Censorship … a story about modern culture, social-media, controlling the narrative, & thought-control generally. How this is playing out in Facebook, other social-media, & why the effect it is having is so insidiously evil & utterly destructive, both individually … and collectively, as a society.

I had actually been writing my next blog-post about something else (not altogether unrelated, at least in part, to the subject-matter of this post) … when Facebook finally pushed me right over the fucking edge, and I realised if I didn’t write something immediately about the censorship scourge which is currently underway on ALL mainstream social media platforms (pretty much since the Trump electoral victory in 2016 – and only ramping up exponentially in seriousness since then) … I would probably spontaneously combust from pure rage and the sheer frustration, injustice, stupidity, and malignancy of it all.

So, to bring you up to speed, dear reader, on the 6th December 2018, I was shut out of Facebook for ONE MONTH for posting a meme that Facebook … in its “Overlord, Eye-Of-Sauron, Dark-Side, Orwellian, 1984, PanOpticon Death-Star” social-justice, peace-to-all-beings, wisdom-loving, kitten-adopting, family-values kind of way … decided was “inappropriate.” For posting the meme … I was sent to Facebook’s Gulag … for a month.

To be clear (ironically enough!) the meme was actually a satirical comment on exactly the kind of “false labelling” which has now sadly become endemic in the current “culture wars” … due to the fact that once having falsely demonised your “enemy” it becomes “easier” to “justifiably” censor them.

Which is, obviously, what happened to me. I include the meme responsible for this “one month Facebook ban,” below, for posterity.

Now this, to my mind, is a perfect example of a meme which humorously and cleverly summarises the madness which has apparently gone coursing unchecked through the world as some kind of reactionary toxic mind-virus … ever since the “orange boogey-man called Trump” was spectacularly elected back in 2016.

In this image that “civilised society” apparently needs to be “protected from,” we have a mild-mannered, probably quite conservative older white guy, having a little chuckle at some outrageously-garbed (trans?) drag-queen or whatever, and then we see him pictured again, but now as a full blown Nazi (obviously because of his “disrespectful” attitude towards the image he’d just chuckled at).

Such a meme highlights perfectly the absurdity of the notion that anyone who doesn’t agree with (typically, currently, the rabid SJW Left’s) way of looking at the world … should immediately be labelled a Nazi, a racist, misogynist, or whatever the latest ad-hominem virtue-signalling slur of the day they can come up with might be.

I’m not even going to bother explaining how patently and demonstrably ridiculous those “charges” obviously are in the vast majority of cases. This truth should be self-evident to any thinking and rational person. The objective of such “ad-hominem smearing” is simply finding an excuse to be able to censor those people or organisations … that you don’t want to have a voice (regardless of whether they have a case, evidence, and the like … or not). And whether this chilling result comes intentionally, or by way of supposed “collateral damage”… makes no difference. The result is the same … it negatively affects free speech, and as such is inexcusable and very very dangerous.

To put this debacle in some context, Facebook has been proactively censoring me for over two years … and the type and severity of this censorship has only been getting worse, as my repeated “wrongthink” gains ever higher “escalation points” within whatever kind of heinously arcane Facebook algorithm monitors such problematic people as me. I am, clearly, just the worst kind of fucking slow-learner!

“What we have here, is a failure to communicate.” 😉

So firstly I’d like to apologise far and wide to those people whom I was unable to be in touch with for the last month (during the festive & NY season, no less!). The many messages which went unanswered (because the Almighty Facebook God kicks you out of Messenger as well) … and the all-round inconvenience of having your more than decade-old network of friends and contacts completely and arbitrarily shut down … all at the whim of some politically-correct Left-Wing SJW ideologues at Facebook, deciding FOR YOU, what you are (or are not) allowed to say. It is just disgusting … there is no other way to describe it. 😦

Let that really sink in for a moment. Please understand that whatever your personal viewpoint or politics, there is, literally no end, to this type of censorship. Absolute power, corrupts absolutely. And the slippery slope is now endless … and only gets slipperier. 😦

