New York Times and Media Matters team up to censor BlazeTV hosts and other conservatives



The New York Times and the leftist outfit Media Matters dropped complementary hit pieces Thursday, accusing BlazeTV hosts Steve Deace, Mark Levin, and Jason Whitlock — along with various other prominent voices in conservative media, including Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, and Lara Trump — of "election misinformation."

The apparent aim of this coordinated attack, which the Washington Post did its part to reinforce, is to pressure the Google-owned platform YouTube to demonetize or possibly even deplatform Democrats' ideological opponents before Election Day.

"Being lumped in with those fine fellows, and being labeled an enemy number one from the official Pravda of the regime, is truly the greatest honor of my career," Deace told Blaze News.

'It defines "false claims" and "election misinformation" so broadly.'

Times reporter Nico Grant gave the plot away in advance when asking Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, and Mike Davis of the Article III Project on Monday about their respective memberships in the YouTube Partner Program, their track records of demonetization, and history of notes from YouTube regarding "misinformation."

Grant, whom Carlson told to "f*** off," indicated that Media Matters, a leftist organization founded by Democratic operative David Brock that is presently being sued by Elon Musk for alleged defamation, identified "286 YouTube videos between May and August that contained election misinformation, including narratives that have been debunked or are not supported with credible evidence."

Blaze News previously reached out to the Times and Media Matters for a working definition of "misinformation" but did not receive a response from either outfit. As a result, it remains unclear whether the Times' false or misleading reports about Russian collusion, former Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann, the death of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, and jihadists' missile misfire at a Gazan hospital would qualify.

Journalists Matt Taibbi and Paul D. Thacker wrote Friday on the "Racket News" Substack, "The problem with the Times piece is it defines 'false claims' and 'election misinformation' so broadly that legitimate questions or analyses and even jokes get wrapped in with far-out conspiracy tales."

Media Matters did, however, shine some light on what sort of claims it apparently feels should not be uttered on YouTube, namely: suggestions "that the election process is 'rigged' against Trump, that the legal cases against him constitute 'election interference,' that Democrats want and are enabling noncitizens to vote in order to win the election, and that Kamala Harris was 'illegally installed' as the Democratic nominee in a 'coup' against Joe Biden."

If Media Matters gets its way, then YouTube might penalize critics for highlighting the unmistakable efforts by Democrats to throw Trump in prison before the election and to remove him from the ballot; Democratic lawmakers' publicly stated plans to invalidate a lawful Trump victory; the Biden-Harris Department of Justice's lawsuits aimed at restoring the voter registration of thousands of suspected foreign nationals; or for questioning the nature of Biden's ouster as Democratic candidate and Harris' voteless candidacy.

Media Matters specifically complained that BlazeTV host Mark Levin said in May that Democrats "will do anything for votes — imprison Trump, steal elections," and that Democrats would "change the electoral process" to get more votes.

The Democratic attack dog attacked Levin further for apparently suggesting in July that Democrats "stole the election from their own primary voters and they're going to install somebody who hasn't gotten a single delegate on her own."

Media Matters also set its sights on Deace, complaining:

Right-wing radio host Steve Deace said Democrats would be "dropping ballots" and "bussing people in … to keep the spigot going until they get what they want" on Election Day. Deace continued, "All they’re trying to do is make her credible enough so they can fortify this thing at the end here."

Media Matters was apparently distressed to learn that Deace could exercise his First Amendment rights and suggest on YouTube that Democrats might want to get the polls "within their narrative margin to justify cheating."

The hit piece also noted that BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock accused California of "manipulat[ing] voting."

A YouTube spokeswoman told the Times that the company reviewed eight videos identified by the liberal paper and found that none of them violated its community guidelines. However, that's not what the Times originally reported.

'But what they meant for evil, I will choose to use for good.'

"A YouTube spokeswoman said none of the 286 videos violated its community guidelines," wrote Grant.

The Times has since issued a correction:

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of videos that YouTube reviewed when asked for comment on whether they contained misinformation. YouTubesaid it reviewed eight videos, which were identified by The New York Times and referenced in the article, not all of them, and found that those eight did not violate its community guidelines; it did not comment on whether they contained misinformation.

The YouTube spokeswoman whose response was initially misrepresented by the Times apparently also told Grant, "The ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial, is an important value — especially in the midst of election season."

Evidently not all are keen on open debate and free speech.

Kayla Gogarty, an LGBT activist who interned at the Human Rights Campaign before becoming "research director" at Media Matters, said, "YouTube is allowing these right-wing accounts and channels to undermine the 2024 results."

Media Matters was not entirely impotent regarding its censorious crusade. The Times indicated that YouTube censored three videos and placed "information labels" that link to supposedly factual information on 21 other videos.

Deace told Blaze News, "The timing of this hit piece is obviously to induce Google, which also owns YouTube and thus the two largest search engines on this planet, to censor those of us who are among the most effective in deconstructing the Left's attempts to deconstruct America right before the election. But what they meant for evil, I will choose to use for good."

Taibbi and Thacker summarized the attack campaign thusly:

A DNC-aligned group produces a "report" documenting a sciencey-sounding quantity of "misinformation" incidents, then passes the scary number to a politically willing mainstream news outlet, which trumpets the new "facts" while publicly and privately pressuring platforms to remove offending material. Welcome to the new "accountability journalism."

