The Great Media Hypocrisy and Increasing Calls for Censorship after the January 6th Attack
Last week, we witnessed an attack on the United States Capitol by a group of domestic terrorists, and although such an attack should be condemned by Americans (and was by almost everyone), the implications of this may lead us further down the road of fascism and into further civil liberties violations. Hypocrisy has been displayed by both major political parties over the last year, and this event is no different. It has been hyper-politicized to the point where the House of Representatives is now looking at its second impeachment of President Trump, who should have toned down the election fraud rhetoric and was wrong to fish for additional votes in Georgia and attempt to convince Vice President Pence to prevent the certification of the electoral votes without sufficient proof.
Some obvious areas of hypocrisy lay with the mainstream media. Back over the summer, during the Black Lives Matter protests, the media encouraged all expressions of the fight against what it deemed as oppression and privilege and was even willing to look the other way as some of the protests erupted into scenes of chaos, arson, and looting. When BLM protesters captured a few city blocks (this became known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone of Portland, Oregon) and trapped residents and small business owners, set up barriers to prevent free travel in and out of the zone with armed guards posted throughout the area (a bit ironic in of itself), and destroyed property; the media largely ignored it, or they classified it as a peaceful party. All of the violence was condoned, and there were even comparisons made between the riots and the Boston Tea Party with the heroic destruction of buildings occupied by small business owners (the mentality became: the business owners had insurance, and even though they may have worked hard to get to where they were, it was just too bad).
The media condemned the January 6th attack right away (and justifiably so), but it then went on to paint all of the pro-Trump protesters as violent and radical thugs, despite thousands of peaceful protesters taking to the streets of Washington, D.C. Yet, despite some violence, the BLM protests were quickly classified as “mostly peaceful.” Where is the consistency? Liberal politicians and the general Democratic population followed suit in the double standard. Both sides have the right to protest and became victims of agitators that hijacked the movements and utilized unwarranted violence, but my problem is more with the hypocrisy. Conservatives largely viewed the BLM protests as violent when they generally were not, just like liberals did with the Trump rally. By media standards, though, it seems to only be considered violence when right-wing groups are involved, and left-wing groups are allowed to be as violent as they please without consequence.
Questioning the media is generally frowned upon by “scholarly” sheep who believe that our institutions in this country are sacred, should not be touched, and can be trusted without the shadow of a doubt. It should be asked, “what did President Trump or his followers gain from storming the Capitol?” This is important because if only condemnation, another article of impeachment, and talk of the use of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment were the results, why would the president risk doing something so imprudent? He knows that the media is biased against him and that a large portion of politicians hate him, so this seems like an illogical political move at a time when tensions were high. Therefore, it seems unlikely that he was intentionally attempting to incite violence against the very government that he was a part of due to the consequences that he would have known would ensue (I will let you decide if anything he said actually constituted overt rallying of people to physically storm the inside of the building). Also, though the media dismisses the idea out of hand, perhaps Antifa (a far-left militia) took place in the riots and lured the protesters into storming the building (a few images of supposed Trump supporters looking eerily similar to Antifa members from the summer exist, and one protester allegedly had a “hammer and sickle” tattooed on his hand). Since the majority of the public lacks curiosity of the world and blindly follows what they are told, it is safe to assume that these questions will not be examined in the near future.
Another area of concern is: why was it so easy for the protesters to storm the building? The Capitol is supposed to be one of the most secure buildings in the country, and yet on a day when they knew that this could happen and all of Congress was meeting in the same place during a hotly contested election, they decided to be less strict with the security? I worked in military security and law enforcement, and I can tell you firsthand that even low-level installations had constant security (but a high-level target with our nation’s lawmakers inside was left without adequate security?). There is something suspicious about this, and even though liberals like to pretend that this was because white protesters were involved (though there is some disparity in levels of response due to race, this cannot be the case here), why was there video evidence of police taking selfies with the protesters and opening gates and allowing them to leave without issue? No sane police officer is going to open gates for protesters (for fear of courts-martial or other equivalent sanctions) unless they were ordered to do so.
President Trump has been continuously harassed as the cause of this horrific breach, despite telling people to go home and remain peaceful. Yet the media, as they normally do, took what he said out of context and did not accept his attempt to persuade his supporters to stand down. No matter what the president says or how he says it, his haters will always criticize his every move (he could give someone a million dollars, and the press would find some way to charge him with racism and foul play for the kind gesture). This is the type of environment we find ourselves in, and now there are calls to purge the nation of Trumpism and force his followers to face consequences for not renouncing him.
