MSM Already Using Capitol Hill Riot To Call For More Internet Censorship

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MSM Already Using Capitol Hill Riot To Call For More Internet Censorship

Zero Hedge | Jan 07, 2021

The United States received a very small taste of its own medicine today as rioting Trump fanatics temporarily forced their way into the nation’s Capitol building, and now the whole nation is freaking out.

I am being generous when I say that America was given a very small taste of its own medicine; unlike the horrific coups and violent uprisings the US routinely orchestrates in noncompliant nations around the world, this one stood exactly zero chance of seizing control of the government, and only one person was killed.

I am also being generous when I say the rioters “forced their way” in; DC chose not to increase its police presence in preparation for the protests despite knowing that they were planned, and there’s footage of what appears to be cops actively letting them through a police barricade. There was some fighting between police and protesters, but contrasted with the unceasing barrage of police brutality footage which emerged from Black Lives Matter demonstrations a few months prior it’s fair to say the police response today was relatively gentle.

the police opened the [*****] gates. pic.twitter.com/HyDURXfoaB

— katie (@cevansavenger) January 6, 2021

Predictably, this entirely American disruption has blue-checkmarked commentariat shrieking about Vladimir Putin on social media.

Of course. Of course. pic.twitter.com/00Xw0eC7Uw

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) January 6, 2021

Future historian: "As right-wing mobs were terrorizing the Capitol, liberal truth-tellers kept their eyes on the real villain." #BlueAnon pic.twitter.com/VNpLASbD1L

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) January 6, 2021

Just as predictably, it’s also got them calling for the censorship of social media.

The New York Times has published two new articles titled “The storming of Capitol Hill was organized on social media” and “Violence on Capitol Hill Is a Day of Reckoning for Social Media”, both arguing for more heavy-handed restrictions on speech from Silicon Valley tech giants.

In the former, NYT’s Sheera Frenkel writes “the violence Wednesday was the result of online movements operating in closed social media networks where people believed the claims of voter fraud and of the election being stolen from Mr. Trump,” citing the expert analysis of think tank spinmeister Renee DiResta of “Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset” fame. As usual no mention is made of DiResta’s involvement in the New Knowledge scandal in which a Russian interference “false flag” was staged for an Alabama Senate race.

“These people are acting because they are convinced an election was stolen,” DiResta said.
“This is a demonstration of the very real-world impact of echo chambers.”

“This has been a striking repudiation of the idea that there is an online and an offline world and that what is said online is in some way kept online,” DiResta adds.

The storming of the capital hill was organized on social media. Time to stop acting like things said online don't translate into real-world action. https://t.co/tpEZZ2KfGZ

— Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf) January 6, 2021

This narrative which seeds the idea that unregulated communication on the internet will lead to violent uprisings is funny coming from Frankel, who, as a Twitter follower recently observed, wrote a piece in 2018 condemning the Iranian government for restricting protesters’ social media access during the demonstrations at that time.

“Social media and messaging apps have become crucial to antigovernment demonstrators around the world, as a means of both organizing and delivering messages to other citizens,” Frankel wrote.

“Not surprisingly, restricting access to such technology has become as important to government crackdowns as the physical presence of the police.”

In the other article, co-authored by Frankel, Mike Isaac and Kate Conger, the message is driven home even less subtly.

“As pro-Trump protesters stormed the Capitol building on Wednesday and halted the certification of Electoral College votes, the role of social media companies such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in spreading misinformation and being a megaphone for Mr. Trump came under renewed criticism,” reads the article, adding, “So when violence broke out in Washington on Wednesday, it was, in the minds of longtime critics, the day the chickens came home to roost for the social media companies.”

The article reports on the US president’s temporary suspension of social media privileges for allegedly inciting violence with his posts, then discusses the various kinds of disinformation and violent ideation being circulated in Trump discussion forums.
“Those alternative social media sites were rife with Trump supporters organizing and communicating on Wednesday,” NYT tells us. “On Parler, one trending hashtag was #stormthecapitol. Many Trump supporters on the sites also appeared to believe a false rumor that Antifa, a left-wing movement, was responsible for committing violence at the protests.”

