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Online censorship continues to thrive. Every major social network is cracking down on conservative users as we approach the 2020 election. One well-known conservative has finally been ousted by social giant Twitter. The act was so shocking, President Trump decided to wade in on the issue.
If you’ve spent any amount of time on social media these days, you know a war is raging. From Facebook to YouTube to Twitter and beyond, Silicon Valley social networks are “cracking” down on conservative content.
Conservatives who voice their support for President Trump can count on social networks to limit their reach, shadow ban them, or outright shut down their accounts. At the same time, liberals are allowed to persecute, harass, even threaten conservatives—without a single repercussion.
Over the last few years, notable conservative figures have been banned from major platforms. Paul Joseph Watson, Milo Yiannopoulos, Stephen Crowder, Ben Shapiro, and even Dennis Prager have had their accounts on various websites blocked, shut down, or temporarily locked.
Not for breaking any rules, mind you, but for spreading popular ideas about conservativism. And for supporting Donald Trump.
Now a major Hollywood actor—and conservative—has been blocked by Twitter for the last time. After one of his tweets was deleted without his permission, he has decided to stop using the censoring platform.
Conservative actor James Woods said on Thursday that he will no longer be using Twitter after the platform suspended him and then deleted a tweet that he refused to take down after the platform received widespread scorn from lawmakers for its continued censorship of conservatives.
“Twitter demanded that I rescind my tweet paraphrasing Emerson,” Woods said in a statement to The Daily Wire. “It now seems they have chosen to delete that tweet from my account without my permission. Until free speech is allowed on Twitter, I will not be permitted to participate in our democracy with my voice. As long as Jack Dorsey remains the coward he seems to be, my Twitter days are in the past.”
Woods was suspended in late April over a tweet that stated: “If you try to kill the King, you better not miss. #HangThemAll.” [Source: Daily Wire]
Just about every well-known, popular, conservative Twitter user has been banned or shadow banned by Twitter in recent years. These are outspoken Republicans or Libertarians who back the president. They don’t say or do anything that violates Twitter’s rules. They simply support Trump, share conservative viewpoints, and challenge left-wing propaganda. So, Twitter bans them.
Meanwhile, any left-wing nut can spread the most vile, hateful, violent, and dangerous statements on the platform. They are not only not banned, but often defended and supported by Twitter!
After Woods left Twitter for good, an outpouring of support flooded the network. Donald Trump himself called out the platform’s abusive tactics, giving Democrats a dire warning.
Woods received an outpouring of support including from President Donald Trump, who tweeted: “How can it be possible that James Woods (and many others), a strong but responsible Conservative Voice, is banned from Twitter? Social Media & Fake News Media, together with their partner, the Democrat Party, have no idea the problems they are causing for themselves. VERY UNFAIR!” [Source: Daily Wire]
To the left, those may sound like idle words. But remember, Trump is not all talk, no action. He confronted the problem of censorship on college campuses. Many schools were denying conservative students the right to express their views. Trump talked about this on Twitter many times. People thought he’d do nothing.
Then he signed an executive order that would withdraw federal funds from colleges that attack free speech. You better believe those schools changed their tune.
President Trump is most-likely already planning a response to the rampant abuse of social networks against conservatives. These companies are blatantly denying Americans’ free speech rights. It won’t be long before we see real action that will force these sites to allow all viewpoints—or suffer serious consequences.
In the meantime, conservatives are fleeing these sites for greener pastures. Maybe that will be enough for Jack or Zuck to learn.
On February 18, the Daily Mail zeroed in on the oldest daughter of former President Barack Obama. For its latest story, reporter Jennifer Smith focused on a secret Facebook account appearing to belong to Malia during high school and her gap year that contained photos of Post-it notes with handwritten anti-Trump messages.
Whether it’s Barron Trump or Malia Obama, children of the presidents should be off limits as they grow up and enter into adulthood. It’s not a political rule; It’s human decency. And so, liberal media figures and commentators rushed to condemn who they saw as the culprit: conservatives.
