My father’s adolescence coincided with World War II, and let me tell you, growing up queer in the forties meant facing a much harsher world than the one we currently live in. That’s not to say there isn’t still a significant amount of homophobia, especially anti-trans hysteria. There is. But my father’s stories about growing up queer reflect a world where reactions to any display of a heterodox sexual identity almost always involved felony-level violence. One night the local cops pummeled his friend at a gay club where he worked as a bartender.
Dad stepped in and ended up with a broken jaw.
Why do I lead with that?
Because several decades ago, we had a First Amendment that was still alive and kicking. I signed every petition for gay marriage and civil unions, and I protested with ACT UP. The legislation that grew from that resistance meant my father was able to live with his partner at the end of his life with much less anxiety about bureaucratic hassles. It allowed him to legally pass on his estate to his partner, who left it to my sister and me, providing financial assistance when we were in dire straights.
None of that would have been possible without the freedom to protest, publish, and speak up publicly in any forum or platform we choose. So if you think this doesn’t affect you, think again. It will, sooner or later.
None of our freedoms matter as much as this one, especially when making headway on the far left — a daunting task in and of itself — means taking on the forces of capital and a class of stooges we call Republicans and Democrats. Along with their billionaire bosses, they are hell-bent on shutting us up.
Here’s a good way to conceptualize just what kind of political power is wielded by billionaires: While a grassroots organization needs to spend countless hours collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures to get a proposition on the ballot, wealth hoarders can achieve the same results with a single phone call.
That’s why a creep like Bill Gates, a college dropout who knows nothing about viruses or biochemistry, ends up leading the global response to the pandemic. He was the greedy bastard who decided to protect patent holders, meaning millions of Africans were unable to get the COVID-19 vaccine, which should and could have been provided to them at no cost.
Capital doesn’t take naps — Shut down freedom of expression and it’s all over.
The 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers gave carte blanche to the state and the powers that back them. It started with the Patriot Act and went nuclear when Chris Hedges squared off against Obama at the Supreme Court. Hedges won the first trial, but the Obama administration was not about to tolerate any pushback against the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and they won on appeal. They ramrodded this legislation down our throats duplicitously, with fear-mongering government propaganda to sell people on the idea that without this insane overreach of executive authority, we’d be at the mercy of marauding terrorists, hiding under every stone and setting up shop in our own backyards.
It worked.
Now, the government can arrest and indefinitely detain any American citizen accused of terrorism. We have relinquished our right of habeas corpus.
And almost nobody knows it.
While preparing this piece, I read an interview with Glenn Greenwald where he discusses freedom of speech and the need to keep the First Amendment intact at all costs. Everyone knows Glenn as the person who broke the Snowden story. He’d been canonized by liberals for all of the revelations he helped make public concerning the government’s surveillance apparatus and the crimes of the Bush administration. But after Hillary’s leaked emails, and especially now that Democrats are heavily into the censorship game, his commitment to telling the truth has made him, in their eyes, a right-winger and a pariah sucking up to Republicans. Which is of course utter bullshit and a fine illustration of what is wrong with our dysfunctional duopoly. Party allegiances shift with the changing tides of public opinion, and politicians are fearful of any perceived threat to their re-electability.
Glenn might not be right 100% of the time. No one is. Still, he is a good-faith actor in a sea of prevaricating shills. The Republicans started griping about the Dems’ curtailing of free speech a couple of years ago, but after October 7th, they suddenly forgot about all that and started to focus on suppressing criticism of Israel and their precious genocide, which both parties are keen on extending. He spoke right up and unveiled the Republicans’ hypocrisy, right to Tucker Carlson’s face. He is as ethical and as unbiased as any journalist in the business.
I’ll quote from the aforementioned interview directly since Glenn puts it perfectly, summing up what all the fuss is about:
“So, for me, the thing I think that triggered this passionate belief in free speech… was this recognition that human beings are incredibly fallible, and there should never be any idea that people are so certain is correct that they are unwilling to have it challenged.”
