He is anti-war and has interfered with corporate profits. The crazy world that we live in right now unfortunately is an opportunity for evil organizations and people to strip away yet more freedom.
I feel like I can almost always personally do the right thing in life, take actions that I later will feel good about. Elite monied interests apparently don’t have any sort of social consciousness or conscience.
I think our election system would be improved with instant-run-off voting (aka alternate vote), election holidays, and blockchain voting - with citizen blockchains.
People counting paper ballots is not bullet-proof.
Please don’t cancel my life and career for trusting the integrity of the math behind cryptographic hashing more than black box voting machines.
I think pretty soon we'll see a movement for national ids to have an electronic component to them, which would be useful exactly in these kinds of situations.
No you won’t, and it’s exactly why we use the social security system for identification even though it is explicitly stated to not be used as such: Americans consistently shot down attempts to identify its own citizens. Any suggestion otherwise ignores history and why we use what we use today.
Ron Paul authored the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act. He's always been anti war, anti large government, anti militarized police.
Facebook knows regulation is on the horizon. They also know their best bet to stay alive is to kiss up to the new administration and turn the issue into a partisan one. By banning political competitors they're buying themselves four more years of time.
We really need a better vocabulary for talking about this sort of thing than the 20th century terms of fascism, communism, and liberalism. I don't have the words yet, but we need to start inventing them.
We are in a new era, and our disasters won't look like theirs. People who shrug away this kind of censorship with the magic words "private company" are in a dangerous form of denial.
... you say, as the OP links to a fully accessible social media post by Ron Paul.
From Techdirt:
Moderation is a platform/service owner or operator saying “we don’t do that here”. Personal discretion is an individual telling themselves “I won’t do that here”. Editorial discretion is an editor saying “we won’t print that here”, either to themselves or to a writer. Censorship is someone saying “you won’t do that anywhere” alongside threats or actions meant to suppress speech.
As I pointed out above, this is really 20th century thinking. Social media allows for a kind of mob behavior that has shown itself antithetical to the kind of market liberalism most of our current assumptions are based on.
Or did you not notice that Parler and its hundreds of thousands of users had literally been systematically erased from the internet yesterday by hounding their service providers?
It's bizarre to see the liberal left I grew up with now defending a kind of insane market fundamentalism and corporate control of the commons of free speech without even blinking at the contradiction. I think that liberal left I grew up with is dead.
We need a name for what it has become, and where they are taking us.
How about "social authoritarian"? Or "non-government authoritarian"? They don't have the power of government behind them, but they manage to be pretty authoritarian without it...
Well, I got "an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization" from the New Oxford American Dictionary.
We could also go with Wikipedia's "Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe" if you're down with crowd-sourced definitions.
If you're not, there's historian Kevin Passmore's more verbose one: "Fascism is a set of ideologies and practices that seeks to place the nation above all other sources of loyalty, and to create a mobilized national community. Fascist nationalism is reactionary in that it entails implacable hostility to socialism and feminism, for they are seen as prioritizing class or gender rather than nation. This is why fascism is a movement of the extreme right."
And, of course, we could go right to the source. Benito Mussolini wrote, "Granted that the 19th century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the 20th century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century."
If you really want to argue with the claim that fascism is a far-right, authoritarian movement, have at it, but that claim has a whole pile of evidence on its side.
They said they were. They also said they were peaceful and democratic. Read "The Manifesto in Practice" section of your link before you take what the manifesto said at face value.
Strong “feminists” that demanded the purpose of women was to stay at home and raise children. Most of Asia had suffrage for women much before the Western world but I would not call them strong feminists.
Nazi Germany took women backwards. Nice revisionism there.
> The policies contrasted starkly with the evolution of women's rights and gender equality under the Weimar Republic
> Women in Nazi Germany were subject to doctrines of Nazism by the Nazi Party (NSDAP), which promoted exclusion of women from the political life of Germany as well as its executive body and executive committees.
> the Nazi regime only permitted and encouraged women to fill the roles of mother and wife; women were excluded from all positions of responsibility, notably in the political and academic spheres.
The literal definition of fascism is an socialist economic system characterized by state run private enterprise. China is probably the closest modern example of true fascism in the literal sense.
No seriously fascism means none of the things people attribute to it today.
Read the about writings of giovanni gentile -- the karl marx of fascism -- if your interested in what literal fascism means.
