I read the WSWS several times a week. They have excellent writers. There is a huge blind spot though in many of their readers though. A lot of their readers who comment regularly, are really intelligent Marxist thinkers, but they denigrate with arrogance, ideas not sanctioned by say, the FDA, etc and put down people for not adhering to a supposedly “pure” Marxist analysis of anything and everything they do. I wrote in the comments section to watch Dr. Mobeen Syed’s interview last night on youtube, of the heroic Dr. Paul Marik, who is Chief of Critical Care Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical and who developed the MATH+ and I-MASK+ protocols for treating Covid-19. Two of these socialists know-it-alls, denigrated my comments without even having any medical information to back up their criticisms. I’ve practiced medicine for 34 years as an NP. I think I know what I’m talking about. But that wasn’t good enough for them. Sometimes, their commenters stink to high heaven with the very elitism they purport to abhor. And that ends up turning off people who might otherwise agree with them on much.
totally disagree with this guys politics and his idea that censorship is all about targeting the left, but it's still great to hear about things like this which i have not seen written about elsewhere. thx matt
I was curious why Google and Twitter would sensor socialist organizations. This right here is why: "The slogan of Marxists, going back to the Communist Manifesto, is 'workers of the world, unite!' not, 'races of the world, divide.'” They're not wokeity-woke enough. The new narrative only wants to fan the flames of the clash between identities, not socioeconomic classes.
He makes some good points, but also contort reality to fit into his narrative that censorship is all about silencing the left. That's false, and has been for decades.
Also, Matt, the content moderation is not directed at the "far right." It's directed at any woke-negating content from any source, and the regular right just happens to produce most of it. But even those from the left who negate the woke narrative get labeled "far right," if they're lucky enough to be acknowledged at all.
Google has been impossible to use. They are now in the business of 1. making sure you don't find what you're looking for, if they don't approve of your search, and 2. disapproving of your search with wild abandon.
Jones wasn't actually a card carrying right winger. You used to be able to find copious amounts of videos where he attacks both sides fairly evenly. I think they went after Jones for that reason. He was always a needling thorn in the side of the powerful.
Jones actually had the balls to crash Bohemian Grove, showing the rich, powerful & connected as they burn an effigy of a child to a giant Owl statue called Moloch.
That should have been a good indicator that our owners have, let's say, some incredibly outre beliefs.
I think he backed Trump for the same reason many folk did. He wasn't a politician & they were sick to death of politicians.
I think Jones was a test case.
To see if anyone actually cared about the 1st Amendment in any substantial way.
They found out that they didn't.
Game on.
I just watched Jones on Rogen's show.
Everything Jones said, Rogen had his producer immediately fact check.
A good 95% of it was backed up by data.
Did he veer off the rails with Sandy Hook?
No doubt.
Was his veering substantially more egregious than what established news organizations shovel on a daily basis?
I've been railing against censorship of, by, and in the media since my days at the SF Chronicle, if not before.
The evolution of U.S. media outlets as little more than mouthpieces of the state, dissembling disinformation that suits a power structure inclusive of neoliberals, neoconservatives, and the 1% served by both, is a sickening betrayal. It's not a partisan endeavor per se, it's one that sometimes seems to exist just because it CAN exist - the ultimate tell of corrupted power.
When the NYTimes/WaPo et al, sold us the pack of lies that took us to war in Iraq, that was neither left nor right, after all, democrats and republicans lined up to fund the war and feather their respective states (recall Hillary's little nest egg she brought home for funding the war).
Some years later objective seekers of truth and information sat horrified at a mute media that never uttered a negative word as President Obama drone warred the death of hundreds of thousands around the world.
In 2019, Tulsi Gabbard had to sue Google for unfair searches and search blocks.
And the entirety of 2020 has been nothing but one lie after another bolstered by repetition and protected by omitting corrections, truths, and contrary realities. From never letting a good panic go to waste to revising the history that was less than 6 months old, narratives arose to further the media establishment's credibility that had been so profoundly eroded over the last several decades (traced back to the original Gulf War, imo). New media climbed into bed with old media and the culture makers from Hollywood to Madison Avenue to create a Potemkin America that existed to deliver a Phoenix of social engineering and virtue signaling.
Fair became foul, foul became fair, and logic and proportion fell sloppy dead.
But hey - at least the Orange King's on his head...right?