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Clinton calls for continued demonization of Trump and jailing of Americans over 'propaganda'



Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appeared on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" Monday, encouraging fellow travelers to continue with the anti-Trump rhetoric that set the stage for two assassination attempts and recommending the prosecution of American citizens over so-called undesirable speech.

After Maddow concern-mongered without interruption for over a minute, Clinton suggested that the mainstream media's failure to "cover Trump the way that they should" has "threatened the physical safety of so many people."

Clinton was not referring to President Donald Trump, who was targeted for assassination the previous day, but rather the illegal aliens he has criticized.

'I don't understand why it's so difficult for the press to have a consistent narrative.'

Clinton intimated that dissenting views are the problem — that the press should adopt a single narrative moving forward.

"I don't understand why it's so difficult for the press to have a consistent narrative about how dangerous Trump is," said Clinton, a proponent of the Russian collusion hoax and an advocate for punishing standout journalists who faithfully fulfilled their duty.

It's unclear how much more conformity it would take to satisfy Clinton. After all, the mainstream media has consistently attacked Trump and portrayed him in a negative light over the past eight years.

Blaze News previously reported that Pew Research showed 20% of stories in the press about Obama in his first 60 days in office were negative and 42% were positive. In Biden's first 60 days, 19% of the stories were negative; 27% were positive. In Trump's first 60 days, 62% of the stories about his presidency were negative and only 5% were positive.

A Harvard University study found that 80% of the press coverage of Trump during his first 100 days was negative.

The Media Research Center revealed last month that on CBS, NBC, and ABC, Kamala Harris was painted in a favorable light in 84% of the networks' coverage, whereas Trump was depicted negatively in 89% of their coverage, reported the New York Sun.

The coverage has not only been consistently negative but hyperbolic. The mainstream media has dutifully worked in concert with Democrats to characterize Trump as a would-be dictator or a reincarnation of Hitler.

Having apparently not learned anything from the actions of Thomas Matthew Crooks and Ryan Routh — or perhaps just enough — Clinton stressed that Americans should be "outraged by what [Trump] represents," adding that he is a "very dangerous man."

After recycling Democrats' well-worn Project 2025 falsehood and joining Maddow in once again resurrecting fears about Russian election interference, Clinton suggested that Americans engaged in what she believes constitutes foreign-sponsored "propaganda" should be "civilly or even in some cases criminally charged."

'Something makes me feel like she might be talking about some friends of mine.'

According to Clinton, clamping down on the constitutionally protected speech of Americans accused of advancing Russian talking points would "be a better deterrence because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial in the United States."

Responding to Clinton's comments, Blaze Media co-founder and nationally syndicated radio host Glenn Beck said Tuesday, "Something makes me feel like she might be talking about some friends of mine. I don't know. But that seems like dangerous talk and a slippery slope."

Clinton alluded to the suggestion by some Republicans in Congress that their colleagues had parroted Russian propaganda on the House floor. She appears to be referring to Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner's assertion to CNN earlier this year that "there are members of Congress today who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not."

Turner, who was reportedly advancing an accusation made earlier by Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), added, "To the extent that this propaganda takes hold, it makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle, which is what it is."

Americans who would dare exercise their constitutional rights to suggest that NATO expansionism was a motivating factor behind Russia's invasion would apparently be ripe for prosecution if Clinton got her way.

Clinton has been pushing for a clampdown on speech she finds undesirable for a while.

In 2021, Clinton told the Guardian, "The technology platforms are so much more powerful than any organ of the so-called mainstream press, and I do think that there has to be not just an American reckoning but a global reckoning with the disinformation, with the monopolistic power and control, with the lack of accountability that the platforms currently enjoy."

"In particular Facebook, which has the worst track record for enabling mistruths, misinformation, extremism, conspiracy, for goodness' sake, even genocide in Myanmar against the Rohingya," continued Clinton. "So governments are going to have to decide right now that the platforms have to be held to some kind of standard, and it's tricky."

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Mark Zuckerberg 'comes clean' in damning letter about Facebook's election interference and pandemic censorship



Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the House Judiciary Committee Monday that he now regrets the major role his company played not only in helping the Biden-Harris administration censor Americans' protected speech, but in suppressing critical information ahead of the 2020 election.

While unwilling to acknowledge its impact on recent American elections, Zuckerberg also indicated he will be terminating his "Zuck Bucks" scheme — ostensibly to alleviate some lawmakers' concerns about deep-pocketed partisans' election interference.

Although it's unclear whether Zuckerberg's admissions will be of any real-world consequence — impacting, for instance, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s censorship lawsuit against the Biden-Harris administration — the committee nevertheless characterized his letter as a "big win for free speech."

Suppressing dissenting voices

Zuckerberg said in his damning letter addressed to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that in 2021, senior officials from the Biden-Harris administration, including the White House, "repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn't agree."

The committee has obtained ample evidence in recent months and years detailing the extent of Facebook's work with the Biden-Harris administration to silence criticism of the experimental COVID-19 vaccines, lockdown measures, and masking, along with other medically accurate information that undermined the Biden White House's preferred pandemic narrative, which it knew early on to be inaccurate.

'We own our decisions.'

For instance, an April 2021 email circulated by a Facebook employee, ostensibly on behalf of Zuckerberg and then-COO Sheryl Sandberg, noted that the Biden White House took issue with a "vaccine discouraging humorous meme," which it told the social media company to delete.

