The Growing Threat of Censorship in Western Nations
"Free" Nations On the Path to Tyranny and Fascism
“The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.” - Thomas Payne
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” - C.S. Lewis
Several articles have been written about governments in Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand engaging in ever-increasing censorship, suppression of free speech and prevention of the free flow of factual and truthful information:
Censorship vs Freedom of Thought and Speech - The Road to Fascism and Totalitarianism (provides details about the myriad laws Western nations have enacted in recent years to conduct massive suppression of free speech)
First, Suppress Freedom of Speech - The Road to Totalitarianism
Should Freedom of Speech Be Absolute? The Slippery Slope of Censorship
These governments continue to tighten the screws on their citizens, engaging in more and stronger efforts to censor and suppress ‘unacceptable and problematic’ content, ‘disinformation’ and ‘hate speech.’
In the minds of governments, ‘unacceptable and problematic’ means any opinion or information that disagrees with ‘official’ narratives - ‘official’ as defined by governments.
‘Disinformation’ is defined by these governments as any information that exposes false narratives, corruption and/or fraudulent agendas.
‘Hate speech’ is any speech governments hate because it disagrees with their manufactured narratives and hidden agendas.
Supreme Importance of Freedom of Speech
I believe the two most important rights and freedoms are those of religion and speech. The quality of life itself for each individual rides on these two freedoms - or lack of or restrictions on them.
The supreme importance of freedom of speech is stated best by the founding fathers of the United States.
“Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom - and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.”
"Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.”
“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”
- Benjamin Franklin
“For if men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.” - George Washington
“When you abandon freedom to achieve security, you lose both and deserve neither.” - Thomas Jefferson
U.S. President Harry Truman offered this accurate warning:
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one place to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”
And this from Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas:
“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”
These succinct and accurate statements are yet profound and have vast implications and power; they correctly emphasize the importance of free speech in all aspects of life.
There is a power struggle occurring in the above-mentioned Western nations that is becoming an outright war: the rights of individuals to express their opinions, ideas and opposition versus their governments intent on expanding their own power and pushing their own agendas at the expense of citizens.
This is a genuine struggle for survival by citizens, since governments can wield so much police and punitive power against any internal opposition or dissent from individuals. People can lose their jobs, professional licenses, reputations, freedoms or even their lives if governments decide to target them for dissenting opinions.
Tyranny Growing in Western Nations
Governments in Western nations are restricting and punishing free speech more and more, as outlined in the articles listed at the beginning of this article. These increasing restrictions are resulting in greater and greater violations of the rights and freedoms of citizens as guaranteed by the constitutions in those nations.
The situation regarding free speech has deteriorated so greatly that most Western constitutions have been virtually dismissed and, for all intents and purposes, dissolved.
Censoring and restricting freedom of speech is tyranny, as stated by Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.
Governments justify their censorship and restrictions of free speech “to protect people from harmful disinformation and hate speech.” This is a vicious lie and attempt to gaslight people into blindly accepting government censorship.
People don’t need such protections. What they need is truth.
Censorship of any kind for any reason ALWAYS results in more truth than ‘disinformation’ being blocked.
Censorship ALWAYS results in the baby being thrown out with the bath water.
Censorship ALWAYS results in harmful consequences far greater than any potential benefits (if any benefits even exist at all).
Governments ALWAYS define ‘disinformation’ as any facts or truths that expose their false narratives and corruption.
“Current censorship has reached levels not seen in the past, and with all the advanced technology available, this nefarious plot to silence the thinkers and hide the truth could affect all forms of speech.
“It is getting much more difficult to find truthful information, as those like Google, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and many other venues are eliminating content and access to content at a blistering pace. A day rarely goes by without something I am reading or researching on these sites being taken down or hidden.
“This can only lead to a world consumed by propaganda alone, thus guaranteeing that only the state narrative will be presented in any mainstream or easily accessible format. This is a dangerous situation . . .”
In the UK, the Keir Starmer government has cracked down on free speech by making it a crime to post any ‘objectionable’ content on social media, podcasts or video broadcasts. Several UK citizens have been arrested for posting content the government doesn’t like, under the guise of “protecting citizens” and “restoring order.”
The UK government has dropped all pretense and are now openly tyrannical and oppressive toward citizens.
“Opportunists have used the civil unrest in the UK in the last couple of weeks to advance their long-term plans to criminalise speech they don’t like.
