79 Comments
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Dazed and Confused's avatar

Why is it the first impulse of all these supposedly smart and well intentioned people is to limit and control what other people say? Goddam karens, all of them.

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DaveL's avatar

“Two Concepts of Freedom” (or Liberty) by Isaiah Berlin, 1958, explains pretty well how that can happen, especially since the birth of “rational” thought during the Enlightenment. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” does a nice job, too.

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DMC's avatar

extra points with Matt and Walter for mentioning the Grand Inquisitor.

it should be required reading but sadly we are a generation away from no one knowing who Dostoevky was, along with many others.

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Michele Kennedy's avatar

The gulag archipelago should also be read. Exploring Russian literature expands the mind and shows the horrors of communism.

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Allison Brennan's avatar

Because they are "smart" and "well intentioned" they know what's best for everyone. We the masses are too ignorant to do the "right" thing, so they'll handle it for us. Bless their hearts.

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Andy's avatar

I’ve been saying this all along: moral and intellectual certitude allow people to avoid reflection. “I’m a good, smart person. Therefore, whatever I do is good and smart.”

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Michele Kennedy's avatar

Everyone believes that they r good

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Heyjude's avatar

The First Deadly Sin.

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Andy's avatar

If I understand Jordan Peterson, this is essentially “taking the Lord’s name in vain,” giving attribution to God for something that you have done.

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Robert Hunter's avatar

Of course, it's the "Noble lie" doncha know.

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Cosmo T Kat's avatar

Why? Hubris comes to mind and lots of federal research grants.

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Tardigrade's avatar

$$$ provides so much perverse incentive. Between the intelligence community, DOD, and the rest of the government, it's a limitless money spigot.

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Jose Weto's avatar

Yes. And they're doing it with our money! We are buying the rope they'll use to hang us.

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Gogs's avatar

Money and overweening self-pride - a powerful combo! I think this is where Dunning-Kruger does come in. Ladies and gentlemen, a big hand for Peter Hotez!

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NothingButNet's avatar

Those who censor are NEVER the good guys. Their censorship is always self serving and virtually always leads to totalitarianism.

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Norma Bown's avatar

supposedly is the key word. bunch of zombies, non-thinkers, incapable of logical analysis, filled with slogans and hates and bile.

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Jake's avatar

No one operates outside of incentives. To find the “why” of behavior, determine the incentive. Most of the time it’s money or status or more specifically, the action or process through which that is obtained.

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steven t koenig's avatar

From day one I felt we were being lied to. So I acted accordingly and ignored every single edict re Covid. I was right. Those who swallowed the panic, shame on you. You gave away your autonomy for no return.

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Gogs's avatar

I don't see how pouring scorn on those who swallowed the lies helps. Many believed at first but became sceptical as the crimes unfolded. It's quite natural, I think, to believe simply because you want to believe. After all, the fact that many of these people who are supposed to be our protectors (an extraordinary idea, I know) are in fact our enemies is a tough one to deal with.

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P.S.'s avatar

Yeayah, they counted on that.

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Kurl Malone's avatar

Every drop has been both totally expected, and a shock akin to a slap in the face.

Anyone else feeling like Ron Paul was right in every conceivable way?

Hopefully someday we listen....

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Jack Gallagher's avatar

Son Rand Paul gets good marks as well.

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Kurl Malone's avatar

I would put Massie on that list, but Ron is another league IMO if for no other reason than his longevity and getting his ass chewed over and over for decades....

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TimInVA's avatar

Hall-monitor kids grow up to be hall-monitor adults.

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Tim Hurlocker's avatar

The source of misinformation and disinformation is primarily the government, aided and abetted by the taxpayer-funded universities. We are paying for our own subjugation.

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Kevin Schilling's avatar

Reading this article with my morning first cup of coffee (sans alcohol) makes me feel depressed (because of the widespread nature of this anti-disinformation effort), then angry (because of the involvement of the USG, i.e. and not just because of the use of my tax dollars in suppressing free speech), then hopeful (because these activities are coming to light), then depressed again (because I suspect the same type of activity is going on right this second,,,,,,just a bit further in the background). Thank you Racket for giving me at least a few minutes of hopeful interlude.

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Mike Eyre's avatar

It does feel more and more like the Great Experiment has failed. If Democrats lose, they get to use the next 4 years to demonstrate just how critically important it is to funnel all speech through their control apparatus. If they win, they'll do it without telling us they're doing it, and no one will try to stop them.

