patrick.net

This paper explores the erosion of academic freedom through institutional censorship, using my experience at Université Laval as a case study. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Hannah Arendt, Loïc Wacquant, and Samuel Moyn, alongside recent analyses by Laurent Mucchielli, Eric Rasmusen, John Carpay, and historical parallels with Galileo Galilei and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I argue that the suppression of dissenting voices is not merely an anomaly but a structural feature of modern academia. I demonstrate how bureaucratic and ideological mechanisms neutralize intellectual challenges, framing these actions as an extension of neoliberal governance, securitizing discourse, and consolidating a monopolized COVID narrative. This essay contributes to the discourse on censorship in the sciences and the social impact of constrained intellectual inquiry.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has rolled out a sweeping new surveillance initiative that allows the global body to monitor online conversations, media posts, and digital trends in real time.

The WHO insists that the new system will help to crack down on “misinformation” and promote “pandemic preparedness.”

According to the WHO, the system will be used to shut down conversations deemed to be “misleading” while allowing others considered “safe” to continue.

The new system is called Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources 2.0 (EIOS).

https://www.who.int/news/item/13-10-2025-who-upgrades-its-public-health-intelligence-system-to-boost-global-health-security

Brazil Launches Online Platform to Track and Prosecute ‘Disrespectful’ Speech

Brazil’s left-wing government has unveiled a sweeping new “anti-disinformation” online system that will track down dissenters and prosecute those caught using “disrespectful” speech.

Critics are calling the chilling new system, which is driven by artificial intelligence (AI), one of the most dangerous censorship tools in the Western Hemisphere.

The publicly funded project is designed to monitor, track, and criminally prosecute citizens who question radical ideology.

Branded the “Platform of Respect,” the initiative was launched by Brazil’s Ministry of Human Rights in partnership with the NGO Aliança Nacional LGBTI+. ...

According to reports, Aletheia doesn’t just monitor misinformation; it actively identifies individuals for potential prosecution.

One high-profile example cited by local media involves Isabella Cêpa, a feminist activist who was forced to flee Brazil and seek asylum in Europe after referring to Hilton as male.

For that remark, she faced up to 25 years in prison before ultimately being vindicated.

The groundwork for such prosecutions was laid in 2019, when Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court declared that “discrimination against LGBT individuals” was legally equivalent to racism, effectively making “transphobia” a criminal offense.

Since then, the law has been used to punish Brazilians for words and opinions, not actions, that contradict state-approved narratives. ...

Under Brazil’s expanding hate-speech laws, any statement suggesting that biological sex is immutable can now be classified as “discrimination” or “transphobia.”

“We’re going to have to start experimenting with new forms of journalism,” Obama said, “with government regulatory constraints.”

“Part of what we’re going to have to do is to start experimenting with new forms of journalism and how we use social media in ways that reaffirm facts and separate facts from opinion.

“We want diversity of opinion,” he claimed.

“We don’t want diversity of facts.

“That, I think, is one of the big tasks of social media.

“By the way, it will require some government regulatory constraints…”

Critics say Obama’s remarks confirm what many Americans have long suspected: that the Democrat establishment is actively laying the groundwork for a government-managed information system, one that polices which opinions are allowed to circulate online.

The vague phrasing, such as “hateful,” “polarizing,” and “dangerous,” has sparked particular concern, as such terms can easily be manipulated to silence dissent.

As one cyber expert warned, Obama’s comments are not about safety, but control.

“F*ck this guy,” said Mike Benz, a former Trump administration official and founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online.

“His whole apparatus is set up to end the First Amendment.

“He’s coordinating with foreign governments to end free speech in America.

“And he spied and lied and did every dirty trick in the book along the way.”

Benz has repeatedly documented how the U.S. government, under Democrat administrations, has funded and coordinated with global “disinformation” networks to pressure social media platforms into censoring political speech.

"Critics say Obama’s remarks confirm what many Americans have long suspected: that the Democrat establishment is actively laying the groundwork for a government-managed information system, one that polices which opinions are allowed to circulate online."

Patrick says

"Critics say Obama’s remarks confirm what many Americans have long suspected: that the Democrat establishment is actively laying the groundwork for a government-managed information system, one that polices which opinions are allowed to circulate online."

