a brazillian reasons to support free speech
and why you need to be a one issue voter on rights
(i’m on vaca, so will not be in comments, this was already teed up when i left. enjoy.)
brazil has just turned off twitter/X and star link.
it’s difficult to even find content on this in the US media, so i wanted to share the brazillan good reasons you need to care about this.
in a truly telling outcome, the smart US media are ignoring this, but most US media outlets and celebrity fascism aficionados are favoring and even cheering for speech suppression. “musk needs to follow the law!” they say.
bullshit.
not even they believe this.
this is the nazis pretending they are shindler.
“legal” is not moral.
legal is not “right.”
legal is not even “acceptable” and can well be “intolerable.”
slavery was once the law of the land in the US. escaped slaves were criminals (and property). those who aided them were outlaws.
and as ever, the left cannot seem to rotate shapes or think by analogy.
here, let me help:
“you must shut down the underground railroad and follow US law!”
you guys still sure “you need to follow the law” is the hill you wanna die on? how about abortion or immigration laws?
no?
anyone?
bueller?
yeah…
in no small irony, some of the more even-handed coverage here comes from, wait for it, al jazeera. (yes, really)
like just about everywhere (including the US), telcom is a state granted privilege in brazil. when the state says jump, everybody jumps.
it’s a basic vulnerability in modern systems. and what would make them do this?
demands to censor, what else?
and as with the EU, the muskrat is having none of it and is happy to pick a fight. because a line must be drawn.
lula wants to make it sanctionable to “offend” brazilian politicians.
this is late state dictatorial rage.
Left-leaning President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who retook the presidency in 2022, defended the court order to suspend X.
“A lot of money does not allow you to disrespect Brazilian laws,” Lula said in a radio interview on Friday.
“Elon Musk is an American citizen, he is not a citizen of the world. He can’t offend presidents, congressmen, the Senate, or the Supreme Court. Who does he think he is?” he added.
who does he think he is?
he thinks he’s a free human with free speech you intolerable popinjay muppet of a totalitarian.
what makes you think you have some right not to be offended? who do you think YOU are?
any of this sound familiar?
Musk has been commended by conservative supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who say Lula’s government has silenced them.
Bolsonaro lost the 2022 presidential election to Lula after peddling unsubstantiated claims that Brazil’s electronic voting machines are prone to fraud.
all over the globe, it’s the same discordant song.
in more proof that the world is a video game, this is supreme court judge alexandre de moraes. you seriously cannot make this up.
in case you think this cannot happen here:
it can. and it will if some people get their way.
this is from 2019. she’s speaking about trump getting yanked off social media while she and joe were amplified in their panoply of public health and public interest lies and laptop hiding.
private organizations making private choices is all well and good. any community should be able to set its own standards.
but this was not that. this was overt threats and staff embedding to control content “or else.” they argued it was “private companies doing private company things” but look how they feel about that now that twitter/X is owned by elon. different kettle of fishheads, huh? rumble, gab, parler, they go after all of them. but so long as you play ball and kowtow and slant, all good, enjoy your section 230 freedoms (as long as you only allow them to be exercised in a manner we find acceptable).
that is not a right, it’s a privilege.
and that is neither right nor moral.
it’s oppressive.
they forget whose rights these are and from whence they derive.
and this makes them monstrous.
based on swamp donkey track record in office of blatant lawfare, censorship, surveillance, shaping, manipulation, intimidation, and other twitter files shenanigans, make no mistake: kammy-whammy will be even worse than joe on this topic because she and her backers have no other defense. they will lean into the EU. they will serve up US companies to despots like lula.
the global censorship net is being set to close. and if the US falls, it will.
they absolutely hate free and open social media and agoras. they will find pretexts for misinformation and disinformation to take town truths they dislike and spread the lies they do. just like the last 4 years.
they cannot have “elections questioned” or “courts second guessed.”
they are too corrupt, too dishonest.
in all this, let’s not forget, they may actually try to sentence trump to prison during his presidential run for the political equivalent of jaywalking. biden sits in the oval after being deemed unfit to stand trial for mishandling classified docs because he’s far too many fries short of a happy meal, no one will even investigate his and hunter’s clear graft and outright influence peddling in ukraine and china, and trump is facing actual prison for misclassifying expenses.
small wonder they want media suppression.
