Hillary Clinton: Free Speech is "Authoritarian"

Submitted by movie buff on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 9:39am

So the former Secretary of State and twice-failed presidential candidate has made a few comments about social media to The Atlantic, and rarely have I seen Orwellian doublespeak laid out so plainly. I don't know if she lacks the self-awareness to realize how she sounds, or if for her, saying this stuff publicly is just an expression of power: I will say what I want because this is my world and all you little people just live in it.

In the linked article, Atlantic executive editor Adrienne LaFrance reports on comments made by Clinton to that magazine's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg at the Sundance Film Festival. (I wonder if they were in a wine cave at the time.) Clinton has a big problem with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg--and no, it's not that he sells your private data for profit. (That's just a sensible business model.) Clinton's issue with Zuckerberg is that, according to her, he prefers not to act as an official censor on his platform, instead letting users post and read whatever they want and decide for themselves what they choose to believe.

There was the time, last spring, when a slowed-down video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi caught fire online. The distorted speed, which made Pelosi appear as though she was slurring her words, seemed designed to make her appear cognitively impaired. “Google took it off YouTube … so I contacted Facebook,” Clinton said. “I said, Why are you guys keeping this up? This is blatantly false. Your competitors have taken it down. And their response was, We think our users can make up their own minds.”

Now I had thought two of the most important principles of free speech are that it protects sleazy crap like that and it isn't curbed at the request of the powerful. But I guess my views on the matter are just out of date. The former Secretary of State is kind enough to update me on the latest NewThink:

When I asked Clinton today whether she too sees a Trumpian quality in Zuckerberg’s reasoning, she nodded. “It’s Trumpian,” she said. “It’s authoritarian.”

And just for good measure she adds that "I feel like you're negotiating with a foreign power sometimes." (I wonder which country she wants readers to think of.) I could point out to Secretary Clinton that Mr. Zuckerberg has quite a history of engaging in the same kinds of censorship that she accuses him of being insufficiently enthusiastic about. But my words would fall on deaf ears because Zuckerberg's crime is that--actual censorship aside--his platform is a populist one where anyone can log on and say anything they want. It's not the influence of "foreign powers" that worry people like Clinton, it's bus drivers in Ohio and plumbers in New Mexico. She longs for the days when in order to criticize an article in the New York Times, you had to write an article in the Washington Post, effectively excluding 99.9% of the public from the debate. Now that bus driver in Ohio can just go on Facebook and drag the shit out of it.

By laying out the populist/elitist divide in such stark terms, Clinton--and The Atlantic--have clarified things quite helpfully. The article seems to think that legitimate discussions of what limits should be placed on our freedoms are best held "at the highest levels," while it describes populist anger as "crawling out of the depths of the web." Censoring ordinary people is the right and proper thing to do, while letting them say whatever they want is "authoritarian" and "Trumpian." Since Facebook is a private platform, if they removed articles or videos at the government's request, that totally, 100% wouldn't violate the principle of freedom of speech. We're through the looking glass now, folks.

Of course, blatantly false stories are nothing new. I think I can safely say I speak for everyone here when I say I don't want Mark Zuckerberg deciding what's true or false, and I'm glad that--to at least some extent--he doesn't. But after RussiaGate, Syrian chemical weapons "attacks," Iraq WMDs, babies in incubators, the Gulf of Tonkin, and all the way back to the fucking Maine, I think we can all agree that the government has the credibility of an abusive, drunken sociopath. If there is any daylight left between Washington and Silicon Valley on issues of censorship, it should be guarded aggressively. And if the price of freedom is fake videos of Nancy Pelosi looking like she's had a few too many appletinis, then I say bring them on.

But what do I know? I'm just one of those "Nobodies" who likes Bernie Sanders.

Tags:

Hillary Clinton

Free Speech

censorship

Vote

Comments

Submitted by Not Henry Kissinger on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 10:54am

Casey Champagne

Doctoring video speed is AWFUL! But posting kiddie porn to shut down your opponent's Facebook campaign pages the night before a big primaries day is just fine!

