There was a time when the disclosure of a back channel for politically motivated censorship would have generated widespread acclaim and called for awards. This is not that time. Just ask Matt Taibbi.
No one is suggesting that the New York Post should receive a Pulitzer Prize for its long fight to prove the truth about the Hunter Biden laptop. Despite an alliance of most of the media and political establishment arrayed against it, the New York Post fought censorship and unrelenting attacks to bring this massive influence peddling operation to light. (Of course, the New York Times and Washington Post can keep Pulitzer Prizes for reporting on debunked Russian collusion claims created and pushed by the Clinton campaign).
In the case of journalist Matt Taibbi, his analysis of thousands of documents has met with the standard scorched earth campaign from liberal reporters and pundits.
As discussed in today’s Hill column, the document dump confirmed what had long been suspected: Biden and Democratic party officials succeeded in getting Twitter to block the New York Post story and suspend those who even tried to retweet or link to the story before the election.
I will not repeat the content of those emails on how Twitter “handled” demands from the Biden campaign and the DNC for censorship. Musk gave the material to Taibbi to synthesize the voluminous record. That is when the familiar media flash mob formed.
NBC Reporter Ben Collins attacked Taibbi on Twitter and said “Imagine throwing it all away to do PR work for the richest person in the world. Humiliating s***.”
New York Times contributor Wajahat Ali also attacked Taibbi:
“Matt Taibbi…what sad, disgraceful downfall. I swear, kids, he did good work back in the day. Should be a cautionary tale for everyone. Selling your soul for the richest white nationalist on Earth. Well, he’ll eat well for the rest of his life I guess. But is it worth it?”
So Taibbi’s reported downfall as a writer is due to his role in disclosing a massive censorship system operated at the direction or behest of one political party and one political family. He is “disgraceful” because he is suggesting that the media and social media companies should not have censored a story on a multimillion dollar influence peddling scheme run by the Biden family.
Taibbi is not alone in such disgrace, according to Ali. He has also attacked former New York Times writer Bari Weiss, including for her statement that she was tired of the pandemic as being somehow racist. (“It reflects America’s cruelty, right?…we have also had cruelty, White supremacy, misogyny. America says go ahead and die, but just don’t die on my lawn.”)
Of course, Ali may be right on what it takes today to be accepted as a journalist. Taibbi is now persona non grata as opposed to Ali, who is routinely invited to write for publications like the New York Times and the Daily Beast despite a litany of controversies.
In one column, Ali suggested white Republican voters would prefer to burn down their own homes then rent to a minority member and compared them to the Al Qaeda terrorists on Flight 93 . He then wrote off most of them as “lost. It’s going to be a long, ugly, violent death rattle of a death cult.”
In today’s world, the New York Times bans Sen. Tom Cotton for his view on the use of the military to quell violent protests, but publishes Ali who told people not to “waste your time reaching out to Trump voters as I did.”
“Reaching out” apparently means calling them virulent racists storming an airplane cockpit. That is the model of real journalism and commentary, not some journalist detailing a politically driven censorship system on social media.
Most critics like MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan attacked Musk or Taibbi while omitting any discussion of the details in these documents. Hasan simply declared that the full transparency ordered by Musk is just one of those “nakedly and cynically right-wing narratives . . . But sure, the laptop! The laptop! The laptop!”
There is a simple reason for this evasion and enmity. The media is too invested in the suppression of this story to now acknowledge that this was a scandal involving both massive influence peddling and massive censorship to cover it up.
I previously wrote a column on the one year anniversary of the Hunter Biden laptop story that marveled at the success of the Biden family in making the scandal vanish before the 2020 election. It was analogized to Houdini making his 10,000-pound elephant Jennie disappear in his act. The Biden trick, however, occurred live before an audience of millions.
The key to the trick was involving the media in the original illusion. Both Twitter and these reporters became invested in the trick. It is like calling audience members to the stage to assist in the performance. Reporters have to insist that there was nothing to see or they have to admit to being part of the original deception. The Bidens were able to make this elephant of a scandal disappear because Twitter and the media wanted it to disappear.
Musk has now pulled away the cover and revealed the elephant. Rather than acknowledge the beast, the media is turning on those who made it visible. The Bidens forced many liberal reporters and pundits to excuse the raw corruption of influence peddling. They are now getting the same figures to dismiss censorship. The alternative is simply too bear, let alone explain. After all, if it is still on the stage, it was there all along . . . and that can only be a “nakedly and cynically right-wing narrative.”