It's such a consistent and predictable pattern: The censors set a precedent using some fringe far-left or far-right figure that "everyone can agree has got to go" and then they keep expanding their definition of what else is "fringe" outward until eventually it encompasses any alternative and independent media sources. I'm not a Trotskyist (although I've enjoyed the WSWS' critique of The 1619 Project), but when it comes to free speech everybody's got to present a united front regardless of political differences or else it's not really a "right." (The only exception to free speech should be that which literally is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action," as outlined in Brandenburg v. Ohio.)
Politically, I agree with almost nothing from the Trotskyites.
But so what?
They have every right to say it - and I have enough confidence in my views to argue it out with them in the world of ideas and let the best ideas prevail.
What I find unfortunate is Damon's inability to see the possibility of cooperating with conservatives to build a pro-free speech coalition. Even while Big Tech and the Democrats are working to silence his voice, he seems more interested in smearing anyone to the right of Castro as a "fascist" than he does in truly defending free speech on principle.
Not a huge fan of, "You should support this because it might help you." It's like, "You don't like racism? But let me explain how it could help you personally." A pretty shallow argument.
If a person can't see that free speech is a good thing, and that controlling "free speech" destroys free speech, well, are they even worth persuading?
I saw this happen with my Google query of "Sweden COVID cases" It use to take me to the WorldoMeter page, as I wanted to compare Sweden's highly criticized approach versus other countries. But as Sweden's numbers went down, and started looking "better" - Google stopped showing WorldoMeter and instad showing Critical Media articles . NOTE: I am all for taking all precautions - as long as the populous is informed. The lack of info and even censorship is what leads to conspiracy.
Moved to DuckDuckGo - much different results - more accurate. Simple example - search on Google and DuckDuckGo "Denmark COVID protests".
These companies are sinking themselves - moving away from them is trivial. Ask IBM, MySpace, Yahoo, SnapChat.
"The real target of censorship is always the left." This is an unserious position, which supports the majority idea that this is an unserious movement. The problem with socialists - not the "Democratic Socialists who uncomfortably brush off Bernie's "We need a revolution" grandstanding as meaning something other than an actual revolution, but rather, the people who know enough to take him literally - is that they seem to have zero interest in finding friends anywhere else but in their enlightened cliques. I have conversed with a handful of true believers with whom I share a fundamental concern that the mainstream U.S. media is brazenly misinforming the public. Yet they refuse to see how conservatives, who have suffered from media bias for a lot longer than 2017(!), may be an ally in the fight against bias and censorship, because we're all "fascists." If that's how you feel, fuck off.
Herd immunity is not based on pseudoscience. It’s what naturally stops a pandemic or epidemic. Why can’t the left, with a few exceptions, admit the that the response to covid has been totally disproportionate & is being used to destroy small businesses & make people slaves to corporations & big government? Contact tracing is unlawful & turns healthy people into some kind of bio threat. So disappointed in how so-called progressives are advocating for Big Pharma,censorship & mass surveillance.
Anyone around when the Internet was created knows that that Google and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) technology killed the ability of mortals to find useful information on the Internet. We don't have to know about all the subterfuge going on in the SEO algorithms to know that they suck, big time. The basic problem is that the algorithms are designed to make money, not help people find useful information. There, said it.
As I read (for the umpteenth time today) about the 1619 project’s claim that the Revolution was an insurrection to defend slavery, it just occurred to me — and fine, call me slow if I’m the last one to think of it:
Could this race-is-everything aspect of the worsening culture war— which is most certainly encouraged by the ruling elite — be an effort to discredit our governmental system to the extent that we dispense with things like, oh I dunno, our Constitution? If it’s all based on evil racism, let’s throw the whole thing out.
Granted the Constitution is seeming more and more toothless these days (even the ACLU is firmly in the censorship camp) but the First Amendment is one of the only tools we have left.
We only use DuckDuckGo for searches. It is non-partisan, does not censor, and does not store your past searches to put ads on your new searches.
I just searched for "WSWS" and the first 7 results were for the World Socialist Web Site (one of them is for their Facebook site, one for their YouTube site and one for their Wikipedia page) The 8th is for their rating by the Media Bias Fact Check site. Also, right under the top result are three links to recent articles on their site.
Just after them comes the Western Society for Weed Science
I notice another reference to "working class." I wish, Matt, you'd define that term as of 2020. Unions, does that qualify? The largest unions are those for teachers. All of whom have college degrees. (I don't have numbers for government workers in unions, but one assumes they are large, and that the workers there are also mostly degreed.) High school degree and a union card doesn't seem to fit.
Maybe another term would be better. Service industry workers or something. Your average schoolteacher and a guy seventy feet in the air cutting limbs with a chainsaw don't have much in common.
