New Database Tracks Canceled People

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Somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, an anonymous researcher has launched a website that tracks people who have been “canceled” for exercising their right to free speech. Appropriately named “CanceledPeople.org,” the database already has 195 entries, with many recognizable names including James Damore, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Jordan Peterson, Charles Murray, Megyn Kelly, Nicholas & Erik Christakis, Bret Weinstein, Chris Mathews, Roseanne Barr, Gina Carano, Roger Pielke Jr., and, of course, Donald Trump.

Notable among those listed are people who are not merely victims of the so-called Left, but also the Right. For example, the first name on the list is Junia Joplin, a Baptist Minister who was fired after she came out to her congregation as a transgender woman during a sermon. This indifference to who is being canceled (and who is doing the canceling) is a welcome attempt at nonpartisanship, although the majority of the listings are people victimized by the Left.

On their About page, the site creators explain what they look for when considering who to add to their database. They write:

“The canceled person has been targeted for behavior that falls within the boundaries of “reasonable expression” (see more on this below). The “offense” may not be recent, and it may not even be their own action.

The canceled person has lost their job or position (this includes forced resignations). Their future professional opportunities have been limited. If they are self-employed, they have suffered financial losses from a boycott or sabotage of their company.

The canceled person has faced a coordinated effort to silence them. The effort seeks to render their person or their ideas unfit to discuss.

The canceled person has faced a coordinated effort to shame them and destroy their reputation. The effort seeks to damage their self-worth and will likely target their personal or professional relationships.”

A strength of this well sourced, no frills database – they don’t even have a logo! – is the “Offense” column, where a lengthy explanation of exactly what happened is provided. Reading these explanations will trigger recollections in many cases where the event gathered national or international publicity for a time, but the name of the person canceled was forgotten.

Whoever is responsible for this database wants to remain unknown, but we salute their efforts and hope they will continue their excellent work. They have created a valuable resource for anyone seeking to more thoroughly understand cancel culture. And needless to say, there have already been far, far more instances of cancelation than the 195 high profile events captured so far in this database, and multiples more cases where people have been intimidated into silence.

EDITORS NOTE: This Winston84 Project column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

ARIZONA: Maricopa Audit Director Speaks Out on Why Are Democrats So Panicked?

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Why Are Democrats So Panicked? Because they know. Everybody knows.

Latest update from Dr. Kelli Ward.

Detailed story from last night on Maricopa audit status…

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Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense permenently banned us. Facebook, Twitter, Google search et al have shadowbanned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Help us fight. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever. Share our posts on social and with your email contacts.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

ElectionEvidence.com: 13 Point 2020 Election Fraud Summary

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The 2020 Election Integrity Project has updated it’s website. On their website they summarize the 2020 Election Fraud.

  1. Ballot counting was delayed in 6 states, all around the same time, on election night for the first time in United States history without any explanation.
  2. Five states wanted to decertify and requested more time for audits whose governors wouldn’t call the special sessions to allow them to do so.
  3. There were 202k more votes than voters in PA.
  4. Hundreds of thousands of votes adjudicated without proper observance which is against FEC law. (See county by county in the sheet below).
  5. Maricopa County defied court ordered and state legislature ordered subpoenas to run a forensic audit and are continuing to fight the audit. If you were accused of a crime, wouldn’t you want to clear your name?
  6. Fulton County (Atlanta) defied a unanimous legislative mandate demanding a full forensic audit.
  7. The state of Michigan’s AG blocked the release of the Antrim county audit. Never allowed for a full audit of the state to be done.
  8. Multiple battle ground states and counties deleted voter records and adjudication records which is against the 22 month minimum set by FEC law. This law specifically exists so you can audit the records in a contested election such as the one in 2020. (See links below and Antrim county Audit under resources page)
  9. Tens of thousands of votes in PA that were sent by mail that were backdated.
  10. There were illegal levels of adjudication rates across multiple states and counties; some were as high as 93%. This is significant because it’s the easiest way to commit election fraud. FEC law allows for less than 1%.
  11. Fulton County (Atlanta) workers kicked out poll watchers and media while scanning and rescanning ballots multiple times over ON VIDEO. An estimated 18,000-32,000 ballots were scanned and assigned to fake names on voter rolls.
  12. There was a coordinated effort across multiple swing states to kick out libertarian and republican poll watchers and lawyers during the election on November 3rd. (See county by county in the sheet below).
  13. All of this is verified and fact-checked and doesn’t even scratch the surface of what’s on this site. Feel free to dig through the links below and come to your own conclusions.

WHAT IS THE 2020 ELECTION EVIDENCE PROJECT?

The 2020 Election Evidence Project was started in response to the media refusing to report on factual pieces of evidence regarding the 2020 election. Our goal isn’t to convince you of some grandiose conspiracy theory, but instead, to present you with information the traditional media isn’t reporting and allow you to form your own opinions. Because the media generally isn’t reporting on what we’ll be presenting, inevitably a lot of our sources will come from independent and right leaning news sources, tech experts, politicians, lawyers, whistleblower, witnesses, and judges themselves.

I highly encourage you to question everything you see in each piece of presented material. With that said, it’s important to be careful of dismissing information due to the source rather than the claim.

Example: If you see a Youtube video that claims something which makes you uncomfortable, don’t throw out the claim because it’s from a source you’re not familiar with. Research the claim instead. It’s easy to fall into the trap of dismissing evidence from a source (instead of verifying the claim) because as humans, we have an inherent need to be “right.” This is dangerous as our human minds are conditioned to believe pretty much anything that will make us feel “right” even when the truth is contrary to the feeling. (This is a term known as cognitive dissonance.)

Throughout your research if you see something that doesn’t sit well with you, match it up with available sources and evidence to fact check it. When doing so, watch out for misleading “fact checkers” whose headlines will claim to dismiss a “fact” when in reality they only dismiss a portion of a fact or outright masquerade as false evidence being real to prove a point, agenda, or simply get clicks (Reuters, AP, USA Today, Politifact, and others are notorious for this). Remember to question everything and come to your own conclusions.

Finally, please understand, we’re not saying that anything posted on this site is right or wrong, we’re simply pointing out the things that traditional media isn’t reporting. Our goal is to share the information and allow you to decide.

To understand more about how cognitive dissonance works click here.

©2020 Election Integrity Project. All rights reserved.

Google Search: Driving the Pornography Industry’s Profits

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As recently as December 2020, when NCOSE researchers conducted a Google search test for “child pornography,” many top results yielded links to hardcore pornography websites, including Pornhub and XVideos—effectively advertising for the world’s largest sexual exploiters that are currently under increased public scrutiny for the proliferation of child sex abuse material on its site.

Two weeks ago NCOSE researchers tried the term “child pornography” again and were thrilled that instead of links to Pornhub or to any other porn sites, the only results on the first 10 pages that we reviewed included information for child safety organizations, news articles, and legislation. In fact, several other search terms that used to direct people to Pornhub (“rape porn,” “incest porn,” and “drugged porn”) no longer do so—though unfortunately they still result in pages and pages of other hardcore porn sites.

Can we call it a “win” that Google no longer drives people looking up “child pornography” to an exploitative website known to profit from images of children being raped? Can we call it a victory when it took a NYT expose, government intervention, and other corporations to cut ties with Pornhub for Google to change its algorithms? Yes. Absolutely! Because when tech mega-giant Google makes any changes—however seemingly “simple” – it has vast ripple effects with the potential to impact hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people. It’s why we celebrate any time Google makes any move toward protecting dignity and actually does “the right thing” as its motto claims.