My sentiments exactly.
I have been and will always be a free-speech absolutist. I do not believe that there’s a single slope in sight that is not slippery as a seal, and if left in the hands of these congressional birdbrains and grifters, we’ll slide straight to hell.
Greenwald also expounds on the conflict between surveillance and privacy, which itself poses a direct threat to freedom of expression and the right to protest. Had a hardcore Republican homophobe president and his cabinet wanted to, the legislation and rulings of the last 25 years would have made it possible for them to record all of my personal communications and behavior 24/7, spy on my activity connected to the gay rights movement, hunt down anyone I emailed, censor them, jail them… Now, they have consolidated that power even further, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling on June 26.
Last month, the Supreme Court struck down a lower court ruling in which Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey stated that Biden’s massive censorship apparatus was “the biggest violation of the First Amendment in our nation’s history.” There is now a legal precedent: the United States Government can approach an independent company, social media platform, or YouTuber and tell them to remove content. If you think that companies are going to stand up and fight back, risking their entire financial futures to do the right thing, then I have a vast swath of swampland in Tallahassee ready for you to scoop up at bargain basement prices…
Greenwald bemoans the current state of the ACLU, which has fallen prey to the dumbest sort of identity politics and no longer has the intention to honor that longstanding liberal axiom that so well expresses the First Amendment’s purpose:
“I disapprove of what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
Instead, the ACLU joined in the liberal establishment’s crazed and hyperbolic Trump frenzy, deciding to adopt a more — pun intended — liberal interpretation of the First Amendment and reconsider the organization’s former stance. They have caved to the pressure and non-stop propaganda from a media apparatus completely controlled by a patrician class that also owns both parties. The idea of freedom of speech is one of the pillars of Enlightenment liberalism. And it has crumbled. The ACLU is no longer the institution of the person Glenn and I grew up admiring so ardently, the mighty Ira Glaser. And that’s a pity.
What’s more, the liberal institutions that are dead with rot, and the hardcore Kool-Aid crowd that’s hell-bent on maintaining them, have misconstrued what all of the hard left critiques of the Democratic Party have been saying: It’s their abandoning of core liberal virtues, not their adherence to them, that has been their undoing.
Let’s look at where this has gotten us. Let’s look at some of the absurdity and tragedy that is born of censorship, which is always and everywhere a terrible idea.
We’ll start with the absurd.
When I was at university in the 80s, and especially during high school in the 70s, I would have to search to find other students who disagreed with me about free speech. But in recent years, there’s been a 180-degree shift. Establishment liberals are pushing hard for censorship. It’s all they have. After incidents like Russiagate and Genocide Joe’s catastrophic performance in that trainwreck of a debate, no one believes in them. So it becomes a culture war. That’s how they defend this abhorrent behavior and hang on to their turf. They devote themselves to things like setting up centers on campuses for kids who feel threatened by being in the proximity of not just radical ideas, but even the most tepid opinion or anodyne point of view.
One of the most absurd examples is California State University’s Free Speech Trauma Program, which posts signs like these all around campus:
Here’s a novel idea: if they’re that concerned about these kids, why not pass a bill so that everyone is covered by a universal healthcare system that the rest of the Western world has enjoyed for nearly a century? That way, instead of visiting some thoroughly unqualified bureaucrat who sits at a desk like a campus cop all day enforcing equity and inclusion policies, they could seek counsel from a qualified therapist. It would allow everyone to reap the benefits of real, palpable change. A universal healthcare system would mean marginalized people in the queer community could get gender reassignment surgery paid for by the government. It would mean low-income individuals no longer have to decide between eating and taking their diabetes medication.
I support these kinds of changes. That’s what we need to be working toward rather than making laws to muzzle people — laws that absolutely will be turned around and used to bite progressives on the ass the minute the opposition is in power.
