Under fascist regimes of the past, freedom of speech of those who went against the policies/philosophies/beliefs of the people in charge was curtailed.
Different methods were used in the past because social media wasn't the main form of communication between/among people. (I'm calling it the main form of communication between/among people now because during this past calendar year, many of us were on lockdown and the only way to communicate was through social media. That's not to say that neighbors never stood with a fence between them -and six feet of distance - having a chat midmorning or something, but if you wanted to talk to your friends, siblings, cousins, etc., the easiest and fastest way was through social media.)
President Trump used Twitter (mostly to his detriment since people didn't like his style of communication) to get past the mainstream media. It did not want a middleman, which proved over and over during the past 4 years or more that it disliked him, to interpret him and his words to the nation/world. He wanted to make sure everyone knew what he was saying. Alas, his style was like that of a doctor with horrid bedside manner. Most people would rather have a doctor with pleasant bedside manner. Break the news gently, don't whap us upside the head with it.
The Big Tech giants and most of their employees appear to be what we call these days liberal or leftist or left wing. (I guess that's an argument in and of itself - most people consider themselves centrist rather than admit to being on one side or another of an argument, because they feel that if everyone believes the same way, it can't be an extreme view. If every news outlet projects a point of view that coincides with yours or makes logical sense to you, you figure it's normal and your point of view is normal, and therefore centrist, not left wing which sounds so radical, not leftist, although maybe liberal because liberal is a term which sort of equates with freedom, and that's a good thing.) But the Big Tech owners and their employees do NOT agree with President Trump or his agenda or the idea of making America great. They take issue with the again part of MAGA because they don't think America was ever great to begin with.
So here they are, making this cyberspace platform available for people to share opinions, cat videos, photos of their family, etc., and along come these opinions that they don't like. As long as it's someone like you and me, well, we're not all that influential. Who are we, after all? Not running a country, not a state governor, not a city mayor, maybe not even president of the PTA. None of us is a talk show host or a talking head in the news media who has specialized in politics and is trying to influence opinion by explaining what is happening and what should logically follow for the good of the country/world. So for a long time there, our words meant nothing, our opinions meant nothing, whether we were on the Democrat side of the political aisle in the U.S., or the Republican side, or the liberal side or the conservative side. But Trump, he wound up becoming a populist. Who'd have thought that a man who ran beauty contests and had TV shows (Celebrity Apprentice, etc.) and who was sometimes the butt of some very funny jokes, would not only run for President of the United States, but win the election, and pretty much keep his popularity if not increase it during his 4 years in office?
Mind you, he lost popularity in the past year due to the pandemic and the way it was handled. I don't know what y'all are seeing in your news about what goes on in the United States, but keep in mind what I've written elsewhere about the media and politics controlling what you can access over the internet. The intuitiveness of the AI built into the internet senses that your interests tend to lie along the liberal/left side of politics, and assumes that you don't want to know what the conservative/right side thinks or cares about, so you might have a harder time finding sources to explain why the other part of the political spectrum believes and lives as it does.
I can tell you, though, that Trump did, indeed, ask for a national lockdown initially to "flatten the curve" (to give the hospitals and clinics time to handle the cases of Covid-19 that would come their way). However, he wanted it initially for 2 weeks (14 days). Then it expanded. But he really did not want it to get beyond 40 days (the word "quarantine" originally had to do with keeping an ill person away from the healthy ones for 40 days to prevent spread of illness). After a time, he ordered that things open up again. In what we call "red states" (Republican/conservative run states), things opened up slowly, with some limitations such as face masks. In what we call "blue states" (Democrat/liberal run states), businesses remained closed for the most part, and getting out in public was heavily limited to the absolutely positively have to do it. End of May, we started to have the BLM/Antifa protests/riots, the take-over of six city blocks in Portland to form its own autonomous zone, and the state governor and the city mayor didn't want police or national guard or military to come in and save the day. Businesses which had been suffering from the long shutdown were now broken into and looted.