Obama and his Globalists want censorship.

Nov. 22, 2024

As the left loses power worldwide, they are turning to increasingly authoritarian measures. In Germany, Antifa-allied Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is filing charges against conservative journalist David Bendels – ironically for calling Faeser an enemy of free speech.

In the UK, Tommy Robinson and dozens of patriots are in prison for posting on social media or screening a documentary, in Tommy’s case. Police in Essex showed up at the door of Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson because of a post on social media.

In Australia, the leftist government is seeking to pass a law requiring all Australians to register with ID to be able to post on social media.

In Germany, as the Scholz government collapses and faces pressure from the patriotic AfD party, the German government is going full Stasi and raided a retired Army vet for calling Green econ minister and vice-chancellor Robert Habeck an “idiot” (Gateway reported).

In July, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser tried to shut down right-wing Compact magazine but was defeated in court.

YouTuber Shlomo Finkelstein is currently in prison for videos showing a burning Koran.

Violent attacks on AfD politicians are the norm in Germany and are rarely prosecuted because the leftist government views the Antifa street thugs as their street muscle. AfD politicians are virtually banned from mainstream media and are subjected to vile and defamatory reporting by “investigative” journalists, often with intel support.

Now, Interior Minister Faeser is pressing charges against conservative journalist David Bendels, editor-in-chief of the AfD-aligned DeutschlandKurier, for making fun of her in a meme showing Faeser holding a sign that reads “I hate free speech” (photo above).

Yes, you read that right: The Antifa-aligned Homeland Security minister of Germany wants to prove she doesn’t hate freedom of speech by going after a journalist’s freedom of speech.

The UK government’s communications regulator Ofcom is facing backlash and a federal lawsuit after asserting that the U.S. Constitution does not protect American citizens from its online censorship laws.

Under the United Kingdom’s sweeping Online Safety Act, Ofcom has been sending enforcement letters to small U.S. platforms, including 4chan and Kiwi Farms.

Ofcom is demanding compliance with British speech regulations and threatening heavy fines for noncompliance. ...

Preston Byrne, an attorney representing 4chan, Kiwi Farms, and two other American companies, said the regulator’s actions were “frankly asinine.”

“My clients are entirely American,” Byrne said.

“All of their operations are American.

“All of their infrastructure is American, and they have no connection to the UK whatsoever.”

Despite that, Ofcom reportedly threatened the companies with “a £20,000 fine plus £100 daily penalties for 60 days thereafter.” ...

Byrne said his team has reached out to the White House, both houses of Congress, and several lawmakers are now exploring legislation to block foreign censorship enforcement on U.S. soil.

“I’m advised that there are a number of senators in Congress and representatives in Congress who are looking at introducing a bill to put a stop to this,” he said.

Byrne added that he is also backing a New Hampshire state law that would create a $1 million penalty per occurrence against any foreign regulator that tries to enforce censorship inside the United States, along with a waiver of sovereign immunity in state courts.

The meme lightly mocked two well-known figures in Granbury politics, activist Tina Brown and former school board candidate Monica Brown.

The post jokingly suggested that Tina supported the candidate she strongly opposes.

To locals familiar with years of political rivalry between the two women, the post was clearly tongue-in-cheek.

Republican precinct chair Sarah Fields described it as exactly that, noting it was “an obviously satirical meme to the local audience, who knew that Tina ‘Karen’ Brown has no love for the former Granbury ISD school board candidate, Monica Brown.”

Google Censored Vaccine Info Long Before COVID — Could It Have Anything to Do With Parent Company Alphabet’s Deep Pharma Ties?

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, admitted to Congress that the Biden administration pressured YouTube, owned by Google, to remove videos that didn’t even violate its content policies.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Big Tech companies colluded with the government to silence dissent and criticisms of the lockdowns and a coercive mass vaccination campaign by censoring truthful information that did not align with the political agenda.

The Biden administration’s role in the censorship regime was the subject of a May 2024 congressional report titled “The Censorship-Industrial Complex.”

Three months after that report was released, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in a letter to Congress that Facebook had censored factual information under pressure from the White House.

In September, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, responded to a congressional subpoena with a letter similarly disclosing how the Biden administration had pressured YouTube, owned by Google, to remove videos that didn’t even violate its content policies.

