Home » The aims of leftist labeling and censoring of conservative pundits as extremists

Comments

The aims of leftist labeling and censoring of conservative pundits as extremists — 45 Comments

  1. There is also the fact that the more extreme you are the more extreme your opponents seem to you. The farther you are to the left (or for that matter the right, but that happens less) the farther to the right your opponents seem. It’s a form of psychological projection.

    Liberals more than conservatives are more likely to self-censor. I once heard a liberal complain why people couldn’t just listen to only NPR. Conservatives couldn’t even if they wanted to since so much media is leftest.

  2. We need colleges to be sued, and to lose, for discriminating against hiring conservatives. In theory, it’s illegal, but in practice, they almost all do it a LOT. Since it’s OK to discriminate against conservatives by colleges, many orgs, whose decision makers were educated at colleges that discriminate, those decision making graduates also discriminate.

    The Reps have missed the boat, badly, on allowing the anti-Reps to take over colleges and teacher unions.

  3. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy; “Those who make peaceful resolution impossible will make violent resolution inevitable.”

    They think that allegiance to the Constitution equates to a suicide pact. They think that liberty “will go quietly into the night’.

    They assume that nothing can disrupt the water, food, medicine, electricity and transport of needed goods into their urban and suburban strongholds.

  4. This is gleichschaltung in practice… not theory..

    “Not acting from any “master-plan,” these developments followed a pattern which can be more properly called “the conqueror State.” Power was seized by individual Nazis or individual Nazi groups. They did this by driving out opponents in both the State and the Party.” / This chapter continues that study by concentrating on the similar process by which hundreds of non-political institutions and groups were “coordinated.” Here once more orders did not come following deliberations in Berlin (or Munich) but were carried out by individuals and groups.

    The only reason you guys think its different is that it doesnt match what you IMAGINE it to be, and never learned what it actually was!

    NEO: For a while, the phenomenon of leftist censorship of the right concentrated on potential speakers at college campuses.

    and after doing things like that for years, with feminists being the largest organizing dictating group and even being called FemNazis (for good reasons as many people saw what they were copying)..

    The question of elections is really… when have enough old people died that new people raised under Gleichshaltung homogenized education system, trained for worker status, give them permission to take over.

    Considering the ferocity of Stanford’s opposition to Robert Spencer speaking about freedom of speech — a concept condemned by Gleichschaltung — one could speculate about whether President Tessier-Lavigne, Provost Drell, Dean Naik and Dean Howe have an intellectual allegiance to former Stanford President David Starr Jordan. According to Holocaust scholar Edwin Black:

    Stanford President David Starr Jordan originated the notion of “race and blood”in his 1902 racial epistle “Blood of a Nation,” in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.” (“Eugenics and the Nazis — the California Connection,” SF Gate, 11/9/03)

    And now, if you believe in merit, talent, etc… your a white supremacist..
    (seriously!)

    Clearly the administrators, professors and students across America’s universities who embrace Gleichschaltung are many; as demonstrated at Stanford by their violent words, these same individuals would not be uncomfortable with the brutality and violence associated with Gleichschaltung at those same German universities in the 1930s. Clearly that violent time is approaching here. Richard Sherman 2017

    for openly saying what they are doing quietly:
    7 NYC Council Members Call On De Blasio To Fire Schools Chancellor
    https://wcbs880.radio.com/articles/7-nyc-council-members-call-de-blasio-fire-schools-chancellor
    Holden said among the questionable episodes are Carranza hiring “his cronies” without a formal search, calling on white parents to get implicit bias training, a recent lawsuit filed by three Department of Education officials who claim they were demoted because they’re white and a job posting from a school district that said it was looking for teachers of color.

    as of last year, we are over 16% below replacement…
    its unrecoverable, and the demographic shift easily explains taking sides

    “I will not be silenced, I will not be quiet,” Carranza added. The mayor’s office is backing him up, calling Holden’s letter a racially-charged smear campaign. A spokesperson for de Blasio said the mayor stands fully behind Carranza

    this is way past the point of being able to do anything…
    that was long ago when no one wanted to ‘believe’ (and still don’t)

    many groups with experience could see what was going on, they had no problem believing in how organized, methodical, and evil to others, people can be..
    With innocents, half the argument if not all of it is, getting over that… often not possible

    We are 16% below replacement and abortion is always a big critical issue to increase access…

    right now… the biggest thing one can do to prevent the inevitable is if the conservative women grow balls and start fighting big time against the feminist women…

    Newly Elected Colorado Politician Calls for a Communist Revolution – ‘By Any Means Necessary’

    I don’t believe our current economic system actually works. Um, capitalism by design is extractive and in order to generate profit in a capitalist system, something has to be exploited, that’s land, labor or resources.