(I don't know what y'all have learned about the event in history called Krystallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), but from what I remembered from history classes, what I was seeing on the evening news (and the daily news) about what was going on past dark during last summer, it reminded me of that moment in history. Businesses were being destroyed. Glass was being broken to get into those businesses. I saw a whole lot of similarities. Something I watched recently shed some light on the activities of those months: Not every building in the area was attacked/broken into/looted. The buildings not touched tended to be those belonging to certain very wealthy corporations. The nearby buildings that were trashed were owned/operated by small business owners. What is the result of this action? The small businesses probably won't be reopening because it will cost more than the business owner has to fix and restock. So he'll have to sell so as not to be stuck with taxes. But since the property he'd be selling isn't a pretty storefront but instead a broken building, its property value has plummeted. To get this albatross off his neck, he'll have to settle for "bottom dollar" instead of "top dollar" or an otherwise reasonable price that would make both buyer and seller happy with the outcome. - The prediction here is that the corporations that own the adjacent properties that were not touched by the rioters will buy up, at rock bottom prices, the damaged properties, clean up the area, and rebuild their own addition, growing larger.)
I don't know if you'll be able to get the video to watch, but I"ll post the URL here so you can see it. I'll warn you that it's long and much of it does NOT cover the riots and real estate values thing, but other related things to 2020 and the pandemic and how governments and others have been handling it. The part about the real estate comes toward the end. I think the whole thing is worth watching (of course I would!), but I'll also tell you that it did not make me feel good after watching it. It's not what I'd call a conservative pep talk sort of video. Here's the URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVuA98P ... e=youtu.be
Okay, so what does a real estate takeover have to do with Twitter/Facebook/etc being portrayed as fascist?
I guess that could be a matter of opinion because facts are kind of hard to come by. However, we did get to the point where Trump's tweets appeared (to some) to be inciting riot. Why? Because he did not back down on his belief that the election was stolen. That's it. He did ask his followers and/or whoever was breaking into the Capitol (some of whom have proven by now to be members of BLM/Antifa - this stuff NEVER comes out initially over the mainstream media and may still not be coming out over the mainstream media because they don't want anyone to think that the other side tried to sabotage Trump's follower's peaceful protest) to go home peacefully. His rally speech is often truncated to cut out the peaceful parts in order to make it sound as though he was inciting violence, but the full speech is obvious to those of us who watched and listened to it that he did NOT incite riot but acknowledged that he knew his supporters were going to go to Capitol Hill to peacefully and patriotically make their wishes known to Congress that they wanted the election to be reviewed in case of fraud. (Keep in mind that since the 2016 election, the Democrats in America were screaming daily that Trump stole the election and that there was massive election fraud - in 2020 since their guy won, there wasn't any fraud at all, none whatsoever, what are you talking about?) So the Big Tech guys decided that Trump had to be silenced because the mainstream media narrative was that Trump had incited the violence and would continue to do so. Bam, off he goes. No more Twitter, no more Facebook. Many of his conservative followers and echoers were also given the same boot-off. Some conservatives closed off their own accounts without Twitter doing it for them. Many moved over to Parler. Big Tech did not appreciate being gone around, so Amazon was pressured to and easily caved and shut down Parler, which was using Amazon computer servers for their website. Amazon easily caved because Jeff Bezos is not a fan of Trump's and was happy to oblige. Nevermind that in doing so he broke a signed contract with the Parler owners. Lawsuits have been filed, and there will be more to this story as time goes on. Meanwhile, Parler is supposed to come back up again on someone else's server, but those folk might find themselves in hot water with Big Tech and the powers that be because they don't like conservatives having a place to freely express themselves.
The question of did election fraud happen and did it give Biden what appeared to be an overwhelming win? The facts are out there, but the courts won't listen to them. Lawsuits were dismissed. Why? Some people think it's because the judges/justices are compromised, and that if they go against the powers that be, it will become common knowledge that they've engaged in activities that will upset the public and/or scandalize them and their families. Is this true? Time will tell if we even ever find out the truth behind any of this.
