Why Care About The Twitter Files As We Rush Toward WW3?

Source: “Twitter to Begin Using ‘Blue Check’ Status as a ‘Big Brother’ Weapon?” Tom Blumer, November 19, 2017

As a high school teacher 15 years ago, I showed students the Laura Poitras documentary on Edward Snowden’s NSA whistleblowing and subsequent hair raising escape. They enjoyed the film but were mystified at the excitement. What was the big deal about Snowden’s revelations? they asked me. 

It was a big deal because he revealed that the telecom corporations were spying on everybody, I told them.

The reaction of teenagers the second decade of the 21st century? Duh, which is Homer Simpson-speak for only a complete idiot didn’t know that already.

Now I feel like the Twitter files are at least as significant but much of my generation views this as another giant Duh

Social media platforms are censoring our speech quietly behind the scenes, so what?

In fact it is a huge revelation that numerous government employees (including the delightfully named Elvis Chan of the FBI’s Las Vegas office) spent untold hours of their taxpayer-funded time insisting that Twitter silence dissent. Elvis and the others did this rather than engaging in the law enforcement we’re told the FBI exists to do.

Liberals have gotten quickly caught up in the personalities around the Twitter files dump of internal data — and it’s easy to do. It would appear that billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter for the purpose of revealing the private messages of work colleagues discussing how to handle the U.S. government’s increasing demands for 1) intervention in the debate about the pandemic and how best to respond and 2) intervention in the 2020 presidential election. The sequence of those two interventions is not without significance. 

Also, some of the journalists Musk selected to work with are conservative. One exception is investigative reporter Matt Taibbi (who used to publish in Rolling Stone before it was captured by the security state now infiltrating most legacy media). Since Musk is himself a wealthy conservative who thinks it’s okay to overthrow governments of nations with large reserves of the elements needed to make his electric cars, no surprises there. But let’s not fail to understand that Twitter has been systematically silencing not only far-right voices but politically left voices as well. (Silencing both is probably fine with liberals who have monumentally failed to stick up for speech that doesn’t align with their views.)

According to the journalists, they received a large dump of internal communications from Twitter and the only constraints they agreed to on their reporting  was the requirement that they “break” their stories on Twitter before publishing elsewhere.

So far this reporting has brought us news of how Twitter worked to suppress the entirely true story of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its contents implicating Senator Joe Biden in corrupt business deals in Ukraine prior to his election as president; how Twitter silenced numerous medical researchers and clinical practitioners debating as scientists do about a novel virus; and how Twitter began designating accounts as “_______ state-affiliated media” where you fill in the blank of the enemy du jour of the U.S. empire.



From the Twitter Files as published by Matt Taibbi January 3, 2023

Some have downplayed the significance of this quiet censorship for years saying, Twitter (or Facebook) is a company not the government so it cannot by definition be in violation of the 1st amendment right to freedom of speech. But what if government was actually pulling the levers of speech repression from behind the scenes? 

What if the FBI paid Twitter $3.41 million to censor speech?

Link to the thread containing this tweet. 

Others have made the argument: so what, Facebook is much worse. And indeed Twitter users for a long time cherished the mistaken belief that their favorite platform, the digital town square where ideas were supposedly shared and debated openly (as the founder of Twitter claims was the goal), was in fact free and open. Twitter was the respectable social media platform, the intelligent choice, where policy makers and journalists and the public who were paying attention gathered. 

Not everyone believes as I do that information control is the ball to keep your eyes on.

But as warmongering members of Congress slip seamlessly into new roles as CNN talking heads, I think I’m right to be alarmed at how insidious censorship in our day has become.

Just look at the war in Ukraine. Information management has all corporate media cheering for our proxy war against Russia, and those of us who dare to dissent find our accounts canceled, with the videos on our YouTube and Vimeo channels disappeared. Despite having tens of thousands of followers; or, perhaps, precisely because the canceled accounts had built up a large number of followers.

Did I mention that the corporate media have pretty much ignored the Twitter Files? 

Interest on Twitter itself is strong, however, and likely to remain so as we anticipate the next reveal. 

If you’re still not sure that ideas are as powerful as facts on the ground, consider the current campaign to make you believe that a nuclear war is either survivable or winnable. President Biden has said a first-strike with nukes is on the table, a table likely to be reduced to smoldering radioactive ash as WW3 ensues.