Blaze News previously reported that the verboten meme in question used the "Pointing Rick Dalton" template, borrowing a still from the 2019 film "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood," in which Leonardo DiCaprio's character points out something on television.

This meme, which the Biden White House wanted erased from the platform, was captioned, "10 years from now you will be watching TV and hear .... 'Did you or a loved one take the covid vaccine? You may be entitled ...'" and was apparently shared over 385,000 times.

Besides memes and medical facts, Facebook also dutifully censored content about the COVID-19 lab-leak theory, which is now the most credible account.

In his Monday letter, Zuckerberg admitted that despite knowing the "government pressure was wrong" and that his company could have told the Biden-Harris administration to pound sand, the company decided anyway to oblige the state, take content down, and censor users.

"Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of pressure," said Zuckerberg.

While Facebook was more than willing to comply with the Democratic administration's demands, Zuckerberg — possibly cognizant that he may soon be dealing with a Republican administration — indicated that the company is "ready to push back if something like this happens again."

Election interference

Zuckerberg also acknowledged in his letter Facebook's suppression of an accurate report in the newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton ahead of the 2020 election.

"The FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election," wrote the Facebook CEO. "That fall, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's family, we sent that story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply."

"It's since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn't have demoted the story," added Zuckerberg.

Among the concerns raised in the New York Post's suppressed report was that a Burisma board adviser thanked Hunter Biden for introducing him to Joe Biden about a year before Biden allegedly extorted the Eastern European country as vice president to get the prosecutor investigating Burisma fired.

The report also hinted that Joe Biden, through his son and his own actions, may have been a compromised candidate and, at the very least, untruthful.

'Your enemies rigged the election and were rewarded with the White House.'

While Facebook worked to suppress the report, elements of the intelligence community antipathetic to President Donald Trump — including active elements of the security state — swooped in to shield Biden in the final weeks before the election, releasing a public letter on Oct. 19, 2020, asserting that the Hunter Biden laptop story had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation" intended to hurt the Democrat's candidacy.

Michael Morell, a former CIA deputy director, later testified to Congress that he organized the letter to "help Vice President Biden" but, more specifically, to help "him to win the election."

Zuckerberg assured Jordan in his letter that Facebook, having helped deliver to Biden a firm grasp on the 2020 election-time narrative and possibly the White House, has since changed its policies and process "to make sure this doesn't happen again," noting that content is no longer temporarily demoted while so-called fact-checkers decide whether it's fit for public consumption.

The Facebook CEO also addressed the contributions he made during the last presidential election to "support electoral infrastructure."

Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, dumped over $400 million into grants allegedly aimed at helping with election administration and voter accommodation. Critics have suggested that "Zuck Bucks" was alternatively a partisan scheme aimed at turning out more Democratic votes.

"They were designed to be non-partisan — spread across urban, rural, and suburban communities," wrote Zuckerberg. "Still, despite the analyses I've seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other. My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a arole. So I don't plan on making a similar contribution this cycle."

"Zuck Bucks" may not be necessary in this election cycle, given that the federal government is actively working on fulfilling Biden's Executive Order 14019, which may prove far more effective at mobilizing Democratic voters.

The response

While the committee called the letter a "big win for free speech," Blaze News columnist Auron MacIntyre noted, "No, a win occurs when your enemies pay a price. Is someone going to jail? Is someone getting impeached? Is anyone even getting fined? No, you just got a confession that your enemies rigged the election and were rewarded with the White House."

— (@)

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) similarly suggested that the letter was too little, too late, writing, "Facebook may have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential race. Four years later, we get a letter saying 'sorry.'"

"Mark Zuckerberg comes clean and finally admits what everyone already knows he and META did to influence the 2020 election," wrote Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.)

Elon Musk responded to the letter, noting, "Sounds like a First Amendment violation."

Podcaster Patrick Bet-David speculated that there were three possible reasons Zuckerberg would have made these admissions: "1. He's being honorable[;] 2. He's done with the Dem party[; and/or] 3. He's getting ahead of a whistleblower."

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Court gives RFK Jr. green light to sue Biden-Harris admin over censorship



A federal court rekindled hopes this week that the Biden-Harris administration could be held accountable over its efforts to have critics censored during the pandemic, ruling that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Children's Health Defense, an organization he leads, have Article III standing to sue.

The U.S. Supreme Court let the Democratic administration off the hook in June for its well-documented efforts to shut down critics of its COVID-19 policies and preferred narratives during the pandemic — policies and narratives that have been shown in the years since to have been in many cases unfounded and/or destructive.

The court's 6-3 ruling in Murthy v. Biden asserted that the states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with other plaintiffs, lacked standing to sue the Democratic administration.

'There is a substantial risk that he will suffer similar injury in the near future.'

Although the plaintiffs in Murthy were ultimately tripped up — a decision Justice Samuel Alito indicated the country might come to regret — theirs had a companion case that still had legs: Kennedy v. Biden.

U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty of the Western District of Louisiana, whose injunction the SCOTUS reversed in Murthy, gave Kennedy the green light Tuesday to run down the Democratic administration in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

"The Court finds that Kennedy is likely to succeed on his claim that suppression of content posted was caused by actions of Government Defendants, and there is a substantial risk that he will suffer similar injury in the near future," wrote Doughty.

