patrick.net

https://billricejr.substack.com/p/the-battle-to-kill-freedom-of-reach

As several Substack Contrarians remind readers, “freedom of speech” is definitely not the same thing as “freedom of reach.” ...

The over-night ramp-up of CIC and the daily blarmy churned out by the Untrusted News Initiative explains why Substack went from an obscure start-up nobody had heard of … to one of the most important media innovations of our lifetimes.

Not only did “contrarian” writers by the thousands flock to Substack so did millions of readers who didn’t reflectively support or believe the claims of “authorities” like Anthony Fauci.

Many authors who quickly picked up on the “free speech” benefits of Substack flourished and saw their subscriber - and reader - numbers increase rapidly and impressively.

I joined the roster of “Covid Contrarian” writers later than many authors (on Sept. 24, 2022), but even I caught enough of this wave for my newsletter to rapidly develop a national and international audience. ...

One objective of the CIC was to spearhead the battle against the scourge of “vaccine hesitancy.”

Correctly assessed, this particular battle can be recorded as a resounding defeat for the Establishment cohorts … as tens of millions of people were becoming increasingly-hesitant to get their next round of Covid boosters.

This result is probably mortifying for Substack’s founders to admit … However, the truth is what it is and the fact remains it was Substack’s own army of “independent” and “dissident” writers who largely explain the sea change in sentiment about the “efficacy” or “safety” of these shots.

(Note: At least 77 percent of Americans (probably more) are now disregarding the CDC’s “guidance” that American citizens should continue to get the latest Covid boosters.)

Almost by themselves, dissident pundits on one little writers’ platform harpooned the mission of history’s most intense and coordinated Propaganda Operation.

https://www.foundationforfreedomonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/FFO-FLASH-REPORT-REV.pdf

Rep. Ayanna Pressley openly admits she’s willing to work with anyone who wants to CENSOR Americans.

They aren’t even hiding it anymore—free speech is the enemy to Democrats.

https://greenmedinfo.com/content/truth-reconciliation-and-surgeon-generals-cover-vaccine-injuries

I've been reading Christopher Rufo's "The American Cultural Revolution" where he documents that this is literally the position of the BLM and DIE people.

Free speech for anyone other than blacks is racism, according to them.

https://educationdojo.com/study-break/2025/02/02-24-education-dojo-daily/#thought_control

I was called some of these names and got a 30-day ban from Facebook for a single post discussing the rampant Covid spread in the professional sports leagues in 2021. I simply pointed out the obvious facts that the leagues were at or near 100 percent vaxxed, were tested every week, were required to wear masks nearly all the time, and had restrictions on going out in public. Anyone with a brain should have been able to figure out the measures weren’t preventing contracting or spreading the virus, yet I’m a covidiot and anti-vaxxer for pointing it out. 🙄 And don’t even get me started on the climate change bullshit. I’ve listened to 40+ years of world-is-ending predictions from charlatans. As a kid, I watched schools across America shove Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth down the throats of impressionable minds. None of his predictions came true, of course, but it did make him a billionaire.

I did get acknowledgement from Peets that they are censoring gab.ai and urbandictionary.com via their wifi:

We are not blocking Gab.com on our WIFI. We blocked Urbandictionary.com and Gab.ai from Patrick's device. These sites have been classed as adult which is why they are blocked.

My response:

I really appreciate the time you put into this.

I can understand blocking porn sites, but neither urbandictionary.com nor gab.ai are porn sites. They are just politically incorrect text-based sites.

So sadly, it looks like Peets is dictating political views to its customers.

Please don't do that. I and most of your customers would like to see the full range of political views. Censorship is wrong.

Patrick

https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1087&context=secrecyandsociety

Ideological and financial motivations have undermined science for decades.
In this narrative review, we explore how organizations and governments
used misinformation, disinformation, censorship, and secrecy to manage the
COVID-19 pandemic. Various rationales for employing censorship and
secrecy during the COVID-19 pandemic are examined including how
organizations and governments create confusion about the risks associated
with their products and blame avoidance to shift responsibility and to avoid
accountability for their actions. Methods of censorship employed during the
COVID-19 pandemic are reviewed, examples are provided, and the
consequences of these actions are reviewed. Information included in this
review was obtained from scientific papers, government documents, mass
media articles, books, and personal accounts of physicians and scientists. We
examine how the use of censorship and secrecy created a challenge for
scientists, physicians, politicians, and the general public in trying to
understand COVID-related topics. Finally, strategies for managing censorship
and secrecy during a pandemic are presented.

https://billricejr.substack.com/p/why-censorship-is-the-most-important

Why Censorship is the ‘Most Important Thing’ to the Rulers of the World

A two-step program explains just about everything: 1. Create a false narrative which allows the control of the masses. 2. Create a system where these false narratives cannot be exposed.

