The Censorship Industrial Complex

Dave Gonigam takes over the Rude today. [The Rude Awakening] August 16, 2023 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( The Censorship Industrial Complex - Internet censorship, five years after Alex Jones - Censorship for the sake of… financial stability? - How “the censorship industrial complex” works - The real issue: Who decides the truth? - Free speech today, a felony offense tomorrow [[LEAKED MEMO] AI Opportunity]( A leaked memo from Google on AI could prove that it's [the biggest opportunity of the decade](. [Click here to learn more]( Silicon Valley insider, James Altucher, shows that a tiny AI company could be in the crosshairs of major NASDAQ players — and [a buyout deal]( could be announced at any moment. And if you don’t get in this stock before a potential deal is announced... You’ll miss out for good. Take a look at this research, and [this urgent buy alert]( before it’s too late. [Click Here To Learn More]( [Sean Ring] SEAN RING Good morning from gay Paris! First, Happy Birthday to my father, philosopher-truck driver John Ring on his 81st birthday! Have a great one, Pop! One of my most excellent colleagues, who doesn’t get enough love from the Rude, is Dave Gonigam. I suppose it’s because his Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets doesn’t hit my inbox until 7:30 pm Italy time, right when I sit down and start to watch YouTube or Netflix. So I’ve become more cognizant around that time and made an effort to read the 5 Bullets more. And it’s been well worth my time. Dave writes all sorts of great stuff on the markets, politics, and other goings-on in a no-nonsense Midwestern way that his subscribers have come to expect… and love. So today, I give you Dave and one of his best pieces on what he rightfully calls “The Censorship Industrial Complex” and its consequences. Enjoy! All the best, [Sean Ring] Sean Ring Editor, Rude Awakening Twitter: [@seaniechaos]( [Your Credit Card: Declined?]( [James Altucher]( Take a moment and picture this scenario: The line at the gas pump is getting longer as you insert your credit card for the second time. You decide to head in and ask the cashier what’s going on. There’s a long line inside. The woman in front of you looks frustrated. Everyone does. “There’s nothing I can do. You’re declined,” the cashier says to the man at the front of the line. It’s not just you. Everyone is declined. Something doesn’t seem right. A sinking feeling sets in as you realize something has gone terribly wrong. [Click here now for an urgent new prediction from a former advisor to the CIA and Pentagon.]( [Click Here To Learn More]( [Dave Gonigam] DAVE GONIGAM Thanks to Sean for letting me take over the Rude today. Let’s begin by rewinding to last March… and the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. On the Sunday night that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury were hatching a make-it-up-as-we-go-along rescue plan… Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) tweeted the following. [Thomas Massie Tweet] We know who that senator is. And how he explained himself. If you’re worried about the state of free speech in these United States, it won’t make you feel any better. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves… Five years ago this week, professional loudmouth Alex Jones was simultaneously “de-platformed” by Facebook, YouTube, Apple, and Spotify on the theory he was engaged in “hate speech.” At the risk of appearing alarmist, I devoted an entire edition of my e-letter to the topic titled, “After Alex Jones, Are We Next?” As the independent journalist Michael Tracey observed in 2021, “If you were under any illusion back in 2018 that this would ever stop with Jones — a figure believed to be sufficiently repulsive that any punishment doled out to him would not have broader implications for the average internet user — well, it didn’t take long for proof of just how wrong you were.” By now, it’s become an annual tradition for me to revisit and update the matter in early August in my 5 Bullets e-letter. This year — as Massie’s tweet above suggests — the matter has become both urgent and dire. We know who that senator is. And how he explained himself. If you’re worried about the state of free speech in these United States, it won’t make you feel any better. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves… Five years ago this week, professional loudmouth Alex Jones was simultaneously “de-platformed” by Facebook, YouTube, Apple, and Spotify on the theory he was engaged in “hate speech.” At the risk of appearing alarmist, I devoted an entire edition of my e-letter to the topic titled, “After Alex Jones, Are We Next?” As the independent journalist Michael Tracey observed in 2021, “If you were under any illusion back in 2018 that this would ever stop with Jones — a figure believed to be sufficiently repulsive that any punishment doled out to him would not have broader implications for the average internet user — well, it didn’t take long for proof of just how wrong you were.” By now, it’s become an annual tradition for me to revisit and update the matter in early August in my 5 Bullets e-letter. This year — as Massie’s tweet above suggests — the matter has become both urgent and dire. A Short History of Internet Censorship The first 18 months of the censorship campaign were mainly confined to instances of “hate speech,” like Jones’ — speech that allegedly would inspire acts of violence against someone based on skin color, sexual orientation, etc. The Establishment had a standard response