In February, Doughty, a Trump-nominated judge, granted Kennedy an injunction blocking elements of the Biden-Harris administration, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI, from coercing social media companies to engage in suppression or outright censorship of content containing free speech.

This injunction was, however, put on hold pending the Supreme Court's Murthy ruling.

Following the SCOTUS' June 26 decision, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals kicked the case back to the district court, affording it an opportunity to reconsider Kennedy's standing, admitting also that he may have stronger grounds.

'This means the Biden-Harris Administration may finally be held accountable for its censorship.'

With the ball back in his court, Doughty noted that Kennedy was "identified as a member of the so-called 'Disinformation Dozen,' which was made up of twelve individuals that the Government specifically targeted for spreading alleged disinformation regarding COVID-19."

The judge indicated that elements of the Biden-Harris administration "specifically targeted" Kennedy. After all, he dared hold "positions contrary to Government positions on COVID-19, including mask mandates, vaccine mandates, vaccine injuries, lockdowns, etc."

Doughty wrote:

There is ample evidence in the record showing that Kennedy has been directly censored in the past. Not only was he a part of the alleged 'Disinformation Dozen,' which was repeatedly flagged and/or censored at the behest of numerous Defendants, but he was also censored for his anti-vaccine and anti-COVID-19 rhetoric. Therefore, Kennedy has more than satisfied the first element for Article III standing, that is, he suffered an injury-in-fact when he was censored.

According to the judge, Kennedy's presidential candidacy and political ambitions put him at further risk for future injury, raising the hypothetical of the FBI working in concert with private and governmental outfits to censor campaign-related information deemed "misinformation."

Kim Mack Rosenberg, CHD general counsel, told the defender in a statement, "Judge Terry Doughty carefully and clearly analyzed the law and facts and applied the framework from the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Murthy v. Missouri regarding standing."

"GREAT NEWS!" Children's Health Defense tweeted. "This means the Biden-Harris Administration may finally be held accountable for its censorship of us via #BigTech."

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Google takes down MAGA ad critical of Biden — prompting multitudes of reposts across social media



Google recently killed an advertisement supportive of former President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign. When outed Friday for shutting down the video multiple times, the tech giant reportedly wrote it off as an "error."

If intentional, then the removals appear to have been a strategic error. After all, Google's perceived censorship has drawn far more attention to the ad than it would otherwise have received were it permitted to run without delay. Additionally, the removals have renewed concerns among conservatives about the impact that big tech continues to have in the democratic process.

The verboten video

The video, paid for by the Make America Great Again Inc. pro-Trump super PAC, dramatizes an fictional engagement between a Biden call center volunteer and a disaffected former Democratic voter.

The video opens with a shot of the exterior of the call center, adorned with signs that read, "Trans for Biden Harris," "LatinX for Biden Harris," and "Undocumented for Biden Harris."

Inside, a bespectacled woman calls a voter who sounds less than enthused to receive a call from the Biden campaign.

"Yeah, yeah. I voted for Biden last time," says the voter.

"That's fantastic," says the rainbow-buttoned Biden volunteer, sitting in front of a cardboard cutout of Biden draped in the Mexican flag.

"Is it?" responds the voter. "Everything costs more. Food, gas, rent."

"Okay, but Biden is helping pay rent for newcomers to America from around the world," says the fictional volunteer, reading off a script that cautions against saying "immigrants."

"You mean illegal immigrants? I'm struggling to pay my bills, but Biden's paying rent for illegals? They get handouts and I'm paying for it," says the voter.

When asked whether President Joe Biden can still count on his vote, the voter on the other end of the line indicates he is voting for Trump.

Censored

Andrew Arenge, director of operations for the Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, noted on X that the MAGA super PAC initially spent over $15,000 targeting the ad at specific communities in rural Georgia last week.

While the ad was scheduled to run from Wednesday until Friday last week, NewsBusters indicated that Google removed the ad for a supposed "policy violation."

There was significant backlash following the perceived censorship, giving the ad new life on various social media platforms — all without MAGA needing to shell out additional funds.

Some critics suggested that the ad removal amounted to election interference. Others have highlighted it as continued evidence of big tech's war against conservatives.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee wrote, "Love the ad. Hate Google. They are evil election deniers and try to interfere with free and honest elections."

Filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza noted in a viral post, "Google has taken down this Trump ad on the pretext of violating its guidelines. The real reason of course is because it's pretty effective. Let's teach Google a lesson by sharing this widely!"

Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, said, "This is unacceptable."

"Why did Google remove the ad from Trump's Super PAC in the first place? This is a continuation of a campaign against conservatives."

Arenge suggested that the PAC doubled down and relaunched the advertisement on Google platforms Saturday. Later that day, the flagged ads were reportedly reactivated.According to NewsBusters, Google said it flagged the ads "in error."

After backlash - including tweets from Donald Trump Jr, Dinesh D'Souza, others - appears Google has reversed course\n\nYesterday, I flagged Google had removed ads from Trump Super PAC (left image) for policy violations. \n\nToday, appears they reinstated the removed ads (right image)
— (@)

The Google Ads Transparency Center page for the PAC's ads indicates the ad has since been successfully deployed, still targeting Americans south of Atlanta. The PAC has so far spent over $1.19 million nationally on Google ads.