So I object to the premise. As a noted left wing and somewhat hyperbolic reporter, Taibbi earned my interest shortly after penning for Rolling Stone: “The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Best piece of prose and more authentically truthful that anything I remember reading during the last financial crisis. When Taibbi was pushed to Substack as punishment for seeking objective truths, he became the first journalist that I chose to pay monthly, and I haven’t been disappointed with his courage or contempt for the financial and technology kings enslaving the world. That said, I have ZERO sympathy for the Republican apparatchiks who chose to withhold the Hunter Biden laptop information for months to deliver an October surprise to voters. All of these insanely expensive political consultants treat us as naive, stupid and foolish. Why not release this kind of information when it’s discovered? The cynical nature of what increasingly appear to be criminal enterprises running our government creates no allegiance from those of us seeking objective reporting and courageous journalists necessary in their function as the fourth estate to hold representatives accountable to the people who elect them. Of course, those investigated and named will never feel remorse because they are without shame.
Your criticism of Republicans may be correct, but it is not relevant.
There is no “you were stupid, so we can be immoral”
The core problem to what is exposed is that it completely undermines what those on the left claim to beleive.
This is not about hate speech.
It is not about disinformation.
It is about lying and supressing the truth to gain power.
It is anti-democratic acts from those claiming to champion democracy.
It is about not trusting voters with the truth.
And now, Mr. Taibbi needs to learn more on what happened on 9/11/01. And try not to dismiss it.
“S. Meyer (the original ATS) is a master of psychological projection.”
Thank you, Anonymous the Stupid. Calling me a master is true where you are concerned, even though you didn’t hit the right target. You add to the blog by showing yourself to be a doofus by self canceling your response on the blog.
Once again, you are lost and canceling yourself in frustration.
The future of the United States as a thriving democracy and influence-spreading superpower depends on the day-to-day media-consumption choices of each citizen. Too many have been seduced and habituated into political infotainment steeped in “us vs. them” narrative-building. Some were vaguely aware that the media & tech giants were hiring PhD psychologists knowledgeable in addiction science to grab and cement audience loyalty.
I sense now that this spell is broken. Media consumption is turning skeptical towards junk news & infotainment. Infotainers like DJT have lost their magic spell. We’re starting into in a new era. What was “Anyone can publish” is becoming “Everyone can curate”.
Jonathan: Elon Musk is desperate for eyes so he joins with Matt Taibbi and releases the “Twitter Files”. And what do they show? Not much much that we didn’t know already. No big surprises. Internal deliberations by Twitter executives over whether to bury a story they deemed “hacked material”–especially since the Post story came out so close to the 2020 elections. Former CEO Jack Dorsey says the decision to bury the story was “a total mistake”. All this we already know. But you claim “Musk has now pulled away the cover and revealed the elephant”. And what is the “elephant” revealed by the “Twitter Files” that former management buried? Hunter’s homemade dick pics. Just porn. Any information that would reveal a vast corruption scandal involving the Bidens? Nope. Just porn. I’m not a prude but I think I would also have buried that part of the story.
Now Taibbi says he had to “agree to certain conditions” when Musk hired him. But he has not disclosed what were those “conditions”. What might be Musk’s motives for bringing out the “Twitter Files” that, so far, don’t disclose anything we don’t already know about Hunter Biden? Musk has to find a way to bring in money. Musk is saddled with $13 billion in debt to finance–that means more than $1 billion annually in interest alone. What better motive to get eyes and new subscribers? Since advertisers are avoiding Twitter because Musk is moving so far to the right how else is Musk going to pay for his huge debt?
Which brings us to another important story you missed. On Saturday, Trump was on Truth Social calling for the overturning of the Constitution and putting him back in power. He said: “Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution”.
Just the words of a sore loser or raw meat for MAGA supporters? Take a wild guess. Considering Trump is the leading candidate for the GOP nomination in 2024 we can’t ignore his call to overthrow the Constitution and make him a dictator. The Dems immediately condemned Trump’s statement. And the response GOP officeholders? Total silence. As of this writing not one Republican has condemned Trump publicly. Think about that and tell me Trump is no longer a threat to our Democracy.
