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A war against fundamental political and free speech rights of Americans, prosecuted by a rogue government, saw several milestones this past week.
One was the indictment of Donald Trump regarding the massive J6 citizen protest against the corrupt 2020 election.
Another was a lawsuit filed by rising Democrat challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr. against Google and YouTube.
The tech company has been manipulating the current election cycle by banning several Kennedy videos which he notes are hurting his efforts to communicate with voters.
Though the latest events involve persons whom the establishment media and entrenched powers have long opposed, feared, and vilified, what’s at stake doesn’t really center on Trump or Kennedy themselves.
It centers on American citizens, and whether a malicious “forever” class of power holders will further succeed in gutting their political self-determination.
By understanding what’s ultimately at stake, Americans might finally shift the debate from personalities or even specific issues, to the larger crisis of the Republic.
RFK Jr. Files a Significant Case
Tech censorship to influence and manipulate politics has long since gone from ‘plausible deniability’ to established fact.
So when Democrat candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced this past week that he had filed a lawsuit against Google and its YouTube subsidiary for censorship, his case has a lot of backing material.
A statement announcing the lawsuit, referenced several specific instances where videos meant to communicate his views and positions to voters were taken down by YouTube:
“In one instance, Google removed a video of a speech given by Kennedy at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, the state that hosts America’s first primary.
“His speech, which was viewed as a political speech and attended by several prominent New Hampshire Democrats including the chairman of New Hampshire’s Democratic Party, centered on Kennedy’s concerns about the corrupt merger of corporate and state power, an issue he has fought about for decades.”
The lawsuit alleges that Google censored Kennedy in collusion with federal officials, “in an environment of political coercion.”
Scott Street of JW Howard Attorneys, who is leading the litigation, commented:
“The government cannot censor its critics. It cannot do so directly and it cannot do so by empowering private entities like Google to act as the censor. That principle is fundamental to American democracy, especially when it involves political speech. That is what this case is about. It’s about preserving voters’ freedom to speak, to hear, to think for themselves.”
Kennedy also highlighted on his Twitter feed the thorough entanglement and influence between U.S. intelligence agencies and major social media platforms.
He retweeted a viral 4 August post by “Name Redacted”, which quantified intel agent embeds into platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Among that information:
Name Redacted
@NameRedacted247
1. 🧵Why has Meta hired more than 160 individuals from the US Intelligence Community since 2018?
Is the Global Engagement Center (GEC) directly providing funding to Meta? Is this a modern-day version of Operation Mockingbird?
CIA-14
FBI-26
NSA-16
DHS-29
State Dept-32
DOD-49
This is an update to my previous thread from December 2022. The primary focus here is to provide a comprehensive list of the most notable individuals, currently working at Meta, with backgrounds in intelligence.
Kennedy’s lawsuit was met with many positive reactions on Twitter, from people and entities engaged in other censorship lawsuits, and others.
Oscar Ferreira summed up the broad human rights issues at stake as well as anyone:
Oscar Ferreira
@oscarMDferreira
Kennedy’s move against Google and YouTube underscores a universal principle of free speech that resonates globally. Whether in America or elsewhere, when platforms like YouTube shape public discourse, their unbiased stance is imperative. The potential collusion between corporate giants and government to censor voices, as alleged, signifies a threat to democratic values everywhere. Supporting Kennedy’s stance goes beyond national boundaries; it’s about upholding the right to free expression in any democratic society. The notion of censoring a significant political figure should alarm all who value democratic principles. #KennedyVsGoogle #FreeSpeechForAll #NoToCensorship #StandWithKennedy #GlobalFreeSpeech
Trump Indictment “A Threat To Free Speech”
When Jack Smith, the special prosecutor in charge of investigating Former President Donald Trump over a typically expanding range of supposed criminal misconduct, finally stepped to the podium last week, he looked overwhelmed by the moment.
Weak-voiced and nervously out of breath, he looked like the target of an investigation, not the prosecutor of one.
Even weaker than his performance in front of the cameras, were the details of his indictment.
As legal expert Jonathon Turley and others soon pointed out, the charges substantially involved legal arguments which have been consistently rejected by American jurisprudence.
That’s because they manifestly violate long-established precedents and Constitutional provisions surrounding protected political speech.
In a USA Today opinion piece, Turley sounded the alarm concerning the deep implications of the charges:
“This complaint is based largely on statements that are protected under the First Amendment. It would eviscerate free speech and could allow the government to arrest those who are accused of spreading disinformation in elections.”
Turley noted that the Supreme Court has previously and fairly recently ruled that political speech has a wide Constitutional latitude of protection:
“In the 2012 United States v. Alvarez decision, the Supreme Court held 6-3 that it is unconstitutional to criminalize lies in a case involving a politician who lied about military decorations.
“The court warned such criminalization ‘would give government a broad censorial power unprecedented in this Court’s cases or in our constitutional tradition. The mere potential for the exercise of that power casts a chill, a chill the First Amendment cannot permit if free speech, thought, and discourse are to remain a foundation of our freedom.’”
Smith’s indictment is an exercise in criminalizing Donald Trump’s assertions regarding the manipulated and corrupt 2020 election.
Turley and others rightly say that even if Trump was completely mistaken in those assertions, he had (and has) every political right to speak his mind.
Of course, Americans have long heard candidates complain about rigged and manipulated elections. Hillary Clinton, and many who supported her, did exactly that, post-2016.
By claiming a monopoly on factual information, government operatives over the last decade have increasingly cast “disinformation” as a grave threat to the “safety” of Americans, and argued that such speech is not protected by the Constitution.
But government is not an arbiter of “disinformation.” The founders recognized that freedom of speech was a fundamental human right, and that open debate and sunlight were the imperfect, but least harmful mechanisms of ferreting out truth from fiction, and exercising political and personal choices.
The Trump indictment is a next-level attempt to criminalize supposed “disinformation,” as decided by government authorities.
If it is upheld by courts, it will destroy the political freedom of Americans.
As Americans are whipped up into yet another “15 minutes of hate” against Donald Trump, sensible minds would do well to consider, understand and be able to articulate to others what’s really at stake.
The Trump indictment and the censorship of RFK Jr. show that the attacks against political freedom have not been deterred by revelations concerning government manipulation and censorship revealed by the Twitter Files, the Missouri vs. Biden court case, and more recently, the Facebook files.
In an era where Governments are using “science” and “data” on virtually any issue to assume a mantle of legal authority to cast dissident perspectives as “dangerous” to the safety and health of citizens, these cases will decide not just the fate of two men, but of human freedom.