That same day, a comedian and writer employed by entertainment like Saturday Night Live and Netflix, Zack Bornstein, argued similarly. “The same people mad at Malia Obama for drinking wine and wearing a bathing suit at age 20 are the same people who excuse Brett Kavanaugh for drinking beer and assaulting a woman at age 17,” he said.
Writer and comedian Sarah Cooper typed on Feb. 18 that “Rightwingers are obsessed with Malia Obama today” and concluded “It's almost as if they wish Barack Obama was still president as much as I do.”
None of them cited any conservatives as evidence. That might be because, in reality, conservatives were some of the first to race to Malia Obama’s defense on Monday.
“OMG Malia Obama is a human with political opinions and also enjoys wine,” conservative commentator Ben Shapiro responded.
Daily Wire writer Matt Walsh tweeted, “Everyone on my Twitter feed seems to agree that this Malia Obama thing is not news and doesn't matter and we should just leave her alone. Seems like this another fake ‘conservatives are outraged about a dumb thing’ story that the media has cooked up.”
Conservative comedian Tim Young chimed in, “Malia Obama isn't responsible for her father's policies... and she definitely wasn't elected to the White House... Sorry, not giving that article the clicks and you shouldn't either. All first kids (who aren't members of white house staff) should be off limits.”
Robby Starbuck, a producer and director, wrote he wouldn’t “spread the garbage being run” about Malia. “She is a 20 year old young adult who’s figuring out who she is, making 20 year old mistakes. We all did at her age. I think it’s dumb to criticize kids of politicians who obviously support their parents. This is not news,” he said.
He ended with a message about the “leftists blaming the Malia Obama trend on Conservatives”: “You’re hard pressed to find one who cares but you’ll find a ton defending her right to be a young adult, living a young adult life.”
Christian conservative writer Carmine Sabia continued, “Attacking Malia Obama for drinking at 20 and for having a Facebook page where she does not like the man who took over for her dad and is undoing everything he did is not journalism. It is stalking and shameful. As a conservative and President Donald Trump supporter I disapprove.”
Writer and digital media manager for the R Street Institute, Shoshana Weissmann, also chimed in. “Imagine being the douche who leaks Malia's info to reporters to feel powerful. That person's definitely on the path to having a fulfilling life,” she wrote with irony. “There's def a type in politics who likes to feel like they are insider-y and will do stuff like this to boost their sense of importance when really nobody cares.”
In other words, conservatives didn’t care about what Malia did – but they did care about how the Daily Mail treated her. And so, instead of placing blame where it doesn’t belong, liberals should join conservative voices in support of journalistic ethics.
Protesters chant ‘John McCain is dead,’ ‘F*** Ben Shapiro’ at Shapiro’s Ohio State lecture
Nov 13, 2018 10:49 pm
Conservative political commentator, writer and lawyer Ben Shapiro waves to the crowd as he arrives to speak at the 2018 Politicon in Los Angeles, California on October 21, 2018. (MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)
As often happens when Ben Shapiro arrives on a college campus to speak, liberal students behaved as if they were under attack. This time, the result was some truly disgusting chants about deceased Republicans, according to The Federalist.
Video sent to The Federalist’s Emily Jashinsky from Young America’s Foundation showed protesters outside the venue where Shapiro was set to speak chanting “Reagan is dead” and “John McCain is dead,” as well as “F*** Ben Shapiro.”
While the video evidence makes it clear that the university’s own students caused more disruption than Shapiro himself ever has by speaking at a university, some at Ohio State still felt Shapiro’s very presence could “threaten the emotional and mental safety of much of the campus community.”
The Morrill Scholars Program Student Advisory Council, which operates within the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, sent an email to students encouraging them to “seek a safe environment” for themselves if they don’t “feel comfortable around a climate that will be created by Ben Shapiro’s presence.”
The email, ironically, warned of the “hostile environment that can result from these kind of events” while failing to acknowledge that the hostility would be created exclusively by students protesting the event.