I should also add here (not that it really matters in the context of this kind of all-powerful unilateral unchallengable censorship), that it is completely IMPOSSIBLE to know what is “acceptable” or not … simply because Facebook (deliberately!) does not publish anything except the most vaguely worded “feelgood warning language” about “creating a safe environment, etc” … and then decides at its whim, what falls under that umbrella or not. Needless to say, it is also impossible to argue your case, or in any way expect any kind of just review (let alone redress!) of your individual situation, even if Facebook were wrong (which they never are, obviously, because they are judge, jury, and executioner).

What follows from there (based on the FEAR of being banned), is the inevitable “self-censorship,” which is of course, what they, The Powers That Be (TPTB), were really after in the first place … and is the endgame of their relentless fear campaign of censorship and banning … a self-imposed quelling of any opinions which fall outside their “ever-narrowing-parameters.”

Back in the Cold War, during the Stasi-era in East Germany, the paranoia of the population was running at all-time highs. Literally EVERYONE was afraid to say ANYTHING about their real thoughts or feelings in respect of living in one of the most unforgiving totalitarian regimes in modern history.

The reason for this was simple. Every person you came across, was potentially a Stasi informant. You never really knew who you could trust. And accordingly, you didn’t trust anyone. Regimes of pure fascist control of this ilk, absolutely RELY on this kind of dehumanising paranoia, and the kind of isolating, self-censoring, “don’t rock the boat” mindsets they generate. This is also the idea which underpins Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy of the Panopticon … the slave-prisoners will “self-regulate” simply because they never KNOW if they are being spied on or not. They just have to assume they are being spied on.

A great film which illustrates this kind of control (by way of paranoia, self-censorship, and mind-control), in the Stasi context … is “The Lives of Others.” If you haven’t seen it, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Julian Assange, certainly one of the most knowledgeable people in the world about the nature of governments, control, secrecy … and how the “dark-arts” usage of modern technology facilitates such things … is quoted describing Facebook as, “the most appalling spying apparatus ever invented.” He was (and is) absolutely right.

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And make no mistake, it is not just Facebook doing this, but YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and all the “walled-gardens” of mainstream social-media right now. “First they came for independent media” … is probably apropos right now, in this context. 😦

What has been happening the last couple of years, in terms of the scale and the scope of online censorship … ironically enough … literally makes the actual book-burning Nazis look positively cute by comparison. The depressing irony here is that it is the folks (and entities) accusing others of being Nazis, who are actually the ones behaving exactly like Nazis. 😦

And all of this carnage is being additionally filtered and curated under what might as well be the all-seeing evil-eye of Sauron … Google. I’d like to be able to say that Google, at this point, has reached “peak evil,” but sadly, that’s not true at all. It can (and will, in my opinion), get much much worse. Which is kind of ironic (once again!), when one of their original catch-phrase mottoes, was literally, “Don’t Be Evil” … which, by the way, for obvious reasons, they recently dropped. 😦

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By way of (probably almost unthinkable) Faustian bargaining, Google is currently cooperating with the brutal and monolithic, ultimate-control-hungry Communist regime of China … all so it can get increasing access to that massive consumer and data market. If you haven’t heard about it yet, check out China’s so-called “social-credit” system. It is one of the outright most scary and dystopian fucking things you’ll ever read or hear about. It is actually HAPPENING. It is a real thing. And if you think it isn’t coming here (wherever “here” is for you), then think again. 😦

Anyway, my point in writing this document, is basically to explain the reasons I will no longer be posting anything on Facebook, that isn’t either purely personal (photo-sharing to far-flung-family or the like), or business related. This recent entirely ridiculous ban I’ve suffered has proved there is now simply NO POINT in attempting to use Facebook for anything other than that purpose (insert cute cat photo here).