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Bishop stabbed by Islamic terrorist speaks out against Australia's global censorship demands



Australian officials appear desperate to hide video evidence of a recent manifestation of anti-Christian hatred. Whereas Facebook was more than willing to aid in Australia's global censorship initiative, Elon Musk's X has indicated it will not comply.

This resistance has enraged Australian officials, prompting legal action and one senator to even declare that Musk should be imprisoned.

Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, the survivor of the Islamic terror attack, cut through all the noise Wednesday, noting that he is not "opposed to the videos remaining on social media" and that freedom of speech is a "God-given right."

Background

A 16-year-old Islamic terrorist savagely stabbed Bishop Emmanuel during his April 15 evening sermon at Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Sydney. The attack at the Assyrian Orthodox church would likely have been fatal were it not for the bravery of the priest and parishioners who rushed to the defense of their bloodied leader, subdued the barbarian, and ultimately restored order to the sanctuary.

The attacker, who allegedly targeted the bishop over a perceived slight to Muhammad, apparently belongs to a network of radicals. The Associated Press reported that seven teens were arrested in Sydney Wednesday in connection to the terror attack. Two teens, one age 16 and the other 17, were charged with conspiring to engage in a terrorist act. Another was charged with carrying a knife in public.

The attack at the Christ the Good Shepherd Church was captured on film, providing the world with a stark reminder of a number of apparently inconvenient truths, not least that Christians remain a prime target for hatred, brutality, and repression, even in the welcoming Anglosphere.

Below is the video the Australia government wants us not to be able to view and is trying to censor globally. \n\nThis is the moment when a Jihadi is stabbing a Christian Bishop in Australia. \n\nYou know what to do. Share it as much as possible.\n\n\ud83d\udd0a
— (@)

Censors piggyback on anti-Christian violence

Blaze News previously reported that in the aftermath of the attack, the Australian government worked feverishly to suppress the video online.

X's Global Government Affairs team revealed Friday that the "Australian eSafety Commissioner ordered X to remove certain posts in Australia that publicly commented on the recent attack against a Christian Bishop" even though they had not violated the platform's content rules.

The commissioner is Julie Inman-Grant, an American leftist who previously worked as a government relations professional at Microsoft and Twitter. Despite an early flirtation with the CIA, she claims she never pursued a career with the agency.

Inman-Grant, who now also serves on the World Economic Forum's Global Coalition for Digital Safety and collaborates with the Biden White House's Gender Policy Council, has worked ardently in recent years to censor various other posts online that, while lawful, are offensive to progressive sensibilities.

For instance, she had Australian mother and breastfeeding advocate Jasmine Sussex censored for daring to suggest that men cannot breastfeed. Inman-Grant demanded earlier this year that a Canadian be censored over his criticism of a United Nations-affiliated transvestite. She also demanded that the feminist publication Reduxx take down an article detailing how a transvestite injured female players in a women's soccer game.

True to form, Inman-Grant — deemed the "Australian censorship commisar" by Musk — indicated she would exercise her powers under the Online Safety Act "to formally compel" X to remove the video of the bishop's stabbing.

X initially complied, geo-blocking the video in Australia pending a legal challenge. However, it was then threatened with a daily fine of roughly $500,000 if it didn't also "globally withhold these posts."

The Global Government Affairs team responded, "While X respects the right of a country to enforce its laws within its jurisdiction, the eSafety Commissioner does not have the authority to dictate what content X's users can see globally. ... Global takedown orders go against the very principles of a free and open internet and threaten free speech everywhere."

An Australian judge ruled Monday that X must block the video across the globe. On Wednesday, the judge exended this order, banning X from showing the video until May 10. Musk has said X will not delete the videos for users based in other countries.

Musk, whose app became the most downloaded news app in Australia earlier this week, posed the question Monday, "Our concern is that if ANY country is allowed to censor content for ALL countries, which is what the Australian 'eSafety Commissar' is demanding, then what is to stop any country from controlling the entire Internet?"

Outrage, uncensored

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters, "By and large, people responded appropriately to the calls by the eSafety Commissioner. X chose not to. They stand, I think — I find it extraordinary that X chose not to comply and trying to argue their case."

The prime minister has suggested that the video evidence of the attack amounts to "misinformation," as do memes of his head photoshopped onto images of other people's bodies.

New South Wales Police Force Commissioner Karen Webb similarly condemned the supposed "misinformation," stating, "I think leading a social media platform should bring with it big social, corporate responsibility."

"I think to have images like that online, they need to be removed immediately and not left up there," added Webb.

Australian Senator Jackie Lambie said, "I think [Elon Musk] a social media nob with no social conscience, he has absolutely no social conscience — someone like that should be in jail and the key be thrown away."

BREAKING\ud83d\udea8\n\nAustralian Senator, Jackie Lambie has called for Elon Musk to be JAILED for not complying to censorship requests from the Australian government\u2026 @elonmusk \n\nFREE SPEECH IS UNDER ATTACK
— (@)

Musk responded, calling Lambie "an enemy of the people of Australia."

Tanya Plibersek, Australia's environment minister, called Musk an "egotistical billionaire," stating that "it's more important for him to have his way than to respect the victims of the crimes that are being shown on social media and to protect our Australian community from the harmful impact of showing this terrible stuff on social media."

The victim central to the controversy kicked out the legs from under Plibersek's argument, indicating he doesn't mind the video being online.

'God-given right'

Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel cut through the noise Wednesday, expressing concern in an audio statement that bad actors were using his stabbing "to serve their own political interest to control free speech."