While on the topic of universities, whose craven administrators have managed to embrace neoliberalism with even more gusto than our crooked duopoly, we have a perfect segue into Abby Martin’s story. Georgia Southern University invited the journalist to speak at the campus. As rules dictate, they asked Martin to sign a document stating she would in no way participate in or support the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and its apartheid state. A staunch supporter of Palestine who has not been afraid to publicly state that Israel’s military response to October 7th is a clear case of genocide, she righteously held her ground and refused. The university withdrew its invitation.
Cornell West was denied tenure for the same reason.
Our universities: a home and refuge for the worst ideas and the scoundrels who conceive of them. You can boycott and protest any nation on the planet except Israel. You can even boycott the USA, but not the milk and honey that flow from God’s chosen land, which remains cordoned off by a big red velvet rope, courtesy of Pennsylvania Avenue.
While still on the all-you-can-eat absurdity buffet, I would be remiss were I not to mention CNN and the BBC, who together did a tag-team routine that puts the Marx Brothers to shame. After Putin decided to limit freedom of the press in his own country, CNN and BBC decided to stop broadcasting from Russia. They imposed restrictions on themselves — censored themselves and by extension all Americans. The government has also made it illegal to read Russian news sources, something that was permitted even during the McCarthy era. What’s more, I was about ready to share a link to a piece debunking claims about the Syrian gas attack, but the United States government is censoring the Syrian press as well. I found this out firsthand, but it’s impossible to find a source validating it. Still, Chatbox answers with the following:
As of my last update in October 2023, there are no specific blanket bans on Syrian news outlets in the United States. However, certain Syrian media organizations or individuals may face restrictions due to U.S. sanctions related to the Syrian government or specific entities associated with it. These sanctions can impact the ability of certain news outlets to operate or receive funding. It's advisable to refer to current government regulations or news sources for the latest information regarding media restrictions.
We are muzzling ourselves, merrily following the guidance of the government and a media machine paid for by a class of sociopathic wealth hoarders.
Matt Taibbi’s first-hand experience with the new censorship and surveillance state represents a much darker side of this unethical and unconstitutional curbing of our rights. When brought before Congress to give testimony on the Twitter Files, Taibbi was pounced upon by Stacey Plasket, a nonvoting member of Congress from the Virgin Islands who works as Biden’s personal attack dog. Taibbi is a winner of the I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism and the National Magazine Award, the author of Hate, Inc. and Griftopia, and the man who revealed the scope of the Biden censorship apparatus and its growing reach. He’s the journalist who took over Hunter S. Thompson’s esteemed role at Rolling Stone, becoming their principal political correspondent.
Plasket, in her opening remarks, referred to Taibbi as a “so-called journalist.” Hilarious, really, coming from a non-voting member and a pimp for Biden and Big Tech. Plaskett’s next move, even more disgusting, was to threaten Taibbi with jail time. The revelations from the Twitter Files turned out to be just that damning to the Democrats, and she was dead set on silencing him. But that pales in comparison to what Genocide Joe did himself: he dispatched federal agents from the IRS to intimidate Taibbi days before the testimony.
That’s Nixon-level, even Hoover-level abuse of power. I know you’re all disappointed that it’s Biden who turned out to be the fascist they said Trump was. But we had better come to grips with that truth before we’re on the brink of World War III. We might be already. Part of the reason for Russiagate, remember, was to gin up support for a dirty proxy war in Ukraine and lay cover for Biden and his son’s influence peddling. It was also spurred on by Biden’s insane intransigence, insisting on the expansion of NATO to ensure that there’s a constantly growing number of vassal states to serve as clients for the nation’s weapons manufacturers. This has escalated to the point that there is now a Russian nuclear submarine stationed in Cuba, for chrissakes.
This is the United States in the 21st century: Empire is maintained via global military dominance, a fiat currency, and the perpetual and tireless effort to maintain neoliberal global finance capitalism at all costs. Only this time it’s the Democrats that have set the standard for curtailing freedom of expression.