By his description (which I don't doubt particularly, despite not trusting Ron Paul, really, at all) the same reason most people get blocked from Facebook if they get blocked, for unspecified “repeated violations of community standards” for which no prior notice of violations was given and no specific violated standards are identified.
objecting to a state's election process and /or electoral votes is not sedition. in fact, it's been done by Democratic senators after the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections. this is part of the democratic process.
In that same article, explicitly and then in the comments, is the note that the referenced objections were not done with actual intent or likelihood of something happening, and was not done at the same time as the leader of the losing party encouraging people for the last two months that they'd been cheated.
> during an active insurrection it is. or did you miss the planned attacks on the 17th
sorry, but participating in the democratic process is not sedition.
and i would hope we never allow mobs to dictate our participation in the democratic process. whether it involves tallying (or objecting to) electoral votes or confirming a supreme court justice.
right but the mob's goal was to dictate our democratic processes. their entire stated goal was to get Trump confirmed as President despite the vote etc
Got it. Any and all concerns about the election process should be withheld until further notice. Which is when, exactly?
I do not believe widespread election fraud invalidated the results of the 2020 election. I condemn anyone who participated in or advocated for the violence and other illegal behavior at the capitol last Wednesday. But I also have many criticisms the US election system. When am I allowed to discuss them without "inciting violence"?
It has been five days now. The people involved in that riot are long gone.
For anyone who thought this was just about the recent events, you now know have your answer. It is undoubtedly a political war going on, driven by leftists at Big Tech.
Free speech in the form of non-violent speech is not free on the various platforms as they say they are.
This is mostly targeted at users with a larger following...
As as example if you have a diff opinion, or say something then you might get suspended or banned. Even so when others on the platform are more violent, and encouraging violent acts. Look at twitter accounts of Iran, China, and all the accounts for antifa for example. They use twitter to cause and incite violence, yet they remain.
A few come to mind phrases come to mind that may get you banned on FB/Twitter:
“#Hydroxychloroquine is a safe drug.
"Eric Ciaramella"
It boils down to this. Left or right is irrelevant, these companies will remove you if you say something they don't want you to say, there's no additional complexity that needs to be analyzed. Any judgement that one needs to make on how to feel about the censoring they do can be made on that simple rule alone. I'm amazed the discussions about censorship have been muddied to this extent where even the past relationships of people have been scrutinized to determine if they were deserving enough of a ban. None of that matters - did you say something they did not want specifically _you_ (the individual) to say at this time? Then they will decide to ban/suspend/remove you. Now how you feel about that is how you feel but there's no reason to even think "Well they let this person say this!", because these companies are not in the business of free speech. They can turn on a dime tomorrow and start banning Antifa members left and right and it still wouldn't change their bottom line.
This is from November 4, 2020 right after the election. She might have been suspended originally in 2017, but wasn't this time and furthermore wasn't banned for repeated breaking of the rules. You can click on the link and still see the tweet.
Imagine if Trump had tweeted a photo of any Democrat's decapitated head, do you think the reaction would have been the same?
No, the twitter rules don't make caveats for different positions in society. They are blanket rules that should apply to everyone equally but are not. That's the entire point I'm making.
> No, the twitter rules don't make caveats for different positions in society.
They do, though. (or rather, they did... I honestly have no idea what state their rules are in today, but they've changed some things) It's the only reason Trump was allowed to stay on Twitter as long as he was, and Twitter were transparent about that. [1]
Trump is in a position in society that Kathy Griffin is not. So Trump could tweet outside the rules and not have them removed, but Kathy Griffin should not be able to. That's what I think you meant when you said
> It's the only reason Trump was allowed to stay on Twitter as long as he was
But here we have the data point of Kathy Griffin's tweet staying up while Trump's tweets are taken down and blocked. So I'm saying that datapoint, that tweet by Kathy Griffin staying up, does not fit your "Twitter lets leaders get away with more" explanation. That tweet from Kathy Griffin should have been removed faster than Trump's tweets, but it's still there.
We can all choose to stop using facebook, instagram, and whatsapp and their power evaporates.
In contrast we cannot choose to stop using the US government. Would you really prefer to have the US government decide what can and cannot be censored?
> Would you really prefer to have the US government decide what can and cannot be censored?