for anyone who raised an objection: These are private companies. They have every right to determine who gets to play in their sandbox. Bollocks. These private companies were acting under duress. Time after time, executives were raked over the proverbial coals at congressional hearings for their alleged failure to curb “hate speech” and “misinformation.” In 2018, we cited Reason writer Zach Weissmueller: “Washington sees in Silicon Valley a chance to control speech in a way never before possible under the First Amendment, and to roll back the clock to a pre-internet age of media gatekeepers. “The way to achieve this is by continually leveraging the threat of regulation.” Worked flawlessly: Haul a tech exec before Congress, give him the third degree for a day, and watch him fold like a lawn chair a few weeks or months later. Lather, rinse, repeat. And then came COVID. Weeks before lockdown came to America in March of 2020, “misinformation” about the virus [was already cause for suspension on Twitter](. By the summer of 2021, the White House freely acknowledged it was “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation” about the virus and the jabs. At least up to that point, the censors could justify all the suspensions and cancellations on the grounds of preventing harm against others (in the case of “hate speech”) or harm against oneself (with allegedly bogus COVID treatments). But by last summer, all pretense had been dropped: Social media censorship is simply about enforcing mainstream orthodoxy. Critics of U.S. aid to Ukraine found themselves vulnerable to suspension or cancellation. YouTube demonetized the channel of a Los Angeles-based Twitch streamer, Jackson Hinkle. Even an opinion about the state of the economy was subject to the censors’ scrutiny. Meta’s Instagram restricted access to a post by streamer Graham Allen suggesting a recession was underway based on one of the traditional definitions of a recession — two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. (The Biden administration was taking issue with that definition at the time.) The power elite’s endgame is obvious and harks back to Weissmueller’s remark above about “a pre-internet age of media gatekeepers.” The goal is a 21st-century version of the “good old days” when three national evening newscasts, taking their cue from that morning’s New York Times, set the boundaries for acceptable discourse. Slender boundaries they are, akin to the 40-yard lines on a football field. Anything to the left of Joe Biden or the right of Mitch McConnell is at risk of the ban hammer. Censorship for Financial Stability! Little wonder that by the time Silicon Valley Bank went under this spring, a U.S. senator was demanding social-media censorship on the theory it would prevent bank runs. The senator was Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) — the former astronaut and husband of gunshot victim-turned-gun-rights-opponent Gabrielle Giffords. Michael Shellenberger broke the story at his Substack site. During a Sunday-night conference call with about 200 participants, Kelly “asked representatives from the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit and Insurance Corporation (FDIC) if they had a way to censor information on social media to prevent a run on the banks.” According to Fox News, “Kelly's camp denied the claim Monday evening and said Sen. Kelly asked about foreign adversaries potentially trying to take advantage of the situation by spreading misinformation.” “Foreign adversaries” — that’s always the pretext. And then, as time passes, censorship is always turned against Americans. It started after Donald Trump won the 2016 election over Hillary Clinton. Democratic Party leaders blamed everyone but themselves for running a terrible candidate and a terrible campaign. In particular, they blamed “the Russians” — as if cheesy Facebook memes like this one changed anybody’s mind about who to vote for… [Like if you want jesus to win] Within a year of Trump’s victory, two of our editors ended up on blacklists smearing them as Russian stooges — blacklists propagated by “prestigious” think tanks and media organs like The Washington Post. (For the record, they were Jim Rickards and former colleague David Stockman.) So yeah — this issue is not hypothetical. It gets to the heart of what we do at Paradigm Press. Newsletters in the Crosshairs From the earliest days of our trade, financial newsletter editors have trafficked in ideas outside the mainstream. Nearly a century ago, Roger Babson warned the Roaring ‘20s were destined to end in tears. (They did.) A half-century ago, Harry Browne urged readers to forget the “Nifty Fifty” stocks and pile into precious metals after President Nixon killed off the last vestiges of the gold standard. (Good advice, then.) Just over a quarter-century ago, James Dale Davidson warned about The Plague of the Black Debt. (It still plagues us.) Across the decades up to the present day, newsletter editors give voice to a nagging feeling people have in the back of their minds — that reality isn’t the way the mainstream gatekeepers portray it. We daresay financial newsletters were the pioneers of “alternative media.” In my 5 Bullets and its predecessor e-letter, I brought my snarky spin to the newsletter art — lobbing spitballs at central bankers, politicians, and the allegedly best-and-brightest denizens of Wall Street. I called out former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for [perjury.]( I called out Warren Buffett for [outrageous acts of crony capitalism.]