But it’s too little. And while it’s certainly late, it’s thankfully not too late for Google to stop buttressing an industry that profits from people’s trauma and pain.

While Google has seemingly reduced the number of searches that result in Pornhub showing up on the first page (or even as the first result), several search terms like “teen porn” and “choking porn” are still directing people to Pornhub, to its main competitor Xvideos, and to countless other hardcore pornography sites.

New York Times two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Nick Kristof (whose investigative piece Children of Pornhub published in December 2020 turned the tide against Pornhub and parent company MindGeek) most recently set his scrutinizing sights on XVideos– asking the same question we and other advocates have been demanding for years, “Why Do We Let Corporations Profit from Rape Videos?” Kristof lambasts Google for serving as “a pillar of this sleazy ecosystem, for roughly half the traffic reaching XVideos and XNXX appears to come from Google searches.”

As Google has consistently held the monopoly of search engine market share worldwide – more than 90%, it’s likely Google has assisted countless people in accessing child sex abuse and other violent, illegal material by allowing links to Pornhub, XVideos, and other hardcore pornography sites to show up at the top of the search results page for searches like “child porn.” Studies have shown that the higher the rank on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP), the higher the likelihood users will click on the link, with the first result having the highest clickrate. “Teen porn” and “choking porn” still offer Pornhub as the #1 result. Pornhub and other porn sites rely on the SEO (search engine optimization)—in fact, it’s at the core of their business models to ensure their sites appear on the top page: so much so that even when they are ordered to take down images by lawyers or law enforcement, they leave the titles, tags, and thumbnails up so a Google search can still find them and bring people to Pornhub. Survivors tell us thumbnails showing their abuse are still widely available through a simple Google search of their name – even when the video has been removed from the pornography site.

Why are we letting Big Tech line the pockets of Big Porn, which has monetized the most violent, degrading, racist, and often illegal acts committed against children and vulnerable adults?

NCOSE met with Google executives last February to press on them to change their algorithms in order to stop driving people to hardcore pornography sites and assault users—including young children – with violent, degrading pornographic images. We pressed on them to stop directing people to hardcore pornography for searches like the ones listed above and others, like “slavery porn” or “Asian slave.”  Not only did searches related to pornography and prostitution lead to Pornhub and other sites, but scientific and innocent terms like “happy black teen” would populate the screen with images of torture and abuse in under a second, together with links to hardcore porn sites.

Google claimed they couldn’t do more, hiding behind “free speech” to cleanse their hands and justify inaction—even though child pornography and hardcore pornography is not protected by the 1st Amendment. In fact, it’s illegal. Google claimed Pornhub was a “legitimate” site, despite mounting evidence of criminal activity and survivors speaking out and they couldn’t mess with search term algorithms or result positioning (though even at the time we knew they could and did change search result rankings and have more recently curated search content that was potentially harmful on a wide scale such as COVID-19  health information). We continued to push on Google to proactively ensure their products and tools were not buttressing illegal and unethical industries. Soon after NCOSE met with their executives, they did in fact make changes so that scientific terms no longer produces hardcore pornographic images, and that innocent search terms wouldn’t result in hardcore porn links and images (which in and of themselves could cause harm to the viewer—especially minors)

Determining how people receive information and what information they see first places Google in a great position of power—and therefore significant ethical responsibility. Google can and MUST continue to adjust its algorithms so that other search terms like “teen porn” and “choking porn” stop leading to Pornhub.com and that other terms like “rape porn” or “family porn” lead to resources, not videos of sexual assault and incest. Google has showed us they’re able to “do the right thing.” We hope they do so again.

Google Search: Driving the Pornography Industry’s Profits

As recently as December 2020, when NCOSE researchers conducted a Google search test for “child pornography,” many top results yielded links to hardcore pornography websites, including Pornhub and XVideos—effectively advertising for the world’s largest sexual exploiters that are currently under increased public scrutiny for the proliferation of child sex abuse material on its site.

Two weeks ago NCOSE researchers tried the term “child pornography” again and were thrilled that instead of links to Pornhub or to any other porn sites, the only results on the first 10 pages that we reviewed included information for child safety organizations, news articles, and legislation. In fact, several other search terms that used to direct people to Pornhub (“rape porn,” “incest porn,” and “drugged porn”) no longer do so—though unfortunately they still result in pages and pages of other hardcore porn sites.

Can we call it a “win” that Google no longer drives people looking up “child pornography” to an exploitative website known to profit from images of children being raped? Can we call it a victory when it took a NYT expose, government intervention, and other corporations to cut ties with Pornhub for Google to change its algorithms? Yes. Absolutely! Because when tech mega-giant Google makes any changes—however seemingly “simple” – it has vast ripple effects with the potential to impact hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people. It’s why we celebrate any time Google makes any move toward protecting dignity and actually does “the right thing” as its motto claims.

But it’s too little. And while it’s certainly late, it’s thankfully not too late for Google to stop buttressing an industry that profits from people’s trauma and pain.

While Google has seemingly reduced the number of searches that result in Pornhub showing up on the first page (or even as the first result), several search terms like “teen porn” and “choking porn” are still directing people to Pornhub, to its main competitor Xvideos, and to countless other hardcore pornography sites.

New York Times two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Nick Kristof (whose investigative piece Children of Pornhub published in December 2020 turned the tide against Pornhub and parent company MindGeek) most recently set his scrutinizing sights on XVideos– asking the same question we and other advocates have been demanding for years, “Why Do We Let Corporations Profit from Rape Videos?” Kristof lambasts Google for serving as “a pillar of this sleazy ecosystem, for roughly half the traffic reaching XVideos and XNXX appears to come from Google searches.”

As Google has consistently held the monopoly of search engine market share worldwide – more than 90%, it’s likely Google has assisted countless people in accessing child sex abuse and other violent, illegal material by allowing links to Pornhub, XVideos, and other hardcore pornography sites to show up at the top of the search results page for searches like “child porn.” Studies have shown that the higher the rank on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP), the higher the likelihood users will click on the link, with the first result having the highest clickrate. “Teen porn” and “choking porn” still offer Pornhub as the #1 result. Pornhub and other porn sites rely on the SEO (search engine optimization)—in fact, it’s at the core of their business models to ensure their sites appear on the top page: so much so that even when they are ordered to take down images by lawyers or law enforcement, they leave the titles, tags, and thumbnails up so a Google search can still find them and bring people to Pornhub. Survivors tell us thumbnails showing their abuse are still widely available through a simple Google search of their name – even when the video has been removed from the pornography site.

Why are we letting Big Tech line the pockets of Big Porn, which has monetized the most violent, degrading, racist, and often illegal acts committed against children and vulnerable adults?

NCOSE met with Google executives last February to press on them to change their algorithms in order to stop driving people to hardcore pornography sites and assault users—including young children – with violent, degrading pornographic images. We pressed on them to stop directing people to hardcore pornography for searches like the ones listed above and others, like “slavery porn” or “Asian slave.”  Not only did searches related to pornography and prostitution lead to Pornhub and other sites, but scientific and innocent terms like “happy black teen” would populate the screen with images of torture and abuse in under a second, together with links to hardcore porn sites.

