All social media platforms work with the US government to censor content, Twitter CEO Elon Musk claimed on Tuesday. Documents released by Musk following his purchase of Twitter showed that the platform colluded with the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and other government agencies to suppress information on elections, Ukraine, and Covid-19.

“*Every* social media company is engaged in heavy censorship, with significant involvement of and, at times, explicit direction of the government,” Musk tweeted, adding that “Google frequently makes links disappear, for example.”

Musk was referring to internal Twitter communications published by journalist Matt Taibbi with his approval, which suggested that the platform’s senior executives held regular meetings with members of the FBI and CIA, during which the agencies gave them lists of “hundreds of problem accounts” to suspend in the run-up to the 2020 election.

In addition to Twitter, the government was in contact “with virtually every major tech firm,” Taibbi claimed. “These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest.” CIA agents “nearly always” sat in on meetings of these firms with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, Taibbi claimed, explaining that although this task force was convened to fight alleged election interference by foreign states, it made “mountains of domestic moderation requests.”

A lawsuit filed earlier this year by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana alleges that officials from no fewer than 12 government agencies met weekly with representatives of Twitter, Facebook, and other Big Tech firms in 2020 to decide which narratives and users to censor, with topics ranging from alleged election interference to Covid-19.

A self-described “free speech absolutist,” Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October. He has since released batches of documents shedding light on the platform’s previously opaque censorship policies. Published by several independent journalists, the document dumps have shown how Twitter suppressed information damaging to Joe Biden’s election campaign, colluded with the FBI to remove content the agency wanted hidden, assisted the US military’s online influence campaigns, and censored “anti-Ukraine narratives” on behalf of multiple US intelligence agencies.

The FBI said last week that correspondence between its agents and Twitter staff “show nothing more than examples of our tradition [of] longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements.”  

The White House has refused to answer allegations that the FBI directed Twitter to censor information damaging to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/news/569016-musk-social-media-censorship/

MEANWHILE:

By Ivan Zuenko

The US and its allies control the global media space, but Beijing has a plan to weaken their stranglehold

When summing up 2020 – a difficult year with the Covid-19 pandemic and an escalation in the confrontation between Beijing and Washington – prominent Chinese political scientist Yuan Peng wrote: “It no longer matters what is true or false – what matters is who controls the discourse.”

The expert was referring to media pressure to discredit China, but in fact he identified one of the main features of our time – which could be called the ‘post-truth era’, when public opinion is shaped not by facts but by emotions.

Those who can guide these feelings in the right direction are the ones who shape the information agenda. The emotions that are generated have become the ‘discourse’. This concept, born among French poststructuralist philosophers (primarily Michel Foucault) in the mid-twentieth century, has found itself at the core of global politics in the early twenty-first century.

The year 2022, with all its tumultuous events – the escalation of the ‘Ukraine crisis’, the diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics, Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, and the expansion of ‘global NATO’ –  has raised the temperature of information confrontation to record levels. We have no reason to expect it to be less heated next year. China is one of those countries which, although it missed out on the initial division of ‘discursive capital’, has recognized the problem in time and is now consistently building up what experts call ‘discursive power’.

Beijing became concerned about this issue about ten years ago, when it became clear that its traditional ‘soft power’ approaches were no longer working. Despite generous investments in promoting its image, China was not treated better as a consequence.

Indeed, on the contrary, the degree of Sinophobia increased in direct proportion to China’s growing economic power. Confucius Institutes were perceived exclusively as breeding grounds for Chinese propaganda. Even a public relations event as obviously successful as the 2008 Summer Olympics was accompanied by loud accusations of human rights abuses and speeches in support of Tibetan separatists.

This is when it became clear to Beijing that what matters is not what is actually happening, but how it is reported on the internet. And online content in today’s world is mostly produced by Westerners and in the English language. As a result, not only the West itself, but also China’s neighbors, look at it through the eyes of the West.

It became necessary to analyze why attitudes towards the actions of a particular country are explained by the manner in which it is presented in the public square – and such an explanation was found in the concept of ‘discourse’. “Whoever controls the discourse controls the power,” Chinese intellectuals began to write, creatively modifying Foucault’s ideas to suit the political demand.

And soon these theoretical findings emerged from the offices of scholars and became the informational basis of Beijing’s new foreign policy – focusing on the ‘great renaissance of the Chinese nation’. The active position of Chinese diplomats and experts in social media (so-called ‘wolf warrior diplomacy’), the promotion of their terminology in various international platforms – all this is part of the ‘discursive power’ that is being developed by Beijing.

The phenomenon of ‘discursive power’ in China has not remained unnoticed by experts on the country. The Institute of International Studies of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) has also published an analytical report titled ‘From Soft Power to Discursive Power: The New Ideology of China’s Foreign Policy’, which provides a comprehensive assessment of this phenomenon and makes predictions for the future.

According to its findings, struggles around discourse are part of the hybrid confrontation that is already taking place on a global scale. China’s main goal is to counter the ‘discursive hegemony’ of the West, without overthrowing it, because Beijing needs the structure to build constructive relations with other countries. As a result, an alternative discursive reality to the West will gradually be created and most countries of the world will find themselves in the horns of a dilemma in choosing which point of view to adopt. Most importantly, ‘discursive power’ in Chinese interpretations is not limited to the written word – technological, financial and managerial standards are also part of it. Which, of course, means a new divide awaits the planet.

Such is the wondrous new world – the world of post-truth and ‘discursive multipolarity.’

