The freedom of speech is deeply imperiled, and most Americans don’t even know this is happening, or why the freedom of speech is so important.
“Stifling free speech, one Pamela Geller-Robert Spencer-Michael Savage at a time,” by Cheryl K. Chumley, Washington Times, September 12, 2017:
Conservatives of the country, take note: Voices are being squelched. Viewpoints are being stifled. Free thinking is being vilified. The First Amendment is being choked.
And it’s all being brought about by a leftist’s favorite tool — controlling in the name of protecting.
The left’s logic goes this way: “Free speech is good, but it has limits.” Or, “We believe in free speech — of course, we believe in the freedom of speech. But some speech is harmful and hateful and hurtful.”
It’s the type of logic that gets Milo Yiannopoulos banned from taxpayer-funded university speaking podiums. It’s also the type of logic that lets thugs masquerade as righteous protesters, and set things on fire, like buildings and police cars, ‘cause their snowflake sensibilities get offended.
It’s spreading.
It’s making massive inroads in the private sector, most noticeably perhaps online, in social media.
“My website and posts have been scrubbed from Google search,” said author, speaker and activist Pamela Geller, explaining in an email how her American Freedom Defense Initiative and Atlas Shrugs sites, aimed at revealing the truths of Islam, were also recently booted from PayPal and Pinterest. Why?
As PayPalexplained [sic] in an email to Geller: “We have recently reviewed your usage of PayPal’s services … [and] due to the nature of your activities, we have chosen to discontinue service to you. … We ask that you please remove all references to PayPal from your website. This includes removing PayPal as a payment option, as well as the PayPal logo and/or shopping cart.”
PayPay [sic], following an outcry from Geller’s readers, reversed its decision.
Small victory.
Geller still faces this: “Google Adsense has banned my account. YouTube demonetized all of my videos. My Twitter account has been shadow-banned,” she wrote in her email.
A shadow-ban is when hashtags only show up in the feeds of existing followers — an occurrence that then restricts the ability of the account holder to grow and expand.
Geller’s not alone on that.
“I’m shadow-banned on Facebook and Twitter,” said Robert Spencer, an author who’s written extensively about Islam and jihad and who serves as director of the online Jihad Watch.
In an email, he said: “In mid-February, my referrals from each one dropped off by 90 percent, and have never recovered. Twitter has flagged several of my tweets as ‘hateful,’ including one in which I said, accurately, that Islam is not a religion of peace.”
Spencer’s facing his own shenanigans from Google.
“Google,” he said, “has altered its search results to give only results favorable to Islam, so while for years one searched for ‘jihad’ and got Jihad Watch as the first result, based on content and size of readership, now it doesn’t even come in on the first page.”
YouTube, meanwhile, has also removed a playlist of “Robert Spencer” videos, he said.
It’s alarming, yes? We’re talking about attacks on free thought here — but we’re also talking about attacks on livelihoods.
Geller and Spencer, in part, earn their livings on social media backs.
“The left is trying to use Charlottesville as its Reichstag Fire moment — a chance to shut down all dissent,” Spencer said. “The Southern Poverty Law Center’s spurious and politically biased ‘hate group’ list became the linchpin of this effort, and that’s when I was banned from PayPal.”
Like Geller‘s, Spencer’s PayPal ban was reversed — but only after supporters raised substantial outcry.
And again: That’s just one small victory.
The onslaught against free speech is growing wider as we speak.
“Twitter Bans Activist Mommy for Tweeting Her Dislike of Teen Vogue’s Anal Sex Guide,” blasted one recent PJ Media headline, in a story about Elizabeth Johnston, “The Activist Mommy,” also known as @activistmommy1 on Twitter, who dared to criticize the digital editorial director of Teen Vogue, for allowing for the publication of a guide on anal sex.
Her tweet wasn’t even that controversial.
“Congrats Phillip!” she tweeted in mid-August, to editor Phillip Picardi. “A sodomite mag just awarded you for teaching kids sodomy. Way to recruit there @TheAdvocateMag!”
