The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Monday revealed yet another facet of the Biden Administration’s sprawling censorship system that targeted dissenting books. It appears that, as with social media companies, it succeeded in getting the company not to promote disfavored books.
Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan revealed on X that the White House was directly involved in the censorship campaign. That includes a 2021 email from one Biden official asking to discuss “the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon?”
Amazon in turn appears to ask only how high the Biden White House wants it to jump on censorship: “[i]s the [Biden] Admin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both)?”
After the meeting, Amazon confirmed in an email that it was actively doing what the government demanded in suppressing sales by not promoting disfavored books: “As a reminder, we did enable Do Not Promote for anti-vax books whose primary purpose is to persuade readers vaccines are unsafe or ineffective on 3/9, and will review additional handling options for these books with you.”
This effort notably parallels demands from Democratic leaders who have called for enlightened algorithms to frame what citizens access on the internet. In 2021, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) objected that people were not listening to the informed views of herself and leading experts. Instead, they were reading views of skeptics by searching Amazon and finding books by “prominent spreaders of misinformation.”
Warren blamed Amazon for failing to limit searches or choices: “This pattern and practice of misbehavior suggests that Amazon is either unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the spread of falsehoods or the sale of inappropriate products.” In her letter, Warren gave the company 14 days to change its algorithms to throttle and obstruct efforts to read opposing views.
It is important to keep in mind that these efforts at censorship targeted scientists who have been vindicated in many of their objections to policies and claims of the government. For example, a new scientific review by 12 researchers from leading universities found little support for the claims that masks reduced Covid exposures.
The Centers for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) initially rejected the use of a mask mandate. However, the issue became a political weapon as politicians and the press claimed that questioning masks was anti-science and even unhinged. In April 2020, the CDC reversed its position and called for the masking of the entire population, including children as young as 2 years old. The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children.
The closing of schools and businesses was also challenged by some critics as unnecessary. Many of those critics were also censored. It now appears that they may have been right. Many countries did not close schools and did not experience increases in Covid. However, we are now facing alarming drops in testing scores and alarming rises in medical illness among the young.
Masks became a major social and political dividing line in politics and the media. Maskless people were chased from stores and denounced in Congress. Then-CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said during a Senate hearing that “face masks are the most important powerful health tool we have.”
The head of the World Health Organization even supported censorship to combat what he called an “infodemic.”
A lawsuit opposing these efforts was filed by Missouri and Louisiana and joined by leading experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University). Yet, universities joined social media companies and politicians in targeting dissenters and silencing opposing voices.
Bhattacharya previously objected to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents. Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.
The media has quietly acknowledged the science questioning mask efficacy and school closures without addressing its own role in attacking those who raised these objections. Even raising the lab theory on the origin of Covid 19 (a theory now treated as plausible) was denounced as a conspiracy theory. The science and health reporter for the New York Times, Apoorva Mandavilli, even denounced the theory as “racist.”
Again, the objection to the censorship system is not that all of these views are correct, but that the public was being actively hampered in reading or hearing opposing views.
The new emails also show direct federal efforts supporting censorship. I testified at the first hearing by the special committee investigating the censorship system. I warned that there was ample evidence of a system based on “censorship by surrogate” where government agencies used academic and media allies to silence those with opposing views.
Despite the determined opposition by Democratic members and the Biden Administration, the investigation has revealed a wide array of grants to academic and third party organizations to create blacklists or to pressure advertisers to withdraw support for conservative sites. The subjects for censorship ranged from election fraud to social justice to climate change.
Now we can add private demands to target dissenting books to suppress sales. It is far more appealing to certain sensibilities than banning publications or removing copies. After all, why burn books if you can bury them?
“The subjects for censorship ranged from *election fraud* to social justice to *climate change*.
LOL To know what lies they are telling, see what information they are censoring. They are total skum.