Google claimed they couldn’t do more, hiding behind “free speech” to cleanse their hands and justify inaction—even though child pornography and hardcore pornography is not protected by the 1st Amendment. In fact, it’s illegal. Google claimed Pornhub was a “legitimate” site, despite mounting evidence of criminal activity and survivors speaking out and they couldn’t mess with search term algorithms or result positioning (though even at the time we knew they could and did change search result rankings and have more recently curated search content that was potentially harmful on a wide scale such as COVID-19  health information). We continued to push on Google to proactively ensure their products and tools were not buttressing illegal and unethical industries. Soon after NCOSE met with their executives, they did in fact make changes so that scientific terms no longer produces hardcore pornographic images, and that innocent search terms wouldn’t result in hardcore porn links and images (which in and of themselves could cause harm to the viewer—especially minors)

Determining how people receive information and what information they see first places Google in a great position of power—and therefore significant ethical responsibility. Google can and MUST continue to adjust its algorithms so that other search terms like “teen porn” and “choking porn” stop leading to Pornhub.com and that other terms like “rape porn” or “family porn” lead to resources, not videos of sexual assault and incest. Google has showed us they’re able to “do the right thing.” We hope they do so again.

COLUMN BY

Lina Nealon

DIRECTOR OF CORPORATE AND STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

Lina Nealon is committed to promoting the dignity of every human being and creating a society where everyone can reach their full potential.  As the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s Director of Corporate and Strategic Initiatives, she spearheads NCOSE’s campaigns to hold corporations accountable for profiting from sexual exploitation. As Founding Director of Demand Abolition, Lina designed and led the first national program combatting the demand for paid sex that drives the global sex industry. Under her leadership, Demand Abolition coalesced a vastly diverse network of survivors, movement leaders, and allies across sectors and disciplines to implement tactics to stop sex buyers, disrupt commercial sex markets, and transform cultural norms around buying sex.  Lina was the leading architect of the Cities Empowered Against Sexual Exploitation (CEASE), a collaboration between twelve major US cities measurably decreasing demand in their communities and a founder co-chair of the World Without Exploitation coalition.

Ms. Nealon has advised governors, attorneys general, mayors and other elected officials, police chiefs, leading philanthropists, and business leaders in promising practices to reduce demand and has drafted numerous policies and legislation at the federal, state, and local levels to stop exploitation. She co-chaired the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Anti-Trafficking Taskforce Demand Committee and was a founding member of Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Working Group on Modern Slavery. Ms. Nealon has provided expert commentary and has published articles for top-tier media including MSNBC, PBS, NPR, Boston Globe, Congressional Quarterly Review, Al Jazeera, etc.

A mother of three girls and a sexual assault survivor herself, Ms. Nealon is driven to elevate survivor leadership and promote women’s and girls’ empowerment. As a Policy Specialist and Trainer with the Institute for Inclusive Security, Lina ensured women’s significant representation in peace processes and reconstruction efforts across dozens of post-conflict countries. She served as Executive Director of Girls on the Run (Greater Triangle Area, NC), sat on the Women2Women Advisory Council, and has mentored numerous young women in building their confidence, leadership skills, and resilience. Lina and her husband Brian are raising four young, adventurous, nature-loving, socially-conscious abolitionists in Durham, North Carolina.

EDITORS NOTE: This National Center on Sexual Exploitation column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Presumably to Silence Him, Rightwing Speaker Put on No-Fly List

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Apparently the fascists running Joe Biden’s government these days don’t like what Nick Fuentes says since he has not committed any crimes.  Scary stuff!

The story is at VDARE, a website the Left abhors and so therefore you should visit it often even if you don’t agree with every word they publish.

Fuentes is apparently being harassed because of his political activities in support of America First and Donald Trump and because  his speech is uncomfortable for some tender ears.

Remember the old adage….First they came for Nick.

America First Patriot Nick Fuentes Put On No-Fly List

America First host Nick Fuentes can no longer fly on an airplane. He announced Tuesday that he couldn’t check into his flight because the authorities didn’t clear him to fly.

[….]

Fuentes believes he was put on the no-fly list due to hysteria over the Capitol protests. He has suffered numerous bans since January 6.

Fuentes was on his way to Florida for a press conference and rally against Big Tech and for Governor DeSantis push to rein-in the power of the tech giants in his state.

Here Fuentes posted news on the gathering of free speech advocates on Twitter last Friday.

You probably noticed that Fuentes is at least still on Twitter when yours truly was suspended back in January.

VDARE notes that Glenn Greenwald, a staunch defender of American civil liberties no matter which side of the political divide one resides on, came to Fuentes’ defense.

This could be you someday, but that is no reason to pull any political punches in these difficult times.

And if this is the first time you have heard of Nick Fuentes, he is the host of a podcast America First Live.  

Check it out!

LOL!  By singling Fuentes out like this, those seeking to silence him may just have broadened his audience.

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

How Long Will Marjorie Taylor Greene Last On Mainstream Platforms?

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Those of us who are amused and glad that finally there are some politicians who engage in hyperbole and confrontational politics with the same abandon as Leftists have a new celebrity to follow, Georgia’s firebrand GOP Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

It isn’t necessary to recapitulate the many ways Greene has horrified the mainstream. They are too numerous to briefly summarize and some of the concerns about her comments and conduct have merit. But so what? There are dozens of members of the U.S. Congress who have committed equally if not more egregious offenses, especially if you examine their history prior to taking office.

As a USA Today headline blared on February 9, “Marjorie Taylor Greene should be removed from Facebook for spreading ‘dangerous lies,’ advocacy groups say.” And who are these “advocacy groups?” They are partisan left-wing pressure groups, the beneficiaries of funding largesse that partisan right-wing pressure groups (is there even such a thing?) can’t imagine. And what about the “dangerous lies” we’re hearing night and day from left-wing sources?

It is a “dangerous lie” to claim the United States is “systemically racist.” It is a dangerous lie to claim there is a “climate emergency.” These are lies that are destined to turn the United States into a police state controlled by a small oligarchy. They are more dangerous than anything Marjorie Taylor Greene has ever said or done, not only because they represent a transformative, credible threat, but because – thanks to billions of dollars and years of repetition – millions of Americans believe these lies.

For several hours earlier this month, Marjorie Taylor Greene was locked out of her Twitter account, supposedly by mistake. Expecting her accounts on Twitter and Facebook to survive is a poor bet. And the reason Greene is considered a threat by these and other mainstream platforms has little to do with anything she’s ever said in the past, however hyperbolic. Greene is a threat because she is willing to challenge the big lies of our time: the lies of systemic racism and a climate emergency.

On principle, and for a variety of reasons, Greene’s voice should be heard. To respect the First Amendment. To adhere to the Section 230 exemptions that prohibit social media platforms from engaging in editorial censorship in exchange for immunity from some liability. And most of all, to offer equal time. A tough voice on the right, standing up to an avalanche of state-sanctioned, media-driven, corporate supported leftist propaganda that inundates the nation.

EDITORS NOTE: This Winston84 Project column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Stalin was a ‘Cancel Culture’ Pioneer: The Inside Story on How He Cancelled ‘Hamlet’

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William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is considered by some to be the single greatest story ever written.

Hamlet has it all: ghosts, sword fights, suicide, revenge, lust, murder, philosophy, faith, manipulation, and a climactic bloodbath worthy of a Tarantino film. It’s a masterpiece of both high art and sensationalism, the only play I’ve seen performed live three times.

Not everyone likes Hamlet, of course. One of its detractors was Soviet premier Joseph Stalin.

