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?
With each passing day, the Democrat party shows us how they are the fascists.
No, the Democratic Party shows us how a handful of fascists can manipulate manipulate millions of party members that are nothing more than stooges.
@Ex Dem
But they have to go along. So who is to blame in that scenario? Sorry, but every person with a brain is free to say, ‘No, that is crazy.’. Modern libs don’t do that. They are all too chicken sh**, because they are all afraid of ‘looking bad’ or sacrificing their status quo. There is no excuse for presumably grown-a** adults that just blithely follow along. I feel you, you aren’t wrong about the people in lofty positions, but try again. You are *almost* there as an ex-dem. Personal responsibility would be the final step, and that seems to scare you, too.
So true, Upstate. Projection at its worst when they accuse Conservatives of being fascists.
Upstate, seeing it is like watching a train wreck in slow motion, with JT doing a play-by-play. Try as the trolls will, there is no denying it’s happening. The only question is how much damage will be done by the time it stops.
OLLY,
I fear they will do everything they can to destroy democracy in order to save it.
Upstate, the modern Democratic party is to democracy what the train derailment was to East Palestine. It’ll just require a massive cleanup.
It will be interesting to see how Amazon deals with JT’s book, The Indispensible Right.
Pre-order today.
The bureaucratic bloat of the executive branch’s administrative state, with its philosopher king propensity to legislate for the world, needs some serious bariatric surgery. Besides, it’s in direct contravention of the founding, fundamental constitutional principle of the separation of powers, with its bureaucratic creep over the legislative power of congress. Remember: executive, legislative and judiciary!!
People pooh pooh me when I call them Communist.
You can’t buy any of Alexander Dugin’s books on Amazon.
Don’t forget that the Democrats want to add two (liberal) states so that they will control the Senate for ever and then pack the Court so that they won’t have to fight a rearguard action against their unconstitutional policies. We came Sinema, Manchin close to ending the filibuster and then adding 5 Justices a few years ago.
We will end up with a Court that will decide that the government can have Amazon ban books, that Tic Toc can ban certain candidates and/or idea, that Facebook can ban one party’s ads and that the FCC should be able to limit what Fox News broadcasts nightly. When there are 5 additional Justices and they are all of the Sotomayor, Jackson ilk how do you think they will “decide”?
“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)?’”
I guess this reply did *not* occur to Amazon: Stuff it. We are not your lackeys.
Besides the horror of Amazon allowing itself to be used as a tool for government censorship, did the company ever consider the *practical* consequences? Did they ever consider how writers, booksellers, buyers and reviewers are going to respond to this suppression and censorship? What customer in their right mind would ever again trust this company?
Does Amazon not realize that a company’s most valuable asset is its reputation? Did they learn nothing from Bud Light, et al.?
The decision-makers at Amazon are also predominantly people of the far left. It is a no brainer for them to comply with the censorship demanded by the fascist Biden regime as it advances Amazon’s agenda as well.
Great idea about a “Time with Turley” show. Start with an hour a week on FOX on the weekend (tape it Friday so you can still have a life) much like Mark Levine. I’d watch.
The lockdowns were one of the most egregious crimes against humanity in modern history. I don’t know that generationally we can ever really repair the damage done. All of this needs to be exposed and discussed, it can never happen again.
So, the question becomes a simple one to ask, but a difficult one to answer. What do we do about it. Addressing tyranny within the confines of the system and gentile public discourse isn’t working. We know what to do. Let’s get about the task of doing it.
Treason by any other name is still treason. This is usurpation of the Constitution in its most manifest way. But make no mistake about where this comes from. An 80 year old man who cannot put together a coherent sentence is not the power behind this. It’s his handlers and the main puppet master is Barack Hussein Obama. He is the power behind the throne, the man behind the curtain, the voice that comes from Joe Biden’s mouth. All Obama needed was a mean spirited mouthpiece who was sold as a nice guy unifier but has been, in fact with his handler Jill, a semi sentient advocate of authoritarianism. The tragedy is millions of reasonable democrats out there who still serve and back this straw man and his puppet master. Dark Days ahead.
And these leftists who desperately want to censor anyone who dares disagree with them, call others ‘a threat to democracy’.
There has never been a time in history where the ‘good guys’ advocated censorship or suppression of speech and ideas.
