The cancel culture bell tolls for thee
I think that “cancel culture” is too mild a word for it, but until we come up with a better one it’ll have to do. Here’s a sample of what’s going on in the corporate realm:
My statement on the woke mob at @simonschuster pic.twitter.com/pDxtZvz5J0
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 7, 2021
Josh Hawley is (or was) an up-and-coming young conservative. The left is attempting now to cancel the entire Republican Party except perhaps for RINOs and NeverTrumpers (although I believe the crocodile will come to eat them eventually, too), and to make those on the right not only subject to harassment wherever they go (actually, that already happened some time ago), but to also make them unemployable as well as politically radioactive.
It’s been clear for a long time that this was happening, and now the effort is escalating. You probably already know that Twitter locked out Dan Bongino, who has departed for Parler; that a liberal activist group is campaigning for Apple and Google to remove Parler from their stores; and that Twitter and Facebook have locked Trump’s accounts and almost certainly have plans for a lot more:
Trump’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, where he regularly communicates messages to his followers, were locked Wednesday, in the aftermath of the Capitol riots, which the president then called a “heinous attack” Thursday in a call for “healing and reconciliation.”
Former first lady Michelle Obama called on the country’s major technology companies to permanently ban Trump from their respective platforms.
“This is going to be the moment that is used as an excuse to shut down, to shutter, to undermine, deplatform everyone, not just people who are political actors … just regular human beings who happen to support the president or be members of the Republican Party,” Domenech told FOX Business.
He said Big Tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are going to extend their restrictions far beyond the office of the president, especially for anyone who attended the “Save America” rally Wednesday.
“They are going to see their businesses libeled,” Domenech told host Lisa Kennedy. “They’re going to see themselves deplatformed, undermined, and make it impossible for them to run advertising, engage with people in a normal manner.”
As I said, this is just an expansion of what’s been going on anyway for at least the past four years. The demonization of Trump by the left wasn’t just about Trump, or even primarily about him. He was a vehicle to get at the enemy: the right, and anyone on it. It was necessary to make him into a demon in order to make all the rest into demons as well, and the entire thing has the goal of driving people on the right ever more underground and into effective silence.
Soviet dissidents at least had the West to smuggle their writings to in order to send a message to the Free World. Where is the Free World now? Does it exist anywhere?
[NOTE: Yes, it still exists – for now – online at places like this blog. But for how long? Also, Google no longer links to blogs; as far as I can see they are very far down in the algorithm if they appear at all. News outlets on the right are a little better, but they are still way way down below all the liberal outlets. DuckDuckGo is better, but how many people use it?]
Your calm and intelligent posts are most appreciated right now. Yes, it’s going to get very nasty. This is not your father’s transition.
All conservatives need to leave Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram right now. And switch to DuckDuckGo. Don’t be the product for these ghoulish leftists. Leave them.
Also need to leave WhatsApp.
Check the latest terms of service rollout happening this week.
Before there was at least a Chinese Wall between your WhatsApp activity and FaceBook’s Big Data evilness. Now that wall is down and all your WhatsApp activity metadata plus whatever WhatsApp itself can find out about you from reading phone address book, etc. gets hoovered into the FaceBorg. Don’t think it’s enough to not have a FB account…. even if you don’t have one, it is certain that many people you *do* know use it and FB will off to the races matching your WhatsApp ‘you’ up with your friends’ address books’ ‘you’. Game over.
Install and use Signal app for chatting with people you don’t mind knowing your cellphone number.
Kate is correct …
The only thing left to do now is vote with your wallet. Also time to move to platforms like Parlor and others that are more sympathetic to conservative causes. We already have divided government and there’s no turning back. Now it’s time to move to divided internet that’s what it take to be heard.
Wall to wall coverer age of the so called “insurrection” would be … this is what democracy looks like” if it were and was for a solid year of riots by the left/dems.
The media is not the enemy of the people. Without a doubt the media IS the enemy of republicans … and are coming for their pound of flesh NOW.
FWIW, Assembled Sad BowTie CivNats mourning yer Living Document Constitution and all that:
Parler is controlled opposition… there to stop you straying too far off the right end of your oh so edgy mullioned and ivy-befringed Overton Window. You can tell it is by the amount of personal data it wants from you when you sign up.
I’m afraid you’re going to have to soil your seersucker and step off the path into the Gab World of knuckle dragging bubba drooling evilness.
Just get used to using Gab in the browser. Can’t get an app for it because Apple and Google being Globohomo’s Gatekeepers won’t allow an app in their stores.
In my city, five people were identified to have been at the rally/protest against the EC certification. I’m not sure who doxxed them, but my local news did a short segment on them while commenting on what happened January 6. The local news also stated that Trump called for violence; this is an outright falsity. A few were small business owners where the public has been called to boycott them. One is a white collared professional who did participate in the Capitol raid and was arrested. He issued an apology, saying that it was the decision in life his life and did not condone the violence.
No working professional who was arrested for participating in BLM/Antifa issued an apology nor were they framed in the way news framed the Capitol raid.
You know, Twitter had better hope there actually WAS massive election fraud in 2020. Because by permanently banning Trump, they’ve absolutely guaranteed that stripping social media companies of their section 230 protections is going to be a 100% mainstream Republican position. Almost no one is going to be able to run for a GOP nomination with out embracing it and incumbents who don’t support it are going to get primary challenges JUST on section 230.
If I was a betting man, I’d be desperately looking for a bookie to take my money that a major Republican office holder is going to lose a 2020 primary over this issue.
Mike
Well, I have left Twitter & Facebook (long overdue), and have resurrected my blog. Of course, this is about the 3rd or 4th time since 2011 that I have attempted to resurrect my blog. We shall see.
MBunge:
I am a betting man by way of profession and was robbed when wagering platforms declared for Biden in *Mid-December*.
All Bets are Off Now as of the Current Year, it would seem.
To Wit: Primarying needs to be tried, but now that things are this nasty, Big Tech and the Three Letters will be dishing up dirt on the challengers or threatening or blackmailing them to either quit or conform.
So… anyone with nothing to lose, please give it a try. We’ll all learn something from what happens.
Time for some changes, sure. But Mister Smith ain’t going nowhere in the current dispensation *or anything looking remotely like it*.
The civil war is on. Big Tech is attacking all the free speech sites even now. Full blown info wars. Gab is under a DDOS. Google, Apple and Amazon ganging up on Parler so they may be gone any moment.
Sundance of The Conservative Treehouse was kicked off of WordPress and managed to create his own site independent of the tech giants. He states he is creating a template for other companies to follow. I hope you have all your data independently collated and archived. They will get to you as the voices here are too independent for their tastes.
I don’t know the cost of running your site. When it comes time to make that transition I pledge $100 to make the move. This small community is too erudite and thoughtful to be stilled by the baying of the mob.
}}} DuckDuckGo is better, but how many people use it?
A: Anyone with any sense.
I’ve already noted this obvious reason:
Search on the following text:
“jake tapper fact checks jake tapper”
DDG:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jake+tapper+fact+checks+jake+tapper&atb=v251-3__&ia=web
Google:
https://www.google.com/search?q=jake+tapper+fact+checks+jake+tapper&oq=jake+tapper+fact+checks+jake+tapper
Note the #2 entry — clearly being sought, and very very clearly matching the search terms virtually word-for-word — on DDG is nowhere to be found in the first three pages of results from Google.
If you’re expecting to get answers from The Goo, I have land for sale… cheap!
Today is a truly frightening day in America. The absolute & sudden crackdown on free speech is not something I ever thought I’d witness, and I’ve been complaining about the attacks on free speech by the left for more than a decade.
“Note the #2 entry — clearly being sought, and very very clearly matching the search terms virtually word-for-word — on DDG is nowhere to be found in the first three pages of results from Google.
If you’re expecting to get answers from The Goo, I have land for sale… cheap!”
It’s the #2 result on Bing.