The Morrill Scholars Program offered a “safe space” to students who preferred not to be alone and found themselves somehow unable to ignore a single lecture attended by several hundred people on a large campus with an undergraduate enrollment of nearly 46,000 students.
This is an email from Ohio State regarding @benshapiro speaking. This is EXACTLY why it is IMPERATIVE he speaks on campus tonight. But no, Ohio State doesn’t discriminate against Conservative students, not at all. pic.twitter.com/lpCa3nQutA
This week, in the space of 24 hours, I went from a nice person with good intentions who differs politically from liberals but doesn’t bend the truth to a racist, sexist, bigot homophobe, at least in the view of actor/director Mark Duplass. I don’t resent Duplass – I feel bad for the guy, insofar as he’s been bullied by the regressive Left into disowning any association with anyone with a different point of view (he’s done similar things with Glenn Beck and Steven Crowder, for what it’s worth).
Here’s how this sort of thing typically works. A liberal says something decent about a person who has said things not in keeping with the liberal agenda; Twitter trolls drag comments out of context to suggest that this person is actually an evil human being; liberal retracts. That’s not unusual. It’s now happened to Kevin Williamson, Bari Weiss, Daniella Greenbaum, Sam Harris, Bret Weinstein, Dave Rubin, Jason Riley, Heather MacDonald, Jordan Peterson, Charles Murray, and many others.
That’s just the way this works. It’s not that these people are hated because they’ve said terrible things. It’s that they’re hated, so the hard Left tries to dig up supposedly terrible things they’ve said.
So, let me take this opportunity to respond to the myriad of items thrown at me by the members of the motivated online Left. First, let me point out that I’ve made mistakes and said dumb stuff. When this is pointed out, I’m more than happy to admit it, as my past retractions and statements openly suggest. In fact, you’ll see some of that below. I’ve been writing a weekly column since I was 17 years old, which provides a great window into seeing how my thinking has changed – and a great window into how people say dumb things when they’re young, and hopefully grow over time. I’ve written millions upon millions of words. I assume some of these words were stupid or immoral or both. In fact, I know some of them were.
I also know that I’ve worked to get better at my job over time – and get better as a person over time.
I’ve also tweeted some 120,000 times – and Twitter is a place for jokes and quips and hot takes, as anyone with half a brain knows. It’s not exactly the place for nuanced discussion. I’m far snarkier on Twitter than I am in person, just like every other person on Twitter in human history.
With all of this said, I’m a proud conservative. I believe in limited government and God-given rights and traditional values. Many of the comments to which the Left objects remain unproblematic and simply conservative. So, let’s go through these supposedly awful comments which put me in the “racist sexist bigot homophobe xenophobe ____phobe” camp.
My comments break down into four categories: stupid/immoral stuff I’ve said or done (and repeatedly retracted); stuff the Left is taking out of context deliberately because they’re jerks; stuff the Left just doesn’t like very much that happens to be true; and stuff I’ve said that’s clearly opinion the Left just doesn’t like.
Stupid/Immoral Stuff I’ve Said (And Retracted Multiple Times)
The “Transfer” Column: At the top of this list is a column I wrote when I was 19 years old regarding the Israeli/Palestinian situation. That column called for transfer of Palestinian Arabs from Judea and Samaria and Israel proper. That idea was stupid and immoral. I have myself called that idea “inhumane and impractical,” as well as a “moral and philosophical error.” It is also worth noting that the same people who decried the transfer column as genocidal and ethnic cleansing were very much in favor of forcing every single Jew out of the Gaza Strip in 2006, and seem fine with complete destruction of Israeli settlements in favor of a Judenrein Palestinian state.