Trump never was a threat to democracy
We don’t have a democracy. We live under tyranny sanctioned by idiots in a voting booth.
Turnout was 11.6% in 1788, by design, in the American restricted-vote republic, wherein vote criteria were Male, European, 21, 50 lbs. Sterling/50 acres, as voters were “entitled” or denied the vote by State legislatures. Since inception, democracy, as in “republic,” rationally restricted the vote, oh, and vigorously enforced borders and immigration restrictions, which, in the newly established America, required naturalized citizens to be “…free white person(s)…,” per the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1798 and 1802 (four iterations – they meant it).
Is it coincidental that America is misdirected and completely off course, thoroughly putrefied, and kills and has a woefully insufficient number of babies (insufficient to grow and defend the nation), and a fertility rate in a “death spiral,” after the corrupt and improper ratification of the 19th Amendment 100 years ago, after the unconstitutional mass immigration of, what the emancipation proclamation made, illegal aliens who must have been compassionately repatriated per immigration/naturalization law 159 years ago, and after the commencement of the illegal immigration invasion 65 years ago?
The inmates have been allowed to takeover the asylum and Americans are persona non grata in their own country, the country they built.
Who does that —-?
An incumbent officeholder who refuses to accept electoral defeat transferring power to the winner is the very DEFINITION of a threat to democracy. Trump, Giuliani and Eastman must stand trial for conspiracy to impede Congress in their official role counting the EC votes. The evidence is overwhelming — dimwit Trump boasts in his Ellipse “Stop the Steal” Rally speech…”if Mike (Pence) does what he should do, then I’m President…” That is as succinct an admission of the intent of the plot as possible, and he tags Giuliani and Eastman in the same speech as his collaborators.
Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto 59 years after the adoption of the Constitution because none of the principles of the Communist Manifesto were in the Constitution. Had the principles of the Communist Manifesto been in the Constitution, Karl Marx would have had no reason to write the Communist Manifesto. The principles of the Communist Manifesto were not in the Constitution then and the principles of the Communist Manifesto are not in the Constitution now.
The entire communist American welfare state is unconstitutional and has been since the “Reign of Terror” of “Crazy Abe” Lincoln.
The communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs) stole the American republic and “fundamentally transformed” it into a communist dictatorship of the proletariat.”
It is the communist democrat party that has destroyed the democratic, restricted-vote, American REPUBLIC.
Never was America intended to be a one man, one vote democrazy.
PBINCA – Why didn’t you mention Al Gore Jr.?
“Trump, Giuliani and Eastman must stand trial for conspiracy to impede Congress in their official role counting the EC votes. ”
No such crime.
Further all they sought to do was persuade Pence to count the EC votes the same way Clinton and Tribe wanted them counted in 2016. If it was a crime in 2020, it was a crime in 2016.
“The evidence is overwhelming — dimwit Trump boasts in his Ellipse “Stop the Steal” Rally speech…”if Mike (Pence) does what he should do, then I’m President…” That is as succinct an admission of the intent of the plot as possible, and he tags Giuliani and Eastman in the same speech as his collaborators.”
Nope. Not only is there nothing wrong with what Trump said, YOUR arguments that there is, is stupid and meaningless.
Saying something that you do not like that is missing enormous details is not proof of anything.
Eastmans plan (based on the Clinton Tribe plan) still required Congress to vote to certify – because the constitution requires congress to certify. Pence can control the order of states. He can preset competing slates in whatever way he pleases.
But only congress can vote to certify. The only thing Pence could do was make it easier for Republicans to reject slates from fraud ridden states – which they should have done. And/or accept legislature appointed slates, which they should not and would not have done.
Given what we know NOW – there is more of a chance Trump could have gotten what he wanted. But it still would be a hail mary.
And Trump would have had to get pretty close to every single republican in the house and senate to vote for him if the EC count did not get certified – and that was never happening.
Anyone who calls “for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” is a threat to democracy.
Under secrecy and name you want the Constitution to be destroyed. You sound like a hypocrite.
For years the Leftists have called for the cancellation of the Constitution.
Or a gross rewrite featuring woke ideology.
The true threat is wokeism.
Judge Judy has been quoted as asking how one knows a teenager is lying. She says you know when the lips move.