Seems fair- after all it is voted by all citizens, not just by the ones that make more noise. Also, there are the citizens' representatives in the parliament, who openly discuss issues and try to establish widely agreed-upon rules.
Fair as well, but then you have to decide: it's either the democratically elected government that sets the boundaries of the free speech, or it's private monopolies that do the same, without anyone's oversight. For some reason (but most probably just because there is a temporary alignment between them and the choices of those monopolies) most US users of HN seem to be fine with censors of free speech being private, undemocratic entities.
People don't seem to understand how close we are to an unrecoverable fall into fascism.
This is not cultural censorship. Facebook is finally waking up to the reality that lies about our elections are well on their way to starting a civil war. With that display on the 6th, that rhetoric is now over the line. They let it go, right up until the consequences (as heinous as they are predictable) were clear.
> Nanci Pelosi tweet May 2017: Our election was hijacked. There is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy & #FollowTheFacts.
Which...they didn’t do. Republicans blocked having witnesses or documents appear during the Senate impeachment proceedings.
So no, collusion was not largely proven to be false, because once it moved to the Senate, nobody was called to testify under oath since Republicans blocked it. The Mueller report remains largely unvetted, and while its conclusions are weak due to Justice Department policy on what a sitting president can be charged with (or accused of? I am not clear on this distinction), its evidence appears to be strong. We don’t know if it holds up or not. It was never rigorously examined, because Republicans blocked it.
> It was never rigorously examined, because Republicans blocked it.
in my opinion, the objective person would likely agree that Trump and his campaign have been rigorously examined both formally (by Mueller and his team) and informally (by the media).
i don't intend to change topics here, but in context of your usage of "never rigorously examined" one could point to Hunter Biden's international dealings as lacking rigorous examination, as stories on this topic have even been actively suppressed.
The Mueller report is pretty damning. Unfortunately almost no one actually read it, and Barr's "summary" was allowed to dominate the news before it was released.
> one that largely proved to be false and filled with fabricated stories.
And that's bullshit. Mueller Report was a damning document that Mueller didn't have the guts to force Barr's hand, and Barr gleefully lied about and declined prosecution.
Furthermore, the objections by many about the election being "hijacked" was not an actual claim to voter-box or voter fraud, but of disinformation and foreign interference.
You should stop posting false whatabouts on HN, it's unbecoming.
please don't take my comment out of context. i was referring to the narratives spun by the media as largely being false and filled with fabricated stories, not the Mueller report (something you're clearly still clinging to).
as recent as June of 2020 the NYT ran a piece about "Russian bounties in Afghanistan" that was effectively walked back shortly thereafter after it was deemed "less than conclusive".
No, the media spun the narrative of Russian interference, with possible collusion, something that turned out to be true (interference) and collusion was left uncertain (Muller stated quite clearly that if he could show Trump didn't collude, then Mueller would have said so, but that he was not going to say so).
"'The president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed,' Mueller told the House judiciary committee, adding that Trump could theoretically be indicted after he leaves office." [1]
Then the Trump DOJ didn't release the summary of the report, but their edited version, leaving plenty out, in order to get people like you to write what you just did. Mueller was so outraged at how the DOJ spun the report, that he immediately did a press conference about it, an unprecedented step.
Here is Mueller's letter to Barr on exactly this [2].
Once Trump is out of office, and several years have gone by without charges, then maybe you can claim these concerns were false, but they most certainly were not fabrications or lies.
> but they most certainly were not fabrications or lies.
i'd strongly beg to differ. fake news was at its peak during the first two years of "Russia-gate" with networks reporting on hearsay and drawing wild conclusions irrespective of hard evidence. journalistic integrity was thrown to the wind.
it seemed as if every week a "we got him" story broke only to fizzle as it turned out to be false.
the linked article below offers some examples of these fake news stories about Trump. and I do recognize that the second quote is written by Barr, not Mueller.
I don’t think parent comment should be downvoted. I pushed back too in another comment above about the validation of evidence. IMO the evidence is mostly untested, and the_drunkard is correct about the media’s premature response.
Also, given current events, here’s a fun quote from the linked article:
> The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years, with votive candles sold in his image and Saturday Night Live cast members singing “All I Want for Christmas is You” to him featuring the rhymey line: “Mueller please come through, because the only option is a coup.”
