It’s no secret that the major social media sites and tech giants, almost entirely controlled by the Left, are silencing right-wing voices in the wake of Donald Trump’s election as president.
The methods they use for censorship are often more insidious and gradual, ranging from subtly removing certain sites from search engines, or purging several thousand users and dismissing all of them as “Nazis” or “Russian bots.”
Now, the Masters of the Digiverse have engaged in the single most outright, blatant, and obviously coordinated act of censorship in recent memory. And the target is an all-too familiar and purposely unsympathetic one.
The controversial right-wing commentator Alex Jones, who has been accused of spreading conspiracy theories through his outlet InfoWars, is now effectively purged from all but one of the major social media giants. In one fell swoop, Jones and InfoWars were permanently banned from Facebook, YouTube, Apple, and Spotify. With only Twitter left to speak to his audience, Jones claims that he was removed from all four platforms within a 12-hour span.
Jones’ official YouTube channel, now deleted allegedly for “violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines,” had garnered more than 2.5 million subscribers and over 1.5 billion total video views. Jones’ Facebook page had around 1.3 million likes, with an additional 950,000 likes on the official InfoWars page.
Combined with the other platforms from which Jones was removed, his audience easily constituted anywhere from 4 to 5 million people. His massive following even resulted in then-candidate Donald Trump appearing on Jones’s show in December 2015.
Whatever one may think of Jones and some of his outlandish comments, the fact that his platform, with an audience of millions, was suddenly purged from almost all major social media websites on the same day should be cause for fear and outrage.
The response from the culprits, of course, is a kind of milquetoast answer babbling about combating “hate speech,” and somehow tying Jones’ pro-Trump stance to the withering “Russia” conspiracy theory. How ironic that their justification for removing a conspiracy theorist involves adhering to their own conspiracy theory, one far more absurd even than Jones’s gay frog theory.
Jones’s complete purge from almost all of social media is incontrovertible evidence of the much-derided “slippery slope” associated with left-wing thought and tactics. The slippery slope can be a logical fallacy, but it is no myth. Remember when opponents of same-sex marriage were mocked and derided for warning that redefining marriage would lead inexorably to campaigns legitimizing polygamy and even pedophilia? Well, guess what? With Alex Jones banished, the Left has wasted no time setting its sights on people and organizations that do not hew to the prescribed orthodoxy on climate change.
Apart from the label of “conspiracy theorist,” many have simply dismissed Jones with the Left’s favorite slur: “Far-right.” This term has been used to dehumanize Tommy Robinson, the co-founder of the English Defence League who authorities in the United Kingdom jailed for the “crime” of reporting on a trial the media and the government did not want publicized. He was only recently released from captivity.
Now think for just a moment: How many times have you seen or heard the term “far-right” loosely applied to innocuous targets? This includes publications such as Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit; organizations like Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys, both of which have been violently assaulted by Antifa thugs. Even former White House advisors such as Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka labor under that moniker; and, of course, most prominently of all, the policies and rhetoric of the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, are often mistakenly labeled “far-right.”
“Far-right” is the “Jude” star of the modern Left, publicly slapped onto anyone who doesn’t kowtow to the rising trend of outright socialism and anti-white racism. Soon enough, you may see the complete blocking of other mainstream Right publications, such as this one, or the censoring of individuals who once worked for the Trump Administration.
Fortunately, these actions already appear to be generating a swift backlash that is comparable to the Streisand Effect: By banning Jones, the Left has made him “more popular than ever,” as evident by InfoWars’ official app skyrocketing to the top of the charts in both Android and Apple stores.
As the Washington Times put it, Jones has become a martyr; he is now defended even by those who hold nothing but contempt for him, but defend his right to free speech nonetheless. Yes, this includes even Ben Shapiro.
As the midterms approach and Democratic prospects burn faster than California wildfires, the Left will grow more desperate to do anything they can to win. In the process, they will surpass anything that Oceania could have achieved in the pages of Orwell’s magnum opus. It won’t be much longer before “2 + 2 = 5,” and “freedom is slavery.”
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