“1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual” is a phrase that the truth-seekers of the world are very familiar with. Now, in true “1984” fashion, big tech giant Twitter is letting its users assume the role of the Thought Police, literally, in order to discredit and push out these same truth-seekers who are not assimilating to the status quo and thus will not talk in their language of newspeak.
On January 25th, 2021, Twitter vice president Keith Coleman announced the new digital thinkpol that will be known as Birdwatch. As Coleman puts it:
Birdwatch allows people to identify information in Tweets they believe is misleading and write notes that provide informative context. We believe this approach has the potential to respond quickly when misleading information spreads, adding context that people trust and find valuable. Eventually we aim to make notes visible directly on Tweets for the global Twitter audience, when there is consensus from a broad and diverse set of contributors.
Coleman then goes on to explain how this program is developing:
To date, we have conducted more than 100 qualitative interviews with individuals across the political spectrum who use Twitter, and we received broad general support for Birdwatch. In particular, people valued notes being in the community’s voice (rather than that of Twitter or a central authority) and appreciated that notes provided useful context to help them better understand and evaluate a Tweet (rather than focusing on labeling content as “true” or “false”). Our goal is to build Birdwatch in the open, and have it shaped by the Twitter community.
This statement reeks of what we know to be BS. Twitter is notorious for banning anyone from its platform who dares to be to the right of Ben Shapiro. They have done it before with spokesmen and activists such as Milo Yianoppolous, Alex Jones (as well as his platform Infowars), and recently they have even gotten rid of Trump while he was still sitting as President along with 70,000 other regular citizens who happen to be conservative and think outside of the box. Twitter has also recently started going after certain accounts that would fall into the far left politically, so this is not an issue of the left versus the right.
What is being done here is actually a screening process to make sure that the people who will make up Twitter’s Thought Police fall in line with the thinking and posturing that the Cathedral, the elitist class who has its power through the state and the media, wants everyone else to adhere to. Twitter is claiming that they are not trying to be the “central authority” here, but because of their use of this process to choose who will be a part of this program and also knowing their past behavior concerning political accounts noted here, it can easily be determined that even if unintentional, Twitter is by proxy the central authority here. After all, they are the ones that are going to pick and choose who will have authority over how information is framed on their own platform.
What this will do is induce and create more of the mob mentality that has been so prevalent in post-persuasion America and which has also helped make us so divided. This type of culture only creates more hysteria which polarizes people in such a way where they only look to the government for solutions, so they then also gradually become more obedient to the government’s commands.
This initiative by Twitter also highlights a trend that has been popular at times in the dystopian states of history’s past, and is now especially catching on here in America: regular people, even family members are being used as pawns in the Cathedral’s game. This is being done through people snitching on their family members to agencies such as the FBI, and now regular citizens will help regulate the arena of opinion in America. What is making these individuals do this goes deeper than just them having a false sense of patriotism. What these people are hoping to gain is some kind of clout for themselves in a culture that has become a host for the parasitical politics that American society has birthed. This behavior is unfathomable to normal people who would never pledge allegiance to a gang of thieves and murderers. It’s also the mark of an empire that is corrupted and sure to go under. We must remember that the practice of family members turning on family members and citizens turning on other citizens was popular in the Soviet Union due to it being encouraged by the state and the people became impassioned enough to do it because of propaganda.
So what can be done to combat this toxicity? Many have already made the move to other social media platforms that are known as bastions of free speech, such as Gab or Parler. It is always a good sign when people are deciding to peacefully go their own way. Even on the internet, decentralization is a good thing. All it would lead to is more platforms being created for more people, and these platforms will cater to more specific people while creating more wealth for those with entrepreneurial skills and for those who are willing to take the risk to make this happen. Everyone’s happy then, right?
