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X Marks the Plot: “Defenders of Democracy” Trying to Destroy the One True Social-media Democracy

(Image credit: Beatchoose/Wikimedia Commons)

By Selwyn Duke

We hear continual warnings from the Establishment and the Left (and the overlap there is profound) about “attacks on democracy.” Donald Trump, of course, is supposed to be a “threat to democracy.” Yet it all appears like projection. Why?

Because the self-proclaimed “defenders of democracy” are now aiming to destroy the only major extant social-media democracy: X (formerly Twitter).

Two recent stories epitomize this. The first involves an actual UK government plot to destroy X. The second revolves around a study blaming Elon Musk, X’s owner, for causing college professors’ departure from the platform. An article at The Independent on the matter actually calls it the “Twitter brain drain.” It’s yet another attack based on the supposition that it is freedom of speech that’s the social-media perversion. It’s inversion — of reality.

Many U.S. Mainstream Media Join Brazilian Socialists to Try to Destroy Elon Musk’s X

By Selwyn Duke

The “world is not obliged to put up with [Elon] Musk’s extreme right-wing anything goes just because he is rich.” So said Brazilian president and ex-convict Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva recently, referencing his nation’s attack on Musk’s X social media platform.

Only, he didn’t mention that “anything goes” doesn’t mean killing and stealing (which governments do frequently).

Rather, that’s what Lula da Silva calls allowing free speech and open debate: “anything goes.” Moreover, allowing “left-wing anything goes” from rich people and entities is apparently okay. Apropos to this, there’s no such thing as a big media outlet that isn’t “rich.”

In fact, 90 percent of our media is controlled by just six enormous conglomerates.

Teacher Who Wouldn’t be Part of “Trans” Child Abuse of Boy Jailed for THIRD Time

By Selwyn Duke

It’s said that Saint Patrick drove all the snakes from Ireland. It appears, however, that he might’ve missed a bunch. That is, if a recent story out of the Emerald Isle is any guide. To wit:

In a testimonial to our upside-down world, an Irish Christian teacher has been imprisoned for the third time. His trespass?

The educator, Enoch Burke, wouldn’t socially facilitate a student’s “gender transition,” as it’s euphemistically called, and then refused to abide by an order from a judge who sided with his school.

Pandering to Muslims, U.K. Leftists Are Suppressing Another Part of British Culture

By Selwyn Duke

Are you a Briton who’s upset that your government is quashing free speech and arresting people for social-media posts? If so, well, don’t take for granted that you’ll be able to drink your woes away. Because now the speech-squelching Labour Party, the equivalent of U.S. Democrats, has another bright idea.

They want to tamp down the age-old tradition of English pub culture.

Oh, this isn’t over concern about health or drunkenness-associated problems. Rather, they’re reportedly doing it for a thoroughly modern(ist) reason: There are many Muslims in Britain now.

And Muslims don’t like alcohol.

Dystopia Across the Sea: “Extreme Misogyny” to be Called “Terrorism”

By Selwyn Duke

“Britain is now an elite dictatorship where majority opinions are crushed,” wrote the Telegraph last year. That was before, too, the recent imprisonment of Brits for unapproved social-media posts, for, quote, “stirring ‘racial hatred.”

(Here’s the evidence, your honor: Here’s the cup the defendant used. Here, in a hazmat container, is what’s left of the eight ounces of racial hatred he poured in. Here’s the spoon….)

And now the U.K. may have another reason to arrest and charge social media users: “extreme misogyny.” This, we hear, is poised to become akin to terrorism under British law.

Coddling Kamala: Media Now Want “Female Politicians” Protected From “Hate Speech”

By Selwyn Duke

Lest you think our mainstream media are inveterate enemies of tradition, know that their opposition to it is selective. In fact, they now appear to want chivalry applied to female politicians, in the form of protecting them from negative social-media comments.

“Don’t hit girls!” is what’s essentially being said.

Perhaps coincidentally, too, this concern apparently arose after Kamala Harris became the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee. Why, a cynic could think this is all driven by a desire to help get her elected.

(Good thing there are no cynics here at The New American.)