That is probably more true with those on the left.
“Anyone who calls . . .”
Didn’t feel like including the *context* for that quote?
If you want to conduct an effective smear campaign, here’s a tip: Drop context. Your followers will gulp down your swill. Your opponents are too busy with life to investigate your scam.
Even Republican Senators are condemning Trump for it.
Lisa Murkowski: “Suggesting the termination of the Constitution is not only a betrayal of our Oath of Office, it’s an affront to our Republic.”
Ben Sasse: “I think people are gonna have to choose if they’re for the circus clown, or they’re for the Constitution.”
MittRomney: “When President Trump says he wants to suspend the Constitution, he goes from being MAGA to being RINO.”
Mike Rounds: “As elected officials, we take an oath to support and defend the Constitution. We should never dishonor that oath. No one is above the Constitution. Anyone who desires to lead our country must commit to protecting the Constitution. They should not threaten to terminate it.”
The usual suspects – who might want to try reading what Trump said before attacking it.
Regardless, Though said inarticulately the FACT is we need changes to the constitution to remedy the lack of integrity of our elections.
Democrats want constitutional changes to elections, just bad ones.
Democrats have been trying to change federal election law the past 2 years.
They have been actively “terminating” the constitution – with ridiculous election lawsuits which they all to often win by virtue federal judges that have not read the actual constitution.
Anon – But abolishing the electoral college is just ducky.
Dennis McIntyre.. no amount of stupid ridiculous malicious spinning and framing can hide The Truth that you so desperately want to hide… as for the Trump fetish….a good shrink might help
DeSantis is going to win the GOP Primary.
A poll in Utah found DeSantis leading with 24%.
Trump got 14%.
Cheney came in at 16%.
Trump made a few mistakes during his presidency. But the one that sticks out there for me is the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi
[On 2 October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident journalist was assassinated by agents of the Saudi government at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.]
Trump of all people is a New Yorker and he has had plenty of interaction with Construction Contractors in NY and New Jersey. over the years.
Why he didn’t come out and say it in his own plain New York English:
‘ Hey the Prince “Put the Hit on the Guy” ‘ beats the hell out of me.
It would have been plain and clear what went down, simple as that.
But he didn’t, He Danced around it. I will never understand that.
What’s hard to understand?… Trump, the Clintons, Biden…they are all elitists who feel laws are for the smaller people. For them, loyalty is the overarching principle, not adherence to the law. It’s tribalistic mania….you protect law-breakers in your tribe, while eviscerating the same law-breakers among the other tribe(s). It’s corruption at a very primal level….humans are born with tribalistic social instincts….mature adults in a democracy — especially leaders — are supposed to have outgrown these innate predispositions.
“Trump made a few mistakes during his presidency. But the one that sticks out there for me is the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi”
True didn’t kill Khashoggi.
International relationships seems to be something you need to study up on.
I agree with the original poster: The Prince Put the Hit on the Guy – Plain & Simple.
International Relationships with the Saudi should have been canceled at that point.
[Really think they should have been canceled after 9/11]
We could have then turned to Russia for Oil (built a relationship) and have avoided/mitigated with diplomacy what the Russians are currently engage in; Ukraine, Syria, and Central African Republic Wars.
Do you plan on cancelling international relationships with the rest of the world as well? Don’t forget the Clinton family.
So, in negociating with the Saudis and Trump says when the Saudis aren’t cooperating: You know, there might be something to those accusations…”
And after condemning Trump for dealing with MBS after killing Koshogi, Biden when to MBS Begging for oil.
An MBS said NO!
Maybe Trump should have condemned MBS. But Biden is constantly making the US weak.
Joe Biden recently sided with the legal position of the Saudi Crown Prince that he has immunity from prosecution in the United States for the murder of Khashoggi. https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/11/us-says-saudi-arabias-mbs-has-immunity-khashoggi-lawsuit In contrast, Trump refused to recognize immunity for the Crown Prince.
And “Crazy Abe” Lincoln, at the behest of Karl Marx, declared martial law and seized power, ending constitutional American freedom after a mere 71 years. Lincoln espoused Marx’s pejoratives, “capitalist” and “fleece the people,” as early as 1837. Karl Marx sent Lincoln a letter of congratulation and commendation in 1864; Lincoln was Marx’s “…earnest of the epoch to come…” directing America toward the “…RECONSTRUCTION of a social world.”
