Friday, October 6, 2017

Justin Raimondo — The Campaign To Rein In the Internet

It’s part and parcel of the “Russia-gate” hoax.…
The Powers That Be have always hated the internet, and now they’re finally making some progress in their campaign to have it reined in. Using the “Russia threat” and Hillary Clinton’s loss to appeal to those who used to be called “liberals,” they’re teaming up with neoconservatives like Bill Kristol and foreign-funded (!) outfits like the Alliance to Secure Democracy to achieve their longtime dream of regulating internet content. And they have powerful allies in the Legacy Media, which has suffered huge losses due to competition from free internet media.
The Russia-gate hoax has many uses – providing cover for a politically bankrupt and intellectually dishonest Democratic party: restarting the cold war; promoting the “liberal”-neocon alliance. Yet paving the way for content controls – i.e. censorship – to be imposed on the internet has got to be the clearest and most present danger of them all.…
Just the latest iteration of dupe the rubes to extend power by controlling the narrative and suppressing dissent. Liberal democracy or plutocratic oligarchy?

AntiWar
The Campaign To Rein In the Internet
 Justin Raimondo

See also

WSWS
The new McCarthyism and the suppression of political dissent
Andre Damon

Rolling Stone
Matt Taibbi

4 comments:

Jefferson said...

Minor improvements in how social media platforms combat propaganda:complete government control of the internet :: minor change in gun laws:complete government control of guns

Jefferson said...

Note on my previous analogy: at least when gun nuts complain that proposed legislation is a trojan horse to complete government control, there's actual legislation, albeit they interpret it idiotically.

The linked article does not identify any proposed legislation to control the Internet, instead we get 1) Senate asked Facebook, Twitter etc to meet with them in the course of ongoing Senate investigation into Russian meddling 2) These social media platforms presumably reacted to this request by, in part, analyzing themselves (again) for improper Russian influence so they could intelligently assist the investigation 3) These social media platforms found some previously unknown ToS violations and booted the accounts.

Government questioning the activities of a company, and that company looking over their actions - finding some mistakes - rectifying them - is normal absent additional evidence.

Social media platforms are relevant to the Senate's investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the election. There is no basis by which a person can "know" it's a smokescreen on the path to complete government control, it's an unsupported conspiracy theory.

Tom Hickey said...

WSWS (Sep 29, 2017)
The new McCarthyism and the suppression of political dissent
Andre Damon

Kaivey said...

When I read the Guardian CiF now I find lots of people are in disagreement with the Guardian article above. I've come to the conclusion that many of them are getting their news from the alternative media. Let's hope there's enough people left and right to stop this McCarhyism. The problem is the patriarchs, they soon back the government in times of war and turn upon the dissenters. Despite the many dissenters writing in the Guardian's CiF , I'm dismayed at the amount of people who still believe the official line about the Russian hacking and the annexing of Crimea. They're completely brainwashed.