Meanwhile, some facts to consider:
Joe Biden is a former Presidential candidate. He ran at least 3 times for President of the United States. During one campaign, it was found that he was lying and plagiarizing another politician's backstory to gain some street cred/compassion from the people. His tendency to gaffe lost him some other support. This man is NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, Mr. Popularity. Not even today.
Last year he came in 5th place in the early primary elections, behind people who wound up dropping out of the race. This points out his basic non-popularity. Even his performance in the Democratic Debates didn't make him shine like a star, much less a sun.
It was not until one man, a Civil Rights icon, spoke in his stead at a rally that Joe Biden suddenly looked like he could be a front runner. That is when his tides and fortunes seemed to turn for the better. But it was one state's primary, maybe two. They weren't considered bellwether states. (Bellwether states being the states whose primary results tend to indicate who will win the national election.) In fact, Biden won only ONE bellwether state's primary. (Compare this performance to Barack Obama's and Donald Trump's bellwether state primary performances and you start to scratch your head.)
He didn't do much campaigning. When he was out in public or making speeches that were broadcast and rebroadcast throughout the nation, it was obvious that he was/is suffering from some form of dementia. It could well be Alzheimer's, considering how belligerent he can get at times when people speak against him. He does not calmly deal with opposition, he gets his bully on. He's got a mean streak in him that he does not control well.
Also during his few rallies, his audience was small. The mainstream media tended to crop out or frame his rallies so that it appeared that he could be within quite the crowd, but if you saw the bigger picture, you saw that the "crowd" was close to him, or it consisted of people (a couple hands full perhaps) standing 6 feet apart or so in designated circles. Considering that the BLM/Antifa protest/riots were allowed to happen and who cared whether they wore masks or not, why wouldn't a Democrat rally consist of a crowd of people with or without masks? Surely it wasn't because people didn't support the guy, right?
But Trump rallies through 2020 were massive, crowded affairs. As the pandemic grew worse, he held them outdoors to prevent germs being shared easily indoors, much as Biden held his rallies outdoors instead of indoors. But the difference was, at the Trump rallies, there were no 6' apart circles, there were no 6-10 media personnel and nobody else present - nope, there were crowds, and the media decried these things as superspreader events.
Trump didn't catch Covid-19 until one event, the one where he announced his nomination of Amy Coney-Barrett for Supreme Court. Considering his age, you'd have thought he was a goner, but nope, he ended up taking the stuff he was saying all along was helpful in the virus (that everyone said he was wrong about - HCQ - along with doses of zinc and Vitamin D3), and he got over it. He even managed to continue as President through the illness rather than give the reins to Vice President Pence temporarily.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden spent last year mostly in his basement. Many of his video messages to his people and the nation were from that basement. Now, I know many people are thinking, he was playing it safe, he's an old man and could catch and die from Covid-19. Yes, that's possible. But he was also giving many of us the impression of weakness. He wasn't taking risks and chances. Donald Trump, on the other hand, was taking risks and chances. No matter what happened, his portrait was one of strength. (Had he died, we would call it stupid. But he lived, so we call it brave and courageous, two adjectives we like to give to our leaders. We don't like to call our leaders weak.) With all the talk about masks being so important, and the 6 foot distance thing, there are so many ways that Joe Biden could have taken all the necessary precautions and avoided being close to anyone so as to avoid catching Covid-19 while still actively campaigning and being out there in public and building up some enthusiasm. But we didn't see any enthusiasm for him outside of the news media.
So what we Americans were seeing was a Democrat who was not going out in public much and when he did, he was not pulling in the huge crowds. He was making dreadful gaffes (he claimed that he was running for Senator instead of President!, he mistook his sister for his wife, just to name two big ones). Some of the things he was saying were being repeated to remind people: "I don't work for you!" "If you don't vote for me, you ain't black." "the Harris/Biden administration" (Normally, the presidential candidate's name is first), "the Harris administration" (both he and Kamala Harris referred to it as that - what the heck? It's supposed to be "the Biden administration"). If you want to give him props for hiding out all year because of his age and possible high risk of catching the virus, what do you do about his VP pick? Kamala Harris is relatively young, healthy, and she did NOT get out there and stump for him. She was NOT pulling in the crowds to bring forth a popular look for the ticket. Does she get props for acting somewhat timid?
