Part 2 of 2
Social Media Overreach
On January 7th, a day after the capitol demonstration, Twitter suspended President Trump’s account permanently. This is an action that Twitter warned was coming for months leading up to the election, when they said that Trump’s special protections would
go away if he lost the election.
The event on January 6th gave them an opportunity to use as a pretext for the permanent suspension of Trump’s account, which they desired to take action on for quite some time.
Twitter issued a
statement after the ban, claiming that it was not what Trump said on Twitter that led to his permanent suspension, it was what some might interpret from what he said.
The reason why Twitter finally took this action had nothing to do with the actions of Trump’s supporters, or even as Twitter admitted, what Trump himself said on the platform. Twitter’s goal was to pull the plug on Trump’s most effective and favorite line of communication.
They understand this is war, and in war if you can cut the lines of communication of your enemy. you do it.
In June of 2019, the head of Responsible Innovation at Google, Jen Gennai during an
undercover video, talked about what tech companies can do to prevent ‘the next Trump situation.’
‘We’re also training our algorithms, like, if 2016 happened again, would we have, would the outcome be different?’ she asked in the video.
By cutting the head off the snake, they could cut the line of communication between the man they fear and the movement they fear even more. This has been the intention of the top three social media companies since the 2016 election, and that especially became true following the 2020 election.
Just as he fast-tracked the decline in faith in one institution, the media; Trump with the help of his tens of millions of loyal supporters were successful in destroying faith in another institution, the American electoral process.
By permanently suspending President Trump from Twitter, and just about every other social media platform he was on, this also exacerbated the decline in trust Americans have in social media.
Confidence in American institutions is what
academics say is the ‘glue that holds society together.’ If Americans lose confidence in the institutions, especially the media, political outcomes become unpredictable. The system starts to ‘unrig’ itself.
Even faith in the judicial institution is falling. The courts will experience an even steeper decline in confidence as Americans see the hypocrisy of the courts. Future lawsuits filed against executive orders from the Biden administration, surely will not receive the same reaction from the courts that Trump executive orders experienced. Sudden deference to the executive from the courts is certain.
When President Trump said “the system was rigged, and we are going to change it,” he meant it. And it seems like he was successful in exponentially expediting this process without needing the legislative branch at all.
After President Trump and many of his supporters were purged from several of the most popular social media platforms, millions of people started flocking to alternatives. Parler, an alternative social media platform started by computer scientist John Matze, was the most mainstream and well known.
Because of the mass exodus to Parler, big tech and the media felt that this reaction could be a viable threat to the control they had over the flow of information. Because of the potential drastic political and financial consequences this could have on the system, like clockwork the media and social media began a coordinated effort to take these platforms down.
Hundreds of hit pieces from every major mainstream media outlet hit the digital presses. These hit pieces were then used by individual journalists and NGO activists to put pressure on the corporations that allow these alternative social media platforms to exist.
Parler was removed from the Apple app store and Google play store. Following the removal of their app, Parler’s webhosting was taken away by Amazon.
The regime received instantaneous results. Because of this, they decided to push even further using January 6th as a pretext. Coordinated attack campaigns were launched by the regime to take down other social media platforms.
Telegram, an alternative to Facebook’s WhatsApp but allows public channels was the next target. Because Telegram would not censor most of the figures they wanted terminated, Apple was pressured again. A prominent left-wing Washington nonprofit group
sued Apple in federal court on January 15th, demanding that it remove Telegram from its app store for failing to crack down.
The suit was a pressure tactic to get Apple to act against Telegram as it already has against Parler, which the Washington Post calls
“a social media site that swelled with calls for violence and insurrection ahead of the Capitol siege.”
The source they use to back this claim comes from more than flimsy ‘research’ from another institution the regime has taken control of and weaponized, academia.
Filing the suit was the Coalition for a Safer Web. A similar lawsuit is planned against Google, according to the coalition’s lawyer, Keith Altman.
“Telegram stands out by itself as the ‘super-spreader’ of hate speech, even compared to Parler,” Marc Ginsberg, the coalition’s president said in an interview.
Ginsberg, who is Jewish, claims in the lawsuit that Telegram’s ‘hateful’ content puts him at risk, and that his ownership of an iPhone gives him standing to sue Apple.
The coordinated attacks on Telegram, Parler, DLive, and others are just a snapshot of the broader social media overreach that started on January 6th. Additionally, payments processors were targeted and Trump himself was banned from banks.
Just like the targeting of individuals by journalists and the media, the digital crackdown represents a counterassault against a movement that is a real threat to the system. This is an overreach though, and overreach always comes with unintended consequences.
WATCH: CNN advocates for censorship of conservative news organizations, saying companies should “be brave” and shut off conservatives’ access to audiences.
pic.twitter.com/MrRmwSSECs
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial)
January 17, 2021
Because the President of the United States himself was purged from twitter, and millions of his supporter suffered the same fate, a major spotlight was shone on the issue.
As much as Republican politicians adored talking about social media censorship, even going so far as grilling tech CEO’s in countless theatrical hearings, no one took this issue seriously until recently. Because the digital crackdown was so severe, this has caught the attention of everyone.