“There are common tactics and strategies that authoritarian regimes use to consolidate and maintain power.
“In the case of the UK, they are using a grossly exaggerated and to a large extent falsified internal threat to the Muslim population while demonising a fictional ‘far-right,’ a broad and undefined term they are applying to anyone who acts, speaks or posts on social media in a way that they deem unacceptable according to their opinion, or ideology.
“Using the excuse of a threat from the so-called ‘far-right’ the UK government has announced a new national Violent Disorder Programme that will consider broader use of facial recognition technology; is supporting police efforts to maintain order, with a focus on online activity; is working with social media companies to prevent the spread of ‘disinformation’ and selective inflammatory rhetoric; and, is using lessons in schools to ‘arm’ children against ‘putrid conspiracy theories.’ ”
In addition to this current crackdown, the UK adopted its draconian and anti-free speech Online Safety Act in October 2023. This Act is similar to the European Union’s Digital Services Act (see section on the EU below), and would label as serious crimes any speech the UK government doesn’t approve.
This teacher in Ireland is being arrested “for not accepting transgenderism:”
Imagine being arrested because you oppose children and teens getting harmful, life-changing, mind-altering, health-endangering, growth-compromising, body-mutilating trans operations and drugs. Is this rational? No, it’s depraved, barbaric and utterly psychotic.
This growing psychosis is just one consequence of censorship and restricting free speech.
This isn’t an isolated incident. People in Western nations are routinely censored, penalized and punished in various ways for speaking out against the trans-for-kids insanity. (No one cared if adults chose to change their sex until ‘trans’ became a militant political campaign aimed at undermining women and targeting highly impressionable, easily manipulated children and teens.)
“Ireland’s new Hate Offences Bill undermines the rule of law”
In Germany, the controlling government headed by Olaf Scholz is in full fascist mode, clamping down on any truthful and factual information that conflicts with government agendas.
Eugyppius is the Substack pen name of a German author who has written extensively on the current German government and their rapid descent into full-blown fascism. Here are a few representative articles from Eugyppius that describe what has been happening in Germany the past few years:
“German Interior Minister bans AfD-adjacent ‘right-wing extremist’ magazine, raids homes of editorial staff, seizes assets, in the latest effort to defend democracy by abolishing democratic freedoms.”
“The farce of German democracy marches on.”
“On the Unjust and Ridiculous Conviction of C.J. Hopkins”
“German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck calls for a comprehensive internet censorship programme to stop people disagreeing with him.”
The United States has the strongest guarantee of freedom of speech of any nation in the world - at least on paper.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees Americans total and unrestricted freedoms of religion, speech, a free press and rights to assemble and petition - total and unrestricted from a government standpoint. The U.S. government is not allowed to restrict or interfere with these freedoms in any way, shape or form.
“The ‘Hate Speech’ Road to Tyranny.
“We [United Sates] like to think we have freedom of speech. Doesn’t the First Amendment guarantee this to us? But some states have ‘hate speech’ laws on the books.”
For all intents and purposes, the U.S. Constitution has been dismissed, and Bill of Rights freedoms and protections dismantled. Read the Constitution and Bill of Rights, then compare how the U.S. government operates with how the Constitution states it is SUPPOSED to operate. No resemblance today. It’s as if the U.S. Constitution was written for a different nation than exists today.
This dismissal of the Constitution is most evident by the current Democrat party efforts to dismiss all Bill of Rights freedoms and protections - in particular, to censor and suppress free speech.
The U.S. federal government is entirely controlled by the Democrat party.
Democrats control both the executive and legislative branches - the presidency and Congress (the supposed Republican majority in the House of Representatives is a farce, as many Republicans side with Democrats on all issues).
Democrats control every important federal agency, to include Departments of Justice, Defense, Health and Human Services, Education, State, Homeland Security, etc.
Democrats control the majority of courts. The Supreme Court isn’t entirely controlled by any one party, but the majority of lower courts are controlled by Democrats.
Many of the most populous and influential states are controlled by Democrats: California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota among them.
This gives the Democrat party near-totalitarian control and power over the United States. And Democrats are using this power to censor and suppress Americans in total violation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The Democrat party in 2024 is the very government the founders of the United States loathed and fought against and wrote the Constitution to prevent.