On the other hand, we Americans saw a candidate (President Trump) who got out in public, took what many called were unnecessary and dangerous chances, and he drew huge crowds of supporters. He didn't gaffe the way Biden did, it wasn't the "Pence/Trump administration", it wasn't any other office he was running for except President, and he knew who his wife is. Granted, his tweets rubbed many of us the wrong way (doctor with lousy bedside manner, after all). But despite his roughness, he seemed to be Mr. Popularity. People wanted to see him. Even in states where the governors were pushing for very low numbers of people getting together in public, you'd see huge crowds of people symbolically flipping the bird at their state governors by being present at Trump's rallies, with or without the required masks.
Another big one I've noticed: On social media, all the pro-Trump people had all manner of reasons they love Trump. He lowered taxes, he allowed businesses to operate without chokehold regulations that weren't helping anything much... You can research all the good he did if you look hard enough. It's out there. On social media, all the pro-Biden people had all manner of reasons why Trump sucked, some of which were lies perpetuated by the mainstream media (such as the caged children, which were photographed in 2014, during the OBAMA administration), but NOTHING in favor of Joe Biden. Now, explain that? How is it that Biden's followers couldn't tell us one thing he accomplished that was good? The man's been in Washington D.C. since the 1970's! That's about 50 years! Not one thing worth bragging about in 50 years?
Now, you know how popular Barack Obama was, right? When Obama held rallies back in the day, those things were packed with people. There was enthusiasm. It was genuine. Very much like the Trump rallies. Very much UNLIKE the Biden rallies.
There is a very telling graphic out there that points out the comparisons:
Votes received: Obama: 69 million////Trump: 74 million////Biden: 81 million
# Counties won: Obama: 873 counties////Trump: 2,497 counties////Biden: 477 counties
# Bellwether states won: Obama: 18/19 bellwethers////Trump: 18/19 bellwethers////Biden: 1/19 bellwethers
It's said that you have to win all three: Florida, Ohio, and Iowa, to win the election. Obama: won all three////Trump: won all three////Biden: lost all three
Your party's House Seats won: Obama: his party won House seats////Trump: his party won House seats////Biden: his party lost House seats (this part measures how well your party did with the lesser offices that were up for election)
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
You look at what happened, and how is it that someone as NOT popular as Biden won 22 million MORE votes than someone as ultra popular as Obama? Remember, pro-Biden folk on social media couldn't or wouldn't tell us the good things he did. But they sure were full of the good things they felt that Obama did when Obama was running for president and even afterward. How does it make any logical sense that two men whose followers can sing their praises and list one after another the good things he's accomplished, received LESS votes than the man whose followers didn't list his accomplishments and sing his praises?
Also part of the facts but may not be widely known: election poll watchers have come forward to explain odd behavior during the election, such as claiming that the vote counting was closing for the night and sending the Republican watchers home while retaining the Democrat watchers and counting more votes. By next morning, Trump's vote number does not change at all, but Biden's vote number goes up significantly. The curious thing: Trump's numbers don't go up. Not even by one single vote. Mailed in votes can't be verified because somehow, someway, the necessity of verifying the signatures on the envelopes was diluted or thrown out altogether, and the envelopes in which the votes arrived were also separated and thrown out, so that by the time anyone wanted to see the envelopes, they were long gone. (Keep in mind, if all those mailed-in votes were actually for Biden and were actually verifiable with a proper signature by a proper voter, wouldn't the Democrats want the proof to be there that their man won fair and square? Stick it to Trump that he was a loser? But no, the proof as to the truth behind the votes was destroyed.) Word is coming out now (or in the past couple or so weeks) that the voting machines used were set up to be easily tampered with, and were indeed tampered with by way of the software used having a backdoor as well as an algorithm to take a certain percentage of votes from Trump to switch over to Biden, and many of the machines were online, connected to the internet - which they should NOT have been - and this allowed foreign governments, Italy for one, to put their fingers into the system and change up the votes. Germany and several other countries have also been accused of being involved in such election tampering. My home state of Texas did not use these machines because they were known to be compromised. A woman in Texas was arrested and charged with election fraud. She did it the old fashioned way since the machines were not compromised. It's one case, but it puts the lie to the mainstream media claiming that there was absolutely, positively, no fraud in this election.