“We know the social media companies have been lackadaisical at best” at stopping extremism from growing on their platforms, Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the Anti-Defamation League, told NYT. “Freedom of expression is not the freedom to incite violence. That is not protected speech.”

“Those alternative social media sites were rife with Trump supporters organizing and communicating on Wednesday,” NYT tells us. “On Parler, one trending hashtag was #stormthecapitol. Many Trump supporters on the sites also appeared to believe a false rumor that Antifa, a left-wing movement, was responsible for committing violence at the protests.”

“We know the social media companies have been lackadaisical at best” at stopping extremism from growing on their platforms, Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the Anti-Defamation League, told NYT. “Freedom of expression is not the freedom to incite violence. That is not protected speech.”
Violence on Capitol Hill Is a Day of Reckoning for Social Media https://t.co/UqDuAWShfg

— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) January 6, 2021

We will likely see many more such articles in the coming days, arguing for increased regulation of internet communication to prevent future incidents like today.

In and of itself this won’t sound terribly concerning to the average citizen. Nothing wrong with taking steps to prevent people from plotting violence and terrorism on social media, right?

But how do you predict what protests are going to be “violent”? How do you decide which protests and what political dissent need to be censored and which ones should be permitted to communicate freely? Do you just leave it up to Silicon Valley oligarchs to make the call? Or do you have them consult with the government like they’ve been doing? Are either of these institutions you’d trust to regulate what protests are worthy of being permitted to organize online?

But how do you predict what protests are going to be “violent”? How do you decide which protests and what political dissent need to be censored and which ones should be permitted to communicate freely? Do you just leave it up to Silicon Valley oligarchs to make the call? Or do you have them consult with the government like they’ve been doing? Are either of these institutions you’d trust to regulate what protests are worthy of being permitted to organize online?
Because the actual power structures in the United States seem to be interested in simply censoring the internet to eliminate political dissent altogether.

In 2017 top officials from Facebook, Twitter and Google were brought before the Senate Judiciary Committee and admonished to come up with policies that will “prevent the fomenting of discord” in the United States.

Friendly reminder that last year representatives of Google/Youtube, Facebook and Twitter were instructed on the floor of the US Senate that it is their responsibility to "quell information rebellions" so as to "prevent the fomenting of discord.”https://t.co/X4Hc56fH0k

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) August 6, 2018

World Socialist Website reported the following in 2017.

Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii demanded, for her part, that the companies adopt a “mission statement” expressing their commitment “to prevent the fomenting of discord.”

The most substantial portion of the testimony took place in the second part of the hearing, during which most of the Senators had left and two representatives of the US intelligence agencies testified before a room of mostly empty chairs.

Clint Watts, a former U.S. Army officer, former FBI agent, and member of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, made the following apocalyptic proclamation: “Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words. America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America.”

He added, “Stopping the false information artillery barrage landing on social media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced — silence the guns and the barrage will end.”

That sounds an awful like government officials and operatives telling social media corporations that it’s their job to censor communication which could facilitate any kind of unrest, no matter how justified.

Do you trust these monopolistic megacorporations to decide whether or not people’s dissident speech is acceptable? I don’t.
As Julian Assange is condemned to remain falsely imprisoned and the mass media ramp up their case for more imperial narrative control, we are now in a battle for the sovereignty of our very minds.

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Chinese Communist Party Bans Members from Opinions ‘Inconsistent’ with the Party

Breitbart | 6 Jan 20210

The Communist Party of China (CPC) revised restrictions on what its members are allowed to say in public in a set of regulations published on Monday, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.

“A member of the party must not publicly express opinions that are inconsistent with decisions made by the central leadership,” reads Article 16 of the revised regulations, which concerns safeguarding the rights of the CPC’s 92 million members.

The regulation’s wording was altered from a similar clause banning the public expression of opinions that are the “opposite of” the party leadership’s decisions.

“Article 11 of the new rules stipulates that while party members are entitled to report misconduct by other members, including those who hold a higher rank, they must not disseminate such information at will and must not do so on the internet,” according to the Hong Kong-based newspaper.

