The “Silencing” Of America?…
How I Learned to Live in American Political Apartheid as a Banned Unperson In a Virtual Internment Camp…
I am one of the thousands of freedom advocates banned by Facebook this week.
After about ten years as a loyal Facebook user, as Admin for a half-dozen groups and enjoying the social connections it offered to my wide-spread family, a couple of days ago I was expelled from Facebook suddenly — along with my nephew, Jeff. #FacebookPurge
Communications with relatives and friends were stricken – all of them. And, suddenly, I had become a banned unperson.
All of my groups and pages were abolished, including pages for recognized exempt organizations, including churches! When they reach out to make contact with me, or share something with me, my friends and family are learning I am been turned into a Facebook Unperson. Photos, videos, shared memories, planned events, gone. I imagine it might feel like this to be violated. I imagine it might feel like this to be a freedom advocate in apartheid South Africa or the happily-gone Soviet Union — singled out as a Banned Unperson.
Sometime that afternoon, I visited Facebook I was astonished to learn that I had been terminated.
There was a link to appeal. I immediately did so, sending a copy of my passport as requested. Within seconds a message popped on the screen: no appeal was allowed. No review was possible. Obviously preset, the social violation dictate was final. I was terminated with extreme prejudice.
Here is that arbitrary, capricious, fully automatic, act of ultimate censorship:
Why? What had I done to be singled out? In the Kafkaesque landscape of arbitrary social media violation, all you can do is try to piece hints and clues together – and never really know the answer.
Could it be because, along with my nephew Jeff, I was an Admin of a group with over 200,000 members called “Red Pill Crusaders”? Perhaps my “Free Speech Crime” is that I am a strong advocate for the Right of Informed Consent, health freedom and vaccine freedom of choice?
Or was the sin that I was recently sharing the facts about how the Americans with Disabilities Act allows people to refuse to be masked and silenced —
https://tinyurl.com/maskexemption.
Of course, it might have been my use of the hashtag #BillionBribeBiden. So while the exact crime(s) are unclear, the class of crime seems obvious: exercising my First Amendment rights.
My guess is that I was purged, at least in part…
…because I have forthrightly asserted that Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the like, while “private companies” at least in name, are not really private actors at all, but are crony corporations favored and supported by taxpayer dollars and resources, acting under color of law, making commercial and political use of our Internet Commons while censoring political and other opinion speech as well as scientific discourse for their own self-interest, and no other reason.
Perhaps it is because I have asserted numerous times that the Telecommunications Act (“the Act”) does not allow these deep state companies to censor the speech of users of the Internet Commons. I believe, as a libertarian and retired lawyer that the Common Law is binding on all and clearly forbids such behavior. The Act includes infamous Section 230 which supposedly “protects” free speech while really giving the crony companies the excuse to violate free speech.
The language of the statute says that the service providers are not responsible for the content their users post…
…if they do not monitor or moderate that content, but merely act as a public utility transmitting same. Then the law goes on to allow the companies to remove, without penalty, “pornography or other objectionable materials.”
It’s the last phrase, “other objectionable materials” that the companies choose to act as if they are allowed to ban people, opinions, facts, science and ideas. However, to reach that irrational conclusion they must ignore the normal rules of statutory construction.
Clearly “other objectionable materials” must be read in the context of “pornography.” Our jurisprudence distinguishes between pornography – which is not protected speech – and political and opinion speech and scientific discourse which is protected from government censorship. That means that it is protected from government censorship even when apparently “private” agents of state power (in this case, Facebook) engage in the censorship. Those companies are legally “creatures of the state” operating under the corporate franchise provided by the government with powers, such as limited liability, not available to corporations that truly are private actors. The phrase “other objectionable materials” must be read to only include non-speech such as pornography.
The Big Media corporations are instruments of, and serve, entrenched deep state power and need to be held accountable.
They must be held to respect freedom of speech or all government support and funding, advantages and protection must be withdrawn from them immediately
Remember, the First Amendment does not create the right to freedom of speech. It merely recognizes the pre-existing natural right and forbids Congress (and through the 14th Amendment, the States and all creatures of the state acting under color of law) from “abridging the freedom of speech.”
Just a few weeks ago I pointed that out to the Federal Communications Commission, as one of the first to comment in support of President Trump’s formal Petition to the FCC asking the agency to review Section 230 and refine its enforcement to stop the censorship. My comments are posted at the FCC web site here: https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/1080792043737/Ralph%20Fucetola.pdf
Could that have provoked the FBV? Once I start to think that way, the chilling effect something like a FBV has (and is intended to have) on legitimate discourse is evident.
There is a bill pending before Congress that would change the operative words of Section 230 from “otherwise objectionable” to “otherwise unlawful” – a huge and very important difference. You can support that change by signing the White House Petition, here: http://www.opensourcetruth.com/free-speech-petition/
Do you think that my advocacy for free speech might have played a role in my banning?
Is sharing a considered opinion on a government forum punishable by FBV? Is that what the First Amendment means now? For the sake of our Republic, I sincerely hope not.
What to do next? Boycott Big Fascist Tech. Use alternatives to it that do not censor. I am moving my social media activities to www.Minds.com — the blockchain-friendly, completely uncensored social media — my user name is RalphFucetolaJD.