You present an opinion piece from Matt Taibbi on substack (where anyone can publish anything) as evidence of what mainstream news was writing?
You might as well cite any fringe blogger. Your proof is like some idiot writing Trump is an Alien Unicorn on a personal wordpress site then claiming mainstream news was calling Trump an Alien Unicorn.
>You present an opinion piece from Matt Taibbi on substack (where anyone can publish anything) as evidence of what mainstream news was writing?
> You might as well cite any fringe blogger. Your proof is like some idiot writing Trump is an Alien Unicorn on a personal wordpress site then claiming mainstream news was calling Trump an Alien Unicorn.
> No wonder you're convinced of wild things.
> I'm done with this level of dishonesty.
woah.
setting Taibbi aside, can you not see how news cycles were dominated by a "Russian collusion" narrative the first 3 years of Trump's presidency? a narrative that largely proved to be exaggerated, false, and self-serving (it was great for business).
as recent as July of this year, the NYT published a story filled with anonymous sources and accusations of Russian bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan. within days, the media went into their typical "blitz" with this story and Joe Biden even had an ad ready to air in response to it. this story, like many others not only could not be corroborated by any mentioned parties, but proved to be "less than conclusive" and was later significantly walked back.
Except for the indictments waiting him upon leaving office. Trump is referred to as "Individual #1" in indictments that sent people to prison, and in the Cohen case, this is clearly Trump. That phrase becomes unsealed when prosecutors unseal it, and they're most likely waiting for Trump's term to be over, making it clearer he can be Federally indicted.
Otherwise who do you think "Individual #1" is?
So when Trump is cleared by these indictments in the future I'll admit there was nothing provable in court. Until then we should wait to see what these existing charges do when they hit Federal court.
You are making an unwarranted assumption here. “Individual #1” follows the norm for unindicted co-conspirators. Now, it's true that an individual subject of sealed indictments related to the crime in question would (because the indictment is nonpublic) be treated the same, but you can't conclude the existence of a sealed indictment from this usage.
Further, none of his “Individual #1” references are related to Russia collusion, even though they arose from things that spun out of that investigation.
>“Individual #1” follows the norm for unindicted co-conspirators
Yes, unindicted because it's not clear if you can indict a President. Those are waiting for the day Trump is out of office, when indictments will likely follow.
From the sentencing memorandum [1]: Cohen states he "acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1", which is likely a felony - usually crime bosses dictating lower level people to commit crimes get harsher punishments than the underlings - and this will likely be tested once Trump leaves office.
So "Individual #1" is not merely a mention of a person. It's the label of a person that directed felony activities.
Can you point to any instance where Ron Paul lied about our elections? Genuine question. I don't follow Ron Paul, but that seems out of character from what I've seen of him many years ago.
My take is that Ron Paul is probably one of the most reasonable people in politics.
What's ironic is that people thought he was crazy when he said it would be possible to abolish the IRS, even though he had all the history and facts to back it up.
I don't follow him either, but it is almost certain that the movement of "stolen election" talk from allowed to verboten is what caused his page to be suspended. I don't have access to his previous facebook content, so I can't search it.
> Facebook is finally waking up to the reality that lies about our elections are well on their way to starting a civil war.
I think it more likely that Facebook is finally waking up to the imminent risk of heavy and heavy-handed regulation, possibly destroying its business model. I haven't seen evidence that Facebook cares about anything but Facebook.
I know how close people say we are to an unrecoverable fall into fascism. A real attempt at fascism would have had much better armed and organized attackers. This was a self-directed mob, which was bad enough; real fascism would have had quasi-official orchestration instead of letting people freelance. That lack of the real power behind it makes me question your narrative.
But I see how quickly and how broadly conservative people are getting muzzled and vilified. I can to some degree see sense in taking away the microphone (and networking apparatus) between now and Jan 20. On the other hand, I can see it becoming the start of a witch hunt. How far are you going to go to shut down conservative voices, and for how long? The fact that it's hitting Ron Paul indicates to me that it is over-reaching reasonable bounds, even for the short term.
> People don't seem to understand how close we are to an unrecoverable fall into fascism.
Oh, I think more of them do than seem to, but some of them are either hedging their bets with regard to the coming regime in case it happens, or outright supportive. Both groups have a strong motivation not to publicly acknowledge the risk.
So much for "I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It."
Very much of the following situation...
First they came for ...Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.