While the DNC and its media allies try to put Donald Trump in jail, or remove him from the ballot, or censor Conservative ideas, the country continues to rush headlong into a fiscal catastrophe. From the WSJ today:
“Today the Congressional Budget Office offers its latest forecast for the coming decade:
The deficit totals $1.6 trillion in fiscal year 2024, grows to $1.8 trillion in 2025, and then returns to $1.6 trillion by 2027. Thereafter, deficits steadily mount, reaching $2.6 trillion in 2034. Measured in relation to gross domestic product (GDP), the deficit amounts to 5.6 percent in 2024, grows to 6.1 percent in 2025, and then shrinks to 5.2 percent in 2027 and 2028. After 2028, deficits climb as a percentage of GDP, returning to 6.1 percent in 2034. Since the Great Depression, deficits have exceeded that level only during and shortly after World War II, the 2007–2009 financial crisis, and the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet we live in a time with no depression, no world war (at least not yet), no banking crisis, no more Covid panic, and low unemployment—and the feds are still spending trillions beyond what they collect in taxes. What are they planning to do if we face an actual emergency? CBO continues its preview:
Debt held by the public increases from 99 percent of GDP at the end of 2024 to 116 percent of GDP—the highest level ever recorded—by the end of 2034.”
The “experts at the Wall Street banks think they can tokenize the money with CBDC’s and that will allow them to waste and steal as much as they want. The U.S. dollar as the equivalent of an ETF on the exchanges. Total surveillance of spending so they can impoverish us and enrich themselves and their pals and turn the country into Guatemala
Jonathan: My comment asking what it would take for GOP voters to reject DJT’s candidacy the responses confirmed my worst fears:
1. Oldmanfromkansas—thinks MAGA is not a “mindless cult” and “Trump supporters are acting rationally” because the economy under DJT was “great”. The facts belie the claim. DJT inherited a booming economy from Obama. When Obama left office the unemployment rate was 4.8%. That rate held through most of the DJT years but in April 2020 the rate soared to 14.7%. Most of that was due to the COVID-19 pandemic but DJT made the situation worse . Over 1 million Americans died because DJT fought his own scientific advisors over how to address the virus. He even tried to re-open the economy during two surges in infections. Then we have DJT’s massive tax cuts for the wealthy that added over $7 trillion to the national debt. Then DJT started a trade war with China. China responded with its own tariffs that resulted in higher prices for consumers and businesses. A 2019 Moody Analytics report estimated the trade war with China cost 300,000 American jobs. And what are DJT’s economic proposals if he is re-elected? He wants to impose new 10% tariffs on most imports–with a 4 yr. plan to phase out all Chinese imports. It’s no secret we depend on Chinese imports for almost everything. How could that be a “rational” approach to trade and why Americans should vote for DJT?
2. Anonymous—puts it this way. He says he is “voting for Trump because I hate you”. Not exactly a rational reason to vote for DJT but a reflection of a “cult” personality.
3. JohnSay–says he would vote against DJT if there was “a damning case against Trump that people believed”. And for JS none of the cases against DJT are “damning”. And certainly not the DC Court of Appeals decision unanimously finding DJT is not immune from criminal prosecution. Although he admits he has not read the decision he jumps to the unwarranted conclusion “it is absolutely abysmally reasoned and will certainly going to bite them in the ass”. For JS all the cases against DJT are being orchestrated by the Biden administration. Another indication of a “cult” follower.
4. edwardmahl–for him “none of the many suits against Trump can be taken seriously”. He even bizarrely thinks that when the NY state legislature lifted the statute of limitations for rape victims that invalidated E. Jean Carroll’s claims. Ed simply thinks all the lawsuits against his leader is the “DNC’s Lawfare campaign against Trump [that] will fail to persuade Republican voters”.
So for the above no amount of evidence or facts will change their minds. When people reject jury verdicts by ordinary citizens or the decisions by the highest courts you know you are not dealing with rational thinking. This is where you enter into an alt universe where facts don’t matter–the world of the “cult” of DJT!
Biden has to be reminded who the opposition is, Hamas by someone off camera.
This, from President Biden, tells us something about how the negotiations between Israel & Hamas are going.
It also, frankly, shows why so many in America and beyond are concerned about the age of the American president who is insisting on running again. pic.twitter.com/dgXFAzKS7q
— Mark Stone (@Stone_SkyNews) February 6, 2024
mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Caused More Deaths Than Saved: Study
https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/for-every-life-saved-mrna-vaccines-caused-nearly-14-times-more-deaths-study-5579794?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge&src_src=partner&src_cmp=ZeroHedge
Seattle restaurant broken into 5 times in the past 6 months of being open
https://www.king5.com/article/news/crime/seattle-restaurant-broken-into-5-times-6-months-being-open/281-cfaaa827-d669-4004-964d-aca86738a055
I’m always curious how anyone can spend so much time going after Trump, who hasn’t been in office for three years, without saying a word about Biden. Obviously they’re obsessed w/anti-Trumpism, which is the real cult of the moment, but I’d love to see an anti-Trumper pretend any Biden policy, like opening the southern border to a huge influx of illegals with a resulting spike in crime including sex trafficking and child prostitution was a Trump era policy. Would anti-Trumpers be honest enough to savage the responsible parties with any of the same venom it deserves? Or just keep pretending Biden isn’t a disaster like we’ve never seen?