I dropped facebook (fb) early in 2020, DDG is my default search engine, and twitter is a sewer I’ve never waded into. I’m writing this on a 6 year old Mac, and when it’s time to replace, it will not be with another Apple product. Same with my iphone. Dropping fb was easy – haven’t missed it for a second.
But, I’m just one person. To really make a difference will require at least 74 million consumers (aka 2020 Trump voters) to also make the switch whenever they can – that will hurt the bastards, but will mostly just slow them down. They will swallow the loss in the US. I live in Asia now, and have lived in Africa and Europe for the last couple of decades, and hardly anyone here knows of or truly cares about these issues going on in the US, and Big Tech knows that. They know that there are 7+ billion other potential customers to fill the “deplorable” gap in the US.
We must understand that this goes deeper – the people that run Big Tech (and Big Gov, Big Media, Big Business, Big Academia) hate you and me. Yes, hate. Neo, it has to be faced. People need to stop dancing around this. I am a career US diplomat (retiring this year, thank God) and I work in the belly of the beast. I hear their private conversations. Big Tech’s crushing of all opposition voices is fervently approved of by the elite (Big Gov/Media/Business/Academia) and the left, and won’t stop just with boycotts.
Telemachus,
Hate them back. Have you seen the vid of Graham being cursed at at the airport?
Last year, Neo posted something regarding the collapse of societies, and one of the comments referenced the classic Hemingway quote, “gradually, then suddenly”. The 80/20 rule was also referenced and I suggested the 80% occurred from roughly 1965 (passage of Hart-Cellar, Gulf of Tonkin, etc) to 2014-15 (the emergence of “The Great Awokening” onto the cultural mainstream. That was the “gradually”, the 80%. Since then we’ve been in the “suddenly”, the 20%. We’re now very much in the midst of it, and the deterioration is accelerating.
Cancel culture is accelerating at breakneck speed. The events on Wednesday are the justification but, whether it was, in part, a ‘false flag’ (as I maintain) or not, the left would have found a convenient justification regardless.
I need to stop making predictions, except to say…as radically different as America looks today than it did one year ago, it’s going to look exponentially more different (pretty much unrecognizable) one year from now.
@Telemachus:
About 2 years ago I was wallowing in the pool at the Okura Bangkok — basically on the corner of Embassy Row as I’m sure you know. Whilst ostentatiously staring out at the view over the edge got to listen in on some visiting High-T Vassarized Queen Bee from State and her train of clucking sycophants. They really do hate us. Time to bend the bow, clear the hall, and string the rest up.
Parler, DuckDuckGo, any conservative site you care to name will be forced off the internet or forced to comply. Who’s going to stop Big Tech? Biden? Congress? our former ‘supreme’ court?
The means to accomplish the purge will be “Hate Speech” laws.
They can’t have the deplorables communicating with each other.
That’s not speculation, that’s what they’ve been doing for quite some time. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram were just the low hanging fruit, given who they’re controlled by.
The more extreme the repression, the harder they push… the more people will conclude that this is an intolerable situation.
They’re no longer playing with fire, they’re setting the forest on fire.
Forcing down American’s throats ‘shut up or be crushed’ is going to start a firestorm that will spiral out of their control.
In stealing the election and now starting to try to deny American’s unalienable rights… the democrats are now riding upon the “tiger’s back” and there will be no safely getting off of it. But the only way to stay upon the tiger’s back… is to increasingly enrage it.
Stupidity motivated by ideology invariably doubles down upon it when challenged.
And there’s only one ‘cure’ for that form of stupidity… politics by other means.
@Ackler:
Try next month.
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of tar?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under the vine of the dark veranda)?
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do you remember an Inn?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
Who hadn’t got a penny,
And who weren’t paying any,
And the hammer at the doors and the din?
And the hip! hop! hap!
Of the clap
Of the hands to the swirl and the twirl
Of the girl gone chancing,
Glancing,
Dancing,
Backing and advancing,
Snapping of the clapper to the spin
Out and in–
And the ting, tong, tang of the guitar!
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
Never more;
Miranda,
Never more.
Only the high peaks hoar;
And Aragon a torrent at the door.
No sound
In the walls of the halls where falls
The tread
Of the feet of the dead to the ground,
No sound:
But the boom
Of the far waterfall like doom.
“Big Tech’s crushing of all opposition voices is fervently approved of by the elite (Big Gov/Media/Business/Academia) and the left, and won’t stop just with boycotts.”
The problem those morons face is that not only are they creating a marketplace for alternative media to rise, but all the old fashioned ways of communicating still exist. Political organizing predates the internet by thousands of years and publishing the news predates it by several centuries.
Oh, and there’s also the high probability that whatever they do to us, China is going to wind up doing to them.
Mike
De-Googling an Android Phone.
Might be of some interest for the more tech-minded:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqSCmT5S-2w
cancel culture=CENSORSHIP!
Geez, people. Just use English directly.
Have a listen to this week’s Z Man Podcast before YouTube unpersons him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNQ0R3PbT1M
My understanding is that facebook has removed the #Walkaway campaign, so I guess dissention of any kind is not allowed.
Harry — Brandon Straka is still on Youtube, but I don’t expect that to last long.
Kate, I left face book some time back. I was never part of the others. Never will be. Desperately trying to disassociate from Google, but it is very hard; and I don’t know that any others are preferable.
Just to prove (to myself) that I am serious, I sold my Amazon stock some months ago when they started lecturing about “social justice”. Sold my Shopify stock today when I learned they had sand bagged the President. I have been associated with USAA for 63 years from back when they wer very small and focused. I absolutely loved the Association. for 62.5 years. I no longer recognize them. I am looking for alternatives for banking and insurance since they went all in for Racial equality (committing $50m of member’s money to prove it.)
My wife thinks I am crazy. She is probably right. I don’t really care. Since I am long past the ability to pick up my pitch fork and march on the castle, or take to the barricades, I will tilt at windmills.
“And I know, if I’ll only be true
To this glorious Quest,
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest.”
The Man from La Mancha
Well, if this does not inspire conservatives to vote with their time and money, then I guess they would rather surrender than even put up a passive resistance, or bother to shop somewhere else.
Can’t quit Facebook because … ? Too much trouble to check out Parler, Gab or Rumble?
I have little to no use for that social media shit and neither do any members of my family. But I signed up for Gab, Parler, and Rumble just on principle.
I’m thinking of opening a Twitter account just to get myself kicked off as a badge of honor. Maybe get a bumper sticker printed up, saying “Banned by Twitter”. Should be less provocative than , “Joe Biden is my P.O.S.”.
There is one alarming thing I am somewhat expecting though: and that will be an attempt by the left to limit internet access itself based on a social credit program and the limitation of domain ownership by “dangerous people” under the pretext that the Internet infrastructure is akin to the airwaves.
But by the time that happens we will be killing our ideolgically opposed next door neighbors. Which is the kind of “civil war” we will experience this time as opposed to a war between the states.
You are not crazy Oldflyer. You are doing what is right. Doing what you can.
There are alternatives. You can degoogle your phone. Change your search engine to DuckDuckgo. Change your web browser to Brave. I’m using it right now.
Encrypt your emails with email clients like Protonmail. Use a VPN service like ProtonVPN to retain privacy while browsing. Perhaps change your banking to a small Credit Union.
I’m sure others here have alternatives as well and are even more knowlegeable than myself (I’m computer semi-literate).
But while we can greatly reduce our contributions to leftist revenue streams, their tentacles are too intertwined with our institutions to completely disassociate from them. But we can give them a hit to their wallets. Think of it as a form of misbehaving…
I respect you Oldflyer. I roll the same way as much as I can. It is getting more difficult by the day to not be complicit in the upending of our culture.
Yesterday, nearly all social media platforms increased their restrictions on non-Leftist-approved speech.
Today, alternatives to leftist social media platforms are being discussed.
Tomorrow, there will be a migration, of unknown size, to those alternate platforms.
The day after tomorrow those alternate platforms will come under attack from the Left.
The day after that…..
Last night after 7PM, the headlines on Instapundit are dominated by galloping CENSORSHIP by “deplatforming,” as well as Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and others leaving presumably in quiet simpatico with President Trump.
Sydney Powell banned, Lt Gen Flynn banned…I cant recall them all: Apple and Google against Parler….
Mark Tapscott gives us “Here Comes The Persecution.” By the Left.
To read the Insta headlines frightens me again. Reading Tapscott doubles it.
https://pjmedia.com/culture/marktapscott/2021/01/08/here-comes-persecution-n1323985
THEN COMES TO BURNING HATING RESOLVES TO DO ALL SHIT ABOUT EVIL TIMES.
A High Tech Nazi Germany is still America made into Nazi’s.
Anyone enduring the same?
There was a post on FreeRepublic. A man notes that at DFW in Texas, on the funiculars and buses and everywhere else, NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THE ELECTION OR DC and Trump.
No one.
In 2008, people were gabbing all about Obama, the “First Black President!” by contrast.
Now…silence.
FIRST, Can anyone else confirm this mass silence in public transport places?
SECOND, what does this mean? Speculation? Can we define the frontier of known possibles and the novelties?
Because I’m not currently in the USA… Enlighten me?
As far as I can tell, Michelle Obama called for permanently banning Trump, in a print news story yesterday.
Since when does a Former First Lady become the bitch-Master of corporate America? Who then do her bidding?
If so, then the Trump INSURRECTION is going to soon to be topped by the premature riot-death of a has been First Couple.
It will be glorious, too!
TRUMP WILL START A NEW SOCIAL MEFIA PLATFORM, states a post at FreeRepublic.com
Here is most of the announcement, as posted there; as explained below, the original communique has been deleted.
It has been suggested for quite some time that Trump, if he lost, would invest in media. Good.
TJ, my daughter who lives and works in suburban Virginia is quite worried about purges. She has no social media presence. She hopes her employer will not require affirmative endorsement of some kind of critical race theory manifesto.
A realtor we know is concerned about purges from the Realtors national association for outside-of-work connections or statements.
The Realtor issue here: https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/09/a-big-move-to-ban-realtor-hate-speech-at-work-anywhere-24-7/
Kate,
My ‘child’ works for one of the ‘biggies’ and has the same fear.
I do hope Trump starts an alternative media. It is my understanding that he had that in the works if he had not won in ’16.
But we need a lot more than that.
We need a new Patriot party to replace the GOPe, an Article V COS and – secession.
It took me a long time, but I finally cut the cord. Between Roku and Philo, no more money to the cable networks.
I do hope Trump starts an alternative media. It is my understanding that he had that in the works if he had not won in ’16.
YES molly brown: Trump has announced his intentions to create a new social media outlet
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3923229/posts
Part of the purge is no doubt to limit the extent to which the decline is driven by voluntary departures. A purge can be spun. “We drove off half our customers” doesn’t exactly admit of much.
“My wife thinks I am crazy. She is probably right. I don’t really care. Since I am long past the ability to pick up my pitch fork and march on the castle, or take to the barricades, I will tilt at windmills.” – Oldflyer
Today, AesopSpouse and I seriously discussed what we would do if our suburb gets as crazy as the City.
We are turning 70 soon, and having just helped one son move south, we are not enthused about going through that upheaval of our own comfortable nest.
However:
We will empty our bank accounts to move our other kids, if there is anywhere left to move them to (small town in Texas is the first plan, away from any Metropolis).
If there’s any way to join them later, we will.
Now I know why the elderly Jews stayed in Germany even after they knew they should leave.
“Do you remember an inn, Miranda?” – Zaphod
Tarantella by Hilaire Belloc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7bFnRKg_II
Sung by Eastwood Collieries’ Male Voice Choir and taken from the vintage 1984 album, In Harmony.
With a name like that, it has to be a Welsh choir.
^^^ Thanks. I like this.
Isn’t it interesting that the poem scans wonderfully as a Spoken Tarantella, but composer/arranger wisely realised that it would in better taste to do something completely different for a musical treatment.
I wonder how many colliery bands and choirs survive now.
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