Should people who question the election results and endorse someone that many regard as pure evil be punished simply for their support? The idea has been floated around, and Facebook and Twitter certainly did not waste time suspending his accounts and censoring unfavorable information about the event. The social media giants have been “fact-checking” posts hardcore over the last several months because they are afraid inconvenient information that goes against the main narrative may gain steam. Big Tech does not believe in free speech, and although the average liberal claims that he or she advocates for it, this is clearly not the case because there is an increasing push to censor whatever they deem as misinformation and classify anything that goes against the liberal agenda as dangerous.
In most cases, liberals’ hatred for free speech would just be passed off as intolerance (the opposite of what they claim to be), but with an active campaign (see Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s idea) to punish Trump supporters or rid the world of the filth associated with the devil himself, anyone who values free speech and association should be appalled by what may come to pass. We do not need another round of McCarthyism in the United States. Will there be calls for fines, arrests, or social cancellations as retribution for support of a president? Will it become illegal to spread information about election fraud (there were likely some cases of fraud and irregularities, but it is currently unknown whether there was enough of it to change the election results, and the president and his team have failed to provide sufficient evidence in a timely manner)? Will right-wing groups become a scapegoat for the nation’s problems? Will there be a nationalistic purge of Trumpism and limits on free speech? If so, this sounds eerily similar to the very fascism that these people supposedly oppose (creating a national narrative that everyone has to follow or face the consequences). Will Americans be conditioned to embrace a new set of Alien and Sedition Acts and force free speech supporters to draft new versions of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions?
As we approach our dark winter with a new president, will the division that has been increasing finally cause the end of the United States as we know it, or will our nation be able to heal itself? It seems unlikely that the division will instantly dissipate, and if the party in power chooses to force their will upon the “conquered” group of people, civil war may ultimately come. However, if the ruling party sends out an olive branch and prevents the temptations of authoritarianism, and the conquered party actually accepts the invitation, peace may be a possibility. With more COVID-19 restrictions looming, the United States does not need punishments for people who desire the expression of their views. Anti-Trump people need to embrace tolerance and work to find common ground with those whom they disagree and stop acting like they are morally superior to the diseased pro-Trumpers. It will be interesting to see what will happen on Sunday (January 17th) with the planned protests in all of the state capitals, and the media is already warning that there will be right-wing violence before the events have even occurred.
Thank you for reading, and please check out my book, The Global Bully, and website. I will leave you with a quote from Glenn Greenwald:
“Authoritarians never believe they’re authoritarians, no matter how much censorship, surveillance, jingoism, & imprisonment they demand. They tell themselves their enemies are so uniquely evil and dangerous – terrorists – that anything done in the name of fighting them is noble.”
Some obvious areas of hypocrisy lay with the mainstream media. Back over the summer, during the Black Lives Matter protests, the media encouraged all expressions of the fight against what it deemed as oppression and privilege and was even willing to look the other way as some of the protests erupted into scenes of chaos, arson, and looting. When BLM protesters captured a few city blocks (this became known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone of Portland, Oregon) and trapped residents and small business owners, set up barriers to prevent free travel in and out of the zone with armed guards posted throughout the area (a bit ironic in of itself), and destroyed property; the media largely ignored it, or they classified it as a peaceful party. All of the violence was condoned, and there were even comparisons made between the riots and the Boston Tea Party with the heroic destruction of buildings occupied by small business owners (the mentality became: the business owners had insurance, and even though they may have worked hard to get to where they were, it was just too bad).
The media condemned the January 6th attack right away (and justifiably so), but it then went on to paint all of the pro-Trump protesters as violent and radical thugs, despite thousands of peaceful protesters taking to the streets of Washington, D.C. Yet, despite some violence, the BLM protests were quickly classified as “mostly peaceful.” Where is the consistency? Liberal politicians and the general Democratic population followed suit in the double standard. Both sides have the right to protest and became victims of agitators that hijacked the movements and utilized unwarranted violence, but my problem is more with the hypocrisy. Conservatives largely viewed the BLM protests as violent when they generally were not, just like liberals did with the Trump rally. By media standards, though, it seems to only be considered violence when right-wing groups are involved, and left-wing groups are allowed to be as violent as they please without consequence.