    And I think that we’re in late phase capitalism and we know it doesn’t work and we have to move into something new. And I believe in community ownership of land, labor, resources, and distribution of those resources.

    And so, whatever that morphs into I think is what will serve community the best and I’m excited to usher it in by any means necessary.

    it doesn’t take a majority. the majority of Germans weren’t Nazis, or even agreed with them!!! Gleichshaltung insured that they all moved in order whether they agree or not… that was its beauty, that’s what they mean by being “swept up”… they don’t mean swept up like you love an opera, they mean swept up in the flow that went only in one direction… like falling into a strong river…

  5. Conservative: Don’t you realize that socialism/communism has failed wherever its been tried? Look at Venezuela.
    Lefty: SHUT UP!
    Conservative: Explain to me how these so-called
    forcings actually enhance the ability of CO2 to block infra red waves from leaving the atmosphere?
    Lefty: SHUT UP!
    Conservative: Don’t you realize that the government has no money? Whatever it gives to one person it must take away from another.
    Lefty: SHUT UP!

    And so it goes.

  6. YouTube’s explosive popularity with men migrating in order to seek entertaining information, but fed up with cable and satellite programming, its lack of a la carte selections, its endless and frequent agenda suffused commercials, its shouting reality shows filled with idiots and moral scum and de rigueur close-ups of trembling moron faces has been noticed, and counter measures placed in effect. After all, if allowed to go unchecked, YouTube could become the new AM radio of the political right.

    As it is. it has been surprisingly long time coming, this mediation and filtering of the commercial quasi monopolies.

    Now, YouTube is becoming just another site for commerce and big-sister sensibility monitoring.

    Commercially speaking, historically themed channels which just a year or so ago did a creditable, if sometimes rough job of addressing limited interest historical topics – say late classical or early medieval politics – suddenly have become filled with commercial interruptions, and their presentations larded with the kind of jabbering filler material prefaces seen in those execrable “Top Ten Amazing …” click-bait links found on the margins of the major news sites web pages.

    I don’t blame the content providers for seeking an income from channels they have built up, but it becomes apparent what happens when the commercial aspect takes over.

    I just clicked off of one YouTube channel for good recently, when I noticed one of the same damned commercials – featuring some girl talking to another version of herself over a cell phone – which had also appeared on cable TV the other day. Yeah … next thing I expect to see is a Home Depot ad featuring a homosexual male and his prolapsed rectum sex receptacle partner strolling the aisle hand in hand as they shop home improvement supplies for the “nursery”.

    The nuisance of that noxious crap is why so many of us have abandoned pay TV, and sought out other sources of political information and entertainment .

    Of course Google knows that; and it is important to them that no information pass from one hand to another without someone ideologically conditioning the transmission and making a commercial profit off it as well.

    The fact that conservatives and libertarians have established such a strong and intellectually dominating niche on YouTube, was only bound to accelerate the process.

  7. “Conservative: Explain to me how these so-called forcings actually enhance the ability of CO2 to block infra red waves from leaving the atmosphere?”

    I’ve spent a modest amount of time trying to see if there are reliable and uncontroversial figures for the increase in solar radiation reaching ground in North America subsequent to the passage of the Clean Air Act , and the consequent reduction in the amount of radiation reflecting sulfur particulates.

    Clean the air of particulates, increase the heat at ground level.

    Did no one anticipate that and take it into account when drawing conclusions about the future; or in assessing the causes and nature of the current measured rises in atmospheric temperatures?

    What percentage of the claimed increase in U.S. atmospheric temperatures is attributable to the (unassessed) consequence of cleaning the air, then?

    This has been addressed by a number of authorities, but their answer is usually not clearly stated as far as I can tell, and they are at great pains, NASA in one case which I recall, to qualify it as a “local” phenomenon.

  8. Do, we arrived at the juncture in our society in which the loudest and whiniest wins.

  9. Artfdgr: “It doesn’t take a majority, the majority of Germans weren’t Nazis, or even agreed with them!!! Gleichshaltung insured that they all moved in order whether they agreed or not… that was it’s beauty, that’s what they meant by being “swept up”… they don’t mean swept up like you love an opera. They mean swept up like the flow that means only going in one direction… like falling into a strong river…

    Thank you Artfldgr, I’ve never heard it put better. It’s chilling, but I think it’s exactly where we’re at.

