Someone leaked to Breitbart an hour-long video of an “all hands” Google meeting that was held just after the 2016 election. The video features Google’s co-founder, Sergei Brin, its CEO, Sundar Pichai, and numerous other high-ranking “Googlers” speaking in turn about the election’s tragic outcome. It is stunning.

All of the speakers express grief over Donald Trump’s election. All of the speakers assume that every Google employee is a Democrat and is stunned and horrified that Hillary Clinton–the worst and most corrupt presidential candidate in modern history–lost. There is much discussion about what Google can do to reverse the benighted world-wide tide exemplified by Brexit and Trump’s election. The insane doctrine of “white privilege” rears its head.

You really have to see it to believe it. Having suffered through the hour-long cri de cœur–OK, to be fair, there is a huge element of schadenfreude, too, and you will relish much of it–you probably will have several reactions: 1) These people may have certain valuable technical skills, but they aren’t very bright and are unusually lacking in self-awareness. 2) It is remarkable that they can achieve such an extraordinary monoculture in an organization with thousands of employees. It must require vigorous enforcement of right-think. 3) It is easy to see how these uniformly left-wing robots/people seamlessly transitioned into Resisting the duly elected Trump administration.

Here is the video, then a final comment:

 

This is the most comprehensive report produced by CNS News and details, what may be one of the greatest threats to free speech in American history,” Media Research Center (MRC) President Brent Bozell explains in a video highlighting MRC’s study on social media censorship.

 

By Thaddeus G. McCotter
AmericanGreatness.com

 

For many, the most arduous aspect of supporting free speech is the principled requirement to defend disagreeable speech; moreover, the degree of difficulty in defending free speech increases in proportion to the detestable nature of the individual or entity uttering said offensive speech.

Yet we must. For to infringe upon the free speech rights of one, however loathsome, is to endanger the free speech rights of all. And, really, who doesn’t like to do a little bitching?

Therefore, let us examine a pundit-class kerfuffle to prove how it is possible and necessary to defend free speech, regardless of how unsavory we deem the speaker.

Recently in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman opined that the optimal way to defeat President Trump was for America

to see every [Trump] tweet, every rally, every word and every reaction so that they can ask themselves: “Is this who I want my kids to see as our president? Are these the people with whom I want to be aligned?” It’s too late to move Trump’s core base on these questions, but I would not give up on his passive supporters.

One of the entities Friedman would give up on is, of course, Fox News. Not surprisingly, one Fox News wag didn’t take this sitting down (though it is what he does all day on television).

Greg Gutfeld, the author of a glorified travel brochure, Lessons from the Land of Pork Scratchings: A Miserable Yank Finds Happiness in the UK (among other impenetrable tracts), disagreed with Friedman’s conclusion; and, alternately, argued such ubiquitous coverage had and would continue to help President Trump:

What a great idea. Because remember what happened the last time the media covered every tweet, every rally, every word in every reaction of Donald Trump? . . . They elected Donald Trump…So telling the media to focus on Trump’s behavior, you are in effect saying “hey, remember how we elected Trump in 2016? Let’s do it again.”

Not in the mood to be contradicted by an “active” Trump supporter, Friedman appeared on CNN and declared Gutfeld a “moron.”

Somewhat evasively (he never refuted the charge), Gutfeld nonetheless fired off a Pershing II of a tweet at Friedman’s host cable station: “Ha [sic] sorry I missed it. I was doing a hit on a network people actually watch!”

Yes, because it is so often messy in practice, sometimes amid the pundit classes’ pillow fights it is easy to miss that we have witnessed a principled exchange of free speech. True, the above exchange is less than courteous. Nevertheless, neither Friedman nor Gutfeld is demanding that his antagonist be silenced, for instance by imploring Twitter Jack to eradicate a tweet or suspend an account (which he is more than happy to do these days, if one is a conservative).

No, what we have is Gutfeld lampooning Friedman’s argument and his host cable station, and Friedman dismissing Gutfeld as a “moron.” We, the public, can determine who is right or wrong; and who we will listen to on what station or social media platform.

And, thus, is free speech practiced and protected.

Lads, a pint, pork scratchings, and a round of applause for you in spite of yourselves!

 

Photo Credit: Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

 

 

By Ben Garrison
grrrgraphics.com

In early America many cities had ‘town squares’ in which citizens could stand on soapboxes and shout out various messages. Our First Amendment protects such speech.

The Internet is today’s town square. The soapboxes are social media.

The Deep State and the left are intertwined with Silicon Valley. The CIA helped Google and Facebook get started. Why? To make it easier to spy on people. Over time, millions gravitated toward Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Conservative and Libertarian voices became very strong and that alarmed the Deep State. So they began demonetizing conservatives. Then they shadow-banned them. Now they are deleting them outright.