I read the WSWS several times a week. They have excellent writers. There is a huge blind spot though in many of their readers though. A lot of their readers who comment regularly, are really intelligent Marxist thinkers, but they denigrate with arrogance, ideas not sanctioned by say, the FDA, etc and put down people for not adhering to a supposedly “pure” Marxist analysis of anything and everything they do. I wrote in the comments section to watch Dr. Mobeen Syed’s interview last night on youtube, of the heroic Dr. Paul Marik, who is Chief of Critical Care Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical and who developed the MATH+ and I-MASK+ protocols for treating Covid-19. Two of these socialists know-it-alls, denigrated my comments without even having any medical information to back up their criticisms. I’ve practiced medicine for 34 years as an NP. I think I know what I’m talking about. But that wasn’t good enough for them. Sometimes, their commenters stink to high heaven with the very elitism they purport to abhor. And that ends up turning off people who might otherwise agree with them on much.
totally disagree with this guys politics and his idea that censorship is all about targeting the left, but it's still great to hear about things like this which i have not seen written about elsewhere. thx matt
I was curious why Google and Twitter would sensor socialist organizations. This right here is why: "The slogan of Marxists, going back to the Communist Manifesto, is 'workers of the world, unite!' not, 'races of the world, divide.'” They're not wokeity-woke enough. The new narrative only wants to fan the flames of the clash between identities, not socioeconomic classes.
He makes some good points, but also contort reality to fit into his narrative that censorship is all about silencing the left. That's false, and has been for decades.
Also, Matt, the content moderation is not directed at the "far right." It's directed at any woke-negating content from any source, and the regular right just happens to produce most of it. But even those from the left who negate the woke narrative get labeled "far right," if they're lucky enough to be acknowledged at all.
Google has been impossible to use. They are now in the business of 1. making sure you don't find what you're looking for, if they don't approve of your search, and 2. disapproving of your search with wild abandon.
These are bizarre times.
Jones wasn't actually a card carrying right winger. You used to be able to find copious amounts of videos where he attacks both sides fairly evenly. I think they went after Jones for that reason. He was always a needling thorn in the side of the powerful.
Jones actually had the balls to crash Bohemian Grove, showing the rich, powerful & connected as they burn an effigy of a child to a giant Owl statue called Moloch.
That should have been a good indicator that our owners have, let's say, some incredibly outre beliefs.
I think he backed Trump for the same reason many folk did. He wasn't a politician & they were sick to death of politicians.
I think Jones was a test case.
To see if anyone actually cared about the 1st Amendment in any substantial way.
They found out that they didn't.
Game on.
I just watched Jones on Rogen's show.
Everything Jones said, Rogen had his producer immediately fact check.
A good 95% of it was backed up by data.
Did he veer off the rails with Sandy Hook?
No doubt.
Was his veering substantially more egregious than what established news organizations shovel on a daily basis?
Not in the fucking least.
I've been railing against censorship of, by, and in the media since my days at the SF Chronicle, if not before.
The evolution of U.S. media outlets as little more than mouthpieces of the state, dissembling disinformation that suits a power structure inclusive of neoliberals, neoconservatives, and the 1% served by both, is a sickening betrayal. It's not a partisan endeavor per se, it's one that sometimes seems to exist just because it CAN exist - the ultimate tell of corrupted power.
When the NYTimes/WaPo et al, sold us the pack of lies that took us to war in Iraq, that was neither left nor right, after all, democrats and republicans lined up to fund the war and feather their respective states (recall Hillary's little nest egg she brought home for funding the war).
Some years later objective seekers of truth and information sat horrified at a mute media that never uttered a negative word as President Obama drone warred the death of hundreds of thousands around the world.
In 2019, Tulsi Gabbard had to sue Google for unfair searches and search blocks.
And the entirety of 2020 has been nothing but one lie after another bolstered by repetition and protected by omitting corrections, truths, and contrary realities. From never letting a good panic go to waste to revising the history that was less than 6 months old, narratives arose to further the media establishment's credibility that had been so profoundly eroded over the last several decades (traced back to the original Gulf War, imo). New media climbed into bed with old media and the culture makers from Hollywood to Madison Avenue to create a Potemkin America that existed to deliver a Phoenix of social engineering and virtue signaling.
Fair became foul, foul became fair, and logic and proportion fell sloppy dead.
But hey - at least the Orange King's on his head...right?
It's such a consistent and predictable pattern: The censors set a precedent using some fringe far-left or far-right figure that "everyone can agree has got to go" and then they keep expanding their definition of what else is "fringe" outward until eventually it encompasses any alternative and independent media sources. I'm not a Trotskyist (although I've enjoyed the WSWS' critique of The 1619 Project), but when it comes to free speech everybody's got to present a united front regardless of political differences or else it's not really a "right." (The only exception to free speech should be that which literally is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action," as outlined in Brandenburg v. Ohio.)
