As our Reichstag fire moment continues, a Big Tech iron muzzle descends across America. And following the purging of President Trump and some other conservatives from Twitter comes news that the company’s main competition, Parler.com, will go off the Internet at midnight after a coordinated Big Tech attack.
Of course, this all comes in the wake of news that Trump and other conservatives were moving to Parler to find refuge from GoogTwitFace censorship.
It happened fast. First Google and Apple banned Parler from its app stores on Friday and Saturday. Now comes something closer to a coup de grace: Amazon will shut down all the company’s servers at midnight in what Parler’s CEO calls “a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the market place.”
More significantly even, it’s an attempt to kill patriotic dissent in the marketplace of ideas.
Understand that we’re witnessing the truly insidious: government censorship by proxy. First Big Tech received “Section 230” protection (from lawsuits) under the Democratic Bill Clinton administration. This helped it attain near-monopolistic control, which — with it being able to shift up to 15 million votes during an election, according to research — it later used to aid Democrats in seizing power.
Now that this is a fait accompli and Democrats will control both houses of Congress and the executive branch, Big Tech knows its leftist friends in Washington won’t hold it accountable; in fact, Big Tech bigwigs are being hired by the incoming Joe Biden administration. So now the tech leviathans are returning the favor double by further censoring the Democrats’ political opponents.
It’s completely symbiotic: Not only does the iron muzzling satisfy Big Tech’s leftist leanings, but it gets to eliminate its business competition in the process and make even more money — some of which then goes to Democrats in the form of donations.
It’s one dark hand washes the other — and both hands choke out Truth and freedom.
Parler’s CEO, John Matze, issued the following statement about the choke-out:
Sunday (tomorrow) at midnight Amazon will be shutting off all of our servers in an attempt to completely remove free speech off the internet. There is the possibility Parler will be unavailable on the internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch. We prepared for events like this by never relying on amazons proprietary infrastructure and building bare metal products.
We will try our best to move to a new provider right now as we have many competing for our business, however Amazon, Google and Apple purposefully did this as a coordinated effort knowing our options would be limited and knowing this would inflict the most damage right as President Trump was banned from the tech companies.
This was a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the market place. We were too successful too fast. You can expect the war on competition and free speech to continue, but don’t count us out.
Of course, Amazon has its rationalizations. An “AWS [Amazon Web Services] Trust and Safety team told Parler Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff that the calls for violence propagating across the social network violated its terms of service,” the company wrote in an email, reports BuzzFeed News. “Amazon said it was unconvinced that the service’s plan to use volunteers to moderate calls for violence and hate speech would be effective.”
“‘Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms,’ the email reads,” BuzzFeed continues. “‘It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service.”
While there is a lot of filth on the Internet — that’s inevitable — this is rich coming from Big Tech. Note that its platforms were used, to a degree, to organize the left-wing riots that convulsed our nation last year. Big Tech has also been used to transmit child porn and to launch vile attacks on President Trump and conservatives in general.
Furthermore, Google has actually aided the Chinese military (while refusing to help ours) and has helped Beijing suppress its people, while entities such as the ayatollah of Iran and Beijing have Twitter accounts.
So Big Tech’s scolding is sanctimony and sleight-of-hand. These companies would sell out our nation, our people, and all that is great and good for money, and have done so. The tech leviathans also have, apparently, erected an unattainable standard for conservatives: that they achieve perfection.
For if patriots organize eight 10,000-strong rallies via tech and 10 crazies (either rightists or left-wing provocateurs) spark violence at just one of them, it will be used as a pretext to deny all conservatives their voice.
Denying their voice in a second way, Big Tech’s standard demands acquiescence to its ideology as a condition for participation in debate. For it claims to want to combat “hate speech,” but this category is defined by the Left, and anything contrary to its agenda is thus classified. The message: You can express whatever you wish — as long as you agree with us.
Some will say that “these are private companies that can do what they want.” This misses the point. The nexus now between Big Government and Big Tech is so great that they’re acting monolithically. Again, the tech leviathans and Democrats empower each other, and both join together to then eliminate dissent and enrich each other.
So, essentially, the Democrats are using Big Tech — today’s town square — to effect censorship they themselves can’t lawfully visit on us directly. It’s an end run around the First Amendment and is the institution of de facto hate speech laws.
It’s also a fascistic wedding of Big Government and Big Business that conspires to crush the virtue-loving spirit and that will, predictably, spark actual negative radicalism and hate. And that, of course, will be the excuse for further repression.
If you sense that time is running out for American freedom, you are correct. If you are not already using your freedoms to save your freedoms to the full extent of your ability before it is too late, now is the time to do so.