Last week, Correct The Record (CTR), David Brock’s super PAC that coordinates with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, announced that it was spending $1m on social media in an effort to combat Bernie Sanders’ online dominance. How, specifically? By paying trolls.

Last night, on the eve of five Democratic Primary elections—Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland—we may have seen this paid army in action. Several notable Bernie Sanders Facebook groups were taken down following a coordinated cyber attack by Clinton supporters, in which a number of users reported content on the pages simultaneously. According to US Uncut, “Facebook’s automated systems take note of how many individuals report a particular post, and if the post is reported enough, it will be taken down. This same process applies to groups, pages, and individual user accounts.”

The groups affected by the attack include (but are not limited to) the following:

Bernie Sanders Activists (40,122 members)
Bernie Sanders Is My Hero (60,097 members)
Bernie or Bust (16,812 members)
Bernie Sanders – Ideas Welcome (33,836 members)
Bernie Sanders for President 2016 (117,601 members)
Bernie Sanders Revolutionaries
Bay Area for Bernie
...

According to US Uncut, there were even allegations of child porn being circulated and posted by the Clinton trolls:

Erica Libenow, a Sanders supporter and member of one of the pro-Bernie groups, said, “We had what looked like a kiddie porn posted in one of our groups today. I reported that one. Seriously made me want to vomit.”

A Facebook post by “Casey Champagne”, whose secondary name on his profile was listed as “Casey Max Charbonneau” (pictured below with Hillary Clinton) and whose Facebook likes included Correct The Record and Barrier Breakers 2016 (Brock’s recently launched online operation), confirmed that Clinton trolls were behind the attack when he bragged in the Facebook group “Bros 4 Hillary” that he managed to get one of the groups banned for “containing credible threat of violence”:

Never forget.

—

The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

Submitted by Le Frog on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 3:49pm

Gee, I must have missed her denouncing this guy

@Not Henry Kissinger and getting these guys "under control." No one commands better control over her supporters than Clinton! That must have been somewhere between voting for the Patriot Act, voting to invade and occupy Iraq, butchering Libya and other countries that no one cares about, and having lunches with Mike Bloomberg. Somewhere in there.

Doctoring video speed is AWFUL! But posting kiddie porn to shut down your opponent's Facebook campaign pages the night before a big primaries day is just fine!

Last week, Correct The Record (CTR), David Brock’s super PAC that coordinates with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, announced that it was spending $1m on social media in an effort to combat Bernie Sanders’ online dominance. How, specifically? By paying trolls.

Last night, on the eve of five Democratic Primary elections—Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland—we may have seen this paid army in action. Several notable Bernie Sanders Facebook groups were taken down following a coordinated cyber attack by Clinton supporters, in which a number of users reported content on the pages simultaneously. According to US Uncut, “Facebook’s automated systems take note of how many individuals report a particular post, and if the post is reported enough, it will be taken down. This same process applies to groups, pages, and individual user accounts.”

The groups affected by the attack include (but are not limited to) the following:

Bernie Sanders Activists (40,122 members)
Bernie Sanders Is My Hero (60,097 members)
Bernie or Bust (16,812 members)
Bernie Sanders – Ideas Welcome (33,836 members)
Bernie Sanders for President 2016 (117,601 members)
Bernie Sanders Revolutionaries
Bay Area for Bernie
...

According to US Uncut, there were even allegations of child porn being circulated and posted by the Clinton trolls:

Erica Libenow, a Sanders supporter and member of one of the pro-Bernie groups, said, “We had what looked like a kiddie porn posted in one of our groups today. I reported that one. Seriously made me want to vomit.”

A Facebook post by “Casey Champagne”, whose secondary name on his profile was listed as “Casey Max Charbonneau” (pictured below with Hillary Clinton) and whose Facebook likes included Correct The Record and Barrier Breakers 2016 (Brock’s recently launched online operation), confirmed that Clinton trolls were behind the attack when he bragged in the Facebook group “Bros 4 Hillary” that he managed to get one of the groups banned for “containing credible threat of violence”:

Never forget.

