Transcript for 8/28/24: ZUCKER PUNCH W/ ANTHONY RUSSO

With every passing day, we’re being moved further down the road towards a totalitarian society characterized by government censorship, violence, corruption, hypocrisy and intolerance, all packaged for our supposed benefit in the Orwellian doublespeak of national security, tolerance and so-called “government speech.”

Yes, this one the greatest conspiracies of all conspiracies and to open up the discussion about it – gets you all kinds of accusations about your political leanings.

Conspiracies of tyranny don’t care about political leanings –all they care about are the useless idiots they can recruit to convince them to roll over and play dead.

It is like a deadly Pavlovian experiment.

George Orwell once said “Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks the whip. But the really well-trained dog is the one that turns somersaults when there is no whip.”

Oh, we have reached that moment in time—where if a politician or bureaucrat can’t dazzle them with brilliance – you can baffle them with BS.

Bu the biggest enemy of the state is someone who asks questions or tells the truth.

By now it sounds cliché – but it applies because of what is in today’s news. 

I along many other independent commentators have said that a democracy or even a republic cannot survive as long as there is censorship and anyone who preaches democracy and freedom while secretly heading up a campaign of censorship is a tyrant and certainly does not deserve to be in charge of this country or any country that declared it is free,

No democracy can survive censorship. If there is censorship, then each individual cannot make his/her own decisions (voting decisions or otherwise) on the basis of truth but only on the basis of whatever passes through the censor's filter, which is always whatever supports the censoring regime and implants it evermore deeply into the public's mind — regardless of its actual truthfulness.

The public as a whole does have a mind, and social engineering can be used for the greater good -- but it mostly comes as a massaging and manipulation tool --where lies and deceit are used against you.

The herd mentality is very powerful and if it is given false information or if information is withheld -- it can mean trouble in the future for a struggling democracy as the majority is lead into a trap-- the collective is brainwashed successfully as differences of opinion are silenced by the tyrannical administration. 

The majority rules any democratic government. If the government doesn't really represent the majority, it's no democracy at all, but instead represents other individuals, the real rulers, who might be hidden.

Consequently, if a democracy exists but a censor somehow becomes allowed, and emerges into existence in a given land, then democracy will inevitably be snuffed-out there, and dictatorship will inevitably be the result — merely because censorship has been applied there, which blocks some essential truths (truths that the rulers don't want the public to know) from reaching the public.

Nothing is as toxic to democracy as is censorship. Censorship prevents democracy.

Now "The Big Lie" goes beyond mere rhetoric about elections being stolen -- it now falls on those who have made the accusation to explain themselves and why they are hiding behind a facade of joy and democracy when they are secretly constructing a plan for oppression and tyranny.

I know it is so easy for the left to warn of an impending dictatorship -- because they have so many pieces of disinformation in their arsenal. They also have abused their power with social media -- as Mark Zuckerberg has come forward saying that the Biden administration or should we say the Harris administration put the jackboot on his neck and pressured him to censor stories that questioned COVID-19 and its origins and also stories about Hunter Biden and his laptop.

Now the mainstream media is claiming that Mark Zuckerberg was pressured into admitting this and that he is not telling the truth.

Zuckerberg wrote a letter to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee stating that The Biden administration “pressured” Facebook parent Meta to “censor” content related to Covid-19.

The letter further stated:

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree."

The letter was posted on the committee’s Facebook page and on its account on the X social media platform on Monday.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed the letter’s authenticity to CNBC.

Zuckerberg said it was ultimately Meta’s decision to take down any content, but he noted he believes that the government pressure was wrong. 

“I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg said.

In a statement to Politico, the White House said, “When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this Administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”

“Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present,” it added.

Zuckerberg said Meta made some choices that, “with the benefit of hindsight and new information,” the tech giant would not make again.

I need to reiterate that a government that censors anyone or anything for their benefit do not represent democratic values.

I hope people take that into consideration when they are being bombarded with the propaganda concerning the hop and joy that awaits us with the Harris Walz administration.

This is an outrage, not just because independent journalists were being shadow banned and harassed, but that it has been covered up and allowed to happen in a so called democratic country.

It is an outrage because the whole Democrat platform has been embraced as some sort of progressive and thoughtful transition into some manufactured Utopia.

They have been using their fascist measures to meddle into our cognitive resonance and have been controlling content. Now the mainstream media questions Mark Zuckerberg’s sincerity and now believes that the Trump administration has bullied him into confessing this.

This is a sick and twisted group of liars we are dealing with -- they lie to our faces and then change the course expecting us to believe that it is all on the level -- it has been one big lie after lie --and they will tell you to your face that there is no malfeasance or deception going on -- we the people know better and it has to be talked about and used to indicate that the democracy they are saying the support is nothing but mob rule.

This is why democracy is so rare. Almost every dictatorship calls itself a 'democracy'. But a government which calls itself "democratic" isn't necessarily democratic, but more likely it has simply fooled its public to think that it is one -- the left says that the right is a threat to democracy, when their continued oppression has actually killed any chanced of having a healthy democracy rather than an oppressive dictatorship.

Anyone who endorses censorship is a totalitarian, a supporter of totalitarianism, even without recognizing the fact. If the person fails to recognize the fact that censorship is applied only in a totalitarian regime, then that person has bought into the most basic belief of totalitarianism: the idea that censorship can be justified in some circumstances. Dictatorships always pump that lie, so as to be able to continue to exist as a dictatorship. There is no circumstance which ever can justify censorship, unless one believes that dictatorship is, or can be, good instead of bad.

If you think that some censorship is good, then you have bought into the fundamental belief that is promulgated in any dictatorship. It's a lie, but it fools the majority of people, in a dictatorship.