Top Democrats have been working overtime to censor and restrict freedom of speech. Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, John Kerry, Gavin Newsom, Tim Walz, Barack Obama, Kathy Hochul, J.B. Pritzker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats have publicly and strongly voiced their “concern” over free speech and their intentions to restrict our freedom of speech - again using the false and gaslighting mantra of “protecting people and children from harmful disinformation, content and hate speech.”
Their fascist and anti-constitutional attitude is best summed up by John Kerry, former Secretary of State and currently the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate:
Kerry speaks in Democrat-code. His code is deciphered in the brackets after each of his statements.
Kerry: “. . .it's part of our problem, particularly in democracies, in terms of building consensus around any issue. It's really hard to govern today.” [This is code for “we can’t fool and gaslight our citizens the way we used to. We can’t hide our corruption, lies and true agendas like we could before.]
“The referees we used to have to determine what's a fact and what isn't a fact . . . have been eviscerated to a certain degree.” [This is code for “We want to be the only ones to define disinformation, lies, facts, truth and hate speech so that we can continue spewing nothing but disinformation, lies and hate speech while blocking any facts, science or opinions that contradict us.”]
“There's a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities [social media], in order to guarantee that you're going to have some accountability on facts, etc.” [Code for “We want to control the narratives and information flow so we aren’t held accountable for our corruption, lies and fraudulent agendas.]
“But look, if people go to only one source and the source they go to is sick and has an agenda and they're putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just hammer it out of existence.” [Code for “That damn freedom of speech is poison to use, because it exposes our corruption and crimes, and gets in the way of us putting out disinformation and gaslighting propaganda.]
“So what we need is to win the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you're free to be able to implement change.” [Code for “We want to stay in power so we can continue dismantling the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and be a totalitarian, fascist government.]
Other Democrats listed above have voiced the same message and intention.
Hillary Clinton went on CNN recently and stated “If they [social media platforms] don't moderate content, we lose total control.” She actually said the quiet part out loud - Democrats want total control. Clinton wants “national action” taken by Congress to restrict freedom of speech - in total disregard for and violation of the U.S. Constitution which prohibits such government intervention. Clinton has voiced her desire to limit free speech several times over the years.
“Hillary Clinton is continuing her global efforts to get countries, including the United States, to crackdown on opposing views. Clinton went on CNN to lament the continued resistance to censorship and to call upon Congress to limit free speech.
“That is why figures like Clinton are going ‘old school’ and turning to government or corporations to simply crackdown on citizens. One of the lowest moments came after Elon Musk bought Twitter on a pledge to restore free speech protections, Clinton called upon European officials to force Elon Musk to censor American citizens under the infamous Digital Services Act (DSA). This is a former democratic presidential nominee calling upon Europeans to force the censorship of Americans.
“Other democrats have praised Brazil for banning X. For her part, Clinton praised the anti-free speech efforts in California and New York and called for the rest of the country to replicate the approach of those states.”
Private citizens, privately-owned businesses and publicly-traded corporations can engage in all the censorship they like; there is no constitutional restriction on citizens and businesses. But when businesses are coerced by government to censor and “moderate content,” that’s an egregious constitutional crime.
Democrats in California passed a law, AB 587, that required social media companies to provide regular reports to the state as to how they “moderate content” and “handle problematic speech” - problematic speech being defined by California politicians, of course. Fortunately, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down key parts of this clearly-unconstitutional law in early September of this year.
The Democrat party has illegally coerced and bribed social media platforms to censor and delete any material, content and accounts they deem as “problematic” - “problematic” because they expose and oppose corruption and unconstitutional actions and laws.
The incredible extent and scope of Democrat engagement in illegal censorship activities have been uncovered over the past 3-4 years.
The infamous Twitter Files as published by Matt Taibbi show that Twitter under Jack Dorsey was a Democrat mouthpiece and propaganda tool - illegally and in complete violation of the First Amendment.
Facebook was and still is a tool of the Democrat party, as is Google.
The Democrat party worked hard to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story. They managed to convince all social media platforms and nearly all mainstream news media to bury this story - the story of massive corruption by Hunter and Joe Biden which has since been proven true. (I believe Joe Biden is guilty of treason as VP under Obama, since he sold influence to China and Ukraine for millions of dollars.)
The only mainstream news media agency that broke ranks and released the story prior to the 2020 elections was the New York Post. The Post was vilified and the story falsely discredited by all other mainstream news and social media companies.
