This is what happens to anyone who happens to report the types of things that America’s billionaires want to be hidden from the public.
To understand how it happened to me (and has happened to lots of others), an introduction is needed, first, about the American Government:
America’s First Amendment to its Constitution is this sentence: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The best summary-description of what that means (as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court) is by the American Library Association, and includes the following crucial statement:
“The First Amendment only prevents government restrictions on speech. It does not prevent restrictions on speech imposed by private individuals or businesses. Facebook and other social media can regulate or restrict speech hosted on their platforms because they are private entities.”
So long as a “private” entity censors public debate, the nation’s laws cannot get involved in that — that censorship cannot be outlawed. If public debate can be squelched by private entities, that’s okay, in America’s system of Government.
The false assumption of this system is that allowing private entities to squelch “the press” or “the news media,” is okay because different private entities will squelch different truths from being presented to the public; and, so, each citizen will select which types of truths not to know, and which types of lies to believe instead — and that’s ‘democracy’ in America. Having different private entities black-out different truths and filter-in different lies instead, will give each citizen whatever he or she wants to believe. The individual will select on the basis of one’s own prejudices. That’s the individual’s ‘freedom’. The consumer will choose which type of fool to be (such as a fool of Democratic Party billionaires, or a fool of Republican Party billionaires), and will buy (believe) whatever lies he or she wants. But is that — belief in the political falsehoods that the individual prefers — really democracy? Won’t the result be instead to cement-in whatever myths that are setting different groups in the society against each other — instead of going against whatever is actually wrong with the Government? How will whatever is wrong with the Government get fixed, that way? Is it even possible?
Scientific empirical studies that compare what the American public want to become laws in America and of what they don’t want to become laws, versus what actually does become law and what does not, have shown that only the preferences of the very wealthiest Americans affect and shape the nation’s laws. This is a one-dollar-one-vote country, not a one-person-one-vote country. (This is an empirical fact, not a theory.) America’s Government is an aristocracy, not a democracy. It’s controlled by counting the wealth, not really by counting the persons. Furthermore, 57.16% of the money that is donated to political campaigns in the U.S. comes from the richest one-ten-thousandth (top 0.01% wealthiest) of the American people (the “original donors” — the actual individuals who donated it); so, the individuals who own the controlling interests in the corporations, think tanks, foundations, and media that shape public opinion in America and who thus determine who becomes elected and who does not, are only the very richest few, America’s actual aristocrats, the people who control the public. The public thus vote the way that the super-rich of both Parties want them to vote. There is a technology of “manufactured ‘public’ consent,” and it’s controlled by the billionaires — NOT by the public. And whereas Democratic Party billionaires determine who get nominated by their Party, and Republican billionaires determine who get nominated by their Party, virtually no one gets elected who wasn’t first selected and backed by that Party’s billionaires.
Since those few individuals control the media, they ALSO are the ULTIMATE employers of the various censors — both on the Republican side and on the Democratic side.
All of the media that are NOT controlled by the super-rich are small (none of them are large, or even medium-sized), and one of those is “Ms. Cat’s Chronicles”. On January 3rd, they headlined linking through to one of the 5 (out of the 200+ that I submitted it to) sites that had published my December 30th article, “Censorship Prohibits Spreading Truths, And Demands Spreading Lies”, and they gave an excerpt from the full article, and they noted “Related: Eric Zuesse’s Now-Deleted Profile at Modern Diplomacy” but here is what became of that profile. It’s gone. All of my hundreds of articles which had been published at Modern Diplomacy are gone. I am now a non-person there (which had been one of the few remaining sites that the billionaires hadn’t yet gotten under their control). And here is the full article that was linked-through to, by “Ms. Cat”: it was published at Oriental Review, “Censorship Prohibits Spreading Truths, And Demands Spreading Lies”, and it explains, and fully documents, how the owner of Modern Diplomacy was forced, by ‘NewsGuard’ in Washington DC, to remove me — the author there that had drawn more page-views than any other author there. And yet, all of those articles now are gone. And you can see described there how it was done, and you can also see that truthfulness had nothing whatsoever to do with my being removed, but that my reporting the ‘wrong’ truths had everything to do with it. A censoring organization that had been funded by some billionaires’ agents, and called itself a “news guard” for the general public, did it. I report truths that all American billionaires (the people who actually control the U.S. Government) want Americans NOT to know. And now, the billionaires are going after EVEN the few (all of them very small) remaining sites, that publish SOME articles that the billionaires want the public NOT to see.
There is no way to solve this, other than by outlawing ALL censorship, and allowing the public to see everything — regardless of whether or not some ‘news’-media owner, or billionaire-funded ‘NewsGuard’ service, doesn’t like it.
Censorship that’s done by the agents of the billionaires who control a Government is just as vile as is censorship that’s done DIRECTLY BY that Government. ALL censorship should be outlawed, regardless of who does that censorship. Otherwise, how is an authentic democracy even possible?
This problem can exist ONLY in a country that has enormous wealth-inequality (such as the U.S. does) and that allows by law (such as the U.S. does) agents of its very wealthiest few to coerce all but a few of the smallest news media to eliminate — not to publish — whatever those super-wealthy individuals want to be blacklisted (not published). The reality in the U.S. today is a ‘democracy’ of, by, and for, only its super-rich, none of whom want the public to know this fact. One way or another, a country that has enormous wealth-inequality will be a dictatorship; and no dictatorship can exist and be perpetuated without censorship. Censorship is the cardinal mark of any dictatorship. Only without censorship can democracy exist, at all. To censor is to mentally control another person — not to inform that person. It is mentally to enslave, not to free, that person. It is not to educate but to miseducate and manipulate that person. Any authentic democracy will do everything possible to prevent censorship.
Julian Assange has been imprisoned by the UK on the demand by the U.S. for over a decade now, though never convicted of anything, but ONLY because he was the world’s most effective champion against censorship and for international democracy and personal accountability. To call either of these countries a democracy is to lie, and to insult the very term “democracy.” What Governments deserve to be overthrown and replaced more than those two do? However, any such revolution must be against censorship, and must itself be overthrown and replaced if it entails any censorship. To replace one dictatorship by another is no path toward freedom.