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Allison Brennan's avatar

Yeah, sometimes it's better to read Matt in the evening with a bottle of wine ...

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Jose Weto's avatar

I quit drinking a decade ago, but when I look at the Rachel-Maddowesque smugness of Kate Starbird in her biopic, I want two bottles of wine. : )

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Kevin Schilling's avatar

"I started out on Burgundy, but soon hit the harder stuff",,,,,I do much of the time feel Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues

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Hektor Bleriot's avatar

"Sometimes I feel there are no words but these to tell what's true, and there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden."

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Kevin Schilling's avatar

one of the great songs of the 20th century !

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Hektor Bleriot's avatar

Hear! Hear! (no...like, fer real). ;o)

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Jake's avatar

Thank goodness that “c” is in your last name, amirite?

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Kevin Schilling's avatar

Si !

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PassingThru's avatar

It's absolutely, simply amazing so many people have bought into this CIA and CCP psychological warfare on society, a.k.a misinformation and disinformation. Freedom has no place in the world where these people are at the helm.

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Steve C's avatar

As always, this is badass reporting Matt. Stunning!

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Jose Weto's avatar

"At this point, it’s impossible to deny that the CIP sought a significant role in shaping the future of a free Internet."

Anyone holding the patrician notion that they know what's best for the world can please go f*ck themselves. Looking at you Kate Starbird.

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Tardigrade's avatar

Disturbing, dizzying, dismaying, depressing.

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TimInVA's avatar

Pain is the great motivator. You have to know the source of it to bring about change. Matt is one of the best in getting at the rot of the political apparatus. It's up to the reader to decide what to do next.

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tony asher's avatar

Wait a minute, is Matt saying our government is lying? Is this somehow a new revelation? You mean all of these years the gov't had told the truth and NOW is lying? Anyone now should expect our govt to lie. They ALL LIE. We are not a democracy. We are a kleptocracy controlled by oligarchs, piners for the 19th century, greedy Wall St scumbags and war mongers. There is of course, a ton of overlap there.

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Jake's avatar

The specific ways and means through which corruption is carried out is important. No, “the government is corrupt” isn’t new, but knowing HOW, to what extent and through what vehicles and processes they are corrupt is invaluable information that is needed if the corruption is to be combatted.

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Jack Gallagher's avatar

Especially since the side actors in this case have been so adamant in denying that they were influenced by government actors.

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Andy's avatar

It’s not the lying, it’s the censorship.

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J. Lincoln's avatar

Censorship equates with lying, as its purpose is to deny the truth...

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glenn's avatar

This FOIA trove adds to the puzzle, yet the most damning information comes from the Twitter files and lawsuit discovery. Evidence that connected actual government involvement in censorship.

These reports demonstrate how creepy academia has become, along with its utter disdain for non-academics. My personal disgust with academia grows deeper every year. I now find it different to recommend college as a path for young folks. I’d rather see them in trades or technical schools.

These reports also clearly demonstrate social media companies see their “users” not as customers, but as feeders for their data products. Worse, their willingness to give such intimate detailed data away truly shows where they stand on privacy. I think some knew this all along, but the FOIA docs are proof. If you go through the painful exercise of deciphering their (FB, IG, etc.) EULAs, you’ll find in cryptic legalese that anything you post on social media they own, and can use as they see fit.

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The Radical Individualist's avatar

Progressivism is a mindless cult. Of course, all cults are mindless. That's what makes them cults.

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Cosmo T Kat's avatar

Progressivism is just Puritanism reborn, and updated. It's the same intolerant mindset this time without God as their stick to beat you with.

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Jose Weto's avatar

This is fundamentalism. Conform or die, infidel!!! Are you Anti-Trans? In the UK, you're going to jail today!

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Sherry 1's avatar

I now understand Progressivism to be a new name for people working together, forcing the slow march to Communism. Progress to Communist governance. But that’s just me.

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Cosmo T Kat's avatar

I like to refer to Progressives as neo-Puritans, it fits.

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Jayhawk's avatar

The thing that consistently jumps out at you in all of this reporting is the willing and eager collaboration between social media, (pre-Elon) corporate media, colleges/universities, NGO’s, think tanks and govt. agencies. This is why it is so hard to stop the blatant censorship efforts, as the First Amendment only prohibits the government from censoring speech. When all of their partners are so excited to censor their common enemy, (which is usually conservatives, but always those challenging the elite narrative) they don’t really need to coerce, just ask.