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/news/569070-china-unveils-new-weapon/

Contemporary media systems are shaped by diverse constellation of organizations, groups, and individuals contributing information to national and international news flows. In our project, we analyze interdependencies and power relationships among these new constellations. We do so through the concept of discursive power: the ability of contributors to communication spaces to introduce, amplify, and maintain topics, frames, and speakers in interconnected communication spaces.

READ MORE:

https://discursivepower.de

READ FROM TOP.

MEANWHILE THE TRUTH IS STILL IN PRISON:

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

One of the empire’s strongest assets is the widespread assumption that propaganda is something that only happens to other people. Another is the widespread assumption that propaganda only comes from other countries and other political ideologies.

The status quo remains the status quo because those who benefit from the status quo are able to use the wealth and power given to them by the status quo to dissuade the public from overthrowing the status quo using status quo media to manufacture their consent for the status quo.

❖

The empire will use any ideology to advance its agendas. “Wokeism”, white supremacism, Zionism, Christian fundamentalism, liberalism, conservatism, progressivism — whatever ideological sympathies can be leveraged, will be leveraged.

The empire will use Nazism and wokeness, at the same time, on the same agenda. Look at the way the empire is using neo-Nazism to advance one part of its Ukraine agenda and using woke-sounding jargon to advance another part. They’re two diametrically opposed values, but it doesn’t matter because the empire has no values besides the pursuit of power.

The engineering of the empire doesn’t have an ideology for the same reason mugging doesn’t have an ideology; it has one goal, and that goal has nothing to do with anyone’s values or ideals. A con man will say whatever you need to hear to get his hands on your money.

The empire uses “wokeism” not because the empire gives a shit about social justice, but because that’s where easily leveraged public sympathies are found at the moment. Getting hung up on wokeism is like fixating on the syringe and not the hand that’s holding it or the poison it holds.

The empire uses ideologies the way we use tools. When it doesn’t need the screwdriver, it picks up the hammer. Right now it’s getting a lot of use out of “wokeism”, and tomorrow it will be something else. Don’t focus so much on the tools, focus on who’s using them, and what they’re being used for.

❖

One of the silliest things about this proxy war is how empire apologists will call it an “unprovoked invasion“, then pivot to gushing about how efficient and cost-effective the war is for advancing US strategic interests against Russia, then pivot right back to calling it an “unprovoked invasion” again.

These are mutually contradictory positions. Either it’s a completely unprovoked invasion that the US didn’t want, or it’s a highly efficient and cost-effective way of getting Washington everything it wants. It’s nonsensical and naive to believe both.

❖

The dream for automation was that it would be used to eliminate the need for human toil. In practice so far it’s only being used to increase inequality: generating more profits for the ruling class while leaving normal people poorer and more desperate. Market forces only encourage more of this.

Apologists for the status quo are basically coming right out and telling us that automation will be used to increase income and wealth inequality, and they’re absolutely correct. That’s what’s been happening, and it will continue until it is made to stop.

Meanwhile we’re seeing the steady normalization of increasingly militarized robots, which will eventually become capable of suppressing domestic uprisings without the annoying human tendency to refuse to fire upon their countrymen, or even switch sides and join the revolution. So we appear to be headed for tremendous poverty and injustice if we don’t force a change in the trajectory we’re on, and if we don’t force it soon they’ll have robotic security systems to stop us. The robots will either be made to work for us, or they’ll be used against us.

This is the trajectory we’ll be on as long as capitalism remains in place and the class which rules it retains control of automation. Vastly unequal tech dystopia where the people are controlled by AI and weaponized robots is the final stage of capitalism (before death by ecocide).

❖

I often hear people saying that those who have been propagandized into accepting the mainstream worldview are stupid, but from what I can tell the successfulness of empire propaganda in taking over people’s minds has very little to do with anyone’s intelligence. You’ve probably noticed that some of the smartest people you know in your own life uncritically regurgitate the same narratives about the world that you’ll hear on CNN or the BBC. Generally, intelligent people differ from the less intelligent only in that they have more clever justifications and defenses for the perspectives they’ve been propagandized into believing.

The tendency to meet authority-endorsed information with critical thought and scrutiny seems to have a lot more to do with the dumb luck of having been conditioned to do so by the kind of life you have lived. If there’s any sort of personal attribute that leaves one less vulnerable to propaganda, it could be described as a sincere devotion to the truth. A sincere devotion to knowing what’s true, and to seeing, thinking and living accordingly. This quality can emerge in people of any kind of intelligence.

A sincere devotion to the truth also happens to be the quality most essential for realizing spiritual enlightenment. It’s also the quality most essential for living a happy life. Whatever that strange spark is and whatever gives rise to it wherever it shows up, it’s pretty clear that it’s the guiding light that will lead our species to sanity.

_________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal, or buying an issue of my monthly zine. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

READ MORE:

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/12/28/propaganda-isnt-something-that-only-happens-to-others-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/

SEE ALSO:

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

VALE VIVIENNE

Vivienne Westwood, an influential fashion maverick who played a key role in the punk movement, has died aged 81.

Westwood’s eponymous fashion house announced her death on social media platforms, saying she died peacefully. A cause of death was not disclosed.

SEE ALSO:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-assange-westwood-idUSKCN24M0XD

LONDON (Reuters) - Vivienne Westwood, dressed in yellow, was locked into a giant bird cage outside England’s Old Bailey court on Tuesday, a stunt to show her support for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who is fighting extradition from Britain to the United States.

“I am Julian Assange,” fashion designer Westwood said. “I am the canary in the cage. If I die down the coal mine from poisonous gas, that’s the signal.”