  10. Today I clicked on a link to what seemed a reasonable headline to me. The link was to an article from Red State Morning Briefing, a newsletter send from that site. The article was “The Mueller Report Raises New Questions About The Seth Rich Murder Case.” I could not get to it, both the Firefox and Chrome browsers got me a page with the link but it said this: This can’t be right…
    You should probably go back to reality. With a link that said GO HOME. I find that extremely frightening.

  11. Beneath the hysteria there are 10,000,000+ members of pro 2nd amendment organizations and 35,000,000 firearm owners. Many of us understand police and military tactics. Many of us are better marksmen than elite police and military units. We are not bound by rules of engagement. If push comes to shove, it will be civil war 2.0. Their major problem is nukes are not an option and smart bombs on civilian targets are not an option. And we can determine where they and their families reside. The http://www.com is a double edged sword. It will not be pretty. Don’t push or adjust, quickly, to shove.

  12. As I mentioned before, this all started with Flat Earth Theory and the other ALt Right conspiracies in vogue at the time. Once again, stuff people only recognize as real when the media starts reporting on it.

    Those of us with different sources get an earlier warning of a few years at least.

  13. Daniel Schwartz on June 17, 2019 at 6:27 pm said:
    Beware of anyone who tries to keep you from thinking for yourself.

    I notice it starts small. Just a little tiny letter dropped off from DJT’s name, and people get triggered/offended and go on a quest to “correct” the BadThought and non Orthodox, non consensus viewpoint.

    The tallest nail gets hammered flat first. The tallest tree gets blown away by a hurricane first.

    Thinking by oneself is not something humanity is all that good at.

  14. Why waste time reading the work of someone bigoted or crazy or stupid? Don’t you have better things to do with your time?

    Shill!

    Cuck!

    Traitor!

    Paid CIA Agent!

    These accusations are commonly thrown about around in “conspiracy land”. It’s a kind of Richard Nixon paranoia, where the Leftist mind control makes you insane and paranoid, then destroys you with focused dps.

    The second one is most likely an Alt Right addition recently however.

    Conservatives have their own list of go to accusations and knee jerk reactions, just like Mormons do.

    Troll!

    Paid Soros agent!

    …. DOesn’t seem very diverse.

    Moon bat

    Insane

    Leftist mental disease

    Derangement Syndrome

    The Left likes to use terms like “right winger” or some variation of “stupid”.

  15. This was tied in when Neo noticed that Google’s search algorithms were borked.

    Back a few years ago, Youtube made money recommending Flat Earth videos, “conspiracy stuff”, and you know, stuff that trends up.

    This created an interesting side effect when advertisers found their ads on some “crazy” or “alt right” stuff and complained to youtube. Youtube dared them to do something about it, and the advertisers started pulling their ads. Youtube reacted by picking a weak demographic without political influence, Gamers (gamergate) and hit them first with demonetization. Meaning the ads from videos were removed so they couldn’t get any ad income from Google…. hehe. Corporations saving a buck. They didn’t care which ads were removed, because they didn’t bother to do much more than the bare minimum. Collective punishment is a Leftist fetish.

    After that, they started with conspiracy land and when that started going well and they got positive feedback from the Neil Disgrace Tyson talking heads, they started realizing they could use these tools against their real enemies: Conservatives!

    haha. And so Civil War 2 advances.

    The Alt Right has been trying to get off Leftist dominated social media platforms for awhile now. Check out galactic wiki instead of the Leftish wikipedia.

  16. “Red State” removed the article:

    So now even conservatives are censoring [practicing their implicit First Amendment right to not provide a platform to expressive speech they find abhorrent] idiotic conservative conspiracy theories.

    Firstly, perhaps its time to stop with your idiotic conspiracy theories.

    Secondly, if your major censorship complaint is somebody exercising their 1A rights, perhaps you are not oppressed.