"I do acknowledge the Australian government's desire to have the videos removed because of their graphic nature," said the bishop. "However, noting our God-given right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion, I'm not opposed to the videos remaining on social media."

"I would be of great concern if people use the attack on me to serve their own political interests to control free speech," continued Bishop Emmanuel. "The moment we oppress this very freedom of speech and religion, we are losing the very human identity and dignity as well."

"I do not wish for what has happened to me to be ... a threat to the very human freedom and freedom of religion," added Emmanuel.

Extra to making clear the censorship regime is not acting in his name and expressing forgiveness for his attacker, he stressed his patriotism, noting, "I'm a proud Aussie."

In light of the country's celebration of Anzac Day, he thanked those Aussies who had fought to protect freedom of speech and religion.

Sydney church stabbing: Multiple people injured during service | 7 News Australiayoutu.be

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'Australian censorship commissar' orders X to globally remove video of Islamic terror attack on Christian bishop



A bearded teen complaining in Arabic about insults to Muhammad rushed the sanctuary of an Assyrian Orthodox church in Sydney last week, savagely stabbing Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and Fr. Isaac Royel. Australian officials determined that the attack on Christian clergymen, which was captured on video, was an act of religiously motivated terrorism.

While apparently willing to admit the attack was what it appeared to be on video, the Australian government has attempted to erase the video evidence from social media.

X, formerly known as Twitter, indicated Friday that the Australian government has ordered it to remove the video evidence of the anti-Christian attack. While the platform appeared willing to accommodate the Australian eSafety Commissioner regionally, that apparently was not enough for the Australian state, which has since demanded global censorship of the video.

South African billionaire Elon Musk and his company have effectively told the government to pound sand.

The terror attack

Blaze News previously reported that police were dispatched Monday evening to the Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley, a suburb of Sydney, in response to reports that a "number of people were stabbed."

A 16-year-old radical previously charged for knife-related offenses had rushed the altar with a knife concealed in his hand.

In the video the Australian government appears keen to hide from the public, the attacker can reportedly be heard saying, "If he [the bishop] didn't get himself involved in my religion, if he hadn't spoken about my prophet, I wouldn't have come here. … If he just spoke about his own religion, I wouldn’t have come."

The attacker lunges at Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, a past critic of radical Islam, then repeatedly stabs the 53-year-old bishop.

The bishop and the parish priest who was cut up protecting him survived their injuries.

New South Wales Police Force Commissioner Karen Webb indicated Tuesday, "We believe there are elements that are satisfied in terms of religious motivated extremism."

"After consideration of all the material, I declared that it was a terrorist incident," added Webb.

Nothing to see here

X's Global Government Affairs team revealed Friday morning that after the attack, "The Australian eSafety Commissioner ordered X to remove certain posts in Australia that publicly commented on the recent attack against a Christian Bishop. These posts did not violate X's rules on violent speech."

Australia's woke commissar is Julie Inman Grant, an American who allegedly turned down a CIA job to work in the U.S. Congress before heading off to work for Microsoft. The censorious commissioner, who also worked for Twitter as the director of public policy in Australia, has been celebrated by the World Economic Forum as among "the world's most influential leaders revolutionizing government."

Grant indicated last week that she personally was not "satisfied enough is being done to protect Australians from this most extreme and gratuitous violent material circulating online," reported News.com.au.

Seeking satisfaction on the matter, Grant indicated she was "exercising [her] powers under the Online Safety Act to formally compel them to remove it."

While convinced "eSafety's order was not within the scope of Australian law," X initially complied with the directive, geo-blocking the relevant content in Australia pending a legal challenge. However, it was apparently met with a subsequent demand to "globally withhold these posts or face a daily fine of $785,000 AUD (about $500,000 USD)."

The Global Government Affairs team noted, "While X respects the right of a country to enforce its laws within its jurisdiction, the eSafety Commissioner does not have the authority to dictate what content X's users can see globally. ... Global takedown orders go against the very principles of a free and open internet and threaten free speech everywhere."

Musk noted, "The Australian censorship commissar is demanding *global* content bans!"

Angry censors

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters, "By and large, people responded appropriately to the calls by the eSafety Commissioner. X chose not to. They stand, I think — I find it extraordinary that X chose not to comply and trying to argue their case."

Albanese insinuated that the video evidence of the attack on a Christian cleric amounted to "misinformation."

"We know, I think overwhelmingly, Australians want misinformation and disinformation to stop. This isn't about freedom of expression," said the prime minister. "This is about the dangerous implications that can occur when things that are simply not true, that everyone knows is not true, are replicated and weaponized in order to cause division and in this case to promote negative statements and potentially to just inflame what was a very difficult situation."

"Social media has a social responsibility," added Albanese.

Musk responded Monday, writing, "I'd like to take a moment to thank the PM for informing the public that this platform is the only truthful one."

The tech magnate also noted that it is "absurd for any one country to attempt to censor the entire world."

The prime minister was apparently not the only Aussie official who figured video evidence amounted to "misinformation."

NSWPF Commissioner Web condemned "misinformation," stating, "I think leading a social media platform should bring with it big social, corporate responsibility."

"I think to have images like that online, they need to be removed immediately and not left up there," added Webb.

Tanya Plibersek, Australia's environment minister, suggested Elon Musk's commitment to free speech and transparency just "beggars belief."