Stalin’s hatred for the play has almost become a thing of legend, in part because it’s unclear precisely why Stalin hated the play. Entire academic papers are dedicated to answering the question.

In his autobiography Testimony, the famous Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich suggests that Stalin saw the play as excessively dark and potentially subversive.

“[Stalin] simply didn’t want people watching plays with plots that displeased him,” Shostakovich wrote; “you never know what might pop into the mind of some demented person.”

Stalin didn’t ban the play, however. He merely let it be known he disapproved of Hamlet during a rehearsal at the Moscow Art Theater, Stalin’s favorite theater.

“Why is this necessary—playing Hamlet in the Art Theater?” the Soviet leader asked.

That was all it took, Shostakovich said.

“Everyone knew about Stalin’s question directed at the Art Theater and no one wanted to risk it. Everyone was afraid,” Shostakovich observed. “And for many long years Hamlet was not seen on the Soviet stage.”

Hamlet is safe in the United States today, fortunately. Yet today’s “cancel culture” has purged many works of art—from Dr. Seuss books and Gone With the Wind to Disney movies like Peter Pan and Dumbo.

These works of art are not being banned by state censors; they are being pulled or restricted by content providers, online stores, and publishers on the grounds that they are culturally or racially insensitive.

“These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises told the Associated Press upon announcing it would no longer publish six Dr. Seuss books, including And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and If I Ran the Zoo.

Whether these works of art are culturally insensitive is a subjective matter, as is the question of whether Hamlet is a morally subversive play. Now, there are those who deny that Dr. Seuss is actually being canceled at all.

If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion.

“We can debate whether doing this was the right thing, but it’s important to point out a few things,” the film critic Stephen Silver wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer. “The decision was made by the company that owns and controls the books, not by the government, or by a ‘mob’ that pressured it.”

Silver is correct to note there’s a difference between government censorship and self-censorship. But his claim there was no pressure behind the decision warrants scrutiny. (More on that in a moment.)

In any event, while there are differences in government censorship and self-censorship, both are dangerous, George Orwell observed.

Obviously it is not desirable that a government department should have any power of censorship… but the chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the [government] or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves. (emphasis added)

What Orwell was saying is that fear of public opinion can also result in censorship.

Now, to be clear, we don’t know for certain the motivations of publishers who decide to stop publishing certain Dr. Seuss books. Just like we can’t know for sure why Spotify suddenly dropped 42 Joe Rogan episodes down the Memory Hole. But it’s not unreasonable to suspect the impetus driving the canceling of today’s works is not unlike that which drove Hamlet out of the Soviet Union: fear.

Stalin’s canceling of Hamlet showed government bans aren’t the only ways to suppress free expression, or even the most effective. As Shostakovich observed, Stalin’s ability to cancel Hamlet with a mere word was a far better demonstration of power than an official state ban. It required no law or formal announcement. All it took was a quiet word and fear, an emotion that Americans today are familiar with.

A recent Cato study shows self-censorship is surging in the US, with two-thirds of Americans saying they are afraid to share ideas in public because of the political climate, which is increasingly dominated by “wokeism.”

Fear lurks behind the disappearance of art and the suppression of free expression. For that reason alone, such efforts should be resisted.

These fears are not irrational. The examples of Americans fired, shamed, and canceled for being on the wrong side of woke culture are legion. The phenomenon last year prompted a letter in Harper’s Magazine signed by dozens of leading academics that condemned the intolerant climate of ideas.

“Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes,” the letter read. “We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.”

This climate doesn’t end with writers and academics afraid to offer certain opinions, however. It extends to corporate boardrooms and executive committees, where individuals are being pressured to decide which art is acceptable and which opinions are fit to be shared on platforms.

To be on the wrong side of the debate invites personal destruction. It’s simply easier to agree to remove “harmful” art or fire that employee who raised the ire of the Twitter mob.

“People are afraid to challenge them,” Robby Soave of Reason told John Stossel last year in an interview on cancel culture.

Like in Orwell’s 1984, in today’s culture you don’t even have to utter Wrongthink to be condemned for it.

“Everyone was afraid,” Shostakovich said.

Just ask Dr. Howard Bauchner, who in March was removed as editor-in-chief of the prominent medical journal JAMA. Bauchner’s crime was that, during a podcast the previous month, his deputy editor questioned the existence of structural racism.

“Structural racism is an unfortunate term,” said Dr. Edward H. Livingston, who is white. “Personally, I think taking racism out of the conversation will help.”

To be sure, in America today one doesn’t risk liquidation for refusing to bow to pressure to self-censor works of art. That cannot be said of the Soviet Union under Stalin.

Yet there is a common thread that runs through both cases of censorship: fear

“Everyone was afraid,” Shostakovich said.

These same words can be applied to those bowing to cancel culture today.

This isn’t to say that Dr. Seuss’s works are or are not culturally insensitive, or that Hamlet does or does not contain themes harmful or subversive.

It’s simply to say that fear lurks behind the disappearance of art and the suppression of free expression. For that reason alone, such efforts should be resisted.

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines:… More by Jon Miltimore.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden’s Curious Choice to Lead Customs and Border Protection

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As Tucson Police Chief, Chris Magnus refused to assist Border Patrol.

The disaster on the U.S./Mexican border has catapulted the issue of border security to new levels of importance. Therefore, the Biden administration’s pick for the Director of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), an always important position, has taken on additional significance.

On April 12, 2021 the Washington Post reported:  Biden picks Tucson police chief to run U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

That article began with this excerpt:

President Biden is preparing to nominate Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus to be commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, selecting a critic of the Trump administration’s immigration policies to run the country’s largest federal law enforcement agency as it contends with the biggest increase in migrants arriving at the southwest border in two decades.

Magnus has led the Tucson police department since 2016 and has prominently associated himself with the movement favored by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party that emphasizes a less-aggressive, community-based policing model.

Magnus opposed efforts to make Tucson a “sanctuary city,” but he generally eschewed cooperation with federal immigration authorities, placing him at odds with the Border Patrol union — and many of the agents and officials who will potentially be under his command.

Here is another important excerpt from the Washington Post article:

Relations between Magnus and the Border Patrol have been frosty, according to three current and former CBP officials, particularly following an incident in 2017 when the Tucson police declined to assist the Border Patrol after a suspect escaped from custody.

The Border Patrol’s union officials called him “an ultraliberal social engineer who was given a badge and a gun by the City of Tucson,” in a 2018 Facebook post.

Magnus is a member of the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force, which is a partner to the National Immigration Forum and says on its website that local police should not be involved in federal immigration enforcement.

It is beyond outrageous that Biden would pick a leader for CBP who opposes cooperation between local law enforcement and immigration law enforcement. This alone should disqualify him from becoming the director of CBP.

It is more than a bit ironic that on April 21, 2021, Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a news release, “ICE officers arrest citizen of the Czech Republic in Illinois,” which began with the following statement:

CHICAGO — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers arrested a Czech Republic national convicted of attempted homicide and other crimes outside his residence in Lyons, Illinois April 19.

Tomas Ruckschlos, 34, was released into the community after serving time in prison for his crimes, without notification to ICE.

It is incredible that while ICE noted, with obvious frustration, the lack of cooperation by local police in Chicago that enabled an alien sought by ICE to be released into the community without making appropriate notification to ICE that Mr. Biden now seeks to have Chris Magnus lead CBP considering that he had similarly refused to cooperate with immigration law enforcement in the past.