I’m waiting for the first s@@tlib to explain why this was good and necessary and call you a ‘nazi’ for opposing it.
antonio
Antonio, don’t worry, Dennis, Svelaz and various guys named “Anonymous” will come here and tell us that censorship by Democrats either never happened or that it is a good thing and that it is Republicans that are fascist.
BTW, Dennis will do it in about 59 different comments because he has nothing else to do al day…or this is his job.
HullBobby,
Or use their awesome mental gymnastics word salad to try to tell us how the good professor is wrong, it is not censorship, or of course, whataboutism!
Upstate, with all of their mental gymnastics and word salads you would think that they would be in good shape, but those gymnastics and salads aren’t healthy at all and in fact cause the rest of us to have heartburn and raised blood pressure daily.
Everyone on Planet Earth know Fascist Democrats ramp book sales for liberal favorites, and depress for hated Conservatives.
Do people think anyone wants a book from the Obamas, AOC(can she even write), Harry and Megan, etc? Every Library buys copies…that ZERO people want or should read!
Time to end Federal Aid to cities, states, colleges, non-profits where anyone gets $100k+….This is the SOURCE of Democrat’s Uniparty power.
Whoever is in charge of the dnc’s social media and online influencing should be hanged upside down in front of the White House.
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
This is the nut of the problem and no “scientist” has never been held to account.
Why was naturally immunity ignored???? What is the science for this little nugget.
The lockdowns, were just quarantining the healthy. When was that ever a practice to stop the spread of a virus?
Masks was always nothing but a scam. But why? Just practice to see how much the govt could lie and get the population to comply?
Schools! What a travesty. If you were under 60 and had no underlying health problems, you were not a problem
School age kids were The least at risk age group. So naturally, those are the ones damaged the most by lockdowns.
I am sure that Democrats need a huge base of voters that are un educated and ignorant, had nothing to do with creating a generation of the uninformed
RE: “Why was naturally immunity ignored???? What is the science for this little nugget.” ‘Natural immunity’… In this one tends to infer that one is inherently resistant or immune to the consequences of exposure to an infectious agent. One only AQUIRES immunity after having been infected and survived the course of the disease. Consider poliomyelitis. One can contract the disease, be paralyzed and immune, or BE immunized with the vaccine and not fall ill. What we were seeing overseas was a world’s population being overwhelmed and people dying by the hundreds. Memory is short of the videos of the events coming out of China, or in Italy early in 2020, when the textile workers from Wuhan returned from their New Year celebrations to Lombardy. When Lombardy announced they were shutting down, residents fled south, taking the virus with them. Recall the first exposures in the Pacific Northwest…the nursing home in Seattle. Eventually, the travel ban was set. The respiratory manifestations of this virus alone puzzled medical science. The usual and customary therapies were yielding the opposite results. Patients were dying. There were other physiological manifestations never seen. This experience was trial and error. What we now know about the vaccines is that they do not immunize, but rather minimize, and much has been gleaned through research across the past 4 years that was not known about this virus, its manifestations, consequences, and management heretofore. That’s the science…and it is still coming. People still have a choice and government is NOT the only source of information.
“What we now know about the vaccines is that they do not immunize, but rather minimize,…”
Do we know that as fact? That seems possible, but that rationale came out very quickly after people who were vaccinated started getting sick, it seemed to me at the time that there couldn’t have been enough study to show that was actually true or simply coincidental.
I got covid very early, and got it for two weeks, pretty sick but no hospital or anything. I was in an ‘at risk’ group for serious illness. My wife then got it, but wasn’t as bad, and my two teens in the house never showed symptoms despite their obvious exposure. None were vaccinated, all had different outcomes.
And what ever happened to the J&J vaccine? That was purportedly a ‘traditional’ vaccine, right? No one ever discusses that. That is what me, my wife (a MD), and one kid got. The other kid was in the midst of a very expensive education, so she got the mrna shots.
PS: None of us was ever symptomatic after those two weeks.
@Neil
Same here, Neil. I had it in January 2020 and didn’t have so much as a sniffle the entire rest of the time, and I went out everyday. I was likely immune the entire time. I know there were many others. It was madness.
