FreeSpeech and Censorship: Thread

[grarpamp]

The Revolution Has Come For Joe Rogan

https://technofog.substack.com/p/the-revolution-has-come-for-joe-rogan

The Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in the late summer of 2021,
shortly after the Americans withdrew, tired and weary and broke after
nearly 20 years of fighting. They seized was control of the country in the
broad and particular sense: setting up command in the presidential palace
in Kabul and targeting the individuals who criticized the new government.
By December 2021, regular Afghans and the members of the Afghan press who
had expressed critical views of their new rulers had “been subjected to
months of [90]intimidation and fear.”

The Biden Administration has adopted these same tactics, calling for their
critics to be silenced by the Administration’s corporate and media
allies. After 20 years of trying to export Western values to Afghanistan,
they ended up importing Taliban-style repression to the United States. And
it only cost us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives.

[91][IMG]

Now, the Regime and its comrades target Joe Rogan, an inquisitive comedian
with a podcast. He is accused of spreading “misinformation” by those
that illegally spy on their citizens and lies without remorse. In reality,
this isn’t about misinformation. It’s that Rogan’s crimes are those
of words and thought. The prosecutors have become the prophet of the god
they have created, searching to eradicate those guilty of the sin of
blasphemy. The Taliban would be proud.

We can be certain that the Regime is not concerned with the truth. Have
you seen them [92]struggle to explain the “evidence” that Russia was
planning a false-flag in Ukraine to justify an invasion?

Or, consider how the COVID-19 misinformation originated from the U.S.
government and its bureaucratic arms. In early 2020, Anthony Fauci and
Francis Collins were both presented with [93]arguments that SARS-CoV-2 was
engineered. Instead of investigating this issue, they saw to it that this
theory was killed off. Despite – or perhaps because of – these lies,
Fauci and Collins remain dear sons of the Regime. Reminders that “All
animals are equal but some are more equal than others. (The Christians of
the Left – such as David French – even go so far as to say that you
have a “[94]spiritual problem” if you don’t trust Fauci and Collins.
Both the left and the right make their idols.)

They killed the truth before. Who is to say they’re not trying to do
that with Rogan?

Those are the easy observations.

Then we get to the deeper and more consequential truths that are
manipulated and deformed and remade for political purposes. Patterns
emerge - and maybe they’re repeating. The institution of marriage, and
the definition of marriage, is subjected to social – meaning political
– evolution. Mothers are redefined as “[95]birthing people.”
[96]Words are even disappeared by the U.S. government for threat that they
are stigmatizing, dare someone have a negative opinion of an ex-convict or
prisoner.

To put it more bluntly, the people who believe men can give birth are now
in charge of what is true. The only authority they have is political
power. Such power isn’t necessarily authoritative, but it gives them the
strength to set definitions and enforce the rules, to declare guilt and
issue punishment. Conflicts of interest be damned. Power over language is
power over the people: “the primary purpose of language – which is to
describe reality – is replaced by the rival purpose of asserting power
over it.”[97]1

In their eyes, this public lynching is justified because these are
revolutionary times and removing Rogan is a revolutionary act. There is no
forgiveness because they seek destruction, not restoration.

There is some limitation to their enforcement power, those means by which
they achieve their ends, necessitating the Biden Administration in July
2021 to order social media companies to [98]ban those who disagree with
the official line of thinking. The U.S. government went so far as to flag
the objectionable content itself, helping corporate America snuff out
inconvenient voices. Supposedly devout Christian Francis Collins has been
silent on the government’s campaign to punish dissent, having been part
of the cover-up. As [99]Collins uses his faith to promote COVID-19
vaccines, perhaps he needs a reminder that Christianity does not give the
civil government jurisdiction over your thoughts or words. Or a refresher
of the [100]evils of abortion.

Anyway, the censorship encouraged by the Biden Administration was
effective – to an extent.

Alex Berenson was [101]banned from Twitter in August 2021 for correctly
labeling the COVID-19 vaccines as “therapeutics.” Dr. Robert Malone,
“who has been credited with inventing the mRNA technology used in the
Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 immunizations,” was also been [102]banned
from Twitter. These suspensions came after Fauci and U.S. Surgeon General
Vivek Murthy and other members of the Biden Administration called for
[103]stronger measures to stop the spread of misinformation.

Yet Joe Rogan thrived, in large part because he provided an alternative
platform to the voices that were being suppressed. The public yearned for
this information and it was delivered through his podcast. It’s reported
that Rogan has an estimated 11 million listeners per episode. It’s also
estimated that his interviews with Dr. Malone and Dr. Peter McCullough
brought in millions more.