There my advocacy, my social and family contacts and the exempt organizations and churches with which I work can find refuge and freedom of speech. See you there.
The Great Facebook Purge of 2020 has freed me from… Facebook!
PS — The latest news: the FCC has just announced it will take up the issue of enforcing Section 230. Will that be too late for the election? Will it be too late for me and thousands of other Banned Unpersons? We shall see… https://nypost.com/2020/10/15/fcc-moves-to-clarify-section-230-law-after-censoring-of-post-story/
One more thing:
Anti-Vaxxers – Should We Let FaceBook Live? Or, As A Favor To America, Should We Just Destroy It?
Funny how they grab your passport BEFORE telling you it is futile. I wouldn’t have let them have that. In fact, I didn’t. I uploaded a hand-written note saying ‘go scr3w yourselves’. It let me back into my account for a full 24 hours to sort things out before somebody read it.
That was how I banned Fascbook, several years ago. I haven’t lost touch with ANYBODY I care about, and I get most of my news by email subscription – which has no filter! I occasionally use minds dot com which brings me new leads from time to time. Also unfiltered.
People who fear life without Fascbook, remember this. Mother Teresa said “I don’t watch TV or buy newspapers, so I know exactly what is happening in the world”.
I think that the major reason your account was terminated has to do with one of the two major candidates for President. A certain offspring of one of the candidates seems to have engaged in activities that are very much illegal and seriously immoral. Nothing will stop the revelation of these evil acts but when it happens one major political franchise in this country will be on life support or worse. This means all the entrenched power and money will be at an end, and it scares the “heck” out of wicked people everywhere. If you are a praying person now is the time to pray, I think!
What you describe is very familiar to me, as I have experienced similar things for several decades – being cut off from family, friends and social contacts. It was so bad, that “lockdown” has just been normal life to me! I didn’t know why these things were happening, which, as you describe, is the most disturbing aspect of the whole thing. Now, as all these changes have been taking place, I’m beginning to understand. It’s to do with all the things you have identified, as well as vaccine injury, whistle-blowing and finding alternative ways of surviving without government. The solution is to carry on in the same fashion, ignoring them – which is clearly what you’ve decided to do. We will all come out stronger in the end. Fascinating times!
Interesting, Grace, that you stumbled innocently into this problem, and that your eyes were opened to it by them trying to have them closed. I think this is happening to countless millions of people now. The d33p state have already fired most of their ammunition, and they are about to get a whole lot back. But every shot they have fired has alerted yet more people to the battle.
To me this signifies that they are truly desperate.
For me, it was becoming v@ccine injured myself around the turn of the century that piqued my interest. Learning how to deal with that got me interested in natural healing (I was alrady distrustful of doctors, although no distrustful enough at that stage). It wasn’t far from there to learn about Wakefield etc and what they did to him. And from there, it was increasingly obvious that our entire reality is fake, our society is built on lies, deception and violence. And lies, deception and violence have been used to maintain it also. Lies about history, climate, politics, money, science, biology, medicine…
The information age was always going to bring in new opportunities and new problems. I had read about mind control, and how it was already very far advanced by the 1960s or 1970s. It merely needed the technological tools to run it on such a scale. At university I learned of the sociology of the digital age back when the internet was born. The ramifications of a global machine that repairs itself and can’t be turned off were terrifying to me back then (1994).
I could see Fascbook coming before it came, and once it arrived I could see instantly what it was for – herding sheep, basically.
So I have arrived at this point fully aware of how ‘they’ can operate. In short, I have been ‘unlucky’ enough to see this coming. I have also been trying vigorously for over ten years – since before Swine Flu – to help others understand this problem and see what could be on the horizon if things kept going in the same direction.
It’s an unpleasant knack I have to see the future and be unable to get others to take me seriously.
I guess, then, it is because of people like me that this is so messy, and we aren’t just all sleepwalking in blissful ignorance to our fate. The bad luck of the perpetrators of this mother of all crimes is that the human spirit doesn’t work the way they think it does. Since they are psychopaths they will never ever understand that.
Now you are awake, you will ask what so many others ask “but what can I do”. Wake up others! Remember how the Emperor’s New Clothes ends. We are so close to a tipping point where only the governments, big tech, big pharma and the effing BBC believe their own lies anymore and everybody else sees right through. There is no longer the fear of being ridiculed to worry about.
I saw what was happening in the autism world and someone hinted at why this could be allowed to go on (why politicians, key players are silent): money and blackmail. Unfortunately it all made perfect sense. The purge, I believe, cannot stop what is coming. And the media will be shown to be fully complicit.
I had content taken down from FB because it was considered “misinformation that may be harmful to its users” a couple of times. The writing was on the wall. The Left threw out tolerance long ago and in 2020 we have seen bias censorship and cancel culture openly and unapologetically. For having a different view on an issue you are terminated. This feels very Orwellian. I ended up deleting my account before they did because I honestly don’t want anything to do with a company that dictates how people think, feel and act by curating the content of FB to their agenda. I wrote about it on my blog ‘Why I Quit Facebook’ if you’re interested. https://redeemedingrace.wordpress.com/2020/10/12/why-i-quit-facebook/