A recurring theme in my writing is that powerful and evil organizations seek to control the population of the world by creating and disseminating false or dubious narratives intended to create great fear in the masses.

The same people and organizations also go to great lengths to conceal stories/scandals that, if exposed, would reveal their duplicitous/diabolical true character.

While I argue society would benefit greatly if more people possessed the critical thinking abilities to identify and dismiss fear narratives that are contrived and irrational, certain developments in the world are genuinely frightening and should be feared. ...

This objective might be summarized as follows:

“Now that we’ve scared enough people to be able to control their thinking and behavior, it’s very important that we also create a system that makes it almost impossible for people to realize the Fear Narratives we created were false and contrived all along.”

The goal of the Censorship Industrial Complex and now-ubiquitous “fact-checking” organizations is to neutralize or minimize the influence of every person who does possess the ability to see what’s really occurring.

Fortunately, “adults in the room” still exist in the world. Unfortunately - and by design - these wise citizens do not possess influence of a degree sufficient enough to harpoon bogus and toxic false narratives.

When someone thinks about all of this and connects the right dots, one realizes the project to protect dubious fear narratives is both massive and diabolical.

It turned out that the people with the motive and means to produce Fear Narratives also possessed the means and motivation to produce a system that labeled skeptics as “spreaders of disinformation and misinformation,” people who should be cancelled and whose views should be suppressed, dismissed or discredited.

MolotovCocktail says

Yeah, it's like out of the frying pan into the fire if you move from CA to TX. Phelan's an alcoholic who is slurring drunk during session. When the republican's win elections they just give away half of the committee seats to the democrats in some sort of uniparty bs. Last year (maybe year before) I think TX tried to criminalize slurs against Jews. So much for free speech.

Phelan was the guy who spearheaded the attack on Paxton. I rooted for Paxton but then this is now in play and I think Paxton is part of it too: https://patrick.net/post/1384365/2025-04-26-charles-perry

Maga_Chaos_Monkey says

MolotovCocktail says

Yeah, it's like out of the frying pan into the fire if you move from CA to TX. Phelan's an alcoholic who is slurring drunk during session. When the republican's win elections they just give away half of the committee seats to the democrats in some sort of uniparty bs. Last year (maybe year before) I think TX tried to criminalize slurs against Jews. So much for free speech.

Phelan was the guy who spearheaded the attack on Paxton. I rooted for Paxton but then this is now in play and I think Paxton is part of it too: https://patrick.net/post/1384365/2025-04-26-charles-perry

Don't get excited. This bill just means that when you doctor some image or video and change what was really said or done, you must include a disclaimer stating that it is altered. It does not forbid satire, it just stops deep fakes.

Well, if you live in Texas, Rep. Phelan’s new bill makes it a criminal offense to distribute media that features an “image, audio recording, or video recording of an officeholder’s or candidate’s appearance, speech, or conduct that did not occur in reality” unless it includes a government-approved disclaimer.
https://texaspolitics.com/2025/04/30/is-the-texas-house-criminalizing-memes/

Maga_Chaos_Monkey says

Last year (maybe year before) I think TX tried to criminalize slurs against Jews.

Never happened. What did happen is that unelected Government Employee-Administrators were forbidden from unilaterally carrying out foreign policy. For example, University Admins refusing to buy for certain individuals or countries on their own whims.

Rokes are constantly trying to exaggerate laws like that into "Free Speech" issues. The Assistant Purchasing Manager for Facilities of a UT campus cannot simply decide to not consider certain bids because she, Begum Al-Maliki, doesn't like Jews or Israel and gives a contract to her Uncle's fly-by-night IT firm that runs by outsourcing everything to his Muslim Brotherhood pals in Pakistan

Patrick says

Ironic that talking about the weather is what caused Mark Steyn to get sued.

https://billricejr.substack.com/p/the-backstory-of-substack

Still, By 2022, NGOs such as the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and articles in The Washington Post and The Atlantic argued that Substack could be over-run by disinformation super spreaders, anti-vaxers and extremists including “Nazis.”

According to one CCDH video presentation, “five popular anti-vaccine newsletters” generate “at least $2.5 million a year … Substack makes 10 percent profit off of their lies. It’s got to stop,” the video concludes. ...