Questioning the media is generally frowned upon by “scholarly” sheep who believe that our institutions in this country are sacred, should not be touched, and can be trusted without the shadow of a doubt. It should be asked, “what did President Trump or his followers gain from storming the Capitol?” This is important because if only condemnation, another article of impeachment, and talk of the use of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment were the results, why would the president risk doing something so imprudent? He knows that the media is biased against him and that a large portion of politicians hate him, so this seems like an illogical political move at a time when tensions were high. Therefore, it seems unlikely that he was intentionally attempting to incite violence against the very government that he was a part of due to the consequences that he would have known would ensue (I will let you decide if anything he said actually constituted overt rallying of people to physically storm the inside of the building). Also, though the media dismisses the idea out of hand, perhaps Antifa (a far-left militia) took place in the riots and lured the protesters into storming the building (a few images of supposed Trump supporters looking eerily similar to Antifa members from the summer exist, and one protester allegedly had a “hammer and sickle” tattooed on his hand). Since the majority of the public lacks curiosity of the world and blindly follows what they are told, it is safe to assume that these questions will not be examined in the near future.
Another area of concern is: why was it so easy for the protesters to storm the building? The Capitol is supposed to be one of the most secure buildings in the country, and yet on a day when they knew that this could happen and all of Congress was meeting in the same place during a hotly contested election, they decided to be less strict with the security? I worked in military security and law enforcement, and I can tell you firsthand that even low-level installations had constant security (but a high-level target with our nation’s lawmakers inside was left without adequate security?). There is something suspicious about this, and even though liberals like to pretend that this was because white protesters were involved (though there is some disparity in levels of response due to race, this cannot be the case here), why was there video evidence of police taking selfies with the protesters and opening gates and allowing them to leave without issue? No sane police officer is going to open gates for protesters (for fear of courts-martial or other equivalent sanctions) unless they were ordered to do so.
President Trump has been continuously harassed as the cause of this horrific breach, despite telling people to go home and remain peaceful. Yet the media, as they normally do, took what he said out of context and did not accept his attempt to persuade his supporters to stand down. No matter what the president says or how he says it, his haters will always criticize his every move (he could give someone a million dollars, and the press would find some way to charge him with racism and foul play for the kind gesture). This is the type of environment we find ourselves in, and now there are calls to purge the nation of Trumpism and force his followers to face consequences for not renouncing him.
Should people who question the election results and endorse someone that many regard as pure evil be punished simply for their support? The idea has been floated around, and Facebook and Twitter certainly did not waste time suspending his accounts and censoring unfavorable information about the event. The social media giants have been “fact-checking” posts hardcore over the last several months because they are afraid inconvenient information that goes against the main narrative may gain steam. Big Tech does not believe in free speech, and although the average liberal claims that he or she advocates for it, this is clearly not the case because there is an increasing push to censor whatever they deem as misinformation and classify anything that goes against the liberal agenda as dangerous.
In most cases, liberals’ hatred for free speech would just be passed off as intolerance (the opposite of what they claim to be), but with an active campaign (see Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s idea) to punish Trump supporters or rid the world of the filth associated with the devil himself, anyone who values free speech and association should be appalled by what may come to pass. We do not need another round of McCarthyism in the United States. Will there be calls for fines, arrests, or social cancellations as retribution for support of a president? Will it become illegal to spread information about election fraud (there were likely some cases of fraud and irregularities, but it is currently unknown whether there was enough of it to change the election results, and the president and his team have failed to provide sufficient evidence in a timely manner)? Will right-wing groups become a scapegoat for the nation’s problems? Will there be a nationalistic purge of Trumpism and limits on free speech? If so, this sounds eerily similar to the very fascism that these people supposedly oppose (creating a national narrative that everyone has to follow or face the consequences). Will Americans be conditioned to embrace a new set of Alien and Sedition Acts and force free speech supporters to draft new versions of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions?
As we approach our dark winter with a new president, will the division that has been increasing finally cause the end of the United States as we know it, or will our nation be able to heal itself? It seems unlikely that the division will instantly dissipate, and if the party in power chooses to force their will upon the “conquered” group of people, civil war may ultimately come. However, if the ruling party sends out an olive branch and prevents the temptations of authoritarianism, and the conquered party actually accepts the invitation, peace may be a possibility. With more COVID-19 restrictions looming, the United States does not need punishments for people who desire the expression of their views. Anti-Trump people need to embrace tolerance and work to find common ground with those whom they disagree and stop acting like they are morally superior to the diseased pro-Trumpers. It will be interesting to see what will happen on Sunday (January 17th) with the planned protests in all of the state capitals, and the media is already warning that there will be right-wing violence before the events have even occurred.
Thank you for reading, and please check out my book, The Global Bully, and website. I will leave you with a quote from Glenn Greenwald:
“Authoritarians never believe they’re authoritarians, no matter how much censorship, surveillance, jingoism, & imprisonment they demand. They tell themselves their enemies are so uniquely evil and dangerous – terrorists – that anything done in the name of fighting them is noble.”
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