Doubt not, FREEDOM is disappearing across the free world.
This from frontpagemag.com.
Over the last five years, American, British, Canadian, and Brazilian governments have unleashed unprecedented waves of repression against political opponents using martial law, military occupations of major cities, government censorship of the internet, nationwide manhunts, televised raids, and extended detentions without trial.
Most of those arrested were guilty of political
speech and protests generally far less violent
than leftist riots by regime supporters.
Three of those leftist governments—the Obiden-Harris Regime, the Starmer Regime, and the Lula Regime—unleashed crackdowns after taking power using various pretexts. The fourth crackdown—in Canada under the Trudeau Regime—took place during an election year.
The pretexts—America’s J6, Brazil’s election protests, or the UK’s anti-migrant rallies—are far less significant than the pattern of leftist regimes taking power and launching crackdowns against opponents who disputed elections or, in the case of the Starmer Regime, protested against policies.
Governments that moan about “authoritarianism” abroad eagerly adopted every element of the authoritarian playbook from endless investigations of political opponents like Trump and Bolsonaro to declaring states of emergency over political protests and censoring speech.
And they justify their authoritarian measures as being necessary:
[T]o stop their ‘authoritarian’ opponents.
The leftist regimes that have taken to locking up people who merely express support online for opposition political protests are not averse to chaos, social unrest, or riots. Before J6, Comrade Kamala and every prominent communist/globalist and mass propaganda media outlet had endorsed BLM race riots. And since, leftist mobs have routinely invaded the United States Capitol, intimidated members of Congress, occupied their offices and fought Capitol Police officers in the name of every cause from banning oil to supporting Hamas with little result other than light slaps on their wrists.
In the years before Trudeau used martial law to silence truckers protesting against vaccine mandates, BLM rioters had been allowed to block streets in Canadian cities with the backing of the regime. No less a figure than Trudeau had ritually knelt to the race rioters and their cause.
Before and after the Starmer regime launched a ruthless crackdown on opponents of mass migration, Hamas supporters had rallied and rioted across London and other cities, threatening Jews and proudly flying the flags of Islamic terrorist organizations officially at war with the UK. None of these moslem mobs were hunted, rounded up and sentenced to years in prison.
Again, America, the United Kingdom, and many other formerly free nations are falling under the shadow of the first stage of authoritarianism. Numerous ‘Reichstag fires’ are used to declare temporary states of emergency during which civil rights and limitations on government powers do not apply. These experiments in totalitarianism took off during the pandemic, but did not begin then.
Trump’s election victory and the success of Brexit led to the launch of censorship regimes in America and the UK.
Free speech on social media virtually disappeared for ordinary people and became the province of a handful of opposition media outlets and influencers big enough to merit special exemptions from the rules inflicted on everyone else.
In America, once the home of free speech, the Obiden-Harris Regime and its liberal and leftist political allies have taken to arguing that the government has a ‘free speech’ right to take away the free speech of the people by telling social media monopolies to censor them.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently admitted:
In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.
A furious media:
[L]ambasted the social media founder for undermining the administration’s contention to the Supreme Court that Facebook and other companies had been acting independently, rather than obeying government diktats.
CNN condemned:
Mark Zuckerberg’s election-season gift to Republicans.
Media outlets argued:
The issue was not speech, but, as media outlets insisted, disinformation or misinformation that threatened public health or national security.
Free speech is at least still a subject of debate in America even as it has disappeared overseas.
The UK’s Online Safety Bill, originally billed as protecting children, mandates:
[S]ocial media platforms censor whatever the Starmer regime and Justice Minister Mahmood may deem to be hateful or harmful content. Platforms will be required to scan even encrypted messages and use algorithms to see to it that no one sees disapproved political speech anymore.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who had no objection to moslem mobs targeting Jews, claimed that he did “not feel safe” after opposition anti-migrant protests and demanded government censorship that would go even further in silencing critics across the internet.
In Brazil, Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a controversial figure who helped the current leftist regime seize power, banned Twitter and leveled massive fines on any Brazilians who use the service. As the New York Times described him:
Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, has taken up the mantle of Brazil’s lead defender of democracy.
Using a broad interpretation of the court’s powers, he has pushed to investigate and prosecute, as well as to silence on social media, anyone he deems a menace to Brazil’s institutions.
Elections in which the two sides are held to very different standards of speech and tactics are held under the shadow of mass propaganda media and government censorship of opponents.
That is what democracy has begun
to look like in what used to be the free world.
The final results are determined by media outlets, unelected officials and partisan judges. If public dissatisfaction with the establishment is so high that the conservatives win despite mass fraud, bloc voting, and every dirty trick in the book, the left spends four years rioting in rage while its unelected officials, including judges, find every possible way to undermine the government.
If the leftists win, they promptly declare an emergency and claim that democracy is threatened by free speech, popular protest, and the existence of any opposition to their unlimited power.
A democracy without a meaningful political opposition able to speak out, advocate for its views, and protest is like a race with only one runner. It’s the end of a contest, not the beginning of one.
A recent New York Times column argued:
The Constitution Is Sacred. Is It Also Dangerous?
Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” no longer encloses only Russia and China. It now encloses Churchill’s England, and the places in America where he once spoke, along with the rest of the world.
