Totalitarians Suffer From Free Speech Phobia

Background

The Baron doesn’t have time for ‘social media’. Truth be told, I wouldn’t either if I were well, but sometimes during one of my attacks of the Vapors, when I’m stuck in bed, it’s fun to divert myself from the discomfort by visiting our Twitter page to check out the latest memes. Some of them are trivial, some amusing, some scurrilous. What they aren’t is long. A blessing indeed that each message is limited to 140 characters when you have fibrofog! The worse it gets, the more blessed is brevity.

The initial sign-up and jargon was confusing but several other bloggers helped me get the thing up and running a few years ago. Now it’s rather like standing on a busy street corner and catching bits of conversation. I miss the feisty Andrew Breitbart, who so enjoyed responding to the haters; his élan is one of the reasons AB is so missed — he was fun and fearless. And Michelle Malkin responds to them in the same way. The hatred is intense vitriol; you can’t help wondering how otherwise sane (one hopes they’re sane) adults (one hopes they’re adults) can spew that stuff so punctually and predictably... and in the end, the greatest sin of all: they’re boring.

We get email notices of “follows” every day on our account. I often look at the profiles of people who choose to get our feed, and ninety-nine per cent of the time I let the follow through. Sometimes I follow back, especially if the language isn’t foul or if it doesn’t seem to be merely a marketing ploy or spam. Other days, when I don’t feel well enough to open the computer, who knows? Followers just come on through and the busy Baron deletes them in our webmail. I seldom visit the “Following You” page to see who’s there. Sometimes I will look quickly down the list to see if a blogger compatriot is on there and doesn’t have a reciprocal “follow” from us.

I did block two real (i.e., non-spam) Twitter accounts recently: the first was quite recent: from one of those Norwegian dudes who ‘reported’ on our supposed demographics. Their descriptions were even uglier and less accurate than President Obama’s infamous "bitter clingers" comment regarding a group of American citizens who planned not to vote for him in 2008. Since then, of course, many conservatives have proudly worn "Bitter Clinger" t-shirts, etc. while they continue to razz him for his mean-spirited remarks about the good people of the Fifty Seven states of America.

[Heh. I always thought he got us confused with the OIC but obviously I’m wrong since the ever-vigilant and ever more Leftie Snopes describes the OIC as some “obscure” group. I’ll bet Madame Secretary of State would be amused.]

The second was a Swedish babe (yep, I’m politically incorrect. Yawn.) who claims (a) that Gates of Vienna is run by Fjordman, and (b) it’s Fjordman who is responsible for "his" blog’s support of Israel. For her ‘proof’ this blogress posted a picture of Fjordman to demonstrate his ‘obviously Jewish’ facial features, and then posited several psychiatric diagnoses resulting from these racial features. I didn’t see any evidence of her background in medicine, but maybe she’s modest and has scads of credentials to back up her paranoid Swedish conclusions. But given her culture, she doesn’t like to brag, see?

Given their outright lies, the two of them can come in through the front gate like anyone else. Or they can stay home. As they say around here, “it don’t confront me none” whether they read us or whether they stay home sharpening their little hate hatchets.

The Progressive Fear Showing Its (Masked) Face on Twitter

Twitter has a feature which allows you to report spam accounts if they attempt to link you.

There have only been a few here, easily deleted. However, in an interesting if predictable development, Da Tech Guy (among many others), reports that conservative blogs are being targeted by numbers of Lefties as "spam", thus getting the right-leaning blog accounts suspended by Twitter. In other words, they send out reams of spam to Twitter declaring certain right wing blogs as ‘spam’. The mind reels...

Da Tech Guy says:

Have you ever wondered why the left always seemed to take the side of the totalitarian states during the cold war. Well look at what’s happening on twitter and wonder no more:

Last night Twitchy reported that liberals had launched an assault on conservative Twitter users, reporting them as spam to trigger account suspensions and renewing their abuse of the flag-spam feature when conservative accounts were reinstated.

You can usually tell spam when it comes... [he means when it comes in your email]

... you look at the account, it has 0-10 followers and tweets out the same link to different folks hoping you will click on it (they also as a rule have an image of an attractive lady but I digress) Our friends on the left after seeing conservatives on twitter beat them time and time again have decided to abuse the reporting system to shut down debate:

The Left has begun organizing stalker mobs to falsely report conservatives for “spam”/“abuse,” in order to silence the Right on Twitter. Why?

Silencing opposition is the Left’s only hope for success. [my emphasis — D]

If conservatives are permitted a fair chance to critique the Left’s agenda, to expose the Left’s tactics and demonstrate the failure of the Left’s policies, the Left loses. Not content to dominate academia, public schools, the entertainment industry, book publishing and the mainstream news media — all of which cultural institutions are characterized by an overwhelming liberal hegemony — the Left is now determined to silence conservative opposition in the few bastions of freedom that remain: Talk radio, cable TV and the Internet.

The post goes on to quote Ed Morrisey’s take and offers some ideas as to the reasons for these attacks. I recommend reading the whole thing.

Da Tech asks:

What still amazes me is how these people are so willing to do this openly.

After six years of experience with haters, I’m no longer amazed. Amused is closer to our reaction. The Left has no shame, no sense of integrity. Indeed, they “are so willing to attack openly” because they control the portals to academia, the press, and the government bureaucracy ; their arrogance arises from a sense of hubris. Just watch Obama in action for a week or so to witness the sense of noblesse oblige. That character flaw is why I long ago named him the Dauphin.

True Believers don’t need humility for their Project of bringing us under control and closing off speech for those with whom they disagree. When the ends justify the means, they have no problem defining dissent as “spam” and thus attacking in hordes so that Twitter suspends a rightwing account. Such an end is righteous indeed, a victory against the Enemy — and we are the Enemy, as we learned with Breivik and the country which spawned him. The ends justify the means for these folks even when the means are untruths, slanders, and libel. Regarding that last smear, they know you have to have very deep pockets to mount a response forcing the truth to be told.

The Baron is pessimistic about the chances for conservatives to prevail in the coming Presidential election. I can understand why: of all the able candidates who might have been put forth, the Republican Party nonetheless decided to field a hedge fund manager as its choice for President in 2012. Still, when one considers Obama’s record, even the weight of his incumbency doesn’t tip the scales much in his favor. And there are Young Turks, able and smart, coming up the ranks. So I’m guardedly hopeful. When the New York Times starts smearing them, you know they’re scared. These Progressives are rotten poker players.

Meanwhile, as the Left continues to panic, expect to see more of the Chicago Way in operation between now and November. As Da Tech Guy says:

As the truth of the left’s prospects in this election become more apparent expect more of this because the bottom line is our friends on the left can’t compete in the market place of ideas so they want to shut it down.

Amen, brother.


Updated with the links now corrected as far as I can tell. This happens more frequently now because Blogger's new improved "Preview" doesn't permit any previewing of the links. Go figure.