Jury verdicts from “ordinary citizens” should be rejected where the jury pool has been tainted by unending and relentless demonization of the Defendant. Do you not understand mass psychology? Do you think Emmanuel Goldstein in “1984” could have gotten a fair trial from the members of the proletariat,who spent two minutes of every day hating on him? People like you have spent far more than 2″ each day hating on Trump. You are the cult. Your are the Salem Witch Trials of our day.
As for rejecting “decisions by the highest courts”, you of course know that the highest court is the Supreme Court of the United States, and that its hands so far are free of the taint of the persecution of Trump.
You’re using BLT stats….and the Bureau of Labor Statistics has always been a political tool. The official numbers are a joke.
It ain’t just free speech. The whole system of leadership and governance of the people, by the people, for the people is being undermined and twisted to suit the purposes of administrators or “the elect”.
Some pigs are (quietly) more equal than others.
And yet the Biden regime dares to call us MAGA voters ”fascists”!! You can’t make this s–t up!
1- Today we also found out, According to a report the House Judiciary Committee published on Tuesday, the Daily Caller News Foundation reporting on Feb. 19 2023, what the President Joe Biden’s administration spend $38.8 millions of dollars to fund research to suppress online “misinformation” through National Science Foundation (NSF) since Biden’s inauguration by November 2022,
2- To counter so-called “misinformation” The NSF received funding for “research initiatives” in a plan dubbed “Track F”. Track F it’s a investment in ‘media strategy’ on Projects Combating ‘Misinformation’ through grants are Provided to Universities for make analysis, studies and research that help and create propaganda tools to “educate” or “re-educate” of the “dangers of misinformation becomes woven into narratives online”
3- But the real “purpose of these taxpayer-funded projects is”
– to develop artificial intelligence (AI)- powered censorship and propaganda tools
– that can be used by governments and Big Tech
– to shape public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others,”
4- And here comes the scariest part of all. For instance, (only 3 University but the ara more)
*the NSF in December 2022 awarded the University of Houston a $50,000 grant for establishing a “social media misinformation interactive dashboard” that would “forecast trends and analysis to help address the misinformation endemic in America,”
*the NSF in July 2019 awarded Syracuse University a $495,478 grant to study the “online dynamics of misinformation,” focusing on how “misinformation becomes woven into narratives online, how technology influences this process, and how design might be used to alter it.”
*Massachusetts Institute of Technology-led researchers informed the NSF awarded $750,000 that “broad swaths of the public cannot effectively sort truth from fiction online” in a project proposal summary, The researchers particularly highlighted “rural and indigenous communities,” “military veterans, older adults, and military families” and “older adults” as being the most vulnerable. MIT-led researchers and it created propaganda tools to educate these demographics because of their vulnerability to “misinformation campaigns,”
But MORE SCARIEST is the President Joe Biden’s administration contemplated concealing its efforts to spend millions of dollars to fund research to suppress online “misinformation” after reporting. NSF program manager Michael Pozmantier sent an email declaring he was “going to see about pulling them [the videos] down or locking the page ASAP” the following day, according to a screenshot in the report.
1-February 19, 2023
‘Serious Threat’: The National Science Foundation Has Spent Millions On Projects Combating ‘Misinformation’
https://dailycaller.com/2023/02/19/nsf-funding-misinformation-disinformation-research-grants/
2- February 06, 2024
Emails Show How Biden Officials Considered Covering Up Censorship Activities In The Wake Of DCNF Report
https://dailycaller.com/2024/02/06/emails-show-how-biden-officials-considered-covering-up-censorship-activities-in-the-wake-of-dcnf-report/
Brilliant piece.
Regarding free speech, and the suppression thereof, this is a good talk between Dave Rubin and Dr. Drew: