Elon And The Bird

In case you've missed the hullaballoo buzzing in social media land, entrepreneur Elon Musk recently acquired a 9.2% stake in Twitter worth $2.89 billion at the time of purchase. How big is that? Bigger than Twitter founder Jack Dorsey ever had! He followed that up with news of a possible seat on the Twitter Board, which Musk then declined before offering to buy the entire company for 40+ billion. While the markets have deemed all this to be good news, with Twitter shares initially surging 25%, many pundits (hailing from the left of politics) are in what looks awfully like the early stages of grief. There's disbelief and dismay with dire warnings from MSNBC, for example, that Musk's majority share could put pressure on Twitter to allow the return of figures such as the dreaded... Orange Man.

Recall that during the aftermath of the last US Presidential election, Twitter took the unprecedented action of disabling President Donald Trump's Twitter account before banning him permanently. YouTube too. The no-no was to question the outcome of the 2020 election, just as Clinton had done 4 years earlier and still does to this day. Not accepting the 2016 election was the Democrats entire rationale for the first attempt to impeach President Trump.

For the record, no, Trump didn't incite violence at the Capitol thus somehow justifying the ban by Twitter. That's always been a loose excuse to do what the left media wanted to do all along. He actually said,

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.

Storming the Capitol happened moments after Trump finished speaking. It took the crowd listening to Trump around 40 minutes to make the journey to the Capitol. Large crowds attract people intent on instigating mayhem - from ANTIFA to British football hooliganism. The pertinent question to ask is why Speaker Pelosi (Democrat) denied Trump's request for extra security on the day? This would be routinely granted in any large political gathering on Government grounds. I'm suspicious and as I'll outline below, it wouldn't be the first time the Democrat machine carried out dirty political tricks.

The censorship of Trump effectively cut him off from tens of millions of followers. It was the equivalent of banishing him from the town- square. De-platformed with the charge of misinformation. Gagged. Twitter's censorial action was widely condemned, even from people you would least expect to take Trump's side. Former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who was no fan of Trump, criticised Twitter and their action as "problematic", which is diplomatic speak for a-step-too-far. If the Leader of the free world could be instantly cut down, it could happen to anyone.

Who's doing the misinformation?

It wasn't just Trump who got singled out. The same action was taken to shut down The New York Post's Twitter account just prior the 2020 election with the coordinated media and Big Tech effort to suppress awkward revelations from Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop, including about his business dealings with overseas oligarchs. In October 2020 it was inferred by 50 ex- intel people that it could be "Russian dis-information" (itself a piece of blatant dis-information as it turns out).

In the corporate media's feverish hands this morphed into, it was Russian dis-information and Trump misinformation. Some 18 months later and most of the US legacy media, from New York Times to the Washington Post, have had an epiphany and admit the laptop is genuine, something they were invited to verify when the story was broken by the New York Post. None took up the offer. That saga is still unfolding with possible indictments of Hunter Biden looming, which may be why they're now having to cover this. So not Russian disinformation and definitely not Trump/right/alt-right misinformation as the legacy media misinformed!

To those who applauded the silencing of a sitting US President, all was fair game. The use of digital media in winning the election and efforts to put in place the clearly doddery, and possibly compromised, Joe Biden, killing a legitimate story was justified by the end goal - getting rid of Trump. Any means were justified, including breaching the first amendment of the US Constitution. Subsequent polling this year shows that 66% of Americans believe the laptop story was important, with a Rasmussen survey finding that 48% believe Trump would have won had voters known of the laptop, its contents and allegations of corruption, including of "The Big Guy" (formally identified as Joe Biden).

So what's propelling the media wobbles about Musk? The short answer is that Musk is a staunch proponent of free-speech - for everyone. In fact, just before taking his 9.2 stake, Musk took to Twitter to poll his 80 million followers on how they thought the platform was doing in upholding free speech.

It's not a stretch to say that Twitter is seen by many on the left as 'their digital habitat' with a woke and even radical world-view that any counter opinions are illegitimate, if not dangerous. Gab CEO, Andrew Torba, makes the following assessment of the problems Musk might face in challenging the culture of censorship.

there is the problem of Twitter’s community itself. It skews massively left and thus anti-free speech. If you allow free speech on Twitter again, those people are absolutely going to leave because their fragile worldview can’t handle the reality that free speech brings.

Twitter is a tribal and self-righteously, bullying sewer. I personally don't bother with it on that basis. Comedian/actor and latterly, social commentator, Russell Brand also steers clear on these grounds. Brand too is at risk of getting kicked off YouTube with calls to have him cut off from his 5.5 million subscribers. Brand is a former Bernie Sanders supporter, who is ironically being labeled "right leaning and "anti-vaxxer", despite consistently saying he's not qualified or there to give anyone medical advice, either way.

Brand is more Libertarian, so not a fan of large centralised control, preferring instead that individuals are empowered to have agency. His crime, to the shut-up squad at least, has been to engage in open discussion (with a little Brand humour included) and for posing awkward questions. This is as opposed to blindly going along with 'the narrative" for an easier life. He asks his audience to keep an open mind and make up their own minds, something we're increasingly expected not to do.