( I called House Speaker Paul Ryan a phony [years before it was fashionable.]( I called out JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon for [all-around douchebaggery.]( I could do this for the longest time while flying under the radar. The newsletter biz was a niche thing with a limited audience. But then comes 2016 and 2017, and my colleagues show up on blacklists. Criticize the Federal Reserve or the big banks? Well, you’re “amplifying Russian talking points” and “sowing discord” among everyday Americans. At the time, I didn’t realize that these were the early acts of an emerging “censorship industrial complex” — encompassing government agencies, Big Tech, academia, and mushrooming nonprofits devoted to rooting out “disinformation.” Introducing the Censorship Industrial Complex Only in the last eight months has the stupefying extent of the censorship come out into the open — laying bare how the censorship industrial complex works. First came the “Twitter Files” last December — revealing internal communications at Twitter during the years before Elon Musk bought the company. Musk and his team shared the memos, emails, and chats with a half-dozen writers led by ex-Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi and the aforementioned Michael Shellenberger. (It’s Shellenberger who coined the term “censorship industrial complex.” The Twitter Files demonstrated a clear pattern of harassment and intimidation on the part of three-letter agencies — browbeating Twitter’s pre-Musk leadership to suppress speech that flew in the face of government-approved narratives. For instance: “Hi team, can we get your opinion on this? DHS flagged this.” Or “Please see attached report from the FBI for potential misinformation.” In short order, these “flags” and “reports” would lead to the suspension of people’s accounts. True, Twitter’s “woke” managers were frequently eager to cooperate — but many of the Twitter Files also show them frustrated with the feds’ demands they uncover evidence of, say, “a Russian op” when none existed. In addition to the Twitter Files, more damning documents emerged in the federal court case Missouri v. Biden. The case was brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana — joined by epidemiologists Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff. Perhaps you recognize their names as co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration of October 2020 — a statement challenging the politicized “science” behind COVID lockdowns, restrictions, and mandates. Both were subject to social-media bans. Likewise for another plaintiff, psychiatrist Aaron Kheriaty — author of The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State. As Kheriaty wrote in June, “Documents we have reviewed on discovery demonstrate that government censorship was far more wide-ranging than previously known, from election integrity and the Hunter Biden laptop story to gender ideology, abortion, monetary policy, the U.S. banking system, the war in Ukraine, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and more. [Emphasis mine.] “There is hardly a topic of recent public discussion and debate that the U.S. government has not targeted for censorship.” And the censorship is as blatant as it gets. You can click on the following tweet for compelling documentary evidence… [Matt Taibbi]( Elsewhere in the Missouri v. Biden documents, we learn that during the first week of the Biden administration, the White House sent a “request” for Twitter to delete a tweet by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [Missouri v. Biden documents] Last month, a federal judge [issued a stay]( – ordering the Biden administration to stop badgering Big Tech to censor. But for the moment, that order has been overturned on appeal as the case moves closer to trial. The Real Issue: Who Decides the Truth? The nature of the stakes came into focus only last month when RFK Jr. testified to Congress. The proceedings before the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government were surreal — especially the conduct of the committee’s Democrats. Our former colleague Jeffrey Tucker, now running the Brownstone Institute, watched it all. “They tried to shut down RFK. They moved to an executive session so the public could not hear the proceedings. The effort failed. Then they shouted over his words when they were questioning him. “They wildly smeared him and defamed him. They even began with an attempt to block him from speaking at all, and eight Democrats voted to support that… “The protests against his statements were shrill and shocking. They moved quickly from ‘Censorship didn’t happen’ to ‘It was necessary and wonderful’ to ‘We need more of it.’ “Reporting on the spectacle, The New York Times said these are ‘thorny questions’: ‘Is misinformation protected by the First Amendment? When is it appropriate for the federal government to seek to tamp down the spread of falsehoods?’ “These are not thorny questions. The real issue concerns who is to be the arbiter of truth?” declares Mr. Tucker. Exactly. Those are the stakes. As Matt Taibbi wrote two weeks ago, “The authors of the Constitution understood that giving anyone the authority to decide questions of fact would create incentives for censorship, especially since government offices tend to be occupied by people with strong political beliefs.” And as Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson tweeted, “Restrictions on ‘misinformation’ are bad because they inevitably empower a fallible authority who cannot be trusted to distinguish truth from falsehood. Restricting it doesn’t cause lies to vanish. It just gives one person or entity a power nobody should have.” Finally, Libertarian Institute executive editor Sheldon Richman: “Let’s remember that much of the challenge to the government’s take on the pandemic and other matters — criticism belittled as ‘tin-foil’ conspiracy-mongering — turned out to be true. “Contrary to the government’s position, searching for the truth requires the freedom to disagree and debate openly. That search abhors centralization, coercion, and the exclusion of anyone but the politically anointed ‘experts.’” Beyond Censorship: Financial Cancellation Worse, behind the censorship, is the ever-looming threat of “financial cancellation.” As Taibbi testified to Congress last spring, “Ordinary Americans are not just being reported to Twitter for ‘de-amplification’ or de-platforming, but to firms like PayPal, digital advertisers like Xandr, and crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe. These companies can and do refuse service to law-abiding people and businesses whose only crime is falling afoul of a distant, faceless, unaccountable, algorithmic judge.” One of PayPal’s founding executives, David Sacks, saw the slippery slope in 2021: “As with the censorship of speech, financial de-platforming often begins as something that seems narrow and reasonable — who wouldn’t want to ban the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys? But once the power is granted, it metastasizes into widespread use.” Yep. Last year, PayPal and Venmo canceled the accounts of the aforementioned Jackson Hinkle, the Twitch streamer who refused to toe the Washington line on the Ukraine war. PayPal delivered the same treatment to the venerable alt-news website Consortium News, evidently for the same reason. Of course, the ultimate example of financial cancellation was the Canadian truckers in February 2022 — locked out of their bank accounts for protesting vaccine mandates. In 2023, the closing of British pundit Nigel Farage’s bank accounts [backfired badly]( – but stateside, JPMorgan Chase canceled[several accounts]( linked to Dr. Joseph Mercola, the alternative health guru. Free Speech Today, a Felony Offense Tomorrow The more significant threat now is that all manner of speech, once considered protected by the First Amendment,might soon open you up to criminal prosecution. One of the disturbing documents that’s shown up in Missouri v. Biden is a memo from a Department of Homeland Security advisory committee — recommending DHS draw up steps to halt the “spread of false and misleading information” — especially anything that undermines “key democratic institutions, such as the courts, or by other sectors such as the financial system, or public health measures.” [Emphasis mine.] Yeah, there’s “the financial system” again. Now… couple that document with the new federal indictment filed against Donald Trump last week. On the first page of the indictment, you find peculiar language about how Trump aimed to “create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger and erode public faith in the administration of the election.” Matt Taibbi again: “Instead of focusing on overt acts in the individual states, episodes which clearly make even some Trump supporters nervous, the prosecutors are after bigger game. They want to argue that by spreading ‘lies’ Trump created an ‘atmosphere of mistrust and anger’ that, by the end, they will argue led to the ‘violent’ ‘attack’ on the Capitol.” You don’t have to believe Trump won the 2020 election — I don’t — to appreciate the gravity of the threat here. If Special Counsel Jack Smith can make these charges stick, ponder the legal precedent. For now, talking smack about the Federal Reserve’s incompetence or JPMorgan Chase’s serial felonies is still free speech. But an ambitious prosecutor of the future might decide it undermines confidence in “monetary policy” or “the U.S. banking system” or “the financial system” — resulting in, well, a bank run. Yeah, I know; that feels like a stretch at the moment. But five years ago, did you ever imagine Alex Jones’ de-platforming would bring us to where we are now? Best regards, [Dave Gonigam] Dave Gonigam For theRude Awakening In Case You Missed It… 🤠The “Bum” Phillips Curve [Sean Ring] SEAN RING Happy Tuesday from crystal clear Catalonia! This is our last full day in Barcelona before we take the train north for a quick stop in Paris. When I got married, I knew I was a lucky man. Sure, I was wandering around the world, but I found a woman happy to follow me on my travels. Odysseus, my literary hero, was gone for a full twenty years before he returned home. His wife, Penelope, stayed home and waited for him by sewing and unsewing Laertes’ burial shroud. My Penelope was just as faithful but wanted to be at my side. That’s why I never understood other bankers with different girlfriends in every city they traveled to. I thought that a terribly expensive and potentially dangerous habit. After all, why travel alone when you can bring your wife? Former Houston Oilers and New Orleans Saints coach Oail Andrew "Bum" Phillips Jr. had a different reason. When a reporter asked him, “Bum, why do you always travel with your wife?” he inimitably replied, “Because she’s too ugly to kiss goodbye!” And so one of history’s great ironies is that Bum Phillips’ quote tells us why we can’t stop looking at the defunct A.W. Phillips Curve: because it’s too ugly to kiss goodbye! What’s the Phillips Curve? The Phillips Curve is an economic concept that illustrates the inverse relationship between unemployment and wage inflation. When unemployment is low, wage inflation tends to be high, and vice versa. Economist A.W. Phillips initially proposed this idea, which has been the subject of economic analysis and debate over the years. That it’s been debated makes sense because the idea was utterly disproven in the 1970s. How? Because both wage inflation and unemployment were high, which was previously thought impossible. Milton Friedman and other economists then attacked the Phillips Curve. Friedman won a Nobel Prize in part for that. [Phillips Curve] Phillips curve. (2023, July 2). In Wikipedia. [[CHART] Could Inflation Hit 20%+ In 2023?]