Submitted by edg on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 11:04am

Aww, that wasn't Clinton trolls.

No way it was Clinton supporters porning Facebook groups that supported Bernie Sanders. It had to be the Яussians!! It was obviously part of their campaign to get Trump elected by ensuring it would be Hillary losing to Trump instead of Bernie beating Trump.

Submitted by Not Henry Kissinger on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 11:50am

Just look at that creep.

@edg

And Casey's no sweetheart, either. (ba dum, ching!)

I never really put a lot of credence in the Pizzagate stuff, but after Epstein I now kinda wonder who gave Brock the material to post in the first place.

Starting to think they might have produced it 'in house'.

—

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 3:10pm

Just 'two' lies?

lol.. I counted more than two here.

Wow. Hillary tells two blatant lies here.
1. She says that she got “more votes“ than Obama in 2008. But there is no popular vote count in primaries, bc so many states use caucuses.
2. She says “I did 100 events for Obama.” The actual number is 13. pic.twitter.com/WavpO4QtvD

— 29 U.S.C. § 157 (@OrganizingPower) January 26, 2020

Umm..anyone else remember her bringing up RFK? Bueller?

Submitted by Le Frog on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 3:44pm

The naked narcissism is simply jaw-dropping

There is no explanation for her constantly showing up in the spotlight and insert herself into the election conversation other than narcissism. She can't seem to stop profiteering off Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump, yet she can't seem to do anything leader-y like advocating for clean water in poor communities, or at the very least, keep on the speaker's circuit like most other former office holders.

I feel like we're all being held hostage by Omnishambles Clinton and her hench-stooges and have been for years. In 2008, she conceded to Barack Obama with conditions, one of which was Clinton operative and total sleaze Debbie Wasserman Schultz installed to run the DNC. Insult to injury: campaigning for Obama at a whopping 13 events.

Wasserman-Schultz would play ball for sure and she loyally worked to guarantee Faillary as the nominee the next time she ran (which turned out to be ASAFP). The then-chair of the DNC then stepped aside and let the Clinton machine run the the DNC. No - OWN the DNC with the Clinton machine: everything from access to data to dodgy campaign funding was managed and approved by Clinton people.

The chair of the DNC who graciously stepped down to make room for Wasserman-Schultz was Tim Kaine, who coincidentally became Faillary’s VP pick in 2016.

Even with that behind us, we are still constantly assaulted with every fucking Faillary Clinton thought. And the people who are constantly giving her an audience can fuck off into the sunset as well. On some level, it must suck to be so widely hated, but, just a thought, why not stop creating reasons for everyone to hate?

Submitted by lizzyh7 on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 3:59pm

She revels in our hatred.

@Le Frog It gives her the weapon she needs to discredit those of us who loathe her - that old misogyny tool is very, very effective with her idiot followers, they love to wield that weapon. Too bad many don't seem to realize at all just how that reveals their stupidity but then again, this country isn't particularly well known for having the brightest bulbs in the bunch.

—

Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

Submitted by Le Frog on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 4:07pm

I can't figure out how it's been so successful

@lizzyh7 Clinton has the charisma of a dial tone and the energy of a bowl of jello. When I'm reading a Twitter conversation between Hillbots and their idiotic YASSSSS QUEEN! cheering, not a fucking one ever mentions a specific thing she accomplished or changed; all I see is that they support a persona. Fine, but I don't understand this intense cult of personality is centred on someone so devoid of personality.

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 7:39pm

You have such a way with words

@Le Frog

Clinton has the charisma of a dial tone.

My phone resents that remark.

Submitted by Shahryar on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 6:55pm

Hillary's top issue is Hillary

@Le Frog

Her #2 issue is anti-non-Hillary people.

Her perfect world is her in power with people telling her how wonderful she is with no regard to improving anything but some interest in making things worse. I know...sounds like Trump.