Unless you want to risk escalating bans and eventual total deletion from the Facebook Universe … you simply CAN NO LONGER RISK colouring even a little bit “outside the lines” … and given you (by design) don’t ever know where those lines might be … better not to play their stupid fucking game at all. Withdraw consent. Withdraw your participation. Withdraw your input. They just don’t deserve anything but the bare fucking minimum from you. And probably not even that. Fuck them.

Obviously, this is to some degree, an admission of defeat. However if there was never even the smallest chance of victory, can it really be called that? Whatever … it’s a moot point. But this decision of mine effectively draws a line in the sand. A line, that by way of the ground I cover in this article, I am clearly drawing for others to see, to hopefully help them understand the scale of the horror (and believe me, it IS horrifying) which has been going on (unseen and unfelt by most, except by activists and other well-informed commentators) … and what a crackdown of this nature means, individually, socially, culturally, and ultimately, politically.

As Steve Bannon and Andrew Breitbart famously observed, “politics lies downstream from culture.” So let’s all do ourselves a big favour, and not forget that. Because that is the crux of the WHY this is all happening on social-media in our here and now. The fabulous Caitlin Johnstone summed it up very well in her brilliant article, “Whoever Controls the Narrative, Controls the World.”

Which is why you have YouTube (and obviously Google, their owners), for example, not even hiding the fact that they are actively tweaking their algorithm, so that heinous (and proven) state propagandists and “fake-news” producers get top placement regardless, in search results – “… this allows news organizations like CNN and The New York Times to populate first when people were looking for information on a major news event rather than conspiracy theories.“

Apart from which, I predicted this “more militant enforcement and control of mass perception” in this article I wrote on this very blog immediately following the 2016 US election result.

“Human consciousness is evolving, and you better believe the Elites know it, and understand what it means. Joe Public has put them on notice, and in no uncertain terms. In combination with Brexit, the election of Trump this year is a seminal moment. More big changes (and surprises!) are coming, and accordingly, we will see a harder and more militant edge in respect of how the global Elites can (and will) now deal with the “malcontent masses,” not just in the US, but in the West generally, moving forward. It is the first time in US history since the advent of MSM, that the population has not “done what it was told” when the full weight of all arms of state and media power was brought to bear on them. How the powers that be (TPTB) will react to that in the months and years to come is anyone’s guess … but we do have some idea. Frank Zappa’s prescient observation below, is probably getting ever nearer.“

For those of you who have not been censored in the way I have (or perhaps at all!), I just ask you to imagine having your posts and comments instantly deleted without a word, and periodically, being completely banned from the platform. Voiceless … Cut. Off. From. The. World.

That has been my personal reality on Facebook for more than two years now … with the Matrix’s “urgency” ramping up over time, as its “Agent-Smith-Algorithms” jack me up on their “priority-lists” as some kind of “repeat-offender” running terrorist sorties against the GroupThink compliance which is now supposed to permeate the type of “society” Facebook is actively designing along the protocols IT wishes to see enforced. It is no exaggeration to say that by way of these huge tech platforms, TPTB really believe they can “terraform” our reality. And you know what? If enough people don’t realise what’s going on, they probably fucking can. 😦

I do realise how difficult it might be for others who haven’t personally suffered this kind of draconian control … to understand what that level of censorship looks like, feels like, and tastes like. But I can assure you, it has made me sick to my stomach, because history has shown us where this kind of control and censorship leads … and it takes us to very ugly and very dark places indeed.

And before anyone thinks “this is surely an isolated case”  … that I must be some kind of “rogue madman” or the like, let me refer you to only ONE list out there, of entire groups and pages that Facebook has unilaterally deleted without cause or justification (or redress). In contrast, I am JUST ONE GUY, albeit a guy who is more actively engaged in throwing monkey-wrenches on a daily basis … into the gears of their bullshit-machine … than most others.

Jordan Peterson for example, is currently actively building a list of those people and groups who have not only been censored but banned outright (de-platformed, they are calling it).