Soviet NY: Letitia James’ Lawfare Has Killed a Conservative Website

By Selwyn Duke

“The Land the Law Forgot,” is what liberal legal scholar Jonathan Turley called New York in June. Oh, it’s not that it doesn’t have laws; it’s got so many, in fact, that studies found it to be our country’s least free state. It’s that N.Y.’s supposed law enforcers are ideological enforcers, using and going beyond the Empire State’s surfeit of strictures to build an empire of left-wing conformity.

Letitia James’ Vendetta

And now Letitia James, the notorious N.Y. attorney general who tag-teamed with a judge to try to pummel former President Donald Trump, has claimed another scalp: nonprofit anti-(destructive)immigration entity VDARE, which, after three years of lawfare attacks, is going to be suspending operations. The kicker:

James has not charged VDARE with anything, says site founder Peter Brimelow.

So this goes beyond even Stalin secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria’s vow, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”

It’s “Show me the man and I’ll show you the process-is-punishment lawfare method.”

When the Feds Quash Free Speech with Legal Tyranny

By Selwyn Duke

Imagine you run a website and are ordered by the federal government to divulge personal information on article commenters. Now imagine that the feds also issue a gag order preventing you from revealing what they’re up to.

This is precisely what happened with award-winning libertarian website Reason.com

Site editor Nick Gillespie related his travails just today at the Daily Beast, and it’s a story many will find chilling. His problems began after he blogged about the life sentence handed down to Ross Ulbricht, founder of Dark Web website Silk Road, by a judge named Katherine Forrest. Not surprisingly, agitated Ulbricht defenders took to his piece’s comments section and, par for the Internet course, savaged Forrest. As Gillespie writes, they suggested “that, among other things, she should burn in hell, ‘be taken out back and shot,’ and, in a well-worn Internet homage to the Coen Brothers movie Fargo, be fed ‘feet first’ into a woodchipper. The comments betrayed a naive belief in an afterlife [note, my libertarian friend Gillespie, that people without that ‘naïve’ belief in an afterlife generally have a naïve belief in government] and karma, were grammatically and spelling-challenged, hyperbolic, and… completely within the realm of acceptable Internet discourse, especially for an unmoderated comments section.” Gillespie then continued:

But the U.S. attorney for U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York thought differently...

Read the rest here.

Orwellian America: Principal Fired for McKinney-comment Thought Crime

By Selwyn Duke

"He did nothing wrong. He was afraid for his life. I commend him for his actions." The essence of this opinion, about ex-McKinney, Texas, police officer Eric Casebolt, has been expressed by many, including talk-radio giant Mark Levin. But the verbatim quotation above was in reality authored by high-school principal Alberto Iber (shown).

Actually, make that former high-school principal — Iber was just fired for rendering his opinion.

Iber’s view, posted on Facebook, certainly isn’t the politically correct one. It may not even be the correct one — that’s a matter for debate. But some might say removing him from his position as head of North Miami Senior High school smacks of the same mentality that calls for criminal charges against climate realists. We already have supposedly “settled science,” based completely on the very unscientific thing called consensus. Do we also now have “settled” positions on perhaps poorly understood current events, so settled, in fact, that deviation from them should mean career destruction?

Read the rest here.

Obama’s Justice Dept. Wants Names of Internet Commenters Who Trashed Judge

By Selwyn Duke

In an age where a British politician was arrested for publicly quoting legendary statesman Winston Churchill, it’s not surprising that a loose Internet comment can get a person in trouble. And this may be what’s happening in the case of six Internet posters whom the federal government believes issued “threats” against a federal judge.

The commenters made their remarks at Reason.com under an article about a letter from libertarian Ross Ulbricht, who found himself on trial for running “Dark Web” website Silk Road, a virtual black market that facilitated illegal drug transactions. In the letter Ulbricht pleaded for leniency from U.S. District judge Katherine Forrest — but it fell on deaf ears. Forrest handed him two concurrent life sentences plus 40 years, with no possibility of parole.

This didn’t sit well with Ulbricht’s supporters, many of whom view him as a “Crypto-anarchist” hero who received a gratuitously harsh sentence from an increasingly despotic government. And, not surprisingly, these passions were reflected in their words.

Read the rest here.