Not quite. Amazon has booted Parler from its cloud-computing servers due to what they perceive to be “an increase in violent content on the social network” a week after the US Capitol was stormed. Parler sued in hopes of getting them back online but was met with a ruling in Amazon’s favor after U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein said that forcing Amazon to get Parler back online goes against the public interest given “the kind of abusive, violent content at issue in this case, particularly in light of the recent riots at the U.S. Capitol…That event was a tragic reminder that inflammatory rhetoric can — more swiftly and easily than many of us would have hoped — turn a lawful protest into a violent insurrection…The Court rejects any suggestion that the public interest favors requiring AWS to host the incendiary speech that the record shows some of Parler’s users have engaged in.”
While it can be argued, on very subjective grounds, whether or not it is in the public’s interest for Amazon to put Parler back online, it is definitely in the Cathedral’s best interest to keep Parler offline, and Amazon is helping to make that happen. After all, Amazon’s power as a corporation has been created in part by the state. To think there’s no conflict of interest here when the government’s courts rule in Amazon’s favor would be foolish. Think of it as a “you scratch my back, and I will scratch yours” type deal. The Cathedral wants to limit the arena of the opinion because it helps make people less aware in general by giving their brain less information or viewpoints to consider. Minimizing the number of platforms people get their information on while having faithful users act as a digital thinkpol will help make this happen.
What makes the future seem even harsher is knowing a precedent is now set because of Amazon and the Courts keeping Parler offline which will make it easy for Big Tech to do its part on behalf of the Cathedral while keep the little people down. This means that those who will be targeted by Twitter’s Thought Police are not only having to go through digital struggle sessions on major platforms, but they are now even being limited in terms of having somewhere to go.
Pessimism is not the answer, however. This is not a total grim reality. There are still many places to go on the internet that are chock-full of resources for those against the Cathedral, such as LewRockwell.com or ZeroHedge. Even better though is that the flip side of the coin to all this presents us with a life-changing opportunity: a chance to be human again. 2020 was a year of lockdowns that caused a great deal of suffering for the souls of numerous people. Letting our lives become so digital because of the lockdowns was a huge factor that caused that suffering. 2021 could be a repeat of 2020, only if we let it.
Instead of letting it, we should do ourselves a favor and fight it off in any way we can. One of those ways is unplugging ourselves from the digital world for however long just so we can truly realize what we have within our real lives. We should also realize as individuals and people as a whole that we are capable of so much in our real lives. Not only can we work to make things better for ourselves while also enjoying the people and things we have already available to us, but we can work together to make real change that will benefit our society as a whole.
The culture wars may be widespread on the internet, but it is just as prevalent and important in real life. Politics is downstream from culture and the politics that affect us the most is our local politics. Therefore, as individuals who value liberty we should act as contras within our communities against the culture of the Cathedral. The best way of going about that would be to unplug and focus more on our families. The family is the foundation of civilization and a good relationship with your family can pour out into the local community and have positive effects.
Strong families will help create a community full of people who are well tuned in terms of having good morals and values. Doing things as a community such as churchgoing, the arts, sports, etc. will help build a culture amongst people that they will find commonality and camaraderie in. Big tech can do nothing in their power to throttle a community like this, and the state would have a hard time getting away with it in terms of optics.
Though ultimately, as individuals, we should realize the power we have on our own. We should also realize that despite all the efforts of all the evil forces in the world, we see through it all and distinguish what is truly good from what is truly evil, as well what is the truth that keeps us free as opposed to what is fake and keeps others in shackles. A big reason many libertarians are on social media is to spread the message of liberty. This is a very noble reason for using these platforms, but it can also cause us lots of stress. Politics is a nasty business after all, and people tend to act brazen and brainless over the internet. We should do what we can with the internet to bring people to the light and show them the truth. The truth does set us free and what we need are more free people. However, we should not burden ourselves worrying about others. We should focus on creating peace and prosperity for ourselves before trying to give it to others. The truth always comes out, and those we worry about now will either one day understand or they will one day reap what they sow.