  17. Scott Adams noticed that YouTube had demonetized certain seemingly random videos of his and looked for a connection between the videos. The connection appears to be his debunking of the “fine people” hoax (the lie that Trump was saying the Nazis at Charlottesville were “fine people” when he said there were “fine people on both sides”). He’s conducting an experiment to see if a new video, exclusively about the “fine people” hoax, is demonetized. And he’s broadcasting that he’s conducting this experiment so we’ll see if YouTube just goes ahead anyway and demonetizes this latest video even and despite being outed as a political censor.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=Yjq51pfGbaw

  18. “Conservatives have their own list of go to accusations and knee jerk reactions, just like Mormons do.” ymarsakar

    If you cannot tell the difference between the all too accurate labels conservative apply to the insanity on the left and the deceitful projection by leftists upon conservatives, then you’re not nearly as perspective as you incessantly proclaim yourself to be…

    Plus, “just like Mormons do”…?

    “Secondly, if your major censorship complaint is somebody exercising their 1A rights, perhaps you are not oppressed.” Manju

    Sigh. And ‘perhaps’ you’re not intellectually challenged and/or have swallowed the Left’s ‘kool-aid’.

    News flash! It’s NOT the Left 1A rights to which we object, in fact bring on all the principled disagreement you’re capable of… no, it’s the incessant attempts to deny our 1A rights by labeling principled disagreement as “hate speech” by those on the left and then, denying our access to public forums to which we object.

    BTW, you HAVE to know this, which makes you an unAmerican POS.

  19. “So now even conservatives are censoring [practicing their implicit First Amendment right to not provide a platform to expressive speech they find abhorrent] idiotic conservative conspiracy theories.”

    That operative rule would actually be the corollary of the right of free association: i.e., that the right to freely associate implies the right to freely exclude or to disassociate; and not directly related to the provision that “Congress shall make no law abridging …”

    So finally, then, the left agrees that private organizations offering a conditional service, even organizations that have powerfully broad social influences, have no legal or moral obligation to be inclusive or so much as evenhanded.

    Good deal. Let the chips fall where they may.

  20. “…obligation to be inclusive or…evenhanded…”
    IOW, what are the odds of the MSM publishing something like this?:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-18/new-clinton-email-review-reveals-multiple-security-incidents

    Minimal, apart from attempts to bury it through superficial or dismissive coverage.

    And because YouTube and other social media have a much larger and varied population of visitors than blogs do – as people surf for variety and seek out information that interests them, rather than wait for it to be doled out by so-called authorities – the presence of that information on social media platforms will attract both more attention and the suppression efforts of the priestlings of progressivism.

    A blog represents very little danger to them. A circle of blogs not much more. An unconventional news site, more, but still limited.

    But popular critics and entertainers like Dice or Crowder, represents a much larger danger, as they have garnered audiences surpassing that of some of the mainstream cable media network presentations.

    These critics have set up camp in the progressive’s own backyards. And the collectivist kind don’t much care for it, obviously.

  21. Julie near Chicago on June 18, 2019 at 1:11 am said:
    Aesop, no problem here with https://spectator.us/ .
    * * *
    I can get to it on Microsoft/Bing also, just not on Chrome.
    The front page of the website comes up okay, but clicking on the post titles doesn’t do anything; and if I follow a link from somewhere else (like PowerLine) to a specific article, it never loads.
    This started happening recently too, as I have read a lot of posts there not too long in the past.

  22. AMartel on June 18, 2019 at 11:42 am said:
    Scott Adams noticed that YouTube had demonetized certain seemingly random videos of his and looked for a connection between the videos. The connection appears to be his debunking of the “fine people” hoax (the lie that Trump was saying the Nazis at Charlottesville were “fine people” when he said there were “fine people on both sides”).
    * * *
    IIRC, it was when Brandon Straka uncovered the MSM’s deceitful editing of Trump’s remarks, and his friends’ refusal to listen to him explain it, that started him down the #WalkAway road.
    He was willing to take the Red Pill and they weren’t — as the meme has it — and the MSM & social media are now determined that other people won’t get that choice.
    Still don’t understand why he hasn’t been Digitally Disappeared yet.

  23. Barry Meislin on June 18, 2019 at 4:16 am said:
    …reasonable headline…

    “Red State” removed the article:
    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/red-state-seth-rich-robert-mueller

    But since Mueller has entirely destroyed his own credibility, it would seem entirely possible that the allegation may re-emerge.
    * * *

    Conspiracy theories never die; they just go into the Memory Core of the Holodeck until someone calls them up again.

    I had read the RS article on Sunday, and wondered which way it would go, since the Rich family persuaded most news outlets to quit working the allegations some time ago, even though their own lawsuit was dismissed.