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Allison Brennan's avatar

Wow. We knew it was bad, and have for years, but seeing this all laid out so clearly is still wholly depressing. The government and academia will never stop trying to censor opinions and facts and theories they don't like, using every tool at their disposal.

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glenn's avatar

What is shocking to me is how willing the social media companies were to offer up massive data sets on there user’s interactions. It confirms a notion I encountered years ago: “you are not a customer of FB, you’re it’s product”

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Jake's avatar
Sep 6Edited

All of this begs the question: why? Why were the government and these NGOs and universities that host these programs in lockstep with one another on a false zoonotic origin narrative? I mean, we know why Fauci was all denydenydeny but does he really have enough power to influence all these different orgs and institutions so quickly and simultaneously? Was this just defense of big pharma’s $$$ scheme to make record profits from a rapidly manufactured vaccine that has dubious efficacy?

This is what it looks like to most Americans that objectively research the overarching issue of Covid and how it was handled:

Fauci via the NIH engaged in gain of function research on SARS-based novel coronavirus strains in a Chinese lab. Why China? Because the type of research that was going on in that lab is banned in the US and was done so BY THE US GOVERNMENT.

The virus, because of its engineered communicability, escaped the lab and infected human hosts all over the world.

Because the research that was being done there is what caused millions and millions of human deaths, there was a concerted, deliberate attempt to make it appear that the virus was zoonotic in origin.

Meanwhile, people were being driven from their jobs, families and society in general if they questioned the official narrative- which we now know with confidence via a pile of evidence- much of it collected and shared by Racket News (hat tip) was false.

Also meanwhile on the vaccine front, we were lied to blatantly again and again not only by the sitting President, but all the aforementioned orgs, 95% of legacy journalism institutions, 99% of higher education, the majority of small businesses, almost 100% of corporate entities, big tech/social media, etc etc etc.We were told that:

It’s safe and effective

If you get the jab you can’t transmit or get subsequent infections

Different types of masks are effective (this changed several times- the narrative involving masks, etc.

There has also been a concerted effort to obfuscate and cover up the degree to which people have been vaccine injured.

So we need to know exactly what mechanisms drove what decisions and at what times. Was Pharma in on it from the beginning? Was the virus developed in concert with a “vaccine” that could be passed off to the public as a panacea of all things Covid? Seems likely if one considers A) the function and efficacy of the vaccine was vastly overstated if not outright lied about- in conjunction with B) the speed at which it was developed and approved by bureaucracies like the FDA- you know the same people that approve processed food that’s making us fat and unhealthy and sending us to our graves early.

I don’t think the government, purveyors of social media, journalism, higher education, etc have any idea how furious this makes many Americans, myself included- even though I fared ok through the pandemic and aftermath.

The reason they don’t have any idea is because the only places that opinions like mine can be said without being removed, suppressed, or attacked by mobs are small communication forums like this one.

In the last 8 years, myself and people like me have all but withdrawn from the society with which we formerly and vigorously engaged. I think there is something ugly and terrible brewing underneath the veneer of what we see as every day life, and I think the cause of it is multi-faceted.

Keep in mind that if a narrative that is true is driven underground, it will not go away, it will continue to grow. If people can’t speak the truth publicly, and are persecuted for it, then they will speak privately. You know, like at ballot boxes.

This is why I don’t believe polls. This is why I think revolutionary currents are brewing under the surface. And this is just one issue. There are a myriad of others, including but not limited to:

The demonization and ostracizing of young, white, hetero men.

The leftist cultural takeover of all influential institutions.

The hyperbolic insistence on victimhood narratives involving race and gender.

The demonization of political operatives on both sides of the aisle.

The national debt from 1776 to 2014 DOUBLING from 2014 to 2024.

Inflation

Getting involved in foreign entanglements and risking nuclear war.

Declining lifespan

Declining birth rates

Emerging BRICS economies

A multi-pronged foreign effort to remove the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

I don’t know if these things will lead to societal collapse, civil war, etc, but I do know that these things mean that we will be unable to return to America as most of us have known it roughly from the era of 1960s to 2010s, and that whatever takes its place won’t be as prosperous for as many people as that period was.

Buckle up.

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TeeJae's avatar

AMEN! Excellent points and brilliantly stated!

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