by Sean Flanagan, Daily Sceptic:
Voltaire, the clearest of Enlightenment thinkers, wrote in 1765: “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
250 odd years later, these words resonate possibly louder now than they did then. Controlling ‘the Narrative’ via propaganda and suppression of dissent has always been central to enacting tyrannical measures, but never before have those in power had at their disposal such potent levers of ubiquitous modern technology and communication to enforce global censorship. As the world begins to wake up to the devastating effects of the past three years surrounding the emergence of COVID-19 and the response measures enacted by our governments, it is now beyond doubt that this censorship has cost the lives and livelihoods of millions of people across the globe.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
The harms that resulted because debate around the Government’s disastrous response was shut down are legion – increased poverty, lower education achievement, loss of employment, closure of small businesses and deaths from other diseases to name a few. Most of this was, and is, entirely predictable and the potential harms were highlighted from the beginning by concerned experts across many disciplines, including numerous highly credentialed doctors and scientists. It is hard to know where to start with the examples of deliberate, coordinated attacks on medical experts who were merely expressing opinions on what they were witnessing in their hospitals, based on what they had been taught, or how they were successfully treating Covid patients. But perhaps one of the first and most blatant blows to the pursuit of truth came in the collusion of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins, Sir Jeremy Farrar, Sir Patrick Vallance, Sir Chris Whitty and their cohort to squash dissenting views on lockdowns and smear the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) as “fringe epidemiologists”.
In an email to Fauci about the GBD, Collins wrote: “There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises.” The pattern was already set – ad hominem attacks on anyone who contradicted ‘the Narrative’, suppression and censorship across multiple social media platforms and perhaps most sinister of all, threats of professional tribunals and the removal of credentials and licences to practise medicine. By making examples of those brave enough to speak up, a culture of fear and censorship has muted the very people that you would expect to speak up for their patients.
The weaponisation of fear was allowed to go into overdrive when these same individuals and organisations dismissed and buried the emergence of information regarding very successful early treatment protocols from doctors treating patients earlier in 2019 and the first quarter of 2020, with what they saw (as they were taught) in front of them in symptomatic patients. Instead of trying to allay the public’s fears, medics, scientists, academics and others were discouraged from and even threatened for entertaining the possibility that generic medicines with impeccable safety records could be used in sequence to successfully treat the symptoms of COVID-19. With hands tied, mouths gagged and principles firmly pushed aside, doctors were instructed by those in authority to send their patients home with no treatment protocol and tell them, in not so many words, only to come back when their lips turned blue from lack of oxygen.
In the place of what was commonly understood to be the ‘scientific method’ – fully open and transparent, always challenging at the edges – came an industry of ‘fact checkers’ deployed by media organisations and social media platforms. This gave rise to the absurdity of an army of generally under-qualified and anonymous employees making pronouncements on the veracity of the claims of professors, Noble prize winners and other highly qualified and questioning people. Big Tech companies cloaked themselves with a thin illusion of impartiality when in reality Government agencies were directing policy and decisions behind the scenes. Here again the manipulation of discourse was ensured by the introduction of a whole new vocabulary of ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’. Pejorative terms designed to stop debate in its tracks – ‘conspiracy theorist’, ‘anti-vaxxer’, ‘Covidiot’ – made frequent appearances in the mainstream media and by force of repetition helped suppress the appetite of the public at large to dare to engage in any independent critical thought of their own.
Yet in the past few weeks many of these fearless medics and scientists have once again found themselves able to engage in the public conversation. What changed?
The acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk has thrown a spanner in the works of those who endorse censorship to reinforce ‘the Narrative’. Using his business smarts, Mr. Musk is doing a full audit of his new company and sharing the results with the rest of the world. Exposing the shenanigans of the previous management (‘Twitter 1.0’) both draws a line under the corruption that took place and sets the direction of travel towards ensuring that Twitter becomes a trusted platform and, to quote Mr. Musk, the “town square” for open debate, information, networking and commerce (‘Twitter 2.0’).
Having had a chance to look under the bonnet of Twitter, Elon Musk said:
Almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true. Is there a conspiracy theory about Twitter that didn’t turn out to be true? So far, they’ve all turned out to be true. And if not, more true than people thought.
Government collusion via the FBI and other agencies can no longer be denied. Money has been exchanged between Government agencies and Big Tech to selectively dial down or dial up voices on social media in support of the current political narrative. If this is true for Twitter, we can likely extrapolate across all Big Tech companies, while mainstream media are known to receive multi-year Government advertising contracts for hundreds of millions of dollars, compromising their ability to operate in the best interests of their users.
To celebrate the restoration of previously censored accounts and the renewal of free speech online, on Sunday January 8th 2023 at 3pm EST USA, 8pm London, we will be hosting a Twitter Spaces event: “Censorship Killed Millions. Free Speech Saves Lives.” Join us to hear the censorship stories of several public figures, including Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Ryan Cole, Steve Kirsch, Prof. Thomas Borody, Dr. Sabine Hazan, Dr. Jackie Stone, Dr. Richard Urso and more.