Peasants WILL Support The Wars Of Their Overlords — Or Else

There’s no point trying to write something better about so-called progressives in Congress publishing and then quickly disavowing a letter to Biden suggesting negotiations to end the bloodshed in Ukraine. In “The Brutal Comedy of the Withdrawn Letter,” Matt Taibbi has already aptly described the clownish collapse of anything resembling opposition to shoveling billions into arming Ukraine. Jayapal, AOC, Liz Warren, and even Bernie are millionaires controlled by billionaires, and the fear that they had angered the billionaires who own them was palpable.

The project of weakening Russia in order to take on China without their big ally is one underwritten by every billionaire-owned media outlet in the West. “Step out of line, the man comes and takes you away.”

Scott Ritter provided an immediate test case for the claim that “the bird is freed” i.e. Elon Musk’s Twitter would no longer see speech stifled to please the rich and powerful. 

Musk flunked. Is there anyone who really believed he’d pass? 

In “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,” Ritter details how he was suspended from Twitter back in April for the a tweet like this one:

He went on to explain:

I based this conclusion on three primary sources, which included a videotape of a Ukrainian official warning the citizens of Bucha that a “cleansing operation” was going to be conducted in Bucha, and that the citizens should remain indoors and not to panic, an article which appeared in an official Ukrainian government website, LB.ua, entitled “Special forces regiment ‘SAFARI’ began to clear Bucha of saboteurs and accomplices of Russia,” which declared that “Special forces began clearing the liberated, by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, city of Bucha of the Kiev region from saboteurs and accomplices of Russian troops,” and video which purported to show members of the Safari Regiment shooting civilians who were not wearing the blue distinguishing armbands signifying loyalty to the Ukrainian cause.

But never mind about evidence. Controlling information about the NATO’s war in Ukraine has been job from the get-go, and I’ve written about it several times already (e.g. here and here).

Truth tellers are still out here but their reach is much curtailed. 

Various pretexts have been offered for why too much truth could endanger the peasantry.

First, they said Russia was meddling in U.S. elections. And anyone questioning or denying this should be silenced. (Meanwhile, The Intercept among others news outlets silenced news of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop until after the 2020 election.)

Source: “During COVID-19 Pandemic It Isn’t Just Fake News But Seriously Bad Misinformation That Is Spreading On Social Media”, Forbes

Then, they said so-called disinformation on the pandemic was dangerous to our health. And the restrictions put in place to suppress beliefs that eventually became mainstream e.g. lab origin, ineffectiveness of vaccines in stopping transmission, remained.

Next, they said Ukraine was a democracy and an innocent victim of Russia’s unprovoked aggression. Journalists with large followings who pointed out the Maidan coup happened all the way back in 2014 were shadow banned or suspended from social media. And an army of bots attacked anyone who expressed doubt about the righteousness of NATO’s cause.

Finally, they said any questioning of the many false flags in this war — massacred civilians in Bucha, shelling of the nuclear power plant Zaporizhzhia, sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany– was grounds for being silenced.

Silencing of dissent is dangerous as we face open confrontation between nuclear powers.

I took some comfort yesterday from war-watcher Big Serge on why neither the U.S. nor Russia is likely to use nukes in Ukraine.

I wanted to include a photo of the massive French austerity protests here, but Google only wants me to know about the CIA-sponsored uprisings in Iran — despite my using the search terms “france protests today.” Search engines are an important part of the information control matrix. 

Meanwhile, more austerity for the peasants rolls on. After Ukraine sent drones to attack ships at port in Sevastopol, Russia suspended grain shipments via ship. (That the grain was supposed to go to hungry people in Africa but was actually ending up in Europe may have had something to do with it.) 

Those with the patience and a stomach for truth may want to listen to the 3 1/2 hour speech plus Q & A session with Putin at the Valdai Discussion Club last week. If you need a chuckle today, imagine either Biden or Kamala Harris pulling off something like what Putin did at Valdai.

Why am I laughing in the face of millions freezing and starving this winter as we face the real possibility that our corporate overlords crave nuclear war?

Because if I start crying I might not be able to stop.


* Actually, I was wrong. AOC is only half a millionaire. Thanks to reader Edward F. for the correction.