This Should Keep You Up At Night

Very few things genuinely scare me…

Nov 17, 2020

When people started getting their blue checkmarks removed on Twitter, that was concerning. When Mailchimp deactivated Stefan Molyneux’s e-mail list, that was worrisome. When Laura Loomer was kicked off of PayPal, that was a giant red flag. When Alex Jones was kicked off of basically everything, that should have bothered anything that remotely supports freedom of speech.

Whether you love these people, hate these people, agree or disagree, the issue is that in this hyperconnected world, removal from the internet and key services meant to have a voice, run a platform, or operate a business are vital to basic survival.

Private businesses have the fundamental right to refuse service, but this direct and explicit targeting of anyone remotely right of Chairman Mao should be concerning to even the most moderate Americans.

As I mentioned in this week’s episode of On The Run, civil libertarians across the political spectrum should always be wary of the state, yet that doesn’t mean we should be less concerned by the cultural movements within academia and the business world that have labeled half of the country as deplorable, undesirable, and unworthy of being part of civil society.

When Keith Olbermann said several weeks ago that Trump supports must be “removed from our society” I didn’t just take him seriously, I’m taking him literally.

When you don’t have access to the tools to communicate, exchange services, or even trade money, you’re sentencing people to live in a world they are no longer allowed to have any participation in, creating an emotional hell alone that will only bring out the worst in people.

In a group chat with several personal and professional friends, one of them forwarded me an article from theconservativetreehouse.com which shook me to my core. As it stands, the popular conservative site will no longer be allowed to use it’s current hosting platform, meaning they have to quickly switch, convert, and move all their content over to a new hosting service by December 2nd.

According to the article:

”given the incompatibility between your site’s content and our terms, you need to find a new hosting provider and must migrate the site by Wednesday, December 2nd.
What does this mean? It means CTH is being kicked-off the WordPress website hosting platform because the content of our research and discussion does not align with the ideology of those who define what is acceptable speech and what is not.
What was our violation? After ten years of brutally honest discussion, opinion, deep research and crowdsourcing work -with undeniable citations on the events we outline- there is no cited violation of any term of service because CTH has never violated one.
The WordPress company is not explaining the reason for deplatforming because there is no justifiable reason for it. At the same time, they are bold in their position. Perhaps this is the most alarming part; and everyone should pay attention. They don’t care.
Truthful assembly is now the risk. CTH is now too big; with a site reach of 500,000 to a million unique readers each day; and with well over 200,000 subscribers; our assembly is too large, too influential, and presents a risk… we guard the flickering flame.
Ten years of work assembling a library of factual citations and explanations of those discoveries, positions CTH to be a leading force in the rebel alliance push-back. [Heck, that’s why this place was started… that was our purpose: “The Truth Has No Agenda.”] However, that also makes us a target; hence the deplatforming.

READ THE REST HERE

I’m afraid of many things in this world, but this direct targeting of people based on core beliefs by turning the market place into a weapon is a type of dystopian world the likes of 1984 and Brave New World couldn’t predict.

Support conservative and alternative businesses, create some yourself if you can, but understand things are looking worse, and that alone should keep you up at night.

Featured image from Unsplash.com