more evidence on media as an organ of "the party"
it's more than just democracy that drowns in disinformation
the more lights you turn on, the more cockroaches you find scurrying for cover.
but the time to be truly frightened is not when they see you and scatter. the time to be afraid is when they all turn around and hiss and tell you to get out of your own kitchen.
and at a certain point, the infestation becomes so thorough that they will and the media headlines will read “reactionary human oppressor seeks to deny cockroach reparations.”
this is pure and simple fascism. “the party” has decided what can be spoken and spoken of and is using the influence of a vast and muscular regulatory and enforcement state to not only shape but to compel corporate practice.
they seek to skirt the first amendment by outsourcing its abrogation through co-optation and intimidation and the meetings were structured and regular.
this is a full blown program, not an ad hoc happenstance.
and so the shock troops of “the science” wind up being a bunch of uninformed 25 year old social justice majors who act with gleeful righteousness in direct proportion to their ignorance for there is none so zealous as he who has no idea what the actual facts are.
and their track record on “fact checking” is less than excellent…
were they private actors acting on personal impulse at private companies, that would be one thing, but when instead they are all getting marching orders and mandates direct from government agencies whose dictates are backed with the threat of force, that is a very different situation.
it’s how you wind up living in a horror movie remake of “silence of the beagles” that is playing on every single channel at once all the time.
the spread of speech suppression by not even a political system but by a political party is the death of a republic.
this is how you prevent the truth from being spoken aloud and manipulate the attention economy by elevating tiny groups with radical viewpoints and agendas to make them look like majorities and silence majorities to make them appear fringe.
it vilifies disagreement with state views by pretending the party line is ubiquitous.
it’s a projected puppet-show to purloin the prerogative of perception.
and this makes your free speech a threat to them because the goal is to prevent society from realizing its own mind.
if you are heard, the spell might break.
omerta becomes the order of the day.
and it will spread everywhere.
and make no mistake, this monster has no intention of remaining with the confines of the social media stream.
those who need a state license to work are just as vulnerable as media companies.
this is how the power to push safety and require credential and remit to engage in economic activity and even personal interaction is used to stifle speech, agency, and thereby twist discernment until you cannot any longer see how the trick is being done.
the shaping of public perception and informational spread is the cornerstone of one party rule and so long as they have the leverage to say “nice media platform you got there, be a shame if someone came along and regulated it or broke you up” like some mobster named “jimmy the brick” admiring a plate glass window, it’s hard to see how we ever get free of this.
i mean, it’s already illegal. but it’s everywhere.
we can pass more explicit laws stating that they cannot do this.
but will they be followed or will it just drive the influence into better hidden vectors and make enforcement ever more arbitrary and capricious?
do you seriously think anyone will be punished for this?
many of the tenets of a republic, especially governmental limits to enumerated powers, only work when they are followed by people who believe in those principles.
and it’s clear how savagely they may be hijacked and subverted by those who do not.
and this is why if we’re ever to have a real public square, we must place it beyond the reach of leviathan.
it cannot be companies, it must be protocols.
it cannot be walled gardens. it must be open source and systems.
we cannot trust the state not to censor and so by moving to real encrypted, peer to peer, swarm sourced systems of voluntary sharing, collaboration, and informational flow we must render the very idea of censorship anachronistic.
it is the only way to be safe.
there is no one you can trust to control such a system and so we must develop systems that are controlled by no one.
this was the topic of my very first substack.
and i think the message it held has done nothing but gather strength as the mission it urges grows ever more crucial.
it’s all coming out and plain to see.
we must find another way.
the public square is the commanding heights of a free society.
and if we will not take it as our own, the question is not “will it be weaponized against us?” but merely “how and by whom?”
and that is not a hammer you want to live under.
more laws about “don’t do this” and “must do that” serve only to dig the hole deeper.
you cannot regulate your way out of over-regulation.
attempts to do so merely feed the beast and drive dependence deeper and that will serve only to prolong this awkward period of internet adolescence.
the time to negotiate the rules of living in mom’s basement has passed.
we need to move out of the house and build our own.
I’m just flabbergasted at how many people are either oblivious or who just don’t care about what is going on. The last two years have shown me that I’ve given people way too much credit for not only being able to use their brains, but to also do the right thing.
Possibly one of your best, and most needed, pieces. Great work.