Your Ability to Remain Free Rests in Your Willingness to Win the Information War

posted by Brandon Morse at RedState 

The "silent majority" is a concept that I think people talk about when they want to feel like they're more powerful than they feel at the moment. To be sure, the silent majority exists, but if I'm being honest, it's too often used as a way to soothe our worries. It's a story we tell ourselves to make us feel like everything will be okay in the end. 

The suggestion is that the American populace is a sleeping giant ready to awaken at any moment and set everything right. The trouble is that the giant is absolutely no worry to anyone if it simply stays asleep. Right now, that giant is definitely asleep. 

We can conclude that because evil is having its way with the world right now. While there are victories won here and there to hold back the tide, the march forward is happening steadily. The victories today either come because of the bravery of a few or, as is often the case, the incompetence of those willing to do evil. 

Keep in mind, a lot of the reason the giant sleeps and the silent majority is quiet isn't because it's lazy. A huge part of the problem is that the giant doesn't know it needs to awaken. Sure there are rumblings here and there and things are definitely heading south in America, but if we're being honest, America has always followed the law of undulation. Yes, things aren't looking good, but an election is coming up and we've fooled ourselves into thinking that a new guy in charge will fix the problem. 

Yeah, it'll improve things a bit, but even if the economy does come roaring back, the border is closed, illegals deported, and our taxes lowered, it'll still be a temporary measure. Eventually, people will be lulled into a sense of complacency and incompetency and evil will creep back into the system, pulling us back down into darker times. 

While the law of undulation is absolute, it doesn't have to be this bad. 

Why are the bad times getting so bad? 

Because it's never been easier or more rewarding to lie, and on top of that, it's never been easier to stop the truth from getting out. 

The sad truth is that it's not a conspiracy theory to say that there is a coordinated effort to spread lies by governments and corporations. The Twitter Files showed they're happy to work together to protect whatever narrative is helping them maintain the most control and raking in the most cash. 

As reported by Reclaim the Net, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski, investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger, and Brazilian investigative journalist Paulo Figueiredo all testified to Congress regarding Brazil's attempts at censoring free speech and how their demands are edging their way into how America's platforms operate. 

It was during this hearing that some profound things were said that point to how these censorship efforts have been so successful. 

“The global escalation of censorship wouldn’t be possible without a complicit press abandoning its role as democracy’s guardian to become an instrument of ideology and partisan politics,” Figueiredo said. 

“The gradual erosion of freedoms and the concentration of power in the hands of a few are warning signs that must be taken seriously, as the fate of our nation is at stake,” he later added.

Pavolovski, who has rejected all calls for censorship by foreign governments, put the onus of protecting free speech on the United States: 

He concluded his opening remarks by criticizing the US for failing to defend freedom of speech and protect American businesses that attempt to uphold this right in Brazil and urged America to “step up and take a leading role” to combat the “out of control” censorship demands from foreign countries.

“Every totalitarian regime that has crushed the rights of individuals, has sought to control what people can say and hear,” Pavlovski warned. “It’s never the good guys doing the censoring. If the United States won’t stand up for freedom of speech – who will?”

Two points that were made very well. The first is that we have a press that isn't reporting the news, but a narrative. The other point is that the narrative is surviving because the United States isn't doing its job of protecting free speech in the land of the free. In fact, it's too often been complicit in censorship or the ones doing all the censoring. 

Some things need to change, and they need to change yesterday. 

Firstly, the U.S. needs to start coming down on other countries that demand American corporations to censor themselves under their direction. The moment a call for censorship comes down the line is the moment the U.S. takes a deal off the table or hits them with a sanction. Pavolovski is right. The U.S. needs to start standing up for free speech, and that means teaching the world that trying to punish or stop it comes with pain. 

As for the press, I don't see that problem ever getting better. Corporate news outlets are going to continue to shill for Democrats, and while that's a shame, it's not without its punishments. Citizen journalists and smaller news organizations have become almost more popular and more trusted than these corporate entities. The issue is that many of the corporations that act as gateways to information do censoring of their own, sometimes on behalf of the government, and oftentimes just because the people running these companies don't like opinions or information that's inconvenient to their ideology, which often benefits one side of the political aisle. 

While I'm all for corporations doing what they want as a private entity, something that works that well for one political party seems awfully governmental, and becomes governmental the moment the government steps in and starts directing or urging that corporation to start censoring the free speech of Americans. Is that company not then a puppet of the government in some way, and if so, doesn't that mean it shouldn't be able to stifle free speech?

RedState, in particular, is often confronted with these issues. Major corporations choke certain topics and stories because they don't like what we're reporting. Multiple "fact-check" organizations have attacked us for, frankly, very ridiculous reasons. I've personally had stories I've written censored because it was labeled as "dangerous or derogatory" when they weren't at all just because they challenged a mainstream social idea. 

The whole reason we have the VIP program is because the strategy is to choke the life out of us by hiding our articles away, stripping us of ads, and making sure we're doing nothing but screaming into the ether. The less we're seen, the less chance there is that someone will wake up from the narrative. Moreover, making us seem like we're irrelevant would make the common American's eyes pass over us while scrolling through a search engine IF we ever appear on one. It's hard to kill us off and silence us when we have the backing of readers.

But RedState has done some serious damage to those in power and it's in their best interest to bury us beneath layers of biased algorithms, creative "fact-checks," and limitations on where ads will appear. 

Does it seem right that an information-based corporation with a global stranglehold could work so hard to protect a political party or the politicians that belong to it? 

These are conversations we need to have but they won't ever be held if the right people aren't put in charge. People who understand the value of free speech and the gumption and uncompromising nature it takes to protect it. 

This is where the sleeping giant comes in. This is where the silent majority stops being quiet. 

As I wrote recently, two stories showed that when the people truly rise up and unite against unfair practices and corruption, even powerful organizations back down. 

If we were to come together and make it clear that our politicians need to prioritize free speech to the point where they're willing to get nasty to defend it, then those politicians will step forward. If we demand this of our politicians right now, then the pressure will be on to conform to these demands, and those who fail to will be made examples of as they lose their reputations and careers. 

There can be no misunderstanding among the political class. You WILL protect free speech or you WILL be dismissed. 

If the people fail to understand the importance of free speech then freedom will die, and it will die quietly. People will wake up one day and be in a world they don't recognize. They'll ask where their freedoms went and they won't be able to locate a specific moment where they disappeared because the erosion was so gradual. 

This fight is intensifying. I can tell you that personally as a journalist. You've likely heard it from others in my industry as well. We aren't warning you that the war on free speech is coming. It's here. You're in it. They're finding new ways to curtail your First Amendment rights every day, and at some point, those lines on that old piece of paper won't mean much in the age of the internet. 

Any politician running today needs to be asked if they think fighting for free speech is a big deal and what they're willing to do with tech companies that curtail it for a political party. If they don't think it's a big enough deal to have a plan, then that politician shouldn't be considered a big deal either and passed on.