    Red State gave a reasonable explanation:

    Each of our contributors has the right to express their opinion, but in the case of Seth Rich we believe the opinion written is in error and encourages conspiratorial speculation without basis in fact. The story has been removed from the site. – Editors

    This sounded to me a lot like the mea culpas from the MSM back in 2007-2008 when they were trying to peddle a story about John McCain romancing one of his staff (IIRC), and both of them shot it down vehemently — plus, it had been tried before and shot down then as well — because the story was indeed “without basis in fact.”

    Nonetheless, Seth Rich was murdered, and no perpetrator has been found; that doesn’t argue well for either the will or the competence of our LEOs.

    These are still up if you need the conspiratorial background:

    https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/05/16/fox-news-murdered-dnc-staffer-sent-44053-internal-emails-to-wikileaks/

    [contains quotes from the original Fox story that went viral, with pushing from conservative outlets — because, hey, the Left does that all the time and gets away with it, why not us too!]

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/the-seth-rich-familys-lawsuit-contains-brutal-claims-against-fox-news/

    On May 23, 2017, Fox News retracted the article — after Wheeler confirmed he’d never examined Rich’s laptop, after Wheeler said he had not gotten his information from FBI sources, and after the FBI said that it had played no part in the investigation of Rich’s murder and had not been given Seth’s laptop. Wheeler later sued Fox, claiming that Zimmerman made up his quotes. Seth’s parents wrote in the Washington Post last year that “Seth’s personal email and his personal computer were both inspected by detectives early in the investigation and that the inspection revealed no evidence of any communications with anyone at WikiLeaks or anyone associated with WikiLeaks.”

    The “conspiracy” part kicks in because some people wondered if the FBI was lying (nah, the Feebs never prevaricate, do they?), if Wheeler was leaned on (nah, the government never threatens reporters, do they?), and if the Rich family’s hired ‘tec lied to them (nah, …).

    Now, given the example of the Pulitzer-prize-winning reporters at the Washington Post and the New York Times, it is certainly possible that Wheeler & Zimmerman did, in fact, invent the entire story from the beginning, but the lawsuits were dismissed, withdrawn, or settled without any public findings of fact.

    I do not support the claim that the DNC put out a hit on Rich, but I can see why some people are not willing to give up the idea — as illustrated below, solely for the purpose of analysis and not persuasion.
    Nonetheless, Seth Rich was murdered, and no perpetrator has been found.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich

    The murder of Seth Rich occurred on Sunday, July 10, 2016, at 4:20 a.m. in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C.[2] Rich died from two gunshot wounds to the back. He was murdered by unknown perpetrators for unknown reasons, but police suspected he had been the victim of an attempted robbery.[1]

    The investigator [Wheeler] stated that he had no evidence to back up the claims which Fox News attributed to him.[4][5][17] Fox News issued a retraction, but did not apologize or publicly explain what went wrong.[18] In response, the Rich family sued Fox News in March 2018 for having engaged in “extreme and outrageous conduct” by fabricating the story defaming their son and thereby intentionally inflicting emotional distress on them.[19][20] The judge dismissed the suit in August 2018, ruling that – while “he sympathized with Mr. Rich’s parents”[21] – they had not been personally defamed by the story and that the network’s conduct did not meet the high legal standard required for their claim.[20][21][22]
    ..
    Police were alerted to gunfire at 4:20 a.m. by an automated gunfire locator.[36][38] Within approximately one minute after the gun shots, police officers found Rich conscious with multiple gunshot wounds.[39] He was transported to a nearby hospital, where he later died.[40][41][42] According to police, he died from two shots to the back[34][35] and may have been killed in an attempted robbery. Residents noted the neighborhood had been plagued by robberies.[34] Rich’s mother told NBC’s Washington affiliate WRC-TV, “There had been a struggle. His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything … They didn’t finish robbing him, they just took his life.”[43] The police told the family they had located a surveillance recording showing a glimpse of the legs of two people who could possibly be the killers.[44]

    Notice the almost imperceptible shift from evidence to allegation; that’s how you get conspiracy theories to stay alive.