These are smart, free-thinking individuals and groups, many of whom had MILLIONS of subscribers/followers who wanted to hear what they’ve got to say. Now, at the whim of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc … they’ve been utterly silenced. Let the enormity of that sink in. Just imagine having invested your time, energy, and years of hard work, built up a following of interested people like that, and waking up one day … to NOTHING. All gone, in the blink of an eye. That unbelievable reality … is what we’re facing, and is the real truth of Facebook (and its assorted Nazi-esque social-media brethren).

Chomsky, in his book “The Common Good,” described things thus … “the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.“

This is exactly what Facebook, Google, and the walled-gardens of social-media are currently doing. Those parameters will become narrower and narrower (as they see fit), until it becomes impossible for “dissenting” points of view to exist or be voiced at all. That is the endgame of what is currently underway. And that is why I am, for all intents and purposes, withdrawing from Facebook as a platform for serious commentary. I sincerely hope it eventually goes the way of MySpace … after all, without its users, it is nothing. As I said earlier, there is no limit to where this kind of censorship goes. And with recent changes like this, Facebook does now increasingly seem to be eating itself.

The bottom line is that if you are not allowed to speak freely, then you might as well not be speaking at all. If you continually have to be “calculating” the aspects or parameters of your opinion which might “fall foul” of the increasingly horrific AI censors … then you are self-censoring, and quite obviously not free. Not only are you not free, but the cage you are in has invisible bars, which will forever continue to shrink at the whim of unseen all-powerful “others.” And the only way you’ll ever even know where those bars are … is by unwittingly putting a foot outside them from time to time (just as I did).

Obviously, once the social-credit system is in place, such “transgressions” will be on your “permanent-record” as a “bad citizen.” This will have instant real-time real-world implications in terms of your job-prospects, your freedom to travel, and your access to credit, etc. Checkmate. Game Over. (BTW, if anyone thinks this sort of thing ISN’T coming soon to the so-called “democratic West” … then let me comment right now on how breathtaking your naivete is.)

Anyway, I will just say this. Facebook is now (and has been for more than a couple of years) a BULLSHIT platform. It is now veritably the ANTITHESIS of what it could have been, and what social-media was supposed to be (and for a while, admittedly, actually was).

However, quite apart from its radical new draconian and overt censorship, it is also being used in concert with criminal totalitarian (as well as supposedly democratic) governments to actively monitor (and persecute) the private lives of entire populations worldwide. Had “freedom of speech” been allowed to continue on the platform, then this may or may not have been some kind of “fair” (if utterly dark!) trade-off. The truth (or otherwise) of that, is kind of an unknowable hypothesis right now.

But it has pretty clearly become undeniable that with freedom of speech completely REMOVED … there can no longer be any value in pretending that Facebook has any utility as a platform for spreading and sharing one’s serious views, ideologies, politics, etc. It has, of its own volition, now forfeited any right at all to make any claims to being “a free speech platform.” The same is true, to varying degrees, of ALL the other “mainstream” platforms (Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, etc). And seriously … Google might as well be the fucking Death-Star.

It is probably fair to say we’ve reached a point where the serious regulation and penalisation of these platforms (by a truly independent third-party (QUANGO-like) entity dedicated to enforcing the principles of free speech) … as something akin to a “public-square-utility”  … is obviously necessary. The last couple of years of ideological fuckery, propaganda, outright censorship and deplatforming have clearly shown that the LAST people you can leave this job to … are the tech-entities themselves. They simply should not have (and should NEVER have had!) this kind of power in the supposedly free-marketplace of international ideas, politics, culture, and philosophy. Fortunately the need for such regulation (once widely scoffed at!) is now being broached by many across the spectrum … even President Trump … who has surely been one of the biggest targets of the relentless bias inherent in Big-Tech’s propaganda shenanigans.