There's growing intolerance towards intellectual difference that seems to be gathering speed, and at pace with the fixation on 'diversity', but just not of thought. And let's not forget the lack of accountability, if not outright amnesia when yesterday's 'conspiracy' and 'misinformation' becomes today's fact. The adage, truth inevitably outs, applies. This is happening with the Durham investigations into the origins of the Russia Collusion Allegation. Having decried as conspiracy Trump's assertion he was spied on, it turns out he was, both before and after taking office. Much of the legacy media is now noticeably silent on 'Russia Collusion' and desperately trying to look the other way, or attempting to make light of what are serious charges and implications.

It's a great example that illustrates just who has been doing the 'misinformation'. There are people who still fervently believe Trump colluded with Russia and stole the 2016 election from Clinton. Nothing will convince them otherwise, such is their hatred of Trump, and especially after 4 years of partisan corporate media beating that drum ad nauseam. This is also despite Special Prosecutor, John Durham, forensically and methodically working his way up the chain as he unpacks the origins of the allegations.

There have already been indictments by a Grand Jury of those involved in concocting the bogus Russia collusion narrative. The allegations and Clinton's paid for Dossier were 'opposition research', or more accurately, false smear for uncritical media dissemination to damage an opponent. It was a dirty tactic originally formulated to distract from the scandal over Clinton's illegal private server , prior to the 2016 election.

Calling it a false narrative is being too kind. It was the trifecta - conspiracy theory, misinformation and disinformation. It was widely and uncritically consumed and repeated by legacy media and their audience. These same people unreflectively now like to opine on misinformation, in the intellectually arrogant belief that 'others' need to be censored (for their own good, of course).  Some of us never swallowed the propaganda and did follow alternate voices. It's these alternate truth-telling voices that the formerly duped are calling to have censored for misinformation, because that's the current opinion of legacy media. Here's another truism that goes with truth inevitably outs. It's easier to fool people than to convince them they've been fooled.

The so what!

Ultimately, the bogus narrative of Russia Collusion proved too useful in undermining Trump's new administration, so the Democrats kept it going with the help of a downright partisan and servile legacy media. It gave us two years of the Mueller Investigation circus! This was a serious matter, which is why John Durham is still on the case. The Democrats tried to impeach Trump over their concocted falsehood. To put it bluntly, they attempted to remove a legitimately and democratically elected POTUS on a conspiracy of their making!

That's a big deal and no matter how much someone may dislike Trump, the word 'irresponsible' doesn't go far enough! We can't just move on and forget. This isn't ancient history, not for those with an attention span longer than a gold fish. The reverberations are still being felt. The world is in a precarious state and we now have the weakest and most senile leader of the free world in American history, in part due to these dirty tactics. It's no surprise that world despots are making their moves now.

Not to mention four long years listening to ill-informed pronouncements on Orange Man Bad. People who thought they were being hip/cool, virtue signalling their Trump Derangement completely oblivious to the manipulation of misinformation they had consumed. You couldn't tell them otherwise without some inane reference to tin foil hats, ha ha.  Heated debates about "Russia, Russia, Russia" and "Hillary waz robbed"...  Justice is being done albeit delayed, and let's hope John Durham and Grand Jury finally put some people where they belong.

Apart from this being dirty-rat politics, it has shown how partisan and untrustworthy the legacy media are, and that US intelligence were politicised and weaponised against political opponents of the Democrat party. James Clapper, the former head of the NIA is still out there peddling this rubbish, as if he's a credible source. He is neck deep. Former Head of the CIA, John Brennan even briefed Obama on what Clinton was up to, yet to the media a completely different story was told with Democrats even saying there was "evidence" that didn't exist. The dumb media lapped it up because it fitted their prejudiced worldview and they were too lazy to ask hard questions or investigate. I'm guessing Durham will get to Clapper, Brennan and former FBI Director, James Comey too, eventually.

Media manipulation via propaganda and weaponisation of intelligence is what happens in authoritarian regimes. Think Pyongyang Times and Putin's KGB. This scandal didn't happen in some third rate hell-hole in deepest darkest wherever. So let's turn another current popular narrative on its head then. We should reflect on how suggestible and undiscerning some people are in consuming legacy media. We should reflect and how easy it was to manipulate so many in to repeating utter bovine manure for so long. This included the media who aren't journalists anymore, they're paid scribes because they failed to put aside their prejudices and do their job properly.

This happened to a leader of the free world, whose job it was to keep the likes of Putin, Kim Jong-un or Xi Jinping in-check. Could such deception happen again on other issues? You bet!

If you don't like it, then leave

Overt censorship is the reason Libertarian and Conservative thinkers, and many others in-between, have sought to create a parallel social media architecture with Parler, Gettr, Gab, Rumble etc. If you're kicked out of the town square for wrong-think and speak, then why not go to somewhere you will be welcome? Sounds reasonable, but not if you're Big Tech, part of the shut-up squad/radical ideologue, or intellectual bully.