_______________________________________________________________________
“These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.”
– Abraham Lincoln, from his first speech as an Illinois state legislator, 1837
__________________________________________________________
“Everyone now is more or less a Socialist.”
– Charles Dana, managing editor of the New York Tribune, and Lincoln’s assistant secretary of war, 1848
______________________________________________________________________________________
“The goal of Socialism is Communism.”
– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
__________________
“The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.”
– Karl Marx and the First International Workingmen’s Association to Lincoln, 1864
COMRADE GENERAL SECRETARY “CRAZY ABE” LINCOLN
“ON DECEMBER 3, 1861, a former one-term congressman, who had spent most of the past dozen years studying dissident economic theories, mounting challenges to the existing political order and proposing ever more radical responses to the American crisis, delivered his first State of the Union address as the sixteenth president of the United States.
“Long before 1848, German radicals had begun to arrive in Illinois, where they quickly entered into the legal and political circles in which Lincoln traveled. One of them, Gustav Korner, was a student revolutionary at the University of Munich who had been imprisoned by German authorities in the early 1830s for organizing illegal demonstrations. After his release, Korner returned to his hometown of Frankfurt am Main where, according to historian Raymond Lohne, “he was one of about fifty conspirators involved in an attack upon the two main city guardhouses and the arsenal at the police facility and jail. This admixture of students and soldiers had planned to seize cannon, muskets, and ammunition; free political prisoners accused of breaking press-censorship laws, and begin ringing the great Sturmglocke (storm bell) of the Dom, the signal for the people to come in from the countryside. At that point, the democratic revolution would be announced…. Unfortunately, they were walking into a trap…. Betrayed by both a spy in their midst, and the reluctance of the common people to rise, nine students were killed, twenty-four were seriously wounded, and by August 3, 1833, Gustav Körner found himself riding into downtown Belleville, Illinois.”
“Within a decade, Korner would pass the Illinois bar, win election to the legislature and be appointed to the state Supreme Court. Korner and Lincoln formed an alliance that would become so close that the student revolutionary from Frankfurt would eventually be one of seven personal delegates-at-large named by Lincoln to serve at the critical Republican State Convention in May 1860, which propelled the Springfield lawyer into that year’s presidential race. Through Korner, Lincoln met and befriended many of the German radicals who, after the failure of the 1848 revolution, fled to Illinois and neighboring Wisconsin. Along with Korner on Lincoln’s list of personal delegates-at-large to the 1860 convention was Friedrich Karl Franz Hecker, a lawyer from Mannheim who had served as a liberal legislator in the lower chamber of the Baden State Assembly before leading an April 1848 uprising in the region—an uprising cheered on by the newspaper Marx briefly edited during that turbulent period, Neue Rheinische Zeitung—Organ der Demokratie.
“Even as they agreed on homesteading, Greeley and Lincoln wrangled over the timing and scope of an emancipation proclamation. The editor joined Frederick Douglass in demanding that the president take steps to make the Civil War not merely a struggle to preserve the Union, but “an Abolition war.” Even as Greeley and Lincoln exchanged sometimes pointed letters, the Tribune’s longtime managing editor Charles Dana was now working for Lincoln. Officially assigned to the War Department — where he would eventually serve as assistant secretary — Dana’s real role was as an aide and adviser to the president on questions of what the former newspaperman described as the “judicious, humane, and wise uses of executive authority.” That Lincoln spent much of his presidency reading dispatches from and welcoming the counsel of Marx’s longtime editor—like the fact that he awarded military commissions to the numerous comrades of the author of The Communist Manifesto who had come to the United States as political refugees following the failed European revolutions of 1848—is a shard of history rarely seen in the hagiographic accounts that produce a sanitized version of the sixteenth president’s story. In the years following Lincoln’s death, his law partner and political comrade, William Herndon, complained that Lincoln’s official biographers were already attempting “to make the story with the classes as against the masses,” an approach that he suggested “will result in delineating the real Lincoln about as well as does a wax figure in the museum.”
– ISR International Socialist Review
Dennis here, and FishWings, etc, are examples of what a Democrat created, dumbed down, uninformed, propagandized citizenry actually sounds like. Democrats can (and do) successfully prevent actual news from being heard by half of the country. Dennis is exhibit A.