Same here: January 2020, my husband and I traveled to New Orleans. Super crowded air travel, super crowded city. We got sick with some “mystery” virus after we returned. One night, I actually considered calling 911 (thank God we did not, given how venting was killing people), but we went to our favorite urgent care place the next day. The doctor tested us for Flu A and B — negative. He said he had no idea what we had, but gave us a Z-pac to protect our lungs, and some heavy duty cough meds so we could get some rest. I had a bout of some intestinal flu last year, but that has been it. During the vax mandates, we did the J&J to satisfy his employer.
@Farm4501
Granted, I do not consider my own experience to be universal, but in my circle, anyway, the only people that suffered greatly were already suffering greatly from something else, to an extraordinary degree. I honestly thought the pandemic would shine a light on our poor state of general health, it didn’t; it just gave people more excuses. This is perhaps something we need to look at in 21st century America. Most people are perfectly fine with a baseline of health that in the past would have been considered very, very poor. And they weren’t wrong. Watch in the future for people in their late 30s or 40s developing ‘elderly’ ailments like osteoporosis and heart conditions because no one taught them anything and they honestly, truly, because people told them so, thought they’d be 25 forever. What can we do but watch the collapse? RIP medicine, and RIP actual science. And RIP resilience and actually caring. The narrative that purports the opposite is insane to the skies, and the check WILL come due.
Patients were dying. There were other physiological manifestations never seen. This experience was trial and error.
But we all know the basic virology. Quarantining the healthy was ALWAYS STUPID.
We had a great heads up from Italy that the elderly were the most at risk. That children rarely suffered severe infections and only died when aggravating medical health issues were present. We built a list of comorbidities, then never used that to make decisions.
Natural immunity is better than a true vaccine.
We knew masks were not effective
Things we knew, we acted against, and things in question were mostly ignored, in favor of lies.
RE: “Natural immunity is better than a true vaccine…” Natural immunity is acquired after infection and the course of disease is run, if one survives. As to quarantine, the measles, diphtheria, and whooping cough experiences of past centuries witnessed that. In the moment of the 2020’s, with uncertainty abounding, whom of the ‘healthy’ young or old, was willing to play ‘Russian roulette’ with this puzzling virus? How many yet remain among living who might have succumbed? The death of a child is 100% for that family. So much of what we argue about now is hindsight. These notwithstanding, precautions taken against Covid appear to have impacted influenza mortality and morbidity. These, under normal circumstances are generally not embraced. https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-die-flu/
. So much of what we argue about now is hindsight.
No, what is being attempted, is an after action review. Something that is never going to happen, at the levels that so desperately need it.
Your post assumes that there were no costs associated with the lockdowns. There are always trade-offs
One question, Then why do you still keep calling it a vaccine?
Remember when they changed the definition of ‘vaccine?’ That was awesome.
Look Jonathan, I don’t know were to put this, so here goes. You need your own radio or t.v. show yesterday. We, the country, need your calming influence and outstanding, brilliant input to help to save our country. You won’t walk around D.C. anymore. Everyone is overwhelmed by the social decay permeating our society, so we need you to direct people to return to some sanity. I could sell out a program featuring you in 10 minutes. I cannot be the only one suggesting this type of project for you. Can’t be.
They screamed book banning when conservatives wanted have only age appropriate books for young children in school, then try to ban books for everyone as any fascist would. Got it!
Anything DeSantis can do, Biden can do better. Let’s hope the vote pans out the same way.
That’s laughable.
so which party is authoritarian these days?
Which party has been authoritarian for over 100 years?
Why limit this to only to ‘these days’?
The democratic party is, by its name itself, a ‘democratic’ party and as such contractionary to truth or science.
After all: they only want to listen to democratic outcomes, not outcomes based upon data or science..
That’s why they are so prone to socialism/communism..
Remember when Kennedy senior loved Hitler and hated the British…. Democrats LOVE CENTRAL POWER, BIG Government and Powerful Businesses in legal with that Government! FASCISTS!
Republicans(not uniparty RINOs) are the Opposite.
Fight for your freedom now….because Democrats are fighting a CIVIL War…their 2nd!
Some quotes from Joe Kennedy. Kennedy predicted “Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived”. “He had in him the stuff of which legends are made,” he continued. Kennedy wrote the entry in the summer of 1945 after touring the German dictator’s Bavarian mountain retreat.
my quote of Joe Kennedy is wrong.
“But I will say history says Kennedy is no longer following orders. He’s off on his own foreign policy agenda, which is peace at all costs, let’s make a deal with Hitler, which he continues to do even when Chamberlain gives up on Hitler.”