YouTube, owned by the same Alphabet company that owns Google, then cut Johnston’s ability to monetize her videos. Geller, Spencer, now Johnston — that’s starting to seem par for the course. But as PJ Media wrote on Johnston’s plight: “This one falls under ‘too stupid to believe,’ but it’s actually true. … While Johnston’s posts and views are controversial to some, none of what she has to say is new. Her views on homosexuality come from the best-selling book in the world — the Bible.”
Note to social media self: No comments critical of Islam. No remarks based on biblical teachings. Got it.
Geller suggests the left, “awash in funding,” is on rampage to kill all dissent. And if they can’t get the government to do it, well then, there’s always the private biz world — at least the private business ventures that are headed by similarly minded leftists.
“They mean to cut off everything from those who are working in defense of the free and the brave,” she said. “The left elites control the cultural apparatus in this country — media, movies, entertainment, academia, etc. There was one place that was free and unfettered — the Internet. Consequently, they blame social media and Internet sites for Trump’s victory and the continuing opposition to jihad and sharia. So, they mean to shut us down. Totalitarianism cloaked in ‘hate speech’ restrictions, and ‘tolerance.’ “…
“The freedom of speech is under strenuous attack,” Geller said. “This is not just about me. If I am silenced, a dangerous precedent will be set that people can be denied access to the means of communications if their views aren’t acceptable to the elites. This would mean the end of a free society in the U.S. Every American should care about this. There is nowhere to flee, nowhere else to go.”…
First comes Geller and Spencer. Then, the Mommy Activist, and Savage. Next? Patriots, beware. We shouldn’t wait for the answer on that. It will mean it’s too late.
DogOnPorch says
Robert is right re: Jihad Watch going to the bottom of the page or beyond in searches…
Wellington says
As Dennis Prager has said (and if you don’t yet know about his Prager University 5 minute tapes, check them out; very prominent, courageous and sensible people, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, have made them), Americans, with the exception of black Americans due to Jim Crow, were freer in 1917 than they are now in 2017.
Eminently true. Profoundly sad. Damn ominous. And the fault for this lies first and foremost with the modern Left and, secondarily, with those not aligned with the modern Left but who are either too ignorant or too timid to speak out against this erosion of liberty.
Art says
Patriots
In the last paragraph – –
“First comes Geller and Spencer. Then, the Mommy Activist, and Savage. Next? Patriots, beware. We shouldn’t wait for the answer on that. It will mean it’s too late.”
Robert, I heard you on InfoWars.com with Alex Jones, a patriot like you and Pamela Geller et al,, speaking the truth about the mindset that protects evil against good American citizens.
I want Pres. Trump to go “rogue” to free himself from his, as Steve Bannon said, his “establishment” so-called advisors, and invite you and Coughllin back to lecture the “shadow government” and the “deep state” about the real enemy of the state, and maybe the Obama holdovers and McMaster will be fired.
Adam says
It seems the time for talk is soon over.
Keep the faith and hold the line.
Matthieu Baudin says
The contemporary left has shamelessly turned ‘racism’ into a political commodity to be exploited at their whim. Prejudice, including racial prejudice, has always had an independent life of its own and has never belonged in any fundamental way to any part of the political spectrum. The National Socialists, for instance, were a revolutionary offshoot of the political left; the Brown Shirts and also many SS leaders exhibited a good deal of left anti capitalist socialist rhetoric and most of the prominent early Fascist leaders of Europe were initiated into revolutionary ideals through their contact with Marxism. Today’s militant left, which is now difficult to separate from the mainstream contemporary left, has developed a taste for racial prejudice against whites together with a deep prejudice against men, prejudice against normative heterosexuality and prejudice against virtually all social institutions that they identify as ‘mainstream’ and which in their revolutionary imagination then carries the tag of ‘social enemy’. The rot that has set in had it’s origins in the early 1970’s, a time when the ‘love’ of the mid ’60’s had been extinguished and replaced by counter cultural militancy that adopted an heroic attitude to social subversion and violent struggle.