The concept of various law enforcement agencies working cooperatively together has been a standard means of enabling various law enforcement agencies on all levels, to achieve common goals to enhance public safety and national security.

Such cooperation creates synergy, which is defined as:

The interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.

For decades various law enforcement agencies on the local, state and federal level have created a variety of task forces to achieve vital common, shared goals.

Consider the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) that includes a wide variety of law enforcement agencies to combat both international and domestic terrorism and operates under the aegis of the FBI includes ICE agents along with local and state police. In point of fact, the number of ICE agents who are assigned to this important task force is second only the FBI.

Virtually all international terrorists violate multiple laws comprehended within the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The Organized Crime, Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) is another important multi-agency task force that, not unlike the JTTF includes law enforcement officers from various local, state and federal agencies including ICE.

Smuggling organizations frequently smuggle aliens as well as narcotics into the United States. Furthermore, many of the leaders of drug trafficking organizations are aliens who also violate numerous statutes found in the Immigration and Nationality Act.

I was promoted to the position of INS Senior Special Agent and assigned to OCDETF for the final ten years of my 30-year career with the former INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), so I speak from professional personal experience.

For the four years immediately preceding my promotion and assignment to the OCDETF I was assigned to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Unified Intelligence Division (UID) in New York City, where I worked with a number of local and state police agencies as well as with other federal agencies and even law enforcement agencies of other countries.

In both of those assignments my unique authority as an INS agent was frequently a factor in our efforts to identify co-conspirators, when appropriate, to seek to bring criminal charges concerning violations of the Immigration and Nationality Act, against those who engaged in drug trafficking and related crimes that frequently included human trafficking and various crimes of violence that are most often perpetrated within the various ethnic immigrant communities, with the immigrants most often suffering the most violence at the hands of these thugs.

In addition to assisting with narcotics investigations as a law enforcement agent, I was specifically able to contribute to major investigations and prosecutions by using my unique authority, as an INS agent, to cultivate confidential informants and cooperating witnesses in various ethnic immigrant communities in furtherance of our investigations of major international drug trafficking organizations.

Contrary to the claims that having immigration law enforcement personnel cooperating with local and state police would undermine community policing in ethnic immigrant communities, in my personal experience, quite the opposite was true.

Indeed, Mr. Magnus has made such fatuous claims in the past to justify his opposition to having his police department cooperate with immigration law enforcement agencies.

As an INS agent I was able to arrange for cooperating illegal aliens to remain in the United States if they assisted with law enforcement officers to identify criminals as well as criminal organizations. Various visas are now available for such cooperating aliens that, may even facilitated the admission of they family members from foreign countries if their assistance was deemed to be particularly instrumental.

My colleagues in other agencies such as the FBI, DEA and ATF frequently told me that my authority as an INS agent was frequently more effective in gaining the trust and cooperation of members of ethnic immigrant communities than was their ability to provide huge financial rewards for cooperating witnesses and informants.

In many cases, our investigations depended on the ability to cultivate such informants and cooperating witnesses.

Furthermore, criminal aliens and members of transnational criminal organizations generally live and operate within the ethnic immigrant communities, thereby posing a direct and immediate threat to the safety and wellbeing of these immigrants no matter where they originally came from.

Strong cooperation between all law enforcement agencies, especially ICE and CBP and local and state police can help to rid these communities of these violent and sociopathic predators, thereby making the lives of those in these various ethnic immigrant communities safer.

The goal of true “Community Policing” must be to safeguard the safety of the residents of the community and restore faith in our system of justice.

This is why there is a clear nexus between Interior Enforcement And The Border Crisis.

Additionally, there are a number of immigration-related criminal charges that can bring pressure to bear against foreign criminals and members of transnational gangs and international criminal and terrorist organizations.

Under 8 U.S. Code § 1326 – Reentry of removed aliens, criminal aliens who are deported and then illegally reenter the United States face up to 20 years in prison. I worked with then-U.S. Senator Al D’Amato to create this enhancement for criminal aliens back in the early 1980’s.

Alien smugglers / human traffickers, whether they are United States citizens or aliens, may be prosecuted for violation of 8 U.S. Code § 1324 – Bringing in and harboring certain aliens.

Under the provisions of 18 U.S. Code § 922(g)(5) any alien illegally present in the United States who is found to be in possession of a firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce faces a maximum of 10 years imprisonment upon conviction for this crime.

Under the provisions of 18 U.S. Code § 1546 – Fraud and misuse of visas, permits, and other documents an alien who violates the provisions of this statute faces up to 20 years in prison if the violations were involved in drug trafficking and up to 25 years on prison if such crimes were related to international terrorism.

These laws were enacted to protect national security and public safety, yet Mr. Biden and his administration refuse to do what is necessary to live up to their oaths of office and protect America and Americans.

The next leader of CBP must fully embrace the notion of cooperation between all law enforcement agencies including CBP and ICE with local law enforcement and not seek to obstruct it.

©Michael Cutler. All rights reserved.

Biden Administration Prioritizes “Wokeism,” Critical Race Theory In Schools

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There is no constitutional role for the federal government in education.

The Biden administration is taking new steps to promote Critical Race Theory and The New York Times’s controversial 1619 Project in US education programs. In a proposed federal rule issued on Monday, the US Department of Education indicated that it will be using taxpayer funds to award millions of dollars in American history and civics education grants that prioritize the belief that America is systemically racist.

The grant program seeks “projects that incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives into teaching and learning,” and refers to President Biden’s Inauguration Day executive order that explains how our country is plagued by “systemic racism” and “deserves an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda” to address this issue.

The new federal proposed rule refers to the 1619 Project and related curriculum resources as a “landmark” model for US history and civics education, despite its agenda-driven hostility against capitalism, its flawed historical analysis that many scholars have deemed false, and the Times’s own correction of the project.

The grant prioritization also pushes for greater emphasis on “anti-racism” training in schools, and quotes the work of Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist.

Successful applicants will demonstrate how their projects emphasize “systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history,” and promote “identity-safe learning environments.”

When former President Trump issued his call for a “1776 Commission” last September to advocate for widespread “patriotic education” in schools across the country, I warned that this was a bad idea. There is no constitutional role for the federal government in education. If one president decides to use the power of the federal government to push one particular educational paradigm, then another president could use the same power to push a different one. In my FEE article, I wrote:

“Emboldening the federal government to execute education policy may seem appealing when your preferred politician or party is in power, but that power remains when leadership inevitably sways to another politician or party. If you wouldn’t support a Biden ‘1619 Commission,’ then you shouldn’t support Trump’s ‘1776 Commission.’ If you wouldn’t support mandatory ‘critical race theory’ taught in your local schools, then you shouldn’t support mandatory ‘patriotic education’ either.”

But, here we are.

Decentralizing power away from the federal government and towards the state and local levels allows for greater taxpayer influence over public policy. It also makes it easier for citizens to choose where to live based on policy. For instance, if parents in Illinois don’t like the new teaching standards that the legislature recently passed to incorporate Critical Race Theory into state teacher training programs, they can always move to another state. If the federal government passes such a law, parents have far fewer options.

The Founders’ belief in federalism, or avoiding the concentration of power at the federal level, is crucially important. As James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers, no. 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” States can make education policy. The federal government cannot.