As more and more time goes by, more and more of this information is coming out. This is the reason Donald Trump is NOT conceding, and this is the reason he continues to claim that the election was rigged or stolen.
Joe Biden is going to be inaugurated as 46th President of the United States on Wednesday. That's a fact. I think it's supposed to take place in the Supreme Court building. This is not the normal inauguration with crowds and speeches and the whole thing. It's being very quiet and few people involved because pandemic.
Prediction: Over time, things are going to happen that will, indeed, bring forth memories of what fascism is about. The behavior in 2020 of the Democrat governors has already spurred certain folk who escaped socialist and fascist states for freedom in the United States to claim that they see the behavior and actions of these state governors as fascist or socialist. Already our First Amendment rights (freedom of speech/religion/right to assemble) has been curtailed, and it will be further curtailed. Twitter/Facebook/etc. cutting off conservative voices is the start. Just because these are big corporations and not the government does not mean they're not acting for the government or for a section of the government. If because they are corporations instead of government entities they're using that as a loophole, don't be fooled by it.
What happens when people are silenced, when they cannot speak their minds or protest what they consider is unfair treatment? They get frustrated. Think of the last time you got upset about something and you got told to "calm down" which is basically a way of saying "shut up" and tends to have the same effect of making you angrier. What do angry people do? What do angry people do who cannot use voice and reason?
One of the less violent options is secession. Last time the U.S. dealt with secession, it was because several states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America, and the outcome was the bloodiest war in U.S. history, the Civil War. In December, my state house representative mentioned that he was prepared to offer up a proposal that the people of the state of Texas vote in November 2021 for secession. Because of the cute "Brexit" term given to Great Britain pulling out of the European Union, this business is being labeled "Texit", and it's been around since 2016 when Texans were discussing the possibility of seceding if HIllary Clinton won the Presidential election. The Texit thing wasn't discussed in 2020 mostly because Trump's obvious popularity and Biden's hidey-hole behavior seemed to indicate that Biden didn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of winning the election. But once it appeared that Trump was NOT going to get his day in court, the Texit talk started up again, and not just among the people, but among the legislators. Texans aren't looking to start another Confederate States of America, they're looking at returning to The Republic of Texas. Allegedly, it's part of the agreement of when they joined the U.S.A. that if they so desired, they could back out and become a sovereign nation again legally. Some scholars say no, that's not true. Others say it is true. Secession is a mostly (mostly) non-violent action, but it could well result in a violent reaction such as war if the remaining U.S. decides to fight it because they feel that they will be harmed by it. Why would they be harmed by it? For one thing, Texas pays more to the Federal government in taxes than it receives back from Federal programs. In that respect, the Federal government would see a secession of Texas as a robbery of a large amount of tax dollars. For another, regardless of the Green New Deal and all of the other programs the Democrats want to install which would put Big Oil out of business, Texas is one of the major sources of oil and gas in the United States and even exports it to other countries. Whatever money the Federal government was making on those sales, and whatever control the Federal government had over that source of energy, it will be taken away from the U.S.A. That is going to hurt, especially since the "renewable, sustainable" energy sources are not fully installed to take over for Big Oil just yet. Another growing problem which will hurt the U.S.A. with a secession of Texas will be Technology. Yes, Big Tech resides in California, Oregon, and Washington states, all of which are Democrat controlled. But a huge number of tech savvy folk are fed up with the way those states are being run (the riots and fires of 2020 were perhaps the eyeopeners) and they're coming to the Republican/conservative run states, Texas being one of them, to escape the insanity. (We have a saying, "Don't California our Texas" - people from California are not being welcomed gladly by much of the population unless they are conservative, although in the bigger cities some of the rich democrats who got fed up with the fascism their state has embraced are being welcomed.)