The main condition was Taibbi agreed to give Twitter a short, exclusive lead time to publish the Twitter Files, after which Taibbi can publish them on his Substack page. I actually think Musk was foolish to insist on this — I went to Twitter to read these files, and all I found were 50K performative comments aimed at venerating or demonizing Musk and Taibbi. That’s not useful information.
Unless the framing of these Twitter Files is to get behind legislation to close off the “family member” loophole for bribery of federal officials and candidates, it’s all just pointless infotainment.
Spoken like a true COMMIE!
Nice strawman. The story isn’t Hunter’s laptop (yes, we already knew that stuff). The story is that Twitter has been exposed as the biased censorship engine many of us thought it was. But you know that and you are just being snarky. What a good progressive.
On one hand nothing really new. We knew much of this prior to The Twitter Files.
On the other hand, good to see real hard evidence proving what we already knew.
I was hoping Musk would select Greenwald, Taibbi or Weiss for this reporting. They are all known for their journalistic integrity.
Those who are critical of Taibbi, show their true colors as partisan hacks.
I await to see what else Taibbi brings to light. I hope he gets the Pulitzer.
Even if Twitter were to go bankrupt, this alone is worth the price.
Christmas gift idea: Give a Substack subscription to Matt Taibbi (or Glenn Greenwald, Bari Weiss or other alt-media journalists) site.
Todays friend, tomorrow’s punching bag.
Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra):
“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravist, warmist, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”
–The Manchurian Candidate movie.
Svelaz,
Actually the Mao’s Culture Revolution comparison has been made on more than one occasion by many others than John Say
I do not think – I hope, this will not play out the same.
But the similarities are significant. The most fundamental difference is that Biden may aspire to be Mao, but he is not.
That is not to say that Biden is less malignant, just less omnipotent.
John Say,
I would not say Biden is even omnipotent, but he is impotent.
While wokeism, cancel culture does have similarities to the Red Guard, what the leftists lack is a leader to unite them.
Thankfully.
Generally I agree completely.
But a democrat election strategy that should have resulted in amplifying a red wave in 2022, actually worked.
I do not understand why it worked.
But it obviously did.
That strategy was driven by the WH and Biden.
So someone there has better judgement than I – more evil judgement certainly. More machevellian.
Does Journalism have a method similar to the Legal Profession’s Disbarment?
Can’t find one[?]
The SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS
f.k.a. – Sigma Delta Chi
https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
American Society of News Editors
https://members.newsleaders.org/about-us
If so: Ben Collins, Wajahat Ali, and Mehdi Hasan would find themselves up for a discipline hearing.
The Twitter Files
There are only two fundamental issues here:
1) Twitter suppressed the laptop story and banned users who reported it. That means that Twitter was the propaganda arm of the DNC, and helped to rig the 2020 election.
2) Twitter banning stories and users (e.g., on Covid) at the behest of government officials. That is a clear violation of 1A and is textbook fascism.
The rest (e.g., “requests,” “contcts”) is noise — noise used by the Left to drown out its dishonesty and its lust for total power.
Just as parts of academia are run by propagandists posing as educators, Twitter was run by propagandists posing as social media executives. Little Red Riging Hood is supposed to be a cautionary tale, not a guide for how to dress in public.
P.S. Thank you EM — a courageous hero who has single-handedly stalled America’s stampede to censorship.
Musk banned Kanye West for speech that’s protected under the 1st Amendment. That’s not the act of someone who “has single-handedly stalled America’s stampede to censorship”
The symbolism expressed by Kanye was violent by Twitter standards. You are making a fool of yourself repetitively revealing your hypocrisy.
“That’s not . . .”
That “stampede” was (and still is) a mob of power-lusting Leftists.
Saying “they rigged the election” is vague, conspiratorial and inactionable.
“They rigged the infospace leading up to the voting”. Now there’s a claim the facts support. Do you see the difference by adding just a few more words? Now, you’ve pinpointed the problem in a way that draws attention to a very specific defect. That then makes consideration of improvements more likely. It’s less grievance-collecting, and more actionable.
“Saying “they rigged the election” is vague, conspiratorial and inactionable.”
If you’re going to quote someone, have the decency to do so accurately. I did not write “they.” I wrote “Twitter.”