While the federal government should not be involved in education policy, there is much to debate at the state and local levels in terms of curriculum and learning standards. Critical Race Theory is penetrating classrooms across the country, and parents and teachers are increasingly speaking out against this leftist ideology of “wokeism,” even if it costs them their job.

We should absolutely celebrate diversity, show tolerance for difference, and acknowledge the deeply racist parts of American history, including government-sponsored racism through Jim Crow laws and redlining. We should also recognize that racism still exists today.

But Critical Race Theory seeks to view all social and cultural issues through the lens of race and racial identity, and to cast all human relations in terms of power structures related to that identity. It is a collectivist notion that puts the group above the individual and pigeonholes people as either oppressor or oppressed.

Indeed, the history of Critical Race Theory is rooted in Marxist thought and began to gain traction in academic circles in the early to mid-20th century through the “Frankfurt School” before spilling over into the broader culture near the turn of the millennium.

Last fall, FEE’s Dan Sanchez, Tyler Brandt, and Brad Polumbo wrote an excellent, in-depth explainer article on Critical Race Theory (CRT), discussing how it threatened the important progress made by the Civil Rights Movement. “The pre-CRT Civil Rights Movement had emphasized equal rights and treating people as individuals, as opposed to as members of a racial collective,” they wrote. “In contrast, CRT dwells on inequalities of outcome, which it generally attributes to racial power structures.”

They argued that the Civil Rights Movement was in line with the broader classical liberal movement, whose harmony-oriented vision stands in stark contrast against the Marxian conflict-oriented view of Critical Race Theory.

“The classical liberal ‘harmony doctrine,’” they explained, “was deeply influential in the movements to abolish all forms of inequality under the law: from feudal serfdom, to race-based slavery, to Jim Crow. But, with the rise of Critical Race Theory, the cause of racial justice became more influenced by the fixations on conflict, discord, and domination that CRT inherited from Marxism. Social life was predominantly cast as a zero-sum struggle between collectives: capital vs. labor for Marxism, whites vs. people of color for CRT.”

The antidote to this Marxist framework is to prioritize individualism over collectivism, in both schools and society more broadly. It’s to focus on the content of one’s character rather than the color of one’s skin, as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. urged.

Critical Race Theory does the opposite. “‘Antiracist’ training sounds righteous, but it is the opposite of truth in advertising,” math teacher Paul Rossi wrote last week in his letter objecting to the adoption of Critical Race Theory at his elite private school in Manhattan. “It requires teachers like myself to treat students differently on the basis of race.”

As more parents and teachers speak out against Critical Race Theory and “wokeism” in their schools, education policy and pedagogy will hopefully reject group antagonisms and embrace individual liberty and social harmony.

COLUMN BY

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019). She is also an adjunct scholar at The Cato Institute and a regular Forbes contributor. Kerry has a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. You can sign up for her weekly newsletter on parenting and education here.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Brett Favre: Ditch MLB & NFL, Go to Six Flags

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Former NFL quarterback Brett Favre was already well-known and hated by the woke crowd for his stance against putting politics on the football field. Now, he’s again taken up the fight against political activism in sports. “I think both sides, for the most part, want to see it just remain about the sport,” Favre said in a recent episode of his podcast, “Bolling with Favre”.

Favre’s statement directly challenges the narrative that major league sports are pushing – that America is racist, and so are Americans. Despite the overwhelming social pressure to believe this narrative, others are bravely stepping forward in agreement. Micah Owings, a former MLB pitcher, tweeted that he agreed with Favre’s stance. “@BrettFavre Thanks for speaking up…Baseball and Sports “used to” UNITE our Country! Thanks to the woke Left, now sports is ripping us apart…”

You can support Favre, Owings, and America by foregoing major league sports and taking your family to another form of entertainment – Six Flags, a company we rank as neutral. Our ranking means that we see Six Flags as putting customers ahead of culture wars, and making the customer experience their first priority. Everyone will have a great time, and you’ll know you’re putting your money where it won’t be used against you and your values.

It’s long past time for 2ndVote Americans to make our voice heard amid the leftist noise. We’re not racists. Our country isn’t racist. And companies that disagree will lose our money, while companies that put customers first will earn our business.

The American people used to put aside our differences over sports. Today, that’s nearly impossible. Take a trip to Six Flags, forget about the politics and culture wars, and be proud to support a company that puts you first.

EDITORS NOTE: This 2ndVote column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Records Show ‘Cancel Rent’ Champion Ayanna Pressley Raked in Thousands as Landlord

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How long will Americans tolerate this corruption and depravity?

Ayanna Pressley, a vocal proponent of rent cancellation, made $15,000 income as a landlord: Report

By Washington Examiner, April 21, 2021

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a vocal proponent of canceling rent, stands accused of profiting off rent from property she owns.

The Massachusetts Democrat, along with her husband, made as much as $15,000 in rental income in 2019, according to documents obtained by Washington Free Beacon.

The income came from a $658,000 Boston home with a rental unit listed at $2,500 per month over the course of four months.

In August of last year, Pressley and her husband refinanced the property as a multifamily investment which requires them to maintain rent loss insurance.

Pressley and fellow members of the “Squad” sponsored a bill called the Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act which effectively would waive renters’ and homebuyers’ obligations to pay rent or mortgages from March 2020 through April 2022 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The congresswoman referred to the bill at the time it was proposed as something that would “help move us toward an America where no person has to choose between putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their head.”

Pressley also referred to paying rent in the pandemic as a matter of “life and death” and has been criticized on social media by those who have wondered aloud if she canceled rent for her tenants during the pandemic.

“We asked ⁦@AyannaPressley⁩ several times whether she cancelled rent for her tenant,” Washington Free Beacon editor Brent Scher tweeted. “No response.”

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Parents need to create alternatives to politically correct education

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Parents are starting to push back. Here’s what we should do to empower them.

More parents are waking up to the “woke” ideology that is seeping into their children’s classrooms and curriculum. Increasingly, they are speaking up and opting out.

Last week, Andrew Gutmann, a father of a student at the elite, US$54,000-a-year Brearley School in Manhattan, wrote a scathing open letter to the school community. He stated that he wouldn’t be re-enrolling his daughter this upcoming academic year due to the school’s singular focus on “anti-racism” efforts that, according to Gutmann, are overtly racist and exclusionary.

“I object to Brearley’s vacuous, inappropriate, and fanatical use of words such as ‘equity,’ ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusiveness,’” wrote Gutmann in his 1700-word letter, which was published on Friday at journalist Bari Weiss’s website.

“If Brearley’s administration was truly concerned about so-called ‘equity,’ it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets,” the letter continues. “If the administration was genuinely serious about ‘diversity,’ it would not insist on the indoctrination of its students, and their families, to a single mindset, most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Instead, the school would foster an environment of intellectual openness and freedom of thought.”

“And if Brearley really cared about ‘inclusiveness,’ the school would return to the concepts encapsulated in the motto ‘One Brearley,’” Gutmann concludes. “Instead of teaching the extraordinarily divisive idea that there are only, and always, two groups in this country: victims and oppressors.”

The Brearley School’s headmaster responded to the letter, calling it “deeply offensive and harmful.” But more parents are coming forward to speak up against these initiatives that are rooted in critical race theory, the push to view social and cultural issues through the lens of racial identity and, in particular, power structures related to that identity.

In an article last month at City Journal, Weiss described many of the parents who have come forward from prestigious private schools in major cities to criticize what they see as indoctrination of their children into a leftist ideology of “wokeism.” In an article last week, Weiss shared a letter from a teacher at one of these prep schools who is no longer willing to be silent about this ongoing indoctrination of students.