The company’s founders fought back against the pressure campaign, issuing a statement that said: “We make decisions based on principles not PR, we will defend free expression, and we will stick to our hands-off approach to content moderation.”

Today, Substack has more than 35 million users and at least five million paid subscriptions.

But a lot of people, like Bill Rice, the author of that Substack post, that Substack is deliberately hiding content which tells the truth about the mass murder by mandated mRNA.

https://www.eugyppius.com/p/german-pensioner-receives-75-day

German pensioner receives 75-day prison sentence in latest speech crime scandal to hit the Federal Republic

Twice last year, the man repeated the expression “Alles für Deutschland”1 in posts on X – apparently in the course of discussing the indictment of Alternative für Deutschland politician Björn Höcke for the use of the same phrase. The words are forbidden in Germany by Section 86a of the German Criminal Code, which bans National Socialist slogans and symbols. While “Alles für Deutschland” occurs in various contexts, the phrase is associated particularly with the Sturmabteilung, or the SA, who carved the words onto their uniform daggers.

The Traunstein Public Prosecutor brought charges against our pensioner last autumn. The District Court convicted him in November and imposed a fine of €4,500, which he was unable to pay due to financial hardship. Rather than granting the usual deferral or instalment plan, prosecutors have summoned him to serve 75 days in prison instead. He will begin his sentence on 5 June.

This is the latest in a long string of speech crime prosecutions in Germany, as our political establishment collaborates with police and prosecutors to intimidate ordinary people who say untoward things on social media. Last November, another German pensioner from Bavaria had his house raided by police for the crime of sharing a meme on X that called former Economics Minister Robert Habeck a “moron.” Others have been prosecuted for such trivialities as tweeting the poop emoji at a cabinet minister, calling Greens fat and stupid, imprecisely quoting important politicians, and reproducing a picture of former Health Minister Karl Lauterbach with his hand raised at an unfortunate angle. In most such cases, convicted speech criminals receive fines (however ruinous), although harsher sentences are not unheard-of.

Patrick says

Fortunately, no problem with that here in the USA, as Candace, Tuqar, IfNotNow (supported by Tides/Soros), The Unz Review, Center for the National Interest, Antiwar.com, MintPress News, Strategic Culture Foundation, etc. etc. say and print tons of shit critical of just one foreign nation.

BTW, I gnoticed that Unz now is taking the Muslim side now in anti-Indian propaganda:
https://www.unz.com/bhua/indian-mass-delusion-syndrome-on-full-display/

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/literally-thursday-may-29-2025-c

Secretary Marco Rubio
@SecRubio

For too long, Americans have been fined, harassed, and even charged by
foreign authorities for exercising their free speech rights.
Today, I am announcing a new visa restriction policy that will apply to
foreign officials and persons who are complicit in censoring Americans.
Free speech is essential to the American way of life - a birthright over which
foreign governments have no authority.

Our enemies have long silenced and punished American speech. This is most clearly seen in the banning of US-based social media platforms, for example. But it’s our allies, such as the European Union, who’ve begun criminalizing speech, recently arresting Telegram’s founder, for example. And they are suing the dickens out of Twitter and Facebook, as two more examples, for violating their stupid online speech codes.

Ironically, George Orwell was British.

Foreign leaders will be desperate to avoid being put on Rubio’s “list” because it doesn’t just block their access to the United States— it publicly brands them as enemies of American liberty. Being sanctioned under a speech-based visa restriction effectively exiles them from the global stage, cutting off face-to-face diplomacy, high-level trade talks, swanky elite conferences, and media platforms that all flow through Washington, New York, and Silicon Valley.

Worse, becoming a diplomatic persona non grata invites political embarrassment back at home, and emboldens the leaders’ rivals to circle like sharks. For a ruling-class technocrat or regulator whose power depends on international status and institutional access, being blacklisted by the U.S. is career poison. The threat of losing that privilege turns the list into a geopolitical electric cattle prod— and Rubio’s message seems clear: if you target American speech, you could forfeit your seat at America’s table.

This is the first time in U.S. history that foreign officials could face personal diplomatic consequences for participating in the global censorship-industrial complex and collectively violating Americans’ constitutional rights.

The move is part of the bigger theme we’ve been tracking — that the Trump administration is reversing the vectors of power, especially on censorship, lawfare, and institutional corruption. Rubio’s visa ban on foreign censors is the next chess move. It’s early, and it was just an announcement, so I don’t want to speculate too much yet about how hard this geopolitical haymaker could land.