Joe Biden is asking for unity. I get that. He wants a nice and easy presidency without having to deal with the frustrated, angry half or so of the population that feels disenfranchised in the last election, or that lost their jobs and their way of life, or their businesses, or young and old members of their families to the Covid-19 pandemic because of the heavy-handed methods and edicts of their state governors. He wants those who supported President Trump to forget 4 years of "not my President", "Russia Russia Russia", "Impeachment!" (It's a known fact that one of the major newspapers posted an article on how impeachment proceedings had begun 19 minutes after Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2017 - they didn't even let him be President for 20 minutes before starting the process of getting him impeached - and so far, the only evidence of Russian collusion has been on the part of Hillary Clinton and/or her campaign.) He will not insist that justice be done against any Democrat who may have broken the law. He will insist that justice be done against any Republican/conservative who may have broken the law. The Democrats, and Joe Biden, seem to agree that we should be a rule of the people rather than a rule of law nation. The Constitution is a "living" document and it can change as times change (according to what the academics and Democrats want it to reflect). On the one hand, Joe Biden repeats his call for unity and peace, and then, even in the same speech, he's all for punishing his opponent and his opponent's supporters. Members of various legislatures, both federal and state, have gone on record demanding severe punishment for Trump supporters, Trump voters. Some demand a reprogramming or re-education. Like there'll be re-education camps. The heads of Big Tech companies seem to be happily on board with that, too. Yep, if we all believe the same thing, that will make life so much easier, right?
There's more to the Biden thing (why he probably would not have won the election except via fraud) than I want to focus on because I've already spent too much time on this reply. Suffice it to say that there's even a pedophilia accusation out there - and good luck finding the evidence behind the accusation or even the accusation itself if you so choose to research it, as your provider might not allow you access to where it is, or you might get a lot of reports about how unreliable a source it is. If you do research into who most "fact-checkers" are, you'll find that they're Biden supporters or Democrats or some such thing. Are they actually that knowledgeable in so many categories? Nope. What sources do they use? Usually mainstream media. To the conservative, that results in a circular argument which proves nothing to them and they dig in their heels against the "logic". If a conservative media tends to reflect what the mainstream media is pushing, chances are that that conservative media is run by someone who hates Trump. (National Review/National Review Online and the Lincoln Project come to mind. I used to love reading NRO.)
Governments can't control people without the people consenting. Many times, people will be forced to consent if they're threatened. Threatened with violence? Yeah, but also with other stuff, like being silenced. Having their jobs taken away (this has happened to people who were at the Trump rally even if they weren't involved in the riot at the Capitol). Having their children's welfare threatened in any manner. Having their homes invaded by crowds of people or threatened with invasion by crowds of people (as that couple in St. Louis, Missouri, who stood outside their home with guns in an attempt to protect their home from protestors and got indicted for it - even though not one shot was fired). The weak will be easily controlled. The others will not be easily controlled and might require some force. Action --> Equal and Opposite Reaction.
Okay, enough said for now. I gotta rest my fingers.
Oh, one more thing: directly from the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Definition of fascism
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
Number Two above for the Big Tech. (Besides, Big Tech can get away with silencing half the population, but certain bakeries can't refuse to bake cakes for certain weddings? Mind you, it's not as though those certain bakeries are the only bakeries in town, and yeah, Twitter and Facebook aren't the only social media in town, but when they forced Parler off the internet and basically tried to destroy a business, it was their message to the other media to watch out or they'd be faring the same way.) This is not mere authoritarian behavior. It IS suppression, and that's mentioned under Number One above.
Have a happy Monday (what's left of it) and Tuesday, y'all!