If there is going to be a free market solution to social media censorship, it is more likely to surface now more than ever before.
The crackdown has also caught the attention of state legislators.
In states like Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, and North Dakota; state legislators have proposed laws aimed at striking back at big tech companies. One bill suggests fining social media companies for taking down posts or accounts for ‘hate speech.’ Another bill suggests allowing users to sue social media companies for taking down their accounts or posts.
The recent swift and severe censorship has also led to millions of people migrating to two main platforms;
Gab and
Telegram. For video content, many created
Bitchute accounts. Platforms like Gab and Telegram were called ‘neo-Nazi’ platforms just months ago. Now, prominent conservatives voices and even elected Republicans are flocking to Gab.
I joined
@GetOnGab when Twitter restricted my account. With free speech under attack on mainstream social media platforms, we need to have options.
Follow me at
@LaurenBoebert.
Gab Social
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert)
January 15, 2021
Don't forget to follow me on
@getongab:
Gab Social
— Allum Bokhari (@LibertarianBlue)
January 21, 2021
I'd like to connect with my supporters and share information on Telegram! Subscribe today!
Marjorie Taylor Greene
— Marjorie Taylor Greene (@mtgreenee)
January 12, 2021
Let’s bring patriots to
@getongab! Here’s my link:
Gab Social
Drop your user in the comments so we can all stay in touch!
— Joy Villa (@Joy_Villa)
January 20, 2021
The counterassault by the regime has pushed conservatives in America further into a corner in reality and digitally. Conservatives are now more condensed online than ever before. Mainstream conservatives are now digital neighbors with people further to the right, and closer than ever before.
Rhetorical Overreach
Today more than ever before, average Trump supporters are being labeled ‘insurrectionists’ or ‘seditionists.’ It also seems that ‘white domestic terrorists’ is a very popular term for them suddenly as well. Year after year labels like these encompassed more and more conservative pundits. After January 6th, essentially all Trump supporters were being characterized as such.
This decision will lead to the weakening of the effectiveness of these labels, disarming one of the regimes most powerful tactics. This will also lead to more mainstream conservatives becoming less reluctant than they otherwise would be, to start looking into figureheads who were previously fringe. Because of this obvious overreach, they will be absorbed into the mainstream right under a big tent movement.
Due to the charismatic nature of more reactionary commentators like
Vincent James or
Nick Fuentes, this will inevitably drive many millions more conservatives further to the reactionary right. Millions of Trump’s supporters are disenfranchised and feel that they have no representation in government. The movement Trump built will eventually transform into a more right-wing version, even more capable of challenging the system and its institutions.
America or Trump. An army of citizens prepared to root out and arrest
#TrumpsNewArmy in their new cause of Civil War and Right Wing Domestic Terrorism. By
@donwinslow and
@Eleven_Films pic.twitter.com/bRJLf2fRYz
— Jerry Saltz (@jerrysaltz)
January 19, 2021
Overreach by Weaponized Institutions
The Tea Party was founded in 2009, but the strong rise of the Tea Party was a reaction to the Obama administration’s weaponized institutions. In April of 2017,
hundreds of new documents were released containing admissions by IRS officials about the targeting of conservative organizations.
Beginning in March 2010, groups with names containing the words “Tea Party” or “patriot” were singled out for greater IRS scrutiny. Later, in an attempt to change from overtly partisan to more general criteria, the IRS shifted to targeting organizations with the goal of “teaching about the Constitution.”
Conservative groups were
raided for documents, investigated, and audited. In July of 2010, True the Vote, a Houston-based conservative grassroots organization, applied for IRS tax-exempt status. In the following months, the group’s founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, endured six FBI domestic terrorism inquiries, investigations by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and Texas environmental quality officials, as well as multiple IRS audits and five IRS requests for additional information about the organization.
View: https://youtu.be/9-8ZKYWgVEo
1:01 min
This is just a snapshot of the targeting by Obama’s weaponized institutions during a time when America was in economic crisis, and the internet was far less advanced.
Today, America’s institutions are more powerful than ever before. Big tech and billion-dollar corporations have more power than the FBI, IRS, and the ATF combined. In fact, big tech alone has more political power than the entire federal government.
Left-wing political NGO’s are more in quantity and have more power than at any time in the history of the country. The rise of the internet allows for individual journalists, and everyday citizens to use these weaponized institutions to destroy their political enemies, and the lives of their family members.
The Pendulum Swing
If the rise of the Tea Party, and the Presidency of Trump was a reaction to the Obama administration, imagine what will be the reaction to a Biden administration; which has already shown it has
more teeth.
With every institution on his side ready to be weaponized, some more powerful than ever before; what Americans experienced under the Obama administration will feel like a cakewalk.
With Kamala Harris as VP, gun rights organizations dying out, and the anti-gun allies Biden has already placed around him; the threat to the second amendment will be more real than ever before.
With coronavirus lockdowns, millions of pending evictions, the coming end to fracking, and certain new wars in the middle east; Biden will preside over a down economy and a nation at war once again.
Regardless of how hard they try, the movement Trump created will never die, it will only go stronger awaiting to be activated. If the Regime thought that the Tea Party and then Trump was a right-wing reaction to Obama, they haven’t seen nothing yet.