Time will tell … but I have a feeling things are going to get worse before (and if) they ever get better. The genie of knowledge is now very much out of the bottle, and the denizens of the internet, the defenders of truth and freedom … have their dander up, and are very much “on guard” for the next wave of attacks by those whose now apparently open goal … is to control and censor them.

Very much like “Whack a Mole” however … whatever is “squashed” by these heinous censors on one day, pops up somewhere else online the next … often with a new and interesting mutation or twist.

So, what happens next? Where does this all go from here? The truth is, nobody knows. We are, as the Chinese say, “living in interesting times,” and nobody really has a clue where this goes, or what might ultimately happen. The important thing to realise however, is that we (humanity) are in a war right now. It is a war on consciousness, and awareness and truth. It is a war on our hearts, minds, and souls. Check out the (banned!) Ted-Talk below by Graham Hancock. It is amazing, and ultimately very relevant to our discussion here.

We are in a war (as ever) with those few motherfuckers who would seek to control us for their own benefit. Currently what is apparently important to these assholes, is that they retain control of the social and cultural narrative (remember … politics lies downstream from culture!).

So, obviously, if we are to have any chance of not all being “blanded” (yes, I just made that up!) into a Starbucks-esque conformity of pumpkin-spice thinking … we need to fight tooth and nail to deny them. Just as you can fight by withholding your dollars from entities you hate, in this consumer-driven society we currently inhabit, so too can you fight these demonic, mind-controlling, cultural-engineering pricks … who want you running their operating-system in your head.

Disconnect from these fucking parasitic networks where YOU are the product, and instead support alternative platforms of your choice. Meanwhile spread the word to anyone who’ll listen, about just how small our allowable “thought-cage” is becoming, and try to make them understand how obviously pointless that makes the platforms themselves. I am only one person, but I am doing what I can by curating a page on the “Activist” section of my website … which lists people and organisations whom I believe are, for the most part, “fighting the good fight” against the soulless machine which apparently wants to crush us into a slave-colony of conformist drones, slurping their goop and accepting their programming.

At time of writing, Minds seems currently to still be the platform to which many activists and free-speakers are gravitating. Gab, despite itself being deplatformed temporarily, by domain registrar GoDaddy, seems mostly to be holding its ground still. MeWe also has some claim to being a good migration-ground for folks who understand the tragedy that Facebook has become. You can find me here, on Minds and MeWe.

Fortunately, although things may often seem very dark, all is not lost, and in fact, human consciousness seems to be reaching a massive tipping point of awareness and awakeness at the moment … and it is happening at almost light speed. This has been evidenced recently by Twitter (and other) polls indicating that trust in information coming from traditional media (MSM) and governments (let alone their “governance” of us!) … is at unbelievably ALL-TIME-LOWS. And as we see in France at the moment, this sort of situation leads to real world uprising.

Polls like the one above (and they have been EVERYWHERE recently!), are clearly very encouraging, and it becomes more obvious than ever, just why the criminal PTB have such a raging hard-on for Julian Assange and Wikileaks. If you ever doubt what relentlessly shining light on the darkness can achieve, just remember what has been accomplished in a little over ten short years by one man and a laser-focused organisation of people dedicated to bringing truth to the public. And that is why TPTB hate him so much.

In closing, I recommend strongly that everyone do a couple of things moving forward. The first is to download a copy of all your Facebook information.  That way you will have a record of the friends you accumulated on Facebook, as well as a lot of precious material which would otherwise be lost in the event of an unexpected  ban/deletion. Click here to find instructions on how to do that.

And the second would be to canvas all your closest friends on Facebook, explain why you are doing so, and ensure you have alternate ways of contacting them (WhatsApp, Email, other SM platforms, etc) … should the Facebook censor unexpectedly come down hard on you. It’s hard to realise just how much one relies on something like Facebook Messenger … until it simply isn’t there anymore (as I and my loved ones are finding out this Christmas season!).

So, on that note of uplift, proactivity and positivity, I will leave you for now. Seek the truth, spread the truth, and keep fighting the good fight! Good luck! 🙂