The trenches are about to be breached, the Red Army (see what I did there?) is charging, and the ammunition is running low for the Blue team.

Morale is at an all-time low. Trust in the Generals and the Supreme Leader has evaporated. What is to be done? How to save the tottering empire of Elites™ from being swept away?

There is one last weapon to deploy. And use it they will. It is their V-2 rocket in this war against the Reds. It may not work, but you never know until you try.

The weapon? Censorship.

If the American people are losing the plot, ignoring The Narrative™, and failing to comply because they no longer believe in your leadership, the one tool left is stopping the flow of information.

Speech, ideas, and free-thinking are the enemies of the Elite™, and they are going to stop it or die trying.

We’ve all followed the battles over content moderation in the United States. All the news about secret government meetings with social media companies, special takedown portals, disinformation boards, and all the rest of the vile unconstitutional and immoral collusion between Big Tech and the government.

But most Americans don’t know that this is just one front in a global war against freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and the free flow of information. This is a worldwide battle, and we are not just fighting openly tyrannical governments such as China, Russia, and Iran. We are also fighting against the so-called liberal democracies whose leaders are doing their best to stifle dissent in any way they can.

The European Union has already threatened Elon Musk’s Twitter, and now they are going after Rumble too for flouting their content laws. It is openly totalitarian, and justified by the “need” to fight “disinformation.” Disinformation is, of course, any information or group of opinions they don’t want you exposed to.

Of course, some of that information is wrong. Some opinions support evil. Some people are looking to deceive you. But that is not the point, because if it were then half the MSM stories you are fed would qualify too.

How many times were you lied to over the past several years? Was there a single day when the propagandists in the government and in the MSM didn’t shovel out a ton of BS and expect us to buy their lies? How much damage was done by misinformation about COVID? Self-conscious lies spread by the propagandists in the media?

The problem our overlords are trying to solve is not disinformation–it’s disinformation that they didn’t produce. It’s information they find inconvenient (Hunter’s laptop, anyone?). It’s the slightest hint of dissent.

Glenn Greenwald–with whom I sometimes agree, and other times not–has a thread on Twitter that addresses this problem directly. It was instructive to read and I want to share it with you because it among other things reminds us how used to information control we have become.

Here's a despotic French minister, @jnbarrot, *boasting* of how he's trying to force Rumble to remove outlets which EU has banned.

Why would a French citizen want their leaders empowered to decide what news they can and can't hear? Either way, keep that repression in the EU: pic.twitter.com/Y3VVwQovYS

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 4, 2022

Russia Today and Sputnik are Russian state mouthpieces. They are easy to censor because we don’t like Russia and they spread Russian propaganda. They