(As an important aside, all surveys show that Biden would have lost the election had the Democrats not been able to censor and suppress the laptop story via news and social media companies. Every survey showed the same result: the majority of Americans would NOT have voted for Joe Biden had the story come out in full prior to the 2020 election.)
This list goes on and on of individual Democrats and various Democrat-sponsored laws seeking to censor and suppress any written or spoken words that Democrats deem unacceptable or “problematic” - too many to list in this article. But the examples given above are representative of Democrats’ intention to eliminate free speech - and their false justifications.
The European Union is also operating in full fascist and censorship mode. The EU is engaged in all-out seek-and-destroy missions against anyone who speaks or writes any truthful information that dares disagree with EU agendas or ‘official’ EU narratives.
The EU passed their Digital Services Act - a draconian set of laws designed to severely censor and suppress any written or spoken words the EU doesn’t like (see here, here, here and here).
In particular, the EU governing bodies have targeted Twitter/X and Musk due to Musk’s conversion of Twitter from a totally leftist/Democrat/global oligarch-dominated echo chamber and mouthpiece, into a free speech platform allowing most any opinions and content. X still deletes posts and suspends account for extreme egregious content, but for the most part X is close to a totally free-speech platform. (Of all platforms in the world, Rumble for video and Substack for authors allow the most freedom of speech and expression.)
The EU has been warning Musk again and again they will take drastic action against X if he doesn’t curb and moderate content allowed on X. Such EU actions include the 6% penalty on worldwide revenues as called for in the EU’s Digital Services Act, or even banning X from member European nations. Musk has thus far thumbed his nose at the EU, refusing to comply - an attitude I love and admire and commend.
The EU and its member European national governments have enacted dozens of laws aimed at curbing speech and information flow. The article Censorship vs Freedom of Thought and Speech - The Road to Fascism and Totalitarianism lists most of these laws and restrictions - but more anti-free-speech laws are passed almost monthly so it’s difficult keeping up with them.
The EU and most European governments have gone rabidly, foaming-at-the-mouth insane over what they deem as disinformation and hate speech. As noted throughout this article, what they and other governments define as ‘disinformation and hate speech’ include any facts, truths or opinions that expose or disagree with EU-supported agendas and narratives.
Governments in Canada, Australia and New Zealand are also rabidly against free speech, and have enacted laws nearly as draconian, punitive and oppressive as the EU. The article Censorship vs Freedom of Thought and Speech - The Road to Fascism and Totalitarianism lists most of these laws, but more are being passed.
Disinformation and Hate Speech
There are laws of human nature just as true and firm as laws of physics. One of those human laws apply to this discussion:
Psychotics, corrupt individuals and criminals accuse others of what they do themselves.
One aspect of this law of human nature is: those who shout and preach the most against disinformation and hate speech are the ones spewing the most disinformation and hate speech.
The individuals, organizations and governments in this chart account for 80% or more of the disinformation on planet earth.
These individuals, organizations and governments form a sort of alliance or partnership, as they all work together toward common goals - more political power and more money for themselves at the expense of everyone else on the planet.
This alliance is more accurately a cabal or cartel given their fraudulent, corrupt agendas and gaslighting propaganda to hide their true intentions and goals.
Combined, there are approximately 8,000-10,000 people actively and knowingly part of this cabal - out of a global populations of 8 billion. But collectively they control over 85% of the planet’s wealth and resources - which in turn gives them control over most of earth’s populations.
Western governments have been subverted and corrupted by global oligarchs and their operatives, pushing fraudulent and corrupt agendas manufactured by these oligarchs (see here and here).
Hence their obsession with censorship and ‘content moderation.’
Summary
Western governments try to hide their corruption and/or true agendas by working to censor and suppress free speech, attempting to block anyone and any information that exposes and opposes their agendas.
These governments justify their nonstop violations of their nations’ constitutions with the gaslighting argument “We want to protect people from harmful disinformation and hate speech.” This is a lie, intended only to shut down anyone who opposes false narratives and hidden agendas.
“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.” - Maximilien Robespierre
Western governments work to keep their citizens as ignorant as possible. Censorship, suppression of free speech, coercion, threats and bribery are the tools they use to accomplish this.
Well written and documented. I’m much more optimistic today after America has at least partially woken up to the tyranny of the global elitists and the sellout puppets of the DNC evidenced by the election. The stranglehold on balanced reporting by MSM due to corporate advertising, especially pHARMa, has pushed us to the edge of the abyss on total information control and thus public opinion.