The Columbus Day Video: While I was on vacation last Columbus Day, members of the Daily Wire office created and posted a satire video that portrayed Native Americans in stereotypically negative ways. My initial response was to leave it up, since even bad satire is satire; within 24 hours, I reconsidered, hating the content of the video. We took down the video and I apologized thusly:
Friends Of Hamas. In 2013, I reported for Breitbart News a rumor I received from high-ranking Senate sources that Chuck Hagel, then nominated for Secretary of Defense, had taken money to speak from a group called “Friends of Hamas.” We reported it as a rumor; the title of the piece was “”Secret Hagel Donor?: White House Spox Ducks Question On ‘Friends of Hamas.’” It turned out that the underlying story was wrong. We shouldn’t have reported the story, and I’ve said so publicly and repeatedly.
The “Sedition Act” Column. In this column, written when I was 22, I wrote that Democrats who had been slandering our troops as well as the Bush Administration over the Iraq War were acting in “seditious” ways. I recommended prosecution of sedition – an inherently idiotic idea. Again – and I can’t say this strongly enough – this column absolutely blows. It’s garbage.
I was clearly talking about Israeli and Arab leadership, as well as terror-supporting people in the Arab world. How do you know that? Because I said so in the very next tweets:
Here’s the reality: the Palestinians have elected terrorists to lead their government in every election in which they have participated, and those terrorist governments have eschewed peace and infrastructure building in favor of pursuing terrorism. Here’s another reality: I opposed President Trump’s Muslim ban when he proposed it as such, I’ve spoken out against discrimination against Muslims on the basis of religion (I, after all, wear a funny hat for religious reasons), I’ve spoken out against attempts to use the Koran as an excuse to label all Muslims terrorists (I do encourage people to assess the expressed political viewpoints of Muslims themselves, since all religions contain root texts that are troublesome on their face, and I care much more about what people actually believe).
Stuff The Left Doesn’t Like That Happens To Be True.
The Palestinian Population Is Radicalized. In 2007, I wrote a column about the Palestinian population, with a very simple point: the notion that simply changing out the leadership of the Palestinian Authority or Hamas would solve the Israeli-Arab conflict was asinine, since the Palestinian population had been radicalized. I wrote this:
The problem runs deeper than a few figureheads. The Palestinian Arab population is rotten to the core. There are many to be blamed: Yasser Arafat, who lined his pockets with cash and subsidized murder while playing the victim of oppression. An Arab world that refused to absorb the Palestinian population, preferring to use it as a political pawn against Israel. The United Nations, which suckled the Palestinian Arab population into dependency at the international teat. Israel, for emboldening the Palestinian Arabs by conceding to them.
In 2006, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip voted for an overt terrorist group, Hamas. A 2014 survey of the Muslim world found that Palestinians were the biggest supporters of suicide bombings. A huge majority of Palestinians want shariah law implemented. Not all populations are equally moderate or equally liberty-loving. This isn’t to suggest that Palestinian civilians should be treated in military fashion, of course. But it does suggest that systemic changes will be necessary to change the hearts of millions of Palestinians, and that simply negotiating with a new figurehead won’t cut it.
Jews who vote for Obama are, by and large, Jews In Name Only (JINOs). They eat bagels and lox; they watch “Schindler’s List”; they visit temple on Yom Kippur — sometimes. But they do not care about Israel.
This happens to be true, by polling data and observation. Sorry.
Transgenderism Is A Mental Disorder. I haven’t been unclear about this. Transgenderism is a mental condition. It is not about societal construction of gender identity or social disapproval of those who don’t “act like us.” If you are a biological man and you believe you are a woman, you suffer from a mental disorder. What I said in this video is factually correct.
None of this is an argument for mistreatment of people who suffer from this mental disorder. Far from it. But pretending that male and female are completely malleable categories is a total and absolute, anti-scientific lie.
Trayvon Martin Was Killed While Beating A Man’s Head Against The Pavement. In response to people tweeting out that Trayvon Martin would have been alive but for a racist murder, I tweeted this a few years back:
This tweet has been trotted out as evidence that I am somehow racist. That’s weird, since I’ve repeatedly condemned killings that I believe are racially motivated:
It’s also weird, since both the state and federal government could find no evidence that Martin’s killing was a racial murder, and a jury found based on testimony of witnesses and forensic physical evidence of Zimmerman's injuries that George Zimmerman shot Martin as Martin sat on top of him pounding his head into the pavement.