Politically, I agree with almost nothing from the Trotskyites.
But so what?
They have every right to say it - and I have enough confidence in my views to argue it out with them in the world of ideas and let the best ideas prevail.
What I find unfortunate is Damon's inability to see the possibility of cooperating with conservatives to build a pro-free speech coalition. Even while Big Tech and the Democrats are working to silence his voice, he seems more interested in smearing anyone to the right of Castro as a "fascist" than he does in truly defending free speech on principle.
Not a huge fan of, "You should support this because it might help you." It's like, "You don't like racism? But let me explain how it could help you personally." A pretty shallow argument.
If a person can't see that free speech is a good thing, and that controlling "free speech" destroys free speech, well, are they even worth persuading?
I saw this happen with my Google query of "Sweden COVID cases" It use to take me to the WorldoMeter page, as I wanted to compare Sweden's highly criticized approach versus other countries. But as Sweden's numbers went down, and started looking "better" - Google stopped showing WorldoMeter and instad showing Critical Media articles . NOTE: I am all for taking all precautions - as long as the populous is informed. The lack of info and even censorship is what leads to conspiracy.
Moved to DuckDuckGo - much different results - more accurate. Simple example - search on Google and DuckDuckGo "Denmark COVID protests".
These companies are sinking themselves - moving away from them is trivial. Ask IBM, MySpace, Yahoo, SnapChat.
"The real target of censorship is always the left." This is an unserious position, which supports the majority idea that this is an unserious movement. The problem with socialists - not the "Democratic Socialists who uncomfortably brush off Bernie's "We need a revolution" grandstanding as meaning something other than an actual revolution, but rather, the people who know enough to take him literally - is that they seem to have zero interest in finding friends anywhere else but in their enlightened cliques. I have conversed with a handful of true believers with whom I share a fundamental concern that the mainstream U.S. media is brazenly misinforming the public. Yet they refuse to see how conservatives, who have suffered from media bias for a lot longer than 2017(!), may be an ally in the fight against bias and censorship, because we're all "fascists." If that's how you feel, fuck off.
Herd immunity is not based on pseudoscience. It’s what naturally stops a pandemic or epidemic. Why can’t the left, with a few exceptions, admit the that the response to covid has been totally disproportionate & is being used to destroy small businesses & make people slaves to corporations & big government? Contact tracing is unlawful & turns healthy people into some kind of bio threat. So disappointed in how so-called progressives are advocating for Big Pharma,censorship & mass surveillance.
Anyone around when the Internet was created knows that that Google and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) technology killed the ability of mortals to find useful information on the Internet. We don't have to know about all the subterfuge going on in the SEO algorithms to know that they suck, big time. The basic problem is that the algorithms are designed to make money, not help people find useful information. There, said it.
As I read (for the umpteenth time today) about the 1619 project’s claim that the Revolution was an insurrection to defend slavery, it just occurred to me — and fine, call me slow if I’m the last one to think of it:
Could this race-is-everything aspect of the worsening culture war— which is most certainly encouraged by the ruling elite — be an effort to discredit our governmental system to the extent that we dispense with things like, oh I dunno, our Constitution? If it’s all based on evil racism, let’s throw the whole thing out.
Granted the Constitution is seeming more and more toothless these days (even the ACLU is firmly in the censorship camp) but the First Amendment is one of the only tools we have left.
We only use DuckDuckGo for searches. It is non-partisan, does not censor, and does not store your past searches to put ads on your new searches.
I just searched for "WSWS" and the first 7 results were for the World Socialist Web Site (one of them is for their Facebook site, one for their YouTube site and one for their Wikipedia page) The 8th is for their rating by the Media Bias Fact Check site. Also, right under the top result are three links to recent articles on their site.
Just after them comes the Western Society for Weed Science
Hopefully everyone reading this stopped using Google in favor of DuckDuckGo long ago. Any other suggestions for search engines would be most welcome.
I notice another reference to "working class." I wish, Matt, you'd define that term as of 2020. Unions, does that qualify? The largest unions are those for teachers. All of whom have college degrees. (I don't have numbers for government workers in unions, but one assumes they are large, and that the workers there are also mostly degreed.) High school degree and a union card doesn't seem to fit.
Maybe another term would be better. Service industry workers or something. Your average schoolteacher and a guy seventy feet in the air cutting limbs with a chainsaw don't have much in common.