Having used the excuse that digital platforms like Twitter are privately owned companies... 'so if you don't like their (arbitrary, discriminatory and selectively applied) rules you should go elsewhere. When that happened, the Big Tech cartel colluded to have elsewhere shut down! Some platforms, such as Gab, took the initiative long ago to build their own digital architecture from servers to email, protecting them from hostile actions of the Big Tech cartel.

The petty truth is they (those who believe in free speech for themselves, but not others) didn't want people to go elsewhere. They wanted people with different viewpoints silenced. What Big Tech did was an abuse of power at one level and monopolistic business practice/anti-trust on the other. The last time I looked it wasn't something to be proud of, nor crow about. Not if you have any genuinely held values compatible with living in a free and democratic society.

It isn't helpful when people throw up their hands and retreat to their socio-political corners in frustration at the inability to find any common understanding. Depending on what media you consume, it can sometimes feel like trying to communicate to a being from another planet, or to someone newly released from some weird cult.  In the current climate, everything has been politicised, including once safe topics like the weather. Now medical procedure and the legally protected right to bodily autonomy has gone from being uncontentious 2.5 years ago to splitting friendships and in some cases, families.

The ability to silence any opposing views or even inconvenient facts, whilst pushing misinformation has serious implications for democracy. Freedom full stop! This is what Government and legacy media want. When only one side/tribe controls all communication levers, deems it their role to censor others, loves those biased Google algorithms that 'curate' the information people get to see (especially hatchet jobs of anyone dissenting) - well, they can do whatever they want with zero accountability. In no way does this serve the public. It's dangerous and the road to authoritarianism.

Musk is right. Free speech is the bedrock of healthy democracies, with the right to disagree or oppose baked into our socio-political system and legislation, for good reason. It's the one guard against tyranny. Our forebears understood this, but we seem to be forgetting as we flirt with, or sleepwalk into, authoritarianism once again, for our own good, of course. In the US free-speech is protected in their Constitution. In New Zealand it should be protected by the 1990 Bill of Rights Act (Part 2 Democratic and Political Rights). When the right to free speech tumbles it inevitably leads to the trampling of other human rights, as we've witnessed time and again in history.

It starts with shutting down speech (of some first), then 'othering' and then persecution. It's a psychologically manipulative process designed to activate human beings worst instincts. We've seen this recently in New Zealand with discriminatory and punitive action towards those who chose (on informed grounds and a right protected in our Bill of Rights) not to get a Pfizer jab (or the second jab, third... forth?...that no one seemed to know was needed).

Ardern tried her level best to create division, rubbing her hands and smirking as she admits, "yip, yip" to creating two classes of citizen. To sic jabbed Kiwis onto the un-jabbed for the crime of exercising a legally afforded right, and despite clear evidence that the jab neither stopped you from getting nor spreading the virus, was a despicable and completely morally bankrupt act! Nothing "kind" about it! According to the data below, the jab isn't even keeping the double/triple jabbed and vulnerable out of hospital, or from dying.

We're told that infringing human rights (including free speech and bodily autonomy) has been necessary and for our own good.  Worryingly, too many Kiwis have just accepted the loss of freedoms, admonishing others to 'be good and just do what you're told to get them back'. Are we children? Is this China? Politicians are there to serve us, they're not our rulers!

Even more worrying is that the current Labour Government seem reluctant to fully relinquish newly acquired (and coercive) powers, even using sycophantic private business/corporates to do the dirty work of discrimination. Will the legacy media do their job and hold this Government accountable? Don't hold your breath. Apart from the tribal affiliation, they're financially beholden, and in much the same way that anything broadcast on the news in China is CCP sanctioned.

As I've demonstrated above, the legacy media have been caught with their misinformation pants down too many times, thus losing any right to claim others aren't reliable sources of information. Unless you're reading alternative news sites, such as The BFD, most would be unaware of the use of psychological nudging being employed to get obedience, for example. In short, it's a subtle brainwashing, however, it only works if you're unaware of the manipulative tactic.  If you aware enough to spot it, the natural response is to groan, roll eyes and switch them off.

When manipulation is revealed, it generally hardens resolve to not comply. So when subtle didn't work, Government switched it up to outright coercion. Case in point: mandates they promised they wouldn't do, followed by Digital Health ID/Social Credit System and active discrimination, the only purpose of which was to punish dissent. More people are waking up to it, so it's hardly surprising that trust in the media, and Governments in general, is at an all time low. Is it any wonder then that Government and legacy media want alternative voices censored?

Given the yowling from some quarters, Musk's entry into social media may be a game-changer, challenging the suffocating effect of cancel culture. He's rich enough to not need to do this, however, it may just be the saving of Twitter. Woke Twitter employees might be petulantly threatening to leave if Musk takes over, but if his social media moves opens up the town-square to all again, this would be a great service to society and democracies the world over.