There seems to currently be an all-out war on diverse voices. The sort of silencing that we are seeing these days makes us think of totalitarian regimes that we read about in history class, the Bolsheviks, Lenin, Stalin, etc. I’d like to think I’m exaggerating, but friends of mine who grew up in Communist or other totalitarian regimes as well as others with firsthand knowledge of that sort of partisan political silencing now indicate they are seeing that sort of silencing here in America. Former presidential candidate and Democrat Tulsi Gabbard has referred to what we are witnessing as not unlike a police state.
Why the attack on diverse voices? The answer is fairly simple: When you want yourself or your party to be in control not just of your designated duties, but of society itself; when you think so less of the common man’s abilities to make the “right” decisions, when you want to create your own utopia. When those are your goals, in order to achieve them you must silence all voices that do not parrot your own.
The “How” of this power grab in America today is multifaceted. It includes a number of power structures all of which are complicit in a Leftest campaign for what they call “unity” but which really is designed to silence all opposition to their plans. Following are some of the tactics currently in use.
Combine
Forces with Big Tech
Big Tech’s biases sync with those of the Left. And, Big Tech has the power to silence the voices of those holding different views.
Democrat Tulsi Gabbard in discussing the Left’s silencing that undermines our civil liberties, noted that "Big Tech is culpable in that they are using their monopolistic power to pick and choose whose voices are heard and whose voices are squelched, whether it’s based on who they agree with, disagree with, political affiliation, who you voted for."
I am aware of the old saw that Big Tech can do as it pleases because it is a private company, not the government and therefore has no responsibility to First Amendment rights. That view is mistaken both ethically and legally.
In today’s world, social media is our version of the old public square where everyone could speak their views. That makes these social media sites and their Big Tech controllers uniquely important. In Packingham v. NC, a unanimous Supreme Court held that a North Carolina law prohibiting registered sex offenders from accessing various websites, where minors were known to be active and have accounts, regardless of whether the sex offender directly interacted with a minor, violated the First Amendment. The Court stated, “to foreclose access to social media altogether is to prevent the user from engaging in the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights.”
While the facts of that case were different from the facts of today’s censorship and silencing by Twitter, Facebook, Amazon’s server (Parlor and Parler App), and others, that case tells us that because the internet is today’s public square, there must be some protection of First Amendment rights within that square if those rights are to mean anything at all.
Combine
Forces with News and Entertainment
When the Press silences only voices of one political viewpoint or when it presents stories in a way that assists and promotes one viewpoint, the silencing becomes a form of propaganda.
The mainstream media has biases that, like those of Big Tech, sync with the views of the Left. Hence, they use omission, distortion, presentation of opinion as fact, suppression of unfavorable stories (e.g., Hunter Biden and his laptop) and airtime to persuade people to adopt the Left viewpoint on most issues.
By now I think it is common knowledge that the mainstream media’s reports about Trump and his actions were over 90% unfavorable. It is also clear that their approach toward Biden is to present everything favorably or if that is not possible to simply not report it. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it, “The press does not feel responsibility for its judgments. It makes judgments and attaches labels with the greatest of ease. Mediocre journalists simply make headlines of their conclusions, which suddenly become generally accepted.” (See his book “Warning to the West”)
Our democracy requires informed citizenry and we in large part depend on the media for that information. If they are not presenting it or are presenting it in a way that conforms only to one voice, then they are essentially silencing all our voices, because without having full facts and information, it is impossible to even formulate differing views.
While the news media may have become a dystopian form of entertainment, the Entertainment Industry itself, again with biases similar to the Left, has made it its mission to use its programming to bend the views of the American people to those of the Left. A recent article in the Hollywood Reporter indicated that Hollywood needs to “double down” on pushing the Left agenda. We will be presented with “entertainment” that reinforces what is good/acceptable and what is not.
Combine
Forces with Corporations and Academia
Again, these institutions tend to also have biases that sync with the views of the Left. Their role seems to be to limit opportunity for those who hold diverse and opposing views. We regularly see these institutions blackball individuals who do not share the “correct” views while at the same time making public statements in support of trending Leftist causes and those who advocate for them.
Just this week Sephora cut ties with one of their beauty “vloggers” because she had stated she supported then-President Trump and also expressed her Christian views. The company was made aware of this via a form of “report on your neighbor” conducted by some Twitter users who accused the vlogger of being racist. Sephora in response to these unproven allegations said the vlogger’s beliefs are “not aligned” with the company’s “values around inclusivity.” Apparently lack of inclusivity of conservative views is OK with Sephora.
This is not a unique incident. Over and over, we hear of individuals, including teachers, scientists, athletes, and respected community members being fired for holding conservative views or making statements that are not in line with the Left’s narrative. A United States soccer star received backlash for standing during the United States’ National Anthem. It seems that every entity aligned with the Left that has the power to do so is encouraging its own hiring officers as well as those of others not to hire anyone aligned with Trump or conservatives.