Unelected European Union (EU) authorities have officially launched the long-anticipated “Democracy Shield,” a sweeping initiative that consolidates every major censorship and monitoring program built over the past decade.

These censorship and surveillance systems are now fused into a single, centralized apparatus to police information, identity, and online speech. ...

The Democracy Shield creates a “European Network of Fact-Checkers,” funded directly by the EU and positioned as an “independent” system even as it operates under the same institutions setting censorship policies.

Dries Van Langenhove was convicted on June 20, 2025, by the Ghent Court of Appeal for violating Belgium’s racism and negationism laws.

Macron’s Mission to Muzzle the Internet
A president once enamored with disruption now dreams of an internet that obeys his censorship demands.

... The plan, delivered between polite applause and nodding journalists, is a major expansion of France’s digital control architecture: fast-track censorship orders, new powers for state agencies, a legal war against “false accounts,” criminal liability for platforms, and a promise to ban social media for anyone under fifteen, enforced by the same age-checking system used for pornography.

The speech was a kind of legislative fever dream, where misinformation, harassment, and child protection were all conflated into a single moral emergency requiring more state authority and faster judicial reflexes. Macron’s frustration was clear. He wants the ability to hit delete.

Kraut still doesn't get it. But the commenters do.

U.S. Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers called the list of sanctioned individuals “illustrative not exhaustive,” and she also detailed their symbolic importance. Enduring Euromoron Thierry Breton, for example, got the hammer for “mastermind[ing]” the DSA and for writing that wacky letter to Musk in advance of last year’s elections, while the State Department singled out cringe girlboss Josephine Ballon at HateAid partly for appearing in a notorious 60 Minutes segment on German political repression and telling her interviewers that “free speech needs boundaries.” ...

Party leader Franziska Brandner echoed this demand: “The entry bans are an authoritarian attempt at intimidation and a direct attack on the rule of law in Europe,” she said. ...

Sonja Eichwede, emphasised that the US was trying “under the guise of supposed freedom of expression” to take action against people and organisations “who are committed to having social platforms without hatred and incitement.” ...

Carmen Wegge, accused the US government of simply presenting a false argument. “Criminal behaviour such as incitement to hatred and insults are not protected by freedom of expression,” she warned. ...

(Note that was four women in a row. -Patrick)

1) Visa sanctions like these allow censorship goons like Breton, Ballon and the rest of them to claim a lot of clout for being persecuted by the Trump administration, while in truth facing nothing more than mild inconvenience. Thus our gaggle of discourse schoolmarms released strident statements within hours of Rubio’s announcement, professing their brave defiance of the Trump administration and their determination to continue censoring the internet in the name of human rights and free speech “now more than ever.” There is the danger that this whole thing devolves into a scenario of symbiotic opposition.2

2) What the U.S. would need to do, to really hurt these people and put a kink in their retarded game, is hit them with real sanctions – the kind that the EU has imposed on Baud and may impose on Köppel, the kind that make it impossible to buy and sell anything. That would have a serious chilling effect on the internet hall monitors. Alternatively, the Americans might work behind the scenes with the EU or specific European governments, like Merz’s coalition, enticing these governments to starve key nodes of the censorship industrial complex of funding in return for favours on things like tariffs (or whatever).

3) All of this naturally depends on what it is the Americans want to achieve. The official line, as stated by Under Secretary Rogers, is that British or EU laws restricting online speech that end up impacting the rights of Americans to free expression cross a “red line” and will invite retaliation from the United States. With only a little extrapolation, this argument also works to defend the European operations of American social media companies from DSA-related harassment more generally. And then there are the visa sanctions themselves, which suggest to me at least an interest in attacking the European censorship regime more generally, and independently of its specific effects on Americans in America.

4) Either way, one should have realistic expectations here: It would be great to get rid of organisations like HateAid, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate and the Global Disinformation Index, but even total success on this front would not inaugurate a new era of liberalism and freedom of expression in Europe. These particular political tumours were all founded in 2018, after Brexit, Donald Trump’s first election and the Cambridge Analytica scandal convinced political elites of the totally insane conspiracy theory that adversarial states like Russia had weaponised “disinformation” and “social media algorithms” to hijack their political systems. ...