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I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I dont believe anything the government tells me. Nothing. Zero.

George Carlin

Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community and they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a 2017interview on MSNBC

As someone whose website was slanderedby the earliest manifestations of the hysterical Russiagate mob, I could go on and on now thats the whole spectacles been disproven, but Im not going to do that. Rather, I want to highlight how despite the whole thing blowing up, well be living with severe direct consequences for years to come.

First, its important to point out that none of Russiagates most irresponsible grifters will face any serious repercussions for wasting the countrys time, money and energy on a fake story for the past two years. Russiagate was as much a business model as it was a conspiracy theory, and some of its most shameless peddlers made out like bandits over the past couple of years.

As Glenn Greenwald noted:

Lets not forget Luke Harding, a guy who literally wrote a book titled Collusion, which naturally soared to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

Of course, nothing seriously damaging will happen to Rachel, Luke or the other myriad Russiagate charlatans who drove and profited handsomely from what was by far the biggest conspiracy theory of the past two years. Will they be banned from Facebook, Twitter or YouTube? Of course not, despite the fact that they played a larger role than anybody else with respect to driving our national conversation into a cesspool of insanity, xenophobia and falsehoods.

Nevertheless, you can be sure Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg will never come out and condemn them for peddling endless amounts fake news. No tech giant scarlet letter will be forthcoming for the priests and priestesses of Russiagate; but why not?

The simple answer is that all the public concern about fake news was just a ruse the tech giants were just pretending to care about it. The real objective was to appease angry politicians by finding an excuse to erase and de-rank opinions that dont conform to the dispositions and leanings that dominate the executive suites of the largest tech companies and the power players in establishment Washington D.C.

Incredibly enough, the entire push that convinced much of the public of a pressing need to encourage tech giants to aggressively censor and ban certain opinions was driven by Russiagate in the first place. In other words, hysteria and fear that Russian propaganda would infect the minds of the American public was a primary driver in getting much of our culture to accept flippant de-platforming from tech giants across the platforms that have come to dominate online conversation in this country. Russiagate is now over, but tech giant censorship remains. Weve been scammed in far more serious and long-lasting ways than meets the eye.

Now would be a good time to revisit a few excerpts from last years piece,These Are the Times Bitcoin Was Made For:

Donald Trumps election and Bernie Sanders unexpectedly strong run in a rigged Democratic primary really shook the neoliberal/neocon establishment to its core. The status quo response has been as pathetic as its been extraordinary, with the hysteria so completely off the wall I sometimes wonder if the whole Russia-Trump collusion narrative was invented and propagated for the sole purpose of promoting a cultural acceptance of censorship.

There are two crucial attack vectors being targeted when it comes to punishing the transgressions of American thought criminals; money and communications, and we need to understand that Alex Jones is our cultural guinea pig. The tech giants started by kneecapping his voice by simultaneously de-platforming his presence from many of todays dominant communications platforms. Now PayPals moved in to make payments more difficult, thus threatening his ability to earn money. You dont have to like anything Alex Jones does to see how dangerous this is. Whats being done to him can and will be to done to others deemed undesirable by Silicon Valley oligarchs should they get popular enough. Whats emerging is a playbook on how to exert pressure and encourage self-censorship in the digital age and you better pay attention.

Lets take another step back to take stock of where were at. Sure a bunch of scam-artist pundits and fake journalists were momentarily embarrassed, but these people have no shame and many of them already achieved fame and fortune. Moreover, just like the banker crooks of the financial crisis era and the Iraq war WMD peddlers that came before them, these people are more likely to be promoted than face any life-altering consequences for the society damaging lies they spread. In fact, our system is so completely rigged in favor of certain kinds of opinions, not even the most bald faced liars amongst them will even see their social media accounts shuttered.

So yes, Russiagate has blown up spectacularly, but were still left with selective tech giant censorship which focuses on a certain type of conspiracy theory or fake news. What Facebook, Apple, Google and others have made clear at this point is that fake news is fine as long as its repeating lies of the government or intelligence agencies. Theres no amount of war-creating government inspired fake news someone can spread that will ever get you banned by the tech giants, but if you dare to have a discussion about vaccines, 9/11 or flat-earth, youll never be heard from again.

Russiagate ending doesnt alter this entrenched and very dangerous double standard. Were once again left with a monumental falsehood exposed, yet the damage has already been done to public discourse and the ability to freely communicate on Americas dominant tech platforms. As such, well continue to be led apathetically in a very restrictive and unfree direction unless we wake up and make some serious changes.

Yes, a ridiculous, false and deranged conspiracy theory has been disproven, but the damage has already been done and the damage is severe.

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See original here:
Russiagate Might Be Dead, but Big Tech Censorship Is Here ...