Submitted by Centaurea on Mon, 01/27/2020 - 4:28am

Sounds like

@Shahryar

a sociopathic narcissist.

—

"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

Submitted by Linda Wood on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 3:57pm

Thank you for saying this:

... after RussiaGate, Syrian chemical weapons "attacks," Iraq WMDs, babies in incubators, the Gulf of Tonkin, and all the way back to the fucking Maine, I think we can all agree that the government has the credibility of an abusive, drunken sociopath.

Submitted by movie buff on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 4:56pm

I feel like we need a new language

@Linda Wood
to describe the present moment. Establishment toadies love to point out that it's not "censorship" since it's technically major media outlets and not the government doing it. This is like an "iceberg theory" of the truth--ignore everything lurking below the surface and just focus on the part you can see. Ignore the spirit of the First Amendment and focus narrowly on the letter. Caitlin Johnstone said something to the effect of: establishment journalists cheering for the deplatforming of dissident journalists isn't a left/right issue, it's because those mainstream journos go to all the right cocktail parties so they know they'll never be on the receiving end of the shunning. This isn't Glavlit we're dealing with, it's something far more versatile and complex. And the class war is a BIG part of it.

—

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." --Noam Chomsky

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 5:52pm

I wrote a series on Facebook censorship

@movie buff

It's being done with help from the Atlantic Council which is made up from many NATO countries and gets lots of its funding from our government. This is one of the side effects of Russia Gate. Look at how alternative websites have seen their traffic cut by up to 90% after Google changed their algorithms. The war on journalists is another. The reason Assange was connected to Russia and Hillary's emails was so people would disown him and have no problem when he was indicted and removed from the embassy. Plus the accusations of rape even though he was never charged for it.

Twitter has been censoring lots of foreign countries and the latest is some one from Iran. The name escapes me at the moment.

Submitted by polkageist on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 6:06pm

What is Glavlit?

@movie buff

—

-Greed is not a virtue.
-Socialism: the radical idea of sharing.
-Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962

Submitted by movie buff on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 6:29pm

The Soviet ministry of censorship

@polkageist

—

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." --Noam Chomsky

Submitted by polkageist on Fri, 02/14/2020 - 1:10am

@movie buff Thank you.

@movie buff Thank you.

—

Submitted by travelerxxx on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 6:37pm

Guessing...

@polkageist

What is Glavlit?

Probably this:

General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press

Submitted by humphrey on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 5:18pm

This is not that far fetched thing for her to say.

Breaking:

Hillary Clinton confirms Joe Rogan is a Russian Asset https://t.co/jMse8yPttx

— CNM (@CNMneews) 24 January 2020

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 5:59pm

Good read

Hillary Clinton: the Most Destructive Democrat in Modern American History.

Let’s be clear. Hillary Clinton is without a doubt the most destructive democrat in modern American history.

For years now, Bernie Sanders has been blamed for the disunity that continues to be showcased out in the open within the Democratic Party. For years, his campaign has been blamed for Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump. For years, he has been treated with hostility by Clinton surrogates, pundits, and other Democratic Party insiders for having the temerity to think he might have something to offer the American people that could be better than what Hillary Clinton had.

Unwilling to accept responsibility for her own electoral defeat and poor campaign strategy, Hillary Clinton has carried this bitterness and resentment towards Bernie Sanders around with her, never afraid to put it on display when given the opportunity and getting increasingly more brazen each time she does so. It will never cease to amaze me that Clinton and her friends in the democratic party machine have the audacity to accuse Bernie Sanders of being divisive, when it is Clinton who continues to stir the pot and deepen the divide with comments like the ones she shared with Howard Stern.

Out of everything she said, the last line is what bothered me and I’m sure many other leftists the most.

“…And I hope he doesn’t do it again to whoever gets the nomination. Once is enough.”