    The Rich family was approached by Ed Butowsky (a friend of Trump advisor Steve Bannon and a frequent Fox News contributor), who recommended having Fox News contributor and former homicide detective Rod Wheeler investigate Seth’s murder. Butowsky said Wheeler had been recommended to him. The family gave Wheeler permission to investigate, though they did not hire him.[15][55] When questioned by CNN, Butowsky denied involvement in the case, but later admitted he was involved and had offered to pay Wheeler’s fees.[56][57] After Wheeler asserted links between Rich and Wikileaks in a Fox affiliate interview on May 15, 2017—an assertion he later backpedaled from[58]—the family spokesman said that the family regretted working with Wheeler.[3] Wheeler then sued Fox News on August 1, 2017, for mental anguish and emotional distress, alleging that he had been misquoted in a story that was then published on the urging of Trump.[59]

    Wheeler doesn’t deny providing the initial story, just the incendiary quotes that were denied by his alleged sources.

    The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPDC) posted its customary reward of $25,000 for information about the death.[30][39]

    On August 9, 2016, WikiLeaks announced a $20,000 reward for information about Rich’s murder leading to a conviction,[60][61][62] although Rich’s family said they were unable to verify this reward offer.[63] WikiLeaks stated that this offer should not be taken as implying Rich had been involved in leaking information to them.[30]

    In November 2016, Republican lobbyist Jack Burkman said he was personally offering a $100,000 reward in addition to those announced by the police department and WikiLeaks, and he added another $5,000 to his offer in December and another $25,000 in January.[44][63][64] Burkman said he hoped the money would help “get to the truth of what happened here and will either debunk the conspiracy theories or validate them.”[65]

    AFAIK, no one has ever claimed the reward; I would not expect the perps to (regardless of motivation), but it’s curious that no colleague has ratted them out — Jussie Smollett’s co-conspirators came to light pretty quick.

    According to British journalist* Duncan Campbell, the Russian intelligence agency, GRU, tried to implicate Rich as the source of the stolen DNC emails, in order to draw attention away from themselves.[71] Datestamps on the DNC files were altered to show the data had been obtained on July 5, 2016, five days before Rich’s death, and the timezone was changed to Eastern Time, within which Washington, D.C. falls. Guccifer 2.0, the alleged GRU front that provided the emails to Wikileaks, then reported that Rich had been their source. Based partly on their acceptance of the false dates, some experts then concluded that the emails had been copied in the DNC offices, and had not been hacked from outside.[72]

    Citations given below, if you are interested in Mr. Journalist’s allegations.

    According to the Mueller Report, WikiLeaks had received an email containing an encrypted file named “wk dnc link I .txt.gpg” from the Guccifer 2.0 GRU persona on July 14th, which was four days after Seth Rich died.[77][78][79] In April 2018, Twitter direct messages revealed that even as Assange was suggesting publicly that WikiLeaks had obtained emails from Seth Rich, Assange was trying to obtain more emails from Guccifer 2.0, who was at the time already suspected of being linked to Russian intelligence.[80] BuzzFeed described the messages as “the starkest proof yet that Assange knew a likely Russian government hacker had the Democrat leaks he wanted. And they reveal the deliberate bad faith with which Assange fed the groundless claims that Rich was his source, even as he knew the documents’ origin.”[80]

    The conspiracy theories have been debunked by law enforcement,[4][5] as well as by fact-checking websites like PolitiFact.com,[5][8] Snopes.com,[9] and FactCheck.org.[4][not in citation given]

    Oh well, if those three intrepid explorers say something is false, I guess that’s the end of the story.

    The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia described the murder as related to a bungled attempted robbery,[4] and said “the assertions put forward by Mr. Wheeler are unfounded.”[4] The FBI told PolitiFact.com that the MPD was investigating the homicide.[8]

    Assistant Police Chief Peter Newsham said the police had no information suggesting a connection between Rich’s death and data obtained by WikiLeaks.[30]

    People who worked with Rich said he was not an expert computer hacker helping to leak information to foreigners.

    People who worked with Hillary Clinton said she never had classified emails on her computer in the first place. Oopsies.

    Andrew Therriault, a data scientist who had mentored Rich, said although he had recently been working as a programmer, this “wasn’t his background”, and another co-worker said Rich was very upset when he heard hackers associated with Russian intelligence services had broken into the DNC computers and could be interfering with the election.[44]

    “People said” is exactly what trials are supposed to either corroborate or not.

    Rich family representative, Brad Bauman, responding to the conspiracy theorists’ claim that the FBI was investigating the case said, “The FBI is not now and has never been a party to this investigation.”[4]

    Did the FBI also say that, and would we believe them if they did? What difference, at this point, does it make?

    When the story aired on Fox News, it included supposed quotes from Wheeler and was written as if the accusations against the DNC came from him. Wheeler alleges that the quotes were fabricated and should not have been attributed to him.[137]

    This section, which is quite long, has the only actual alleged evidence presented on the case, being audio recordings for the most part.