No writing, nor any other statement, should ever be censored, no matter how vile it is. Indeed, if it is vile, then it needs to be exposed, not hidden; because, if it is hidden, then it will fester until it grows in the dark and finally becomes sprung upon a public who have never been inoculated against it by truth, and therefore the false belief becomes actually seriously dangerous and likely to spread like wildfire, because it had been censored before it became public. The most deadly infections are those that grow in the dark and then become released upon a population who have no pre-existing protection against it.

Every religion, and every evil regime, seeks to censor-out whatever contradicts its propaganda, and is therefore intrinsically hostile toward democracy, but the danger is always being presented not by the writers and speakers of the propaganda, but by its publishers (regardless of media: print, broadcast, or online) — they are the source of all censorship. They are the censors. 

The people who select what to publish, and what not to publish, are the censors. The regime's media are what perpetrate censorship, routinely, because those media are actually essential arms of the dictatorship, even if they are not directly owned by the government but instead by the clique who actually possess control over the government because they possess control over the mainstream (and much of the non-mainstream) media and thus the public's mind in a 'democracy' in order to make it the dictatorship that it actually is.

Facebook conspired with the government to censor individuals expressing “disapproved” views about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zuckerberg’s confession comes in the wake of a series of court rulings that turn a blind eye to the government’s technofascism.

I really don't believe that the people understand how important this is -- yes we all know that politicians lie, but this was more than lying -- this was a jackbooted enforcement of censorship aimed at a social media platform that is known as a news spreader-- more powerful than any mainstream news source.

In a 2-1 decision in Children’s Health Defense v. Meta, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit brought by Children’s Health Defense against Meta Platforms for restricting CHD’s posts, fundraising, and advertising on Facebook following communications between Meta and federal government officials.

In a unanimous decision in the combined cases of NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, the U.S. Supreme Court avoided ruling on whether the states could pass laws to prohibit censorship by Big Tech companies on social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.

And in a 6-3 ruling in Murthy v. Missouri , the Supreme Court sidestepped a challenge to the federal government’s efforts to coerce social media companies into censoring users’ First Amendment expression.

Internal documents released by the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government confirmed what we have long suspected: that the government has been working in tandem with social media companies to censor speech.

By “censor,” we’re referring to concerted efforts by the government to muzzle, silence and altogether eradicate any speech that runs afoul of the government’s own approved narrative.

The revelations that Facebook worked in concert with the Biden administration to censor content related to COVID-19, including humorous jokes, credible information and so-called disinformation, followed on the heels of a ruling by a federal court in Louisiana that prohibits executive branch officials from communicating with social media companies about controversial content in their online forums.

Likening the government’s heavy-handed attempts to pressure social media companies to suppress content critical of COVID vaccines or the election to “an almost dystopian scenario,” Judge Terry Doughty warned that “the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth."

The government is not protecting us from “dangerous” disinformation campaigns. It is laying the groundwork to insulate us from “dangerous” ideas that might cause us to think for ourselves and, in so doing, challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

Thus far, the tech giants have been able to sidestep the First Amendment by virtue of their non-governmental status, but it’s a dubious distinction at best when they are marching in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

Nothing good can come from allowing the government to sidestep the Constitution.

The steady, pervasive censorship creep that is being inflicted on us by corporate tech giants with the blessing of the powers-that-be threatens to bring about a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.

Orwell intended 1984 as a warning. Instead, it is being used as a dystopian instruction manual for socially engineering a populace that is compliant, conformist and obedient to Big Brother.

Things are worse than we know, because censorship exists. Maybe censorship is pervasive.

There is no joy -- no pushing forward -- the entire left wing has been lying their way into the hearts and minds of the people.

They have suppressed information that they claimed would kill people -- but now we know what their agenda was -- and now continues to be.

This is scary when you see just how easy it is to fall for an administration that puts a tyrannical hold on free speech and expects us to believe that they are the saviors against a so called dictatorship from the right wing?

I know that decrying censorship objecting makes me a right-wing makes me sound like a Nazi-kissing literal Hitler in the eyes of many in this bizarre funhouse mirror world of online political discourse, but I insist that censorship by powerful corporations is one of the greatest obstacles we face in our fight to survive and thrive as a species in a world that is increasingly imperiled and dominated.

The idea that we can vote our problems away is only useful insofar as it gets the populace trying the doors and learning for themselves that those doors are locked. You understand that if the Jackboots come pounding on your door at 3 in the morning to take you away -- you have nowhere or no place to express your disgust and anger?

You can yell all you want in your padded cell asking yourself "What happened to my joy -- my world. my life?"

Then you realize what the Big lie is really about -- it isn’t about January 6th -- it is what Morning Joe has been telling you, or Rachel Maddow -- or the robotic blab you get with Anderson Cooper.

It has been the Zucker Punch from Facebook banning you for having an opinion, or posting memes or even jokes about vaccines or even Hunter Bidens hookers and blow.

Amazing right?

But now there are people out there that have bought into the manure pile -- and they are up to their mouths in it --which is good because it makes it easier for them to keep their mouths shut --which is exactly what these liars want.

Eventually, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes “extremism, “we the people” might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other.

Whatever we tolerate now—whatever we turn a blind eye to—whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others, whether in the name of securing racial justice or defending democracy or combatting fascism, will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.

I want to know how anyone can defend this -- saying that this is something they support -- an administration that side steps the constitution for their own political gain.

We should all be alarmed when any individual or group—prominent or not—is censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.

Given what we know about the government’s tendency to define its own reality and attach its own labels to behavior and speech that challenges its authority, this should be cause for alarm across the entire political spectrum.

To ignore the long-term ramifications of such censorship is dangerously naïve, because whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now will eventually be used against you by tyrants of your own making.

If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

Eventually, as Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.