For many years, Alex Jones reached millions with his journalism and rants. His tirades helped wake people up. He yelled at us about the Deep State, including the corrupt security agencies, the Bohemian Grove, the CFR, the Bilderbergs, fluoride in our water, the lies about 9-11, and yes, even Sandy Hook. The latter had many anomalies that should be questioned. Alex brought all of this up and more before anyone else had a inkling about what was really going on with such matters. He was routinely dismissed as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ by the establishment. However, much of what he has been saying over the years is now acknowledged as self-evident. The legacy media, the Deep State, and Silicon Valley could not stomach the fact that he was informing and influencing minds and elections. They all got together and confiscated his soapbox. Their lame excuse? They claimed he was a purveyor of ‘hate speech.’

Having previously endured years of hate speech aimed toward me, I know what it is and what it isn’t. To me, it’s libel, defamation and death threats. Alex Jones has never engaged in hate speech. Questioning climate change is not hate speech. Jones is not a racist, a bigot or any of the other ‘phobic’ names the left enjoy pinning on ideological opponents. ‘Hate speech’ sounds alarming and terrible, but it’s also vague. Who gets to decide what it is?

Conservative commentator Gavin Mcinnes appeared on Breitbart News Saturday this week to discuss his recent Twitter suspension and why it’s up to President Trump to stop social media censorship.

Appearing alongside Breitbart News Editor Amanda House, conservative commentator and CRTV host Gavin McInnes discusses his recent suspension from Twitter and the banning of his pro-Western mens group, The Proud Boys. During the interview, McInnes warned that the banning of Alex Jones was just the beginning of mass consevative censorship and soon websites like Breitbart and Fox News would also have to worry about being censored online.

 

 

 

By Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com

Professor Erik Nielson warns in a New York Times op-ed that the kind of censorship that saw Infowars banned from most major social media platforms this week will eventually backfire on the left.

In an article entitled If We Silence Hate Speech, Will We Silence Resistence?, Nielson, who is an associate professor of liberal arts at the University of Richmond, writes that “mounting pressure from the political left to censor hateful speech may have unintended consequences.”

Cautioning that leftists should be “wary” of applauding the likes of Apple, Facebook and YouTube banning Alex Jones, Nielson writes, “If we become overzealous in our efforts to limit so-called hate speech, we run the risk of setting a trap for the very people we’re trying to defend.”

The professor cites inflammatory rhetoric used by black leaders after the civil rights era which led to them being put under surveillance and subjected to harassment by the FBI under the justification of them being labeled “hate groups”.

He also cites the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, which “federal lawmakers have increasingly tried to shut the movement down by accusing it of hate speech,” in addition to Black Lives Matter, which some have attempted to label a hate group by making the target of their anger, police officers, a protected class.

He also makes the point that the 2017 Women’s March was accused of engaging in “hate” because it had links to anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

“If we allowed these voices to be silenced on grounds that they promote hate, we’d find ourselves scrambling to defend the radical poets, musicians, filmmakers and other artists who have pushed the boundaries of expression into what could arguably amount to hate speech, but who have done so from the vanguard of social and political protest,” writes Nielson.

He also points to the hypocrisy of Spotify reversing its decision to “stop promoting artists who engage in hateful speech or conduct,” but then banning Alex Jones for that very reason.

“Within weeks, Spotify reversed course, noting that its policy was “vague.” But by silencing Mr. Jones on its platform, it’s not exactly clear where Spotify is drawing the line.

And that’s the inherent danger in attempting to limit something like hate. It can be so broadly defined that our efforts to counteract it will be broad, too.

If that happens, we risk silencing the voices and perspectives we can least afford to lose. That’s not a triumph over hate. That’s falling victim to it.”

Nielson’s argument will resonate with real liberals, but given that much of the left has abandoned liberal principles and aggressively supported censorship, so long as it’s directed against their political adversaries, don’t expect the blue check mark brigade on Twitter to embrace his position.

Even though the internet is aflame with controversy over the coordinated purge of Alex Jones and InfoWars from Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and  Apple, there is no real transparency over their decision and the process by which it was made.

Alex Jones and InfoWars have been top Twitter trends for hours, and even some left-wing journalists like Michael Tracey are decrying Silicon Valley’s Masters of the Universe appointing themselves the arbiters of free speech on the web.

But Apple, Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube have offered, at most, only copy and paste explanations for why they banned InfoWars content from their platforms — or why, after months of pressure from the Democrats and CNN, they all came to the same decision on the same day. Questions about transparency have a much broader scope that just the case of InfoWars and Alex Jones. Beyond the banning of other individuals such as Tommy Robinson, the same questions apply to a whole host of actions by the Masters of the Universe, including partnering with foreign governments to shut down accounts, shadowbanning users to limit the scope of their engagement, and mass user purges.

Breitbart News sent the following questions to Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple earlier today, and have yet to receive a real answer for most of them. Apple and YouTube chose to provide the same canned statement they provided to all other media outlets who contacted them, while Facebook and Spotify ignored our request entirely.
 

THE QUESTIONS SILICON VALLEY WON’T ANSWER

1) What content specifically from InfoWars/Alex Jones was found to be”hate speech” and otherwise rule breaking?

InfoWars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson confirmed to Breitbart News that none of the tech giants that targeted InfoWars and Alex Jones over the past 24 hours pointed to specific content that violated their terms of service.

Make no mistake.  This is the most serious attack on our right to free speech and if it goes unchallenged, everyone else is next!