( [Click here to learn more]( Take a close look at this scary chart pictured here… What you see is the money supply in America… And as you can see, the number of dollars in circulation has exploded in the last few years. In fact, more than 80% of all dollars to ever exist have been printed since just 2020 alone! Which is why some say inflation could soon explode even higher than it is now, to 20% or more. And if you’re at or near retirement age you must take action now to protect yourself… otherwise you risk losing everything. [Simply click here now to see how to survive America’s deadly inflation crisis](. [Click Here To Learn More]( Criticisms of the Phillips Curve Critics of the Phillips Curve have raised several arguments against its validity: - Long-Run Expectations: One essential criticism is that, in the long run, people and businesses adjust their expectations based on inflation. This means that if policymakers attempt to maintain low unemployment by creating inflation, people will come to expect that inflation and the trade-off between unemployment and inflation will break down. - Supply-Side Factors: The Phillips Curve doesn't take into account supply-side factors that can influence both unemployment and inflation, such as changes in productivity, technology, and labor market regulations. These factors can impact the relationship between unemployment and inflation. - Adaptive Expectations: The Phillips Curve assumes that people's expectations about inflation are based solely on recent history. However, if people's expectations become more sophisticated and forward-looking, they might respond differently to changes in unemployment. - Globalization: In a globalized economy, factors such as international trade and capital flows can impact inflation and unemployment in ways the Phillips Curve doesn't account for. Supply chains, outsourcing, and global competition can influence domestic labor markets and inflation dynamics. - Rational Expectations: Rational expectations theory suggests that people make predictions based on all available information, including government policies. If this theory holds, attempts by policymakers to exploit the Phillips Curve trade-off may not be successful because people will anticipate and adjust to these policies. - Lags and Uncertainties: The relationship between unemployment and inflation might take time due to various economic lags, such as information and policy implementation lags. Additionally, there might be uncertainties in estimating the natural unemployment rate, which can affect the effectiveness of using the Phillips Curve for policy decisions. - Non-Monetary Factors: Other non-monetary factors, like changes in taxes, regulations, and technological shocks, can influence unemployment and inflation, making the simple trade-off depicted by the Phillips Curve less accurate. Simply, the Phillips Curve doesn't fully capture the complexities of real-world economic dynamics. So Why Do We Still Use the Phillips Curve? This is something that’s always stuck in my craw. Why do economists still use the curve if it was disproven in the 1970s? But here are some reasons why we shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater: In the short run, there can be observable relationships between changes in unemployment and inflation. Economists use historical data to identify trends and correlations, which can help predict the potential impact of changes in one variable on the other. The Phillips Curve is often introduced in economics courses to help students understand the basics of macroeconomic relationships, how different factors affect the economy, and the complexities of policy decisions. I’m not keen on this, as the relationship doesn’t hold. The Phillips Curve provides a framework for discussing the possible trade-offs between macroeconomic goals like low unemployment and stable prices. It prompts economists and policymakers to consider the potential consequences of different policy choices. Looking at historical data and examining periods where there appeared to be a clear trade-off between unemployment and inflation can help economists understand how the economy responded to various policy decisions in the past. Wrap Up Uncle Miltie Friedman was right: inflation and unemployment have no long-term relationship. Milton Friedman in 1976 and Edmund Phelps in 2006 won the Nobel Prize in Economics partly for showing the long-run Phillips Curve was vertical, so there was no trade-off between inflation and unemployment. But we’re too long short-term in our thinking as a culture, and it’s also reflected in our economic thought. Sometimes, you’ve just got to kiss ugly things goodbye. Have a great day! All the best, [Sean Ring] Sean Ring Editor, Rude Awakening Twitter: [@seaniechaos]( [Paradigm]( ☰ ⊗ [ARCHIVE]( [ABOUT]( [Contact Us]( © 2023 Paradigm Press, LLC. 808 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. 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