"This egotistical billionaire thinks that it's more important for him to be able to show whatever he wants on X or Twitter or whatever you wanna call it today, it's more important for him to have his way than to respect the victims of the crimes that are being shown on social media and to protect our Australian community from the harmful impact of showing this terrible stuff on social media," said Plibersek.

Plibersek enthusiastically noted how Australia has quadrupled the eSafety Commissioner's budget.

With that increased budget, the commissioner had Australian mother and breastfeeding advocate Jasmine Sussex censored for daring to suggest that men cannot breastfeed. The taxpayer-funded commissioner also demanded that X censor Canadian activist Chris Elson over a post criticizing a United Nations-affiliated transvestite.

Australian court demands global censorship

Vastly exceeding his jurisdiction, an Australian judge ruled Monday that X must block the video across the globe.

The Associated Press reported that Justice Geoffrey Kennett demanded that the tech company block all users from seeing the footage, including sovereign American citizens. X has been given 24 hours to "hide" the video.

Stephen Tran, lawyer for the censorious commission, suggested that continued circulation of the footage would cause "irreparable harm."

In the meantime, the Australian censorship regime has been targeting individuals who have shared the video. Popular X user Ian Miles Cheong, for instance, indicated that X had received a report from the Australian government over content he shared but that the platform would not be taking action.

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Journalist gets ruthlessly mocked for warning that 'excessive free speech is a breeding ground for more Trumps'



A Canadian journalist used what little free speech remains available to him to denounce the free speech Americans alternatively enjoy as a birthright. Lawrence Martin's chief concern appears to be that "excessive free speech is a breeding ground for more Trumps."

Martin's establishmentarian article, published Wednesday in the once-serious Globe and Mail, has been mocked ruthlessly online, including by one of the plaintiffs who sued the Biden administration for leaning on social media companies to censor Americans.

Martin opens his article with excitement over the prospect that the U.S. Supreme Court might come down on the side of the Biden administration in Murthy v. Missouri.

Martin, evidently accustomed to this style of overreach under the Trudeau regime, wrote, "There was a bit of good news about the future of public discourse this week. The United States Supreme Court, even though stacked with right-wingers, sounded like it was ready to give the Biden administration the go-ahead to try to persuade social-media platforms not to put out content promoting nonsense about the presidential election, conspiracy theories about the pandemic and other assorted bilge and crackpottery."

The high court heard oral arguments Monday concerning whether the Biden administration violated the Constitution when it pressured social media companies to censor and suppress Americans' protected free speech.

Blaze News previously reported that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed last year with a district court's assessment that there was ample evidence of a "coordinated campaign" of unprecedented "magnitude orchestrated by federal officials that jeopardized a fundamental aspect of American life."

U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty underscored that the Biden administration "used its power to silence the opposition. Opposition to COVID-19 vaccines; opposition to COVID-19 masking and lockdowns; opposition to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19; opposition to the validity of the 2020 election; opposition to President Biden's policies; statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true; and opposition to policies of the government officials in power."

According to Martin, who once served as the Globe's bureau chief in Washington, a ruling in favor of greater censorship of those views deemed undesirable by the powerful would "be a victory for regulation of the internet."

Even if the Biden administration wins the battle, the establishmentarian noted there is still a war to be won against an empowered American citizenry.

"The greater likelihood is that extremes of free speech will continue to be tolerated, creating a pathway for more Donald Trumps," wrote Martin. "The extremes came following the arrival of the internet and social-media platforms. They created a tsunami of free expression. Despite the grumblings we still hear about the lack of free speech, these platforms gave more of it to the masses than anything ever before."

Martin makes it abundantly clear why this is a problem: "The masses were finally weaponized — not with arms, but with a communications instrument that empowered them against establishment forces like they had never been empowered before."

"Would the rise of the hard right and Mr. Trump have been possible if the internet had been given guardrails? Not a chance. The internet gave him — before his account was suspended in 2021 — 88 million Twitter followers," wrote Martin. "With that came the freedom to circumvent traditional media and create an alternate universe."

Martin further lamented that the internet has "undermined" the establishment media, which has repeatedly been exposed pushing consequential falsehoods and manipulating the public.

To "reverse the trend," Martin advocates for "rigid regulation." However, he acknowledged that "the free speech lobby in the United States is as fierce as the gun lobby."

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a tenured professor of medicine at Stanford University and coauthor of "The Great Barrington Declaration" named as a plaintiff in Murthy v. Missouri, wrote in response to Martin's article, "Dear @globeandmail, I'm sorry to report that your editorial page has been hacked. Or maybe it has been taken over by authoritarian blockheads who are publishing dangerous misinformation. One or the other. Respectfully Yours, Jay."

Dear @globeandmail,\n\nI'm sorry to report that your editorial page has been hacked. Or maybe it has been taken over by authoritarian blockheads who are publishing dangerous misinformation. One or the other.\n\nRespectfully Yours, \nJay
— (@)

In response to Martin's suggestion that "excessive free speech is a breeding ground for more Trumps," Auron MacIntyre, host of Blaze Media's "The Auron MacIntyre Show," wrote, "That's what we're counting on you commie scum."

Mike Benz, the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, suggested Martin had "summarized 10 years of work in 10 words."

"We all need to ask ourselves the question: are we engaging in 'excessive' free speech?" asked Dinesh D'Souza.