“As a teacher, my first obligation is to my students,” wrote Paul Rossi, who teaches mathematics at the posh Grace Church High School in New York City. “But right now, my school is asking me to embrace ‘antiracism’ training and pedagogy that I believe is deeply harmful to them and to any person who seeks to nurture the virtues of curiosity, empathy and understanding.”

“‘Antiracist’ training sounds righteous, but it is the opposite of truth in advertising,” Rossi concludes. “It requires teachers like myself to treat students differently on the basis of race.”

Grace Church High School made headlines in March for releasing an “Inclusive Language Guide” that, among other recommendations, urged the school community to become more “welcoming and inclusive” by avoiding words such as “mom and dad,” “parents,” and “boys and girls.”

As more parents and educators feel emboldened to speak out against the rising tide of wokeism in their children’s schools, it offers opportunities for change.

Some of that change might come from schools reining in their woke rhetoric if enough parents object, but much of the change will likely come from parents opting out of these private schools for other options. As more independent schools realize there is a market for focusing strictly on teaching and learning without political indoctrination, they will be able to differentiate themselves from schools seeped in critical race theory.

Similarly, more parent demand for alternatives to woke education will lead to more entrepreneurial efforts to build new learning models that focus on individual development over group affiliation.

I recently received an email from an Asian mother whose child attends a private school in the Boston area and who is fed up with the school “trying to ‘brainwash’ kids.”

“The social pressure to conform with what the schools define as ‘moral compass’ is enormous and exhausting,” she wrote. “The underground chattering is bubbling and I wonder where the parents would ultimately draw the line and declare enough is enough. I personally feel time may be ripe for more innovative and balanced models to challenge the status quote of the existing learning institutions.”

The demand for non-woke education truly is skyrocketing and it presents a moment ripe for “creative destruction” in the education sector.

The term creative destruction was popularized by economist Joseph Schumpeter in his 1942 book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, to describe the dynamic process of new business models and organizations replacing outdated or inadequate enterprises. He explained that capitalism is “the perennial gale of creative destruction,” fueled by entrepreneurship and innovation.

Parent demand may spur the private sector to offer alternatives to woke education through free-market capitalism, but what about the children forced to attend government schools that are much less responsive to market signals? Like many elite private schools, public schools are also embracing woke ideology at alarming rates.

In February, Illinois legislators voted in favor of enacting new “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards” in the state’s teacher education programs. These programs must begin to reflect the new standards that focus on “systems of oppression.” Illinois teachers-in-training will be expected to “explore their own intersecting identities,” and become “aware of the effects of power and privilege and the need for social advocacy and social action to better empower diverse students and communities.”

Around the same time the Illinois standards were passed, a group of educators released a document criticizing objective math education as being racist, and called for “dismantling white supremacy in math classrooms by visibilizing the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture with respect to math.” States like Oregon seem to be taking note.

And last month, the California Board of Education passed an ethnic studies curriculum for K-12 students that focuses primarily on four ethnic groups, including African Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Latino Americans, and Native Americans. While the new statewide ethnic studies curriculum is not a high school graduation mandate, as California legislators and the state’s teachers union originally proposed before California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill last fall, the new school curriculum emphasizes group identity over individualism.

Ahead of the governor’s veto, The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote about the state’s proposed ethnic studies curriculum: “This is ugly stuff, a force-feeding to teenagers of the anti-liberal theories that have been percolating in campus critical studies departments for decades. Enforced identity politics and ‘intersectionality’ are on their way to replacing civic nationalism as America’s creed.”

Many parents may disagree with the woke ideology their children are exposed to in schools, or they may simply prefer that these schools focus on academics, not activism. But too many families have too few options beyond a mandatory public school assignment. Expanding education choice policies, as more than two dozen states are currently attempting to do, will enable more families to choose their preferred educational setting.

Private school parents are courageously pushing back against the ideology of wokeism that is invading their children’s schools, and they are using their resources to find or build different learning models. Education choice policies will allow public school parents the same opportunity of exit and innovation.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

COLUMN BY

Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019). She is also an adjunct… More by Kerry McDonald.

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Keepers of the Public Square have Betrayed America

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Let’s be clear. When Republicans regain majorities in the House and Senate, if they do not redefine Section 203 of the Communications Decency Act more narrowly to strip its protections from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, it will be a dereliction of duty to the American people and the principles of free speech and truth.

If Section 203 is not the solution, then perhaps anti-trust is. Because these three social media giants legitimately and unarguably are the public square, and their unbounded, one-sided, political censorship cannot continue. Seeing that they collude with the mainstream media and major corporations, it becomes an affront to Americanism and a visible threat to the future of the country as we know it.

After allowing every false story on Russian collusion for more than two years, after allowing every false story on Russian “bounties” on the heads of American soldiers in Afghanistan — the most recent long-running media narrative definitively proven false now — after blocking every true story by the New York Post and other conservative outlets about Hunter Biden’s laptop, Facebook and Instagram have now blocked the Post’s true story on the luxury homes purchased by Black Lives Matter Co-Founder and avowed Marxist, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, in predominantly white neighborhoods. I would link to the fully documented story, but of course Facebook won’t allow it. It’s true and it’s based on public information. So this is just more woke partisanship.

Further, when sports writer Jason Whitlock shared the Post’s story with the tweet, “Black Lives Matter founder buys $1.4 million home in Topanga, which has a black population of 1.4%. She’s with her people!” he was locked out of his account by Twitter. Whitlock was told he had violated Twitter’s rules against publishing private information. When called out on such nonsense — there was no address, just actual public information — Twitter reversed the decision, claiming for the millionth time that it was just an error.

No it wasn’t. These are all on purpose, and that purpose is to help the Democratic Party and its increasing leftward lurch, to pursue a partisan and ideological agenda that is increasingly radical and outside the bounds of mainstream America.

Because BLM is one of the premier activist political organizations in the country, this is a blockbuster story squashed by the major social media outlets who are increasingly not just aligned philosophically, but also in business, with the Democratic Party. We see them getting protection from accountability when Democrats run Congress and they seem to be working hand in hand with other major “American” corporations to oppose election integrity laws, such as Georgia’s — which is less restrictive than New York’s and Joe Biden’s Delaware to name a couple and to show that none of this is about voter rights.

The examples go on and on. Because social media is overtly acting as an arm of the Democrat communications establishment, just as the mainstream media has for years.

This partisanship cannot be defended by Section 203, which is meant to hold websites harmless for what readers or viewers put in comment sections. Mostly, it was designed for “interactive web sites” where third-party users might post defamatory information on a website, such as a comment section, and the website could not be held liable for that. Sometimes the analogy is made that the way it works in practice is like more benign information carriers, such as Verizon or AT&T, who are not held liable for everything from slander, or child porn or terrorist planning using their networks.

Of course, the phone carriers don’t block political conservatives for violating nebulous “community standards.” They don’t keep Republicans from using their services to help Democrats, or vice versa.

It’s this “comments” protection that social media uses as a shield by counting every post as a comment from a third-party, which of course it is. And comments are moderated on news sites, mostly for language or indecent pictures, but also other purposes. But even the largest news websites are barely a blip compared to the social media giants.