When Trump Administration employees leaving government service were told by the Biden Administration that they would not be able to receive the rest of their maternity leave which they were already in the course of, their main concern was that they would not be able to find immediate employment not because of having a new child at home but because former Trump officials face an uphill climb finding a job in a Washington D.C. Reported in Politico on Feb 2, the article notes that employees declined to go on the record for fear that it would affect [their] prospects of landing a job with a salary sufficient to support a family.
Blackballing those who speak diverse views is a form of silencing because it places a person in the untenable position of having to choose between speaking their views or being able to feed themself.
Academia is not immune from this sort of behavior. Just this week I received information about the Kansas Board of Regents passing a suspension of tenure and its protections through 2022. While the justification is potential financial problems due to CoVid, the reality is that under this plan administrators could layoff faculty without any procedural safeguards, without the right to discovery, and with no procedure for reinstating faculty once the financial exigency has passed. Thus, this makes it possible for a tenured member of the faculty to be fired for any reason, including unpopular views, as long as she is told that it is due to financial exigency.
Taking
Political Action
The current administration is right on board with the Left and its silencing. It supports the impeachment of a political rival. It supports calls to censure or remove Congress persons who spoke up or made objections to the Left’s position about the election’s irregularities. Via executive order that effectively silences the voices of the people, the President is cancelling all actions of his predecessor without reflection about their benefit or detriment to the country. Some of these orders include enforcement and punishment provisions for not complying. And the people’s Capitol is filled with military protecting not the people but those within the seats of power (while at the same time no military is sent to cities actually under violent assault from Left and anarchist organizations).
The first bills in a new Congress reflect the priorities of that administration. In this administration we see bills that would further silence views that do not “unite” with those of the Left. HR-1 and its counterpart S-1, eliminates any restrictions on vote-by-mail, a form of voting that is noted for its likelihood of misuse and hence dilution of legitimate voters’ voices.
But more importantly, HR-1 allows federal regulators to categorize and regulate speech. If desired, all speech that just mentions a candidate could be illegal for up to 4 months prior to an election; all that is required is that the speech “promotes, attacks, supports, or opposes” a candidate. The regulators would be a Commission whose chairman would be appointed by the President and have a tie-breaking (and hence partisan) vote. The bill also requires groups to disclose personal information of supporters, sometimes to the public at large.
While presented as a “voter protection” act, If HR-1 were to become law it would certainly intimidate if not silence those who hold viewpoints in opposition to those in power. It would silence any form of honest debate about candidates or issues and their possible solutions. Notably, the ACLU opposes this bill.
Keeping
the People in Fear of Speaking Out
In addition to silencing diverse views, the above activities all also serve to intimidate by creating a fear in others not yet silenced so that they too will not speak out. This is not unlike a hate crime in which a member of a particular group is injured less to harm that particular individual and more to warn the entire group not to cause trouble – to stay silent.
This is the goal of Biden’s unity: Unite in silence. Silence all diverse views and from the outside it will look like we are all united. The above methods (as well as others) all work to this end. Do not present diverse views on social media or you may be censored or your account deleted; do not expect to get information from news, yet without information you may not be able to form cogent views and thus will not speak out; prepare to be bombarded with proper viewpoints in entertainment so that you will begin to internalize and speak those views; do not speak diverse views for fear of losing and/or not finding employment; you must follow executive orders (fiats of the executive) or fear punishment for not acting in accordance with this executive power grab; forget speaking through your vote which the Left is working to dilute. But if you unite with the “correct” view, the party view, you will be just fine.
And
What Will You Do?
People like Poland’s Deputy Justice minister have seen this silencing before. He recently called on the U.S. to protect every citizen from the “cancel culture” which “has more in common with the methods of Soviet Russia than modern democracies.” Russian dissident Alexei Navalny said something similar before he was arrested and sentenced to more than two years in a Russian penal colony. Professor Michael Rachkosvsky who grew up in the former USSR, came to this country in 1993, and now teaches at Quinnipiac University, reminds us that socialist ideologues need to eliminate opposition and control media, art, and literature. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was seemingly prescient not only in the underlying themes of his novels condemning the ideological lie, but especially in his “Warnings to the West” originally published in 1975.
These and others who have a personal experience with silencing are warning us. If you cannot speak, cannot vote, and must conform, then you have no voice and you are not free.
You are being watched by the many arms of the power hungry who will silence you if you do not behave and “unite” with the Left. You are being watched, but who will watch the watchers? And is watching just enough? Are you willing to sit back and watch your freedoms dissolve, perhaps because as of yet you have not been affected?
My hope is that this taking of our freedom is being done so quickly, so openly and obviously, and so broadly that everyone will notice, that no one will be complacent about it, and that no one will simply sit back and watch. This is a watershed moment. Complacency gives those who seek unbridled power exactly what they want. Indeed, complacency, which is the voice of complicity, may remove your last chance to speak up and your voice may be lost forever.
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