As even CNN’s Chris Cillizza didn’t shy away from pointing out, that was clearly the not so subtle implication that Clinton still feels Bernie has absolutely no chance of winning the nomination let alone a general election. She treats him as though he is some sort of fringe joke with no place in the democratic party, rather than as a man who awakened an entire generation of Americans and is at least partially responsible for the incredible blue wave we’ve seen in elections all across the country since the last Presidential election.

Clinton has absolutely no desire to learn, and her divisive attitude and the bitterness that comes along with it serves no one other than Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and the donor class. I can only imagine how Bernie would be treated if he was the one spewing any talking point that sticks against Hillary Clinton if she has chosen to run again.

Submitted by humphrey on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 6:10pm

I don't think that she will ever stop.

Submitted by wendy davis on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 6:40pm

hellary clinton:

“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”

–Hillary Clinton, speech at George Washington University, March 17, 2008

Later Hillary tried to explain by saying:

“Now let me tell you what I can remember, OK — because what I was told was that we had to land a certain way and move quickly because of the threat of sniper fire. So I misspoke — I didn’t say that in my book or other times but if I said something that made it seem as though there was actual fire — that’s not what I was told. I was told we had to land a certain way, we had to have our bulletproof stuff on because of the threat of sniper fire. I was also told that the greeting ceremony had been moved away from the tarmac but that there was this 8-year-old girl and, I can’t, I can’t rush by her, I’ve got to at least greet her — so I greeted her, I took her stuff and then I left, now that’s my memory of it.”

hey, hellary; what did you do with gadaffi's gold bars, anyway? bet they're not in the central bank you'd set up first thing after hitting the ground in ~~tripoli~~ beghazi.
cackle, cackle. anthony freda's 'the hillary hawk':

Submitted by humphrey on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 6:49pm

I think that this is the event.

@wendy davis

Submitted by ggersh on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 7:26pm

You guys are so negative irt her heinous s/

10 people like her, got it 10 people, now remember these guys are not quite the best 10 list to have but it's about her heinous, always her heinous.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/hillary-clinton-kissinger-mubarak-bla...

Ten “Somebodies” Who Like Hillary

By
Esha Krishnaswamy

According to Hillary Clinton, “nobody likes” Bernie Sanders. But it begs the question: Just who exactly likes her?

1
Madeleine Albright: Former Secretary of State, 1997–2001
2
Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud: Former King of Saudi Arabia, 2005–2015
3
Tony Blair: Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1997–2007
4
Jeff Bezos: CEO of Amazon

Jeff Bezos is a Bond villain without the charisma.
5
George W. Bush: Former President of the United States, 2001–9
6
Islam Karimov: Former President of Uzbekistan, 1989–2016
7
Henry Kissinger: Former Secretary of State, 1973–77
8
Hosni Mubarak: Former President of Egypt, 1981–2011
9
Benjamin Netanyahu: Prime Minister of Israel, 1996–99 and 2009–Present
10
Harvey Weinstein: Former Hollywood Producer

—

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 7:38pm

Hey...

@ggersh

Just because Epstein is dead he shouldn't be left off the list. And why no mention of Bill?

Submitted by ggersh on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 8:31pm

No empty suit either so disappointing...-g-

@snoopydawg

—

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Submitted by travelerxxx on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 9:42pm

Blue dress

@snoopydawg

And why no mention of Bill?

Well, the list was "... people that like her." We don't know that about Bubba. Methinks they probably have separate schedules, if you know what I mean. Besides, Bill is kinda more Epstein-ish. And then there's that thing about Monica...

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sun, 01/26/2020 - 9:54pm

Hillary sure seems to be traveling alone a lot lately

@travelerxxx

Or with daughter Chelsea, but no Bill in sight. She was interviewed in Park City Utah about her new show and she talked about why she stayed with him after the Monica scandal. She said that people raked her over the coals for it. I thought it was none of my business and didn't rake her...but it's interesting that she is promoting it by herself when both contributed to it.

And actually both of them flew on Epstein's jet to his private island. She took her BFF Huma with her though...lots of rumors.