The rest of your twaddle is based on your inability to read (or worse).
Thinking minds can clearly see how the protests of the Left underwrite the need for the First Amendment.
The “trick” as you call it, was in fact an orchestrated fabrication by the Biden Regime to squelch the truth! Also called a “conspiracy theory” by the MSM
The deflectors and smear-mongers are out in full force. Apparently, the Mother Ship is in full panic.
SPOT ON, Prof. Turley, Well Said…!!! Blinded by the light of Reality and Facts out in the open, they send out bigger and bigger clowns to try to keep the circus going under the big top of darkness….
Perhaps Twitter does have some redeeming qualities? Nancy Pelosi’s replacement is an election denier
====
Hakeem Jeffries
@hakeemjeffries
Keep pouting.
History will never accept you as a legitimate President.
6:33 PM · Nov 24, 2020
https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1593310309762174983
If today’s “reporters” were working in 1972-73 and Nixon was a Democrat the “reporters” would be saying:
There is no proof of a break-in;
If there was a break-in there is no proof it was at the behest of the administration;
If it was at the behest of the administration it was for a good reason:
If it wasn’t for a good reason it is old news anyway;
and if it isn’t old news the guard that found the tape on the door was probably a Republican.
If you think Woodward and Bernstein were critical elements in Nixon’s fall, then a deep state operative, the FBI’s Mark Felt, brought him down.
Daniel, besides missing the point, do you think W & B were not part of Nixon’s downfall?
Taibbi and Musk are spinning a classic limited hang out that obscures the contents of the laptop, which was much more than porn and obfuscates the real nature of Twitter and almost all social media – which is that they are run by the DHS. The white-hat batman story is bunk. Professor Turley, whose legal opinions I always read with interest, is staying within the framework established by the state’s narrative. Unfortunately, it’s propaganda.
Did I miss the time the media were ON the side of people like him? We really need to stop pretending we’ve had an objective media since the Obama years.
JT’s usual practice is to use Twitter to promote the columns and posts on this blog by linking to them. So with that practice did JT have any problems linking to the NY Post Hunter Biden story in October 2020? Thanks.
Sea lioning, is not a good look, meaning you are neither a concerned citizen nor a very good troll
Squeeky Fromm, our former resident girl reporter, who’s humor is sorely missed, had a marvelous joke, as usual, in reply to Professor Turley’s reporting of the Hunter Biden Oct 2020 story
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/10/31/nbc-finally-responds-to-hunter-biden-story-with-an-exhaustive-expose-of-an-unknown-and-unrelated-document/comment-page-1/#comment-2020549
Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter says: October 31, 2020 at 12:38 PM
ROTFLMAO!!!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Elq2Pq4WoAAIJQl?format=jpg&name=900×900
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Maybe TPTB are hoping we’ll all think that it was just a pink elephant; that we were seeing things we know that ain’t.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5QSRKQmglc&w=560&h=315%5D
Couldn’t possibly be real that ‘truth, goodness, and the American way’ just isn’t embodied in too many powerful and influential people in whom leadership has been entrusted.
And then there is the propaganda, the mis-, dis-, and mal-information permeating pretty much every corner of media. I guess the medium is the message? Marshall McLuhan wrote: “The restructuring of human work and association was shaped by the technique of fragmentation that is the essence of machine technology.” Is fragmentation the essence of online media? Did we all get stuck in that Abstract Thought machine from Inside Out, threatened with deteriorating into Deconstruction and then becoming 2-Dimensional shadows of our original society? 🙁 Do not go gentle into that good night.
Matt Taibbi has said many times he grew up in a democrat household, and embraced the values of that party —- the values that existed back in the day when it was the Jack Kennedy democrat (lowering taxes stimulates the economy — jfk said this many times — doesn’t sound like today’s democrat), and more recently, the Joe LIeberman democrat, one of the last holdouts of the old order.
Taibbi in his writings appears to try as hard as he can to remain an objective Journalist, in the best meaning of that term….and he succeeds quite a lot.
So, what do ‘we’ do about the attack mob —-
You break the attack mob. The journos posting all the same stuff and attacking Taibbi are likely on the newest incarnation of Journolist. If someone with even the most basic scruples, dumping info from that would help break the stranglehold.
This is not a time of morality, this is a time in which communists sees the finish line.