Internet Censorship

Internet censorship

I read this article on the sinister alliance, and it gave me further information as to what is happening with internet censorship.

Pre-social media, maybe just 20 years ago, there was an unwritten social filter that tended to be applied across the board in terms of news and education. This filter was essentially a middle-of-the-road liberal/slightly-right filter that suited the neoliberal establishment well. It kept the right deplorables at bay but more importantly for the 1% most people were not exposed to the political truth of exploitation by the 1%.

The following is a perspective, judge for yourself. From 1990 onwards movements developed across the world, some of them using social media. Beginning with Horizontalidad, there was then the Arab Spring, movements in Spain, leading up to Occupy in Wall Street and across the globe. Occupy frightened the hell out of the 1% and was violently squashed, because the 1% were becoming publicly accountable - Occupy showed us that the greed of the 1% was the source of our governmental and socio-political problems.

And Occupy used the internet to communicate. This was the death knell of an open internet. The 1% had always funded some people on the internet, there were plenty of neoconservative think tanks such as the Atlantic Council pinpointed in the article. But this was not enough because the 1% were exposed, it became necessary to defuse the ability of the internet to develop campaigns such as Adbusters - "The Canadian anti-consumerist and pro-environment group/magazine Adbusters initiated the call for a protest [Zandtao - OWS]". This defusing has been done by developing a campaign of confusion throughout the internet.

However this confusion has been taken further as described by Berit Anderson based on research by Jonathan Albright and others - all discussed in this blog "Discernment - Detoxing your Internet". With the success of mobilising for Occupy, the right recognised the potential for mobilising their "grassroots(?)" here - the Tea Party, Brexit and onwards. Robert Mercer amongst others helped finance manipulation of the internet to Trump's benefit in the 2016 election - discussed here.

The controlling 1% have no objection to Alex Jones promoting unsubstantiated right-wing propaganda, he is not a threat to them because of his emphasis on race bias - the 1% uses racism to their advantage in dividing the 99% as can be seen with Trump. The Dark Money Network has now funded a right-wing bias on the internet to the advantage of the 1%. They are happy with the promotion of the AIN, the IDweb, and so on. But for them what is more important they do not want an internet that promotes genuine 99% understanding such as Occupy.

It is very important to note that as discussed in this Ghion Journal article the 1%-internet are turning to right-wing think tanks such as the Atlantic Council. This is the dominant direction of the internet censorship of BigTech.

But in my view the writer has to be careful of defending internet "independence". Especially with regards to the creation of videos the internet has more and more become dominated by "independents", people who have been funded to make professional clips. Whilst ordinary retired people such as me (pension-funded) or Ghion journal seeking crowdfunding for their blog, right-wing independents such as Alex Jones had sufficient funding to do far more than scrape a blog-living. "Independent" voices were one way that the right-wing were able to hijack the "visual" internet.

I support Rainer in his call to beware of 1%-censors, the Atlantic Council, "And the structure of this censorship regime is laid out for everyone to see. For example, Kristol and The Weekly Standard are closely tied to the Atlantic Council, a powerful neoconservative think tank whose board includes ex-CIA and Homeland Security officials. The Atlantic Council is also funded by large corporations and banks, Gulf monarchies, Western governments, and NATO." We need to monitor the bias shown by the Atlantic Council. They have no problem sacrificing Alex Jones - in fact censoring Alex just adds fuel to White Nationalist fire, if as a result they can censor who they fear, people such as Occupy who exposed the enemy as the 1%.

But beware Rainer, independent on the internet is not now independent.