    In later recordings Butowsky told Wheeler that the claims being attributed to him were false but says that “One day you’re going to win an award for having said those things you didn’t say.” He also says “I know that’s not true, if I’m under oath, I would say I never heard him say that.”[138]

    And that’s how Conspiracy Sausages are made.

    *Take these for what you think they’re worth; I never saw them at the time.
    71. Campbell, Duncan (July 31, 2018). “Briton ran pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign that helped Trump deny Russian links”. Computer Weekly. Retrieved October 31, 2018.
    72. Tucker, Patrick (August 2, 2018). “A new report claims that Russian hackers altered dates in stolen documents to frame the DNC staffer for the theft.” Defense One. Retrieved August 25, 2018.

  24. FWIW, the comments at TPM are an interesting mirror universe — they complain about exactly the same things the Right complains about when news and internet stories go viral on the Left with as little real evidence or less, but showing exactly ZERO acknowledgement that it happens with their own pet stories.

  25. Sorry, I’m not buying Mrs. Rich’s contention that an office employee from Omaha tried to fight off two robbers at 4:00 am outside his home. The hole in the robbery scenario is they didn’t take anything.

  26. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/449241-gop-senator-introduces-bill-to-hold-online-platforms-liable-for-political

    Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who has sought to make a name for himself as one of the Republican Party’s sharpest tech critics, is introducing legislation that would chip away at the legal shield preventing online companies from being held liable for content posted by their users.

    Hawley on Wednesday will introduce a bill requiring companies to prove they are politically “neutral” before they receive protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which largely gives internet platforms legal immunity over content posted on their sites by third parties.

    The Missouri Republican’s legislation comes after Republican lawmakers for more than a year have threatened to gut Section 230 over allegations that the top social media companies in the world are biased against conservatives, a claim that the tech companies have categorically denied and say has not been substantiated by any evidence.

    [depends on what the meaning of the word “evidence” is]

    The Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act would require “big tech companies” to submit to external audits conducted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to prove their algorithms and content moderation practices are not biased against either U.S. political party. It would require the companies to undergo audits every two years.

    Hawley pointed to a “growing list of evidence” that tech companies are “making editorial decisions to censor viewpoints they disagree with.” He said the process is “shrouded in secrecy because these companies refuse to make their protocols public.”

    Hawley, along with Republicans including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and most notably President Trump, have pointed to individual anecdotes of conservative posts or accounts being removed to substantiate their claims that right-wing perspectives are routinely discriminated against online.

    The tech industry and libertarian groups are already mobilizing against Hawley’s bill, defending Section 230 of the CDA as the provision that has empowered the Internet and slamming Hawley’s legislation as enabling government censorship of speech.

    Sooo…internet gatekeepers, after growing like weeds because of their platform protection, are now cutting conservatives out of the picture, but it’s the goverment that will censor speech?


    The Internet Association, Silicon Valley’s top tech trade group, in its own statement said Section 230 “is the law that allows online companies to moderate and remove content that no reasonable person wants online – including content that could have a ‘political viewpoint.'”

    …no True Scotsman…

    “This bill forces platforms to make an impossible choice: either host reprehensible, but First Amendment protected speech, or lose legal protections that allow them to moderate illegal content like human trafficking and violent extremism,” IA President and CEO Michael Beckerman said in a statement. “That shouldn’t be a tradeoff.”

    It isn’t; it’s a strawman argument.

    Hawley’s bill is not likely to become law, but it marks the first significant piece of legislation out of the Senate addressing allegations of political bias against conservatives by tech companies.

  27. If you cannot tell the difference between the all too accurate labels conservative apply to the insanity on the left and the deceitful projection by leftists upon conservatives, then you’re not nearly as perspective as you incessantly proclaim yourself to be…

    It’s not about whether it is accurate or not. I know you think that matters but it is not a concern of mine. You are just projecting your ego’s views of what is “right” unto me. As a Son of God, you have to put some brakes on that projection power of yours, as some of us don’t really look at things in a human way any more. Not that they cannot, but that it is like looking at Leftist bullsh or social media justice for too long. It rots the spirit.

  28. Plus, “just like Mormons do”…?

    You can ask Aesop about that. He had the prototypical “circle the wagons” response to something he perceived as a criticism or hostile or anti Mormon (before that went out of vogue).