In response, the Biden White House [104]demanded Spotify do more to censor
the discussions of Rogan and his guests. At the same time, the liberal mob
– encouraged by their leadership – aimed at Rogan, hurling disgusting
and false allegations of “racism.” CNN, eager to shift the focus off
the [105]network’s own problems, is asking Spotify to give Rogan the
proverbial death sentence:

  CNN's [106]@BrianStelter & Jim [107]@Acosta strongly suggest Spotify
  should remove Joe Rogan from their platform; also note his
  "profanity-laced apology"

  "It seems untenable to have that kind of video surface, and that kind of
  compilation surface, and keep one’s job"
  [108]pic.twitter.com/rSyAV8f1dN

  — Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) [109]February 6, 2022

This is the same network that [110]lied about Rogan’s use of Ivermectin,
calling it “horse dewormer.” It is the same network that ran an
[111]altered video of Rogan, making him seem sicker with COVID-19 than he
really was.

No surprise that it’s CNN’s Brian Stelter leading the way against
Rogan. How do I describe Stelter? (For starters, I do so with pleasure.)
He is a humorless fat man. A dedicated media believer pretending to be a
media reporter. He is as dumb as he sounds and as arrogant as he looks. He
oozes the sadism of a hall monitor and the false confidence of an
impostor. He is Kim Jong-un without the hair or the country or the
charisma.

Prior to Rogan, Stelter’s favorite targets were enemies of the Regime:
Tucker Carlson and Fox News. For being a “media reporter,” he
typically has a curious focus to target one journalist and one network.
CNN tolerates this well enough, excusing Stelter’s poor ratings because
he attacks the network’s adversaries and defends the network without
question.

Put Stelter on the offense against critics and he’ll call a Jihad
against “right wing” media from his CNN studio. He’s the zealot that
will behead you for drawing a cartoon of the wrong left-wing figure
(whether it’s Joe Biden or Don Lemon) – and then blame you for
inciting violence on “Reliable Sources” the next day. He will demand
the unvaccinated be treated as second-class citizens, relegated to the
margins of society until they comply with his favored health policies,
just as he continues on his own adventure of finding out what comes after
“morbid obesity.”

And in the presence of his preferred State power, masochist Stelter
emerges to flatter and grovel. When he had the chance to interview
Biden’s press secretary, he lobbed the softball of his dreams:
“[112]What does the press get wrong when covering Biden’s agenda?”

But back to Rogan.

One could say that Rogan is under attack for speaking truth to power. But
that’s not quite true. As Christopher Hitchens observed, that cliché is
looking in the wrong direction because power already knows the truth. More
importantly, Rogan – and his guests – speak truth to the powerless.
That’s what they’re scared of. And that’s why we see these campaigns
against Tucker and Rogan and anyone else who dare tell dangerous truths.

To put it another way, President Biden and his corporate allies, and their
mob of supporters, seek to obliterate the relationship between the writer
and the reader, the speaker and the listener.

Thus, this is about more than Joe Rogan. It is about you and it is about
me. It is about gatekeeping and limiting what we can watch and read and
hear. And they achieve that end through the destruction of Rogan the
individual.[113]2

 89. https://technofog.substack.com/p/the-revolution-has-come-for-joe-rogan
 90. https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2021/1217/Free-speech-in-Afghanistan-Who-is-silenced-by-Taliban-and-why
 92. https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1489366748134449153
 93. https://technofog.substack.com/p/new-documents-reveal-early-beliefs
 94. https://technofog.substack.com/p/david-frenchs-spiritual-blackmail
 95. https://technofog.substack.com/p/newsweek.com/biden-admin-replaces-mothers-birthing-people-maternal-health-guidance-1598343
 96. https://www.cdc.gov/healthcommunication/Preferred_Terms.html
 97. https://technofog.substack.com/p/the-revolution-has-come-for-joe-rogan
 98. https://www.yahoo.com/video/white-house-says-social-media-202900243.html
 99. https://religionnews.com/2021/09/10/francis-collins-a-bit-frustrated-with-evangelicals-amid-covid-19-vaccine-push/
100. https://www.discovery.org/a/nih-director-francis-collins-isnt-a-national-treasure-hes-a-national-disgrace/
101. https://thehill.com/homenews/media/569908-twitter-bans-conservative-author-Alex-Berenson
102. https://nypost.com/2022/01/08/twitter-ceo-parag-agrawal-has-brought-wave-of-high-profile-bans/
103. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/07/18/fauci-surgeon-general-criticize-spread-covid-misinformation-online/8007255002/
104. https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/psaki-big-tech-should-censor-more-misinformation-but-we-believe-in-freedom-of-speech
105. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/jeff-zucker-cnn-investigation-affair-cuomo-1294608/
106. https://twitter.com/brianstelter
107. https://twitter.com/Acosta
108. https://t.co/rSyAV8f1dN
109. https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1490357546191888388
110. https://thehill.com/homenews/media/576723-gupta-tells-joe-rogan-cnn-shouldnt-have-called-ivermectin-horse-dewormer
111. https://ijr.com/cnn-caught-deceptively-altering-video-of-joe-rogan-to-make-him-look-sicker-than-he-really-is/
112. https://www.yahoo.com/now/cnn-brian-stelter-draws-criticism-190801600.html
113. https://technofog.substack.com/p/the-revolution-has-come-for-joe-rogan
114. https://technofog.substack.com/p/the-revolution-has-come-for-joe-rogan
115. https://technofog.substack.com/p/the-revolution-has-come-for-joe-rogan