The original version of the article contained similar wording but did not single out “the internet” as a prohibited means of dissemination.

“Party members are encouraged to report misconduct to the party’s circuit inspection teams,” according to the SCMP.
The inspection teams ostensibly investigate allegations of corruption within the party and have brought down several senior CPC officials in recent years.

Additional CPC rule revisions published on Monday “stipulate that work-related mistakes will no longer be treated as discipline violations,” according to the report, indicating that party members were previously punished for their work blunders.

Monday’s revisions to the CPC’s regulations officially incorporate references to “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,” the name for Chinese dictator and CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping’s socialist ideology. Known simply as “Xi Jinping Thought,” the philosophy’s precepts are included in the CPC constitution and were written into the Chinese state constitution in 2018.

Chinese state media praised the CPC’s revised regulations on Monday, according to the SCMP, “saying they represented progress in protecting the political rights of party members.”

“The amended party rules, which include new guidelines on access to information and how to handle internal complaints, were described by state media as ‘boosting democracy within the party,'” according to the report.

People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the CPC’s central committee, published an op-ed by Wang Qishan in 2014 in which the then-leader of the party’s anti-corruption body argued that joining the CPC meant sacrificing certain rights and freedoms.

“Senior Party officials need to waive more as they shoulder greater responsibilities,” the politician said in the November 2014 article. Wang is now vice president of the People’s Republic of China.

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Facebook removes all on-the-ground video of Capitol Hill protest
'At this point they represent promotion of criminal activity which violates our policies,' the social media platform stated as a justification for censoring content.

January 7, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Social media giant Facebook announced it is deleting all videos taken during Wednesday’s storming of the U.S. Capitol building, ostensibly to prevent “promotion of criminal activity.”

“We have been searching for and removing the following content,” the company said in a statement, “Praise and support of the storming of the US Capitol”; “Calls to bring weapons to locations across the US — not just in Washington but anywhere in the US — including protests”; “Incitement or encouragement of the events at the Capitol, including videos and photos from the protestors,” because “At this point they represent promotion of criminal activity which violates our policies”; “Calls for protests — even peaceful ones — if they violate the curfew in DC”; and “Attempts to restage violence tomorrow or in the coming days.”

Facebook, which has also suspended President Donald Trump (as has Twitter), added that it has updated its label on election content stressing that Joe Biden is the “certified” winner of the presidential election, and has “taken enforcement action consistent with our policy banning militarized social movements like the Oathkeepers and the violence-inducing conspiracy theory QAnon.”
Conservatives have noted that Wednesday’s videos are an invaluable resource for firsthand information about what transpired at the Capitol, and have noted Big Tech’s double-standards in what type of content the industry is willing to let stand:

What? If people want an on-the-ground look at what happened yesterday, of course they should read Post story. But it would be strangely incurious to ignore first-hand accounts as well. Imploring readers not to learn things is an odd position. https://t.co/LBcceuTDeI

— Byron York (@ByronYork) January 7, 2021

This evil genocide-excusing propaganda is allowed on Twitter, for context of what is not. https://t.co/kfL6scBe6s

— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@pnjaban) January 7, 2021

Dozens of protesters broke into the U.S. Capitol Building onWednesday after the “March to Save America” rally where the president said supporters would march “over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” where “we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen-and-women” who were meeting to formally object to the certification of electoral votes from a handful of states.

As covered live by LifeSiteNews, viral videos showed groups of protesters engaging in physical altercations with police, pushing against security barricades, breaking through a window, trespassing in congressional offices, and climbing on walls, causing the vote certification to be suspended and lawmakers to be evacuated from the chambers. LifeSite’s on-the-ground reporting indicates many were allowed to enter and simply walked through the building (which is normally open to the public) after the initial breach.

Trump told the breachers to “go home in peace” via tweets and video message, yet a coalition of Democrats and establishment Republicans quickly decided that Trump had “incited” the violence, some by blaming his support of marching to the building (which was a pre-planned part of the event, advertised before Trump’s remarks), others by blaming Trump’s refusal to concede in the first place.