    He had to be reminded and counseled not to think with his natural man ego self.

  29. Another goal of declaring all conservatives the “alt right” is so they can be physically assaulted, Richard Spencer-style. Whatever stupid opinions Spencer had, he was simply standing there when the attack happened, and that famous “sucker-punch” surprise assault (after which the masked assaulter scampered away) was tremendously popular with the left and has fueled a trend of follow-on assaults. Its what they fantasize they should be able to do to all of us.

  30. Two points. First, there’s a lot of irony in screeds against “the left and the MSM” for lumping conservatives together. Uh huh, they’re a monolith engaging in some well-coordinated nefarious plot, but conservatives are all unique voices that should be judged on individual merit. Second, name-calling and hyperbole in place of sober, reasoned argument always is part of the deal for every person everywhere. See, e.g. McConnell equating Puerto Rico statehood with “full-bore socialism”, or some leftist lumping Ben Shapiro’s brand of stupid in with Richard Spencer’s brand of stupid. It’s done by everyone both because it’s shorthand for tribalist “you suck” and because it’s harder to defend against — you’ve chosen the battleground. There’s nothing uniquely leftist about it.

  31. “Jesse Sands on June 19, 2019 at 9:46 am said:
    Two points. First, there’s a lot of irony in screeds against “the left and the MSM” for lumping conservatives together. Uh huh, they’re a monolith engaging in some well-coordinated nefarious plot, but conservatives are all unique voices that should be judged on individual merit. Second, name-calling and hyperbole in place of sober, reasoned argument always is part of the deal for every person everywhere. See, e.g. McConnell equating Puerto Rico statehood with “full-bore socialism”, or some leftist lumping Ben Shapiro’s brand of stupid in with Richard Spencer’s brand of stupid. It’s done by everyone both because it’s shorthand for tribalist “you suck” and because it’s harder to defend against — you’ve chosen the battleground. There’s nothing uniquely leftist about it.”

    What is uniquely leftist is the demand that they receive from conservatives and libertarians that which conservatives and libertarians neither want nor need from them; i.e., the sharing of costs for their moral dysfunction, their emotional incontinence, and their life incompetence. It’s what the leftist conceives of as sharing the unfairness of life. “The unfairness of life” meaning, they being what they are, and having to live with it.

    To their mind it is the agency of the state which is to be used to effect this transfer of life energies and product. Why the state? Because as we all know the citizen cannot as easily distance himself from the state as he could from the average Hollywood lunatic ( Who prove by their wretched psychological lives that big money doesn’t really help the liberal-kind lead a dignified or worthwhile personal life.) Hence, the modern liberal’s continuous wails for inclusion; their demands for involuntary association, and an institution of an obnoxious system of non-exchange: value expropriated from the competent and free, for which the competent and free receive nothing of value in return; their life capital spent on the leftist only in order to be saddled with the costs of yet more leftist life-dysfunction.

    Living with modern liberals, or progressives, is tantamount to living in a political extortion racket. They never get better, they never go away permanently, they are always demanding attention, and they always come back for more.

  32. Pingback:Hump Day: Hey! What’re You Looking At, Huh? | The Universal Spectator

  33. Ymarsakar on June 19, 2019 at 8:21 am said:
    Plus, “just like Mormons do”…?
    You can ask Aesop about that. He had the prototypical “circle the wagons” response to something he perceived as a criticism or hostile or anti Mormon (before that went out of vogue).
    * * *
    Circling the wagons is a rational response to attacks showing explicit animus (not generally encountered here, btw), and also criticism based on faulty information. Correcting errors & false allegations, or suggesting alternative interpretations of facts, is not a hostile response.

    I find it interesting that the pattern of leftist attacks on the right shows the same methodology as traditional anti-Mormon invective. Perhaps the latter has gone out of vogue because its erstwhile Christian-conservative-consumers are now dealing with the same kinds of accusations, but leveled at Christians and conservatives in general.

  34. Jesse Sands:

    Of course the right has its name-calling blocs, too. But it tends not to march in lockstep to the extent that the left does. One of the many differences between left and right is that the right has far more people who champion the individual, and the left is far more collectivist, not just in policies but in thinking and expression.

    I’ve looked at politics from both sides now (apologies to Joni Mitchell), and that is my firm conclusion.

    In addition, the left dominates the MSM, and whether most people rate the press highly or not, the MSM still shapes the views of an enormous number of people and is highly influential.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>