(for the record, putting trump in the pokey will lead to a landslide win. the “letters from a birmingham jail” that will emerge will become a civil rights rallying cry of unimaginable intensity.)
facile fascism fears freedom.
and this is wrong.
a government should fear its citizens, not the citizens their government.
and we simply cannot take much more of this and survive as a society.
if you vote on one issue this election, vote on this: free speech is the cornerstone of free people.
and anyone who says otherwise cannot be allowed near power.
someone shared this with me. i cannot speak to the accuracy of all these claims some of which may be fanciful or hyperbolic, but i think the general gestalt is exactly correct.
there is a new tribe of active informationalists and analysts and they are simply crushing the propaganda sprogs.
we are too many, too motivated, too interested.
this upwelling cannot be contested or convinced or disputed. not by them.
and the magic trick of calling everyone “racist/sexist/transphobic/whatever” has ended and inverted into a shibboleth for “i have no argument.”
so they will seek to shut it down, shut us down.
it’s all they have.
your free speech is their existential threat.
and what that says about them should be more than self-evident.
you can have this:
or you can have this:
there is no middle ground.
LFG.
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
- Yeats
I'm not "spiritual" by nature...but I do think ordinary people are no longer paying heed to the old social and political leaders. It seems there's an awakening where many are listeneing to new movement leaders instead.
Seems like we're getting close to an "uprising"....but normal people don't seem to know where to direct these "emotions"
Perhaps we're "put" here to help?
Masks. Most people knew they were BS. But most went along with them. Feeling an obligation to not frighten those who did. Kindness. Compassion. Those poor little old ladies, frightened by bare faces. To wear a mask was just being nice to your fellow man. Not a big deal. But it was. A "big f'n deal."
"Masks mandates aren't my hill to die on."
=
"Free speech isn't my hill to die on."
All who said the first were actually saying the second, whether they knew it or not. And by making that declaration, followed by the widespread compliance with mask mandates the authorities have predictably continued to strip away our First Amendment protections.
Masks were always known to be unsupported by medical science, ineffective, worthless facial decorations. But the *symbolism* of them had value for the behavioral scientists. They helped "amplify fear" (aka terrorized) of disease and spread awareness, acting as "nonpharmaceutical interventions" that scared people apart, changing perceptions and resulting in behavioral changes in social interactions.
Symbols. Symbols are speech. The oldest form of speech. Communication even the illiterate understand. Like flags, crosses, mascots, colors, cave drawings, etc. "Show you care." "Be afraid." "I'm protecting you." "I'm taking this seriously." Speech.
And to mandate speech, "Show you care" is the other side of the same free speech coin from censorship. To show a bare face when masks were mandated to "follow the (behavioral) science of "Fear Amplifcation" was to contradict and ineffectuate the NPI. How dare you shout "calm down, there is no fire" in a theater where those in charge screamed "fire" to clear it?!?! That was their thinking and rationale. So much so that even a baby without a symbolic mask on his/her face was grounds to toss entire families off of planes, "Your baby isn't amplifying fear sufficiently with a free face, others might get the idea that we have nothing to fear. And we can't have that!"
To not wear a mask was to speak "we have nothing to fear but fear itself" against the state as it was demanding our fear - for our own protection and safety, of course!
But, masks weren't the hill to die on for most of our friends, families, neighbors, employers, business owners, teachers, lawyers, judges. That told those of us who were making this argument all we needed to know about how little most people truly care about free speech and how few will even fight to preserve it.
The Land of the Free, Home of the Brave? Apparently not. Not brave enough to fight for free speech. Which was what mask mandates were all about. And here we are four years later. Predictably for those of us who saw the implications to the First Amendment of mandating symbols, speech. They get people to give up essential rights and liberty, the most essential right of all, as an act of "kindness."
In the words and song of Nick Lowe, there are times that require us to be cruel to be truly kind. They convinced most to believe it's kind to terrorize each other.
https://vimeo.com/3393451