Yahoo News and Google News are the biggest by monthly users, according to Statista, but a big part of that is because people have those auto-set as their homepage. If you remove those outliers, the three biggest are the Huffington Post (110 million unique monthly users) CNN (95 million) and the New York Times (70 million.)

By comparison, Facebook has 2.8 billion monthly active users. It also has 1.84 billion daily visitors. YouTube has 2 billion monthly users and Twitter has 330 million, but interestingly, it is the darling of the media and political class.

You can see how these three social media sites dwarf traditional media, and form a de facto public square. That should change the knee-jerk defense of “a private business can do what it wants”  — said frequently by people who rarely suggest that same defense in a plethora of other situations for private businesses — because that is not true in a thousand different ways. A private business cannot be a monopoly. It cannot deny service based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference and so on. It cannot hire or fire based on that criterion. And now, apparently, cannot not make a cake for a gay wedding. So that argument is weak gruel and clearly hypocritical.

But the media does not have those 203 protections. They can be as biased or partisan as they want under the First Amendment, but they are also liable for the content that they create. So they can be sued for liable and slander and so on.

Yet in practice, the social media companies operate prima facie much more like the media than they do a comments section of a website or Verizon. This is critical because treating them like the media destroys their entire model. Every photo and story that the media publish from other media such as Reuters or AP or any other source, the media outlet pays for. If social media had to pay for every such usage they would be bankrupt in a week. Or they would have to block billions of users from sharing any copyrighted stories and photos. Completely unsustainable.

The social media companies say that their entire business is akin to a comments section, so they should be afforded the Section 203 protections. Indeed, this is where, I think, a Republican Congress needs to re-work the Section 203 — or another legal angle I do not see — to ensure that a cabal of three companies does not control the vast majority of arguably the most important industry in America: Information.

The comments section on a newspaper site is so paltry as to pose no threat to the public square. Not so with social media. The most glaring example of the power they wield is this data point: A post election survey found that 17 percent of Biden voters would not have voted for him if they knew about the Hunter Biden laptop and the implications in it. If those polled answered truthfully, that alone would have been a landslide for Trump. That one case, and the obvious collusion among all of the social media and mainstream to block out a truthful story, apparently swung a presidential election.

That cannot be allowed to continue.

The New York Post article that BLM leader Cullors purchased “four high-end homes for $3.2 million” in the United States since 2016 is only meant as another example of the ongoing closing of the public square by social media. This cannot be allowed to stand in a nation that can only thrive on robust and free debates.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Revolutionary Act column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Joins YouTube Alternative ‘Rumble’ Following Google Censorship

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Excellent. Rational Americans must support the alternative social media platforms, if we are to have any chance against defeating the Left. President Trump in particular must support alt-tech, and bring his 200 million-plus social media followers with him.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Joins YouTube Alternative ‘Rumble’ Following Google Censorship

By Breitbart, April 18, 2021

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has reportedly joined a growing YouTube alternative called Rumble in response to Google’s recent removal of a video featuring DeSantis and a number of Ivy League-educated medical experts discussing the negative effects of ongoing lockdowns.

Reclaim The Net reports that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has joined the growing video sharing platform Rumble and created a new channel on the platform where he plans to post video updates and live streams. The decision to join the platform comes shortly after DeSantis found some of his own content censored by Google-owned YouTube.

YouTube recently removed a video of DeSantis discussing the negative effects of ongoing pandemic-related lockdowns with a number of Ivy League-educated medical experts.

In a statement on DeSantis joining the platform, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski commented:

Gov. Ron DeSantis is a longtime proponent of free speech and has been at the forefront of the effort to demonopolize Big Tech.

He understands firsthand Americans’ distrust of monolithic tech companies and the danger they pose to free expression and free markets. In fact, YouTube recently removed from its platform a video of the governor and a handful of Ivy League-educated medical experts discussing the downsides of prolonged pandemic-related lockdowns.

Rumble, on the other hand, invites robust and civic dialogue on our platform, including Gov. DeSantis’ insights and expertise.

DeSantis’ new Rumble channel features several clips from DeSantis himself, former White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Scott Atlas, epidemiologist Dr. Martin Kulldorff, and professor of medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, all discussing various topics such as the censorship of medical opinion and the effects of the coronavirus.

All of the individuals featured in the clips have recently faced censorship from Silicon Valley tech giants and were part of the discussion with DeSantis that was removed by YouTube. The original video of the discussion had received more than half a million views on YouTube before being removed.

Read more at Reclaim The Net here.

RELATED ARTICLE: Michigan Gov. Whitmer faces backlash for visiting elderly father in Florida during pandemic

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VIDEO: Black Lives Matter Founder Cries About Mean Right-Wingers on Social Media

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The mean right-wingers are pointing out that it’s a little rich for Patrisse Cullors to purchase millions of dollars worth of real estate while she bloviates about HER struggling black people.

I thought this story had gone away a week ago when Candace Owens called her out, called her a typical Marxist enriching herself while claiming to work for the little people.

Owens went one step further and asked if she found white people so racist why did she buy a $1.4 million dollar home in a ritzy white community in California?

Why doesn’t she want to live with black people? Owens asked.

By the way, in case you’re wondering why no post here since Friday, it is because I had to hop over to Refugee Resettlement Watch to report on another humorous situation, this time, the mess the flip-flopping Biden/Harris administration is making of the Refugee Program—all immigration in fact.

Oh joy! They have succeeded in royally pissing-off their NO Borders base.

You may have seen the news on cable TV yesterday when Biden finally admitted there was a crisis at the border and that they couldn’t do two things at once.  Be afraid, be very afraid.

Here is what I wrote over the weekend.  And, I will have more today.

Back to BLM and Marxist Patrisse Cullors!

We have to stay focused on white supremacy she says! 

From The Independent: 

Black Lives Matter founder breaks down in interview over right-wing attacks on her new home

Black Lives Matter (BLM) co-founder Patrisse Cullors held back tears while discussing criticism she faced last week over her housing portfolio, worth $3m (£2.17m).

Ms Cullors, 37, who created the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter in 2013 and later co-founded the Black Lives Matter Network, was criticised last week after the New York Post revealed that she had spent $1.4m (£1.017m) on a Los Angeles property, her third residence in the city and fourth overall.

She has bought two other homes in the Los Angeles area over the last few years, which sit in her portfolio alongside a 3.2-acre property in Georgia that she purchased for $415,000 (£301,950).

She says attacks on her are racist, but WTH Whitlock is black and so is Candace.

Questions were raised about how the director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation had acquired the funds to pay for the properties, with Black sports journalist Jason Whitlock accusing her and other BLM founders of “making millions of dollars off the backs of these dead Black men who they wouldn’t spit on if they were on fire and alive”.

However, during an interview with Marc Lamont Hill for Black News Tonight on Thursday, Ms Cullors described the scrutiny over her homes as a “racist and sexist” attack by the “right-wing media”.

Ms Cullors also rejected claims that the purchases go against her self-described ideology as a “trained Marxist”, explaining that she bought the homes for her family, and defines her wealth “as my family’s money, as well”.

She added: “I think that is critique that is wanting. The way that I live my life is a direct support to Black people, including my Black family members, first and foremost.

[….]

“We have to stay focused on white supremacy,’ she added as she urged people to ‘see through the right-wing lies,’” Ms Cullors added.

What lies?

Cullors, with tears trickling, claims she has had to hire security because of the verbal attacks.

More here.

Now watch Candace Owens on Tucker last week.  She is so good!

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.