As illustrated earlier, the Republicans will, of course, jump right back on board the censorship bandwagon when support for Israel’s bloodthirsty genocide — or any of the capital-generating schemes from their wealth-hoarding masters — is threatened. It’s essential that both parties comply because it’s how they keep propagating those fabulous tales of Russian prostitutes and pee tapes and Alpha Bank servers. They euphemistically refer to this process as “content moderation.” It’s needed to perpetuate those phony stories about beheaded Israeli babies. At one point, the media even tried to tell us that Charlie Sheen had been “weaponized” by the Russians. Remember when telling the truth about Russiagate meant you were — and among some nut jobs still are — a “Putin Puppet?”
Some of the smartest people I know, including PhDs, writers, and artists, fell hook line, and sinker for Russiagate and all of that other nonsense. This dishonest, unethical, and unconstitutional misinformation campaign is a dangerous means of holding onto power, a straight line that ends in tyranny: Biden is a letter-perfect manifestation of Montisquieu’s depraved and corrupt autocrat.
I was trying to explain this to my friends on social media a couple of years ago when they all supported the Joe Rogan boycott like a merry band of good little constituents and virtue signallers armed with the best intentions. That Rogan business was complete and total censorship propaganda, part of an overall move to take control of the digital commons away from the people. Rogan wasn’t doing anything that Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey did throughout their careers: interview experts with differing opinions. What he was also doing — and this is what pissed off legacy media so much — was reaching a massive audience, his number of followers dwarfing those of any cable news show on television.
That was the true reason behind the attempt to muzzle him.
I couldn’t get anyone to understand what I meant, but they’re getting it now, slowly, as their posts become censored on a more regular basis.
That’s the endgame.
This brings us to JD Vance, our future Vice President.
I saw Jimmy Dore talking on his podcast last week, praising some of Vance’s takes on foreign policy views. Luckily, Jimmy did his homework later and dug up this scathing exposé on Vance by Whitney Webb. As Webb notes, Vance, among others, is a star protege of PayPal founder Peter Thiel, a powerful wealth-hoarding Big Tech ghoul and libertarian whose tentacles reach deep into the Trump campaign. He also worked for Thiel at Mithril Capital, and later for Revolution Ventures, helping with the “Rise of the Rest” seed fund, where he built ties with investors like the Walmart family, Jeff Bezos, and the massive Clinton machine. Not exactly the “populist” some right-wing rags like to claim he is.
Let’s also not forget that he’s the man who authored Hillbilly Legacy, a disgusting “pick yourself up by your own bootstraps” account of an entire culture crippled by corporate greed and indifference. He places the blame squarely on the victims, stuck in misery that people like Vance have helped to create.
Worse yet is Vance’s connection to Palantir, a company that has concocted a privatized version of the government’s post-9/11 surveillance overhaul, the ever-popular Patriot Act. As Webb points out, Palantir is another Peter Thiel creation, and he and co-founder Joe Lonsdale are pouring millions of dollars into the Trump/Vance campaign to further the interests of big tech and strengthen the ties between them and the weapons manufacturing industry.
This is what’s at stake. Are we going to cower in fear and vote for the demagoguery of Trump or the technocratic fascism of Biden? What does it matter — and I’m OK with being a little dramatic here because it’s called for — when making a choice for either means having blood on your hands?
History and the current climate suggest that we will, out of apathy or ignorance, follow the same path. But what we need to do is finally wake up, organize, and fight back in the hope of making a world in which economic and social justice are more than mere words. We must demand a world where we are not only free to fight back but able to become fully actualized human beings in every sense of the word: politically, spiritually, creatively, and sexually realized individuals whose lives are spent in the pursuit of truth rather than capitulation and surrender to a hollow existence spent reproducing ourselves day-in-day-out, selling our labor to a criminal class of wealth hoarders and the lackeys they employ as we grow poorer and the planet disintegrates.