal. Yet, there they are - dressed in their SS Trooper black uniforms. Screaming orders at citizens as if those citizens were Jews to be rounded up for the concentration camp trains.

My thoughts now are regarding where my line in the sand needs to be. I guess those out participating in the demonstrations have already had to make that decision.

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@travelerxxx We have seen it.
We are now experiencing it.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

about police infiltrating Houston protests.
I HATE and DESPISE undercover cops.
The fuckers tried for a solid YEAR to set me up. Coming to my office, my home, following me, my husband, even putting recording devices in my home. I PAID teams to do sweeps of my office.
They PAID my criminal defendant clients to entice me into some criminal act.
On, and on, and on.
I am LUCKY to have escaped charges and prison.
I was, at the time, primarily doing criminal defense, and was getting a good reputation.
Well, fucking MY BAD.
The impetus was to keep me from running for office.
Like, I want to be a prosecutor or judge who is ok with this? BUT THEY ARE.
The undercover officers are down the chain, shooting at people. Go up the chain, and it is the government we elected.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

CB's picture

Fits well with your essay.

In the West: Propaganda, Hysteria and Truly Foul Breath!
by Andre Vltchek / May 30th, 2020

If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be laughable: the political brigands in North America and Europe are fuming, spitting and rolling their eyes upwards towards the ceiling. They are pointing fingers in all directions, shouting incoherently “China!”, “Russia!”, “Venezuela and Cuba!”, “Iran!”; “You, You, YOU!”.

China and Russia are quietly building a new world, which includes brand new infrastructure, factories and entire neighborhoods for the people. Hospitals are being constructed, and so are universities, parks, concert halls and public transportation networks. Both countries are doing all this quickly and noiselessly, and with great determination. And despite sanctions and embargos, they never shout back at the salivating, angry mouths of the Western gurus of brainwashing.

The difference between the West and the two mighty allies in the East, is enormous. In fact, it is not a difference, but an outright contrast.
...
What I do know is that in both China and Russia, people come first. Their standards of living are at the center of almost all the efforts of the planned economies. Beijing and Moscow and most of their bureaucracies exist so that the people live longer, better, and have more meaningful lives. The cities and villages are designed for citizens to become more educated, healthier, while enjoying a deeper cultural life.

Visiting Russia, from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad, as well as China, from Guangzhou to Urumqi; it is clearly visible, undeniable.
...
I do not even have to write about COVID-19 in this essay. Many people that are reading these lines are well aware of the horrific failure and disgraceful lack of solidarity in the West.

Next time, when you hear loud shouts and insults, smell terribly bad breath, and see finger-pointing towards Russia and China, find a chair, sit down, and calmly, very calmly ask yourself at least few basic questions:

“Is this the world in which I want to live?”

“If the world in which I live scares me, frustrates me, makes me unhappy, why should I trust its ideologues and propagandists?”

“Perhaps the reason why the Western rulers hate, despise and fear countries like Russia and China, is because they are actually doing something essentially good for our planet and the people! If they do, shouldn’t I support them?”

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CB's picture

Western “Progressives” Support Yet Another Color Revolution in Hong Kong
The Banality of Protest
by K.J. Noh / September 1st, 2019

Misinformed “progressive” western “activists” and pundits are putting down their remote controls and organic smoothies just long enough to tweet out that Hong Kong protesters need to be supported as paragons of virtue and justice. Some have even blogged and bloviated about the importance of these protests as a struggle for freedom against “dictatorship.”

Most of these individuals never question why, out of the thousands of daily protests, or the 200-plus ongoing global independence movements, or the 50-plus ongoing violent conflicts, why this particular struggle has been curated to penetrate the thick fog of their ignorance and their flashbulb-short attention span.

Most of these individuals wouldn’t be able to distinguish Hong Kong from Hokkaido, and couldn’t tell Putonghua from Toisanhua from Cantonese. Most have never seen or spent a day in China. In fact, you know it’s not a real color revolution until the stupid section of the western “progressive” blogosphere gets to cheerleading.

This is what they are willfully missing:
...
Progressives — if you actually are that — you need to keep your eyes open, your minds alert, and think sharply, critically, objectively as you wander into this battlespace.

Color revolutions and regime change operations simply can’t happen without you: they need you to become the blind chorus, the vapid echo chamber, the ditzy cheerleaders, and the jaundiced, prejudiced, ignorant umpires in this dirty game of information warfare. If you don’t want to become a vector of propaganda and a host of disinformation in this ugly viral warfare, you need to think critically, reflexively, dialectically when you tweet, blog, agitate, or speak out. Lives and nations rest in the balance.

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