How You Dress Matters. The Left also suggests I’m racist for this tweet:
That’s weird, since nothing in the tweet references race, since it’s not about race. Lots of people of all races dress in this fashion! If you’re inherently connecting EBT cards (more white people are on food stamps than any other race) and saggy pants to black people, perhaps that’s because you’re being a racist, you idiots.
Controversial Opinions That The Left Just Doesn’t Like.
Describing Rahm Emanuel As A “Kapo.” In a 2010 column, I described White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel as a kapo – a Jew who helped Nazis target Jews during the Holocaust. My basis for that statement was a Jerusalem Post report that Emanuel had told members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that “Thwarting Iran’s nuclear program is conditional on progress in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.” Jeffrey Goldberg, the Obama administration’s appointed stooge, denied the account on the Obama administration’s behalf (Goldberg admitted that if Emanuel had said it, “that would be blackmail”). Nonetheless, the Obama administration moved full-scale toward promoting Iran’s regional terror ambitions, with Emanuel’s help. The kapo language was probably too charged. But Emanuel’s participation in the Obama administration’s pro-Iran agenda was despicable.
Calling Certain Political Activities and Perspectives “Fascist.” I’ve done that a number of times.
He sees democracy as a filthy process that can be cured only by the centralized power of bureaucrats. He sees his presidency as a Hegelian synthesis marking the end of political conflict. He sees himself as embodiment of the collective will. No president should speak in these terms -- not in a representative republic. Obama does it habitually.
I’ve also described as philosophically fascist attempts to force bakers to bake cakes, attempts by companies to root out and destroy those who disagree, and universities banning mainstream speakers. And by the way, I’ve described Trump’s economic central planning as “fascist” as well. So there’s that.
Accusing The Obama Administration Of Racism. I wrote in 2010 that racial violence was becoming more common, and that the Obama administration was fostering a climate ripe for it. I wrote this:
The Obama administration is racist. They are using that racism to let black criminals off the hook, justify illegal immigration, hamstring law enforcement across the country, and push redistribution as a solution to supposed continuing discrimination against "people of color." The predictable result of this policy will resemble the results of the 1876 election: federal abdication on racial violence, state abdication on racial violence and local abdication on racial violence. The next race war will come not from racist whites, but from racist blacks and Hispanics who feel empowered to act on their racism by an administration that excuses all minority misbehavior.
That’s surely overstated. But the administration was certainly racially divisive, and escalation of riotous violence across the nation in 2014-2016 was not a coincidence.
Rap Sucks. Sorry, but I think rap sucks. My father is a classical composer. I’m a classically trained musician. If you don’t like that opinion, tough. Maybe I’m wrong, in your opinion. That's fine! I also think Batman v. Superman was a good movie! But it’s not racist to think rap sucks. If we’re going to judge levels of racism by the kinds of music we like, and if I’m supposedly a racist for hating rap, then somebody is going to have to explain to me why I love jazz, originally and continuously a black musical form.
People Went Nuts Over “Black Panther” For No Reason. I think people, particularly in the media, went nuts over the cultural “importance” of Black Panther for no reason. Sue me.
That’s an opinion you may not like, but it’s certainly not racist. I liked the movie, by the way.
These seem like the most often-invoked examples of my supposed unpalatability. I’m happy to discuss any other problems people have, and update my list, in any of the above categories. Frankly, after this much writing, I don’t remember a lot of what I’ve written. I’d also like to continue getting better at my job, and being better as a person – and self-criticism is the central part of that process. In that sense, I’m grateful for the opportunity to re-examine dumb things I’ve said. It’s just too bad that those on the Left who level criticisms aren’t really up for discussion or explanations or answers. They’re too busy shouting down Mark Duplass for talking with people who might not like Bernie Sanders’ perspective on the world.