Canadian comedian Danny Polishchuk noted, "Really embarrassed about my country sometimes."

"So excessive censorship is breeding ground for more Bidens?" wrote Zerohedge. "Fact check: true."

Ezra Levant, the publisher of Rebel News, indicated that Martin's article "accurately reflects the establishment view in Canada. They have lost control of the national conversation and they'll do anything to get it back — including Trudeau's Bill C-63 that proposes life in prison for 'hate.'"

Responding to the backlash, Martin tweeted, "Lest anyone get the wrong impression from the headline on today's column, ah, no I do not oppose free speech. I support intelligent efforts, though not Trudeau's legislation, to curb hate speech, child pornography, racism, promotion of violence etc. etc. on the internet."

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Biden BULLIED Amazon to Censor Books & Mitch McConnell FLIP-FLOPS on Border Deal | 2/6/24

Biden BULLIED Amazon to Censor Books & Mitch McConnell FLIP-FLOPS on Border Deal | 2/6/24

Taxpayer-funded researchers are perfecting schemes to stealthily regulate speech and control sensitive narratives online: Report



Under the Biden administration, federally funded researchers are using millions of social media posts they claimed amounted to "misinformation" during the 2020 election in order to develop better ways of regulating speech, according to a digital free-speech watchdog.

Just the News reported that work by a research group at the University of Washington in Seattle, executed in part with taxpayer grants and previewed in an article last year in Nature Human Behavior, points to how various existing censorship strategies could be combined to create an invisible administrative hand with which to better throttle ideas in the cradle and crush undesirable content without leaving easy-to-see fingerprints.

In June 2023, the research group comprising members of the university's Center for an Informed Public detailed possible "solutions" to the purported threats that so-called "misinformation" poses — to democratic processes and public health measures in particular.

The researchers derived a "generative model of viral misinformation spread, inspired by research on infectious disease," then applied that model to 10.5 million tweets "of misinformation events that occurred during the 2020 US election."

They subsequently determined that "commonly proposed interventions are unlikely to be effective in isolation."

To achieve a "substantial reduction in the prevalence of misinformation" — which at one time or another has been a label assigned by big tech and big government to legitimate claims about the Hunter Biden laptop, COVID-19 vaccine side effects, and the Wuhan lab-leak theory — the researchers recommended that censorship and narrative controls be used in combination.

Some of the tactics they noted could be used effectively in combination include:

  • the removal or obfuscation of "all content matching search terms related to an emerging misinformation incident";
  • labeling content as "misinformation";
  • account banning and a strict adherence to a "three-strikes" rule;
  • hard-to-detect "'virality circuit breakers', which seek to reduce the spread of a trending misinformation topic without explicitly removing content," in part by suspending algorithmic amplification; and
  • "nudge-based approaches," whereby users are prompted to doubt a post's accuracy even if it has not been proven to be false or misleading.

The researchers claimed that "we urgently need a path forward that goes beyond trial and error or inaction," recognizing their proposals might serve as practical short-term alternatives to "large-scale censorship or major advances in cognitive psychology and machine learning."

Two of the researchers on the projected penned a piece in Nature Medicine last month calling for the use of "every point of leverage available" to combat "misinformation and disinformation."

Mike Benz, executive director at censorship watchdog Foundation for Freedom Online, told the "Just the News, No Noise" show Monday that the researchers' 2022 study is a road map on "how to censor people using secret methods so that they wouldn't know they're being censored, so that it wouldn't generate an outrage cycle, and so that it'd be more palatable for the tech platforms who wouldn't get blowback because people wouldn't know they're being censored."

Jevin West, a researcher on the project, contends that concerns like Benz's are much ado about nothing, telling Just the News that the fears about his research possibly impacting free speech relied upon a "fundamental misunderstanding of the paper that appears to be based on non-factual distortion and falsehoods."

Just the News took this to mean that "he considered criticism of the work to be disinformation."

"The paper made no policy or tactical recommendation to social media platforms or the federal government," added West. "There was no follow-up from them and we have no idea what, if anything, any of those entities did with the learnings from our paper."

Although West's suggested that this work is theoretical and apolitical, the censorship researchers nevertheless appear eager to see their work put into practice, having noted in their 2022 paper, "Our results highlight a practical path forward as misinformation online continues to threaten vaccination efforts, equity and democratic processes around the globe."

The FFO previously indicated that this censorship study is just the tip of the iceberg.

TheBlaze previously detailed the FFO's findings that in the first two years of the Biden administration, the National Science Foundation had spent nearly $40 million on government grants and contracts primarily through its Convergence Accelerator to combat "misinformation."

Over 64 censorship grants made their way to 42 colleges and universities, with some grants "explicitly target[ting] 'populist politicians' and 'populist communications' to scientifically determine 'how best to counter populist narratives,'" according to the FFO.

West's center at the University of Washington was among the recipients, nabbing a five-year, $2.25 million grant from the NSF for "Rapid-Response Frameworks for Mitigating Online Disinformation."

Benz insists that the purpose of these efforts to disguise censorship amid congressional probes and court challenges is to produce an "information purgatory to place largely conservative, populist or heterodox opinions and to stop them from going viral."

Responding to the researchers' stated ambitions, the FFO director said, "So they want to be able to control and prevent all opposition to election procedures that they want in place, to vaccination campaigns and to what appears to be racial and climate equity initiatives."

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