LeftisruiningCanada says
Like this. Feel free to elaborate
Sons of Liberty says
Matthieu Baudin ,….Spot ON ! The Nazi fascists exhibited some of the same Marxist beliefs,…. that the GOVERNMENT should control all activities. Yes , business owners were allowed to continue in business , AS LONG AS they functioned in a way THAT BENEFITED THE STATE ! Yes , private property rights existed BUT at the whim of the STATE , hence the confiscation of Jews property. Anyone seen as a threat to the State was eliminated and there property taken . The elimination of FREE SPEECH is just the beginning, the violence against Trump voters should be a WARNING TO ALL !
Milo says
The time is now for a new platform. All it takes is will and determination and money to compete and prevail.
Mantel says
Forget about Google, use http://www.duckduckgo.com instead.
AnneM says
Or DogPile, another good site.
Lydia says
Exactly.
History is repeating itself.
The pattern of the tactics is predictable.
eduardo odraude says
The situation is arguably worse than the article makes it seem — it is not just Spencer, Geller, and the activist mentioned — many smaller fry, who don’t have a large readership to defend them and to get bans reversed, are being demonetized and removed. Maybe anti-Trust legislation is needed to break up some of these virtual media monopolies, like Google.
eduardo odraude says
Notice what Google does to http://www.citizenwarrior.com
Bezelel says
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf_NCB64VZg
I have this one bookmarked and replay in slow motion whenever I need a lift. Works wonders!!!
Bezelel says
Dammit, I just checked the link and youtube has made it private, It is a of the antifa boy getting hit in the groin with a pepper ball fired by a Phoenix Policeman. How can it be made private when it was a news cast?
Yohanan says
Spencer, your analogy to Reichstag fire is diatribe and whitewashes neo-Nazi aspects present at Charlotteville alt-right. Your counter to SPLC list also has loose cannons.
Free speech does have limits by USA Constitution. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions
Bezelel says
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-14/report-%E2%80%98unite-right%E2%80%99-organizer-jason-kessler-was-occupy-movement-obama-supporter-8-m
There are a lot of mysteries surrounding the Charlottesville riot. Like the police standing down as ordered.The list is long. The fact that the nazi’s shut down free speech with violence is no mystery.
Sons of Liberty says
Yohanan ,…Then why were the,..” Unite the Right ” organizers , former Obama voters who were part of “Occupy Wall Street ” ? Seems strange that someone who voted for OBAMA would all of a sudden become a NEO NAZI ? The whole thing was staged by the DEMOCRAT PARTY , starting with the Charlottesville Mayor , A DEMOCRAT along with the Virginia Governor McCauliffe , a CLINTON SUPPORTER. If the Attorney General would investigate ,…the REAL TRUTH would come OUT !
Rick says
I just searched YouTube for Robert Spencer and got a full page of links. I like this site but saying YouTube has banned Robert Spencer is an outright lie.
Robert Spencer says
No, in fact, it is not a lie. YouTube banned a “Robert Spencer” playlist. See here: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/08/youtube-removes-robert-spencer-playlist-as-inappropriate
But yes, they left up my own channel and other videos I’m in. Why? I don’t know. Ask YouTube.
gravenimage says
It would have been easy enough for Rick to have found this story:
“YouTube removes ‘Robert Spencer’ playlist as ‘inappropriate’”
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/08/youtube-removes-robert-spencer-playlist-as-inappropriate
Robert Spencer notes first thing that this is not the Jihad Watch YouTube channel itself. How can Rick claim this is inaccurate?
Mark says
This documentary needs to be shared as fast and widely as possible. Please give it a thumbs up. https://youtu.be/t_Qpy0mXg8Y
Guest says
Be strong Robert Spencer and Pamella Geller. If you don’t write the truth who will?
John S. Obeda says
May God help all of us to write and to speak the truth and follow the good example of our leaders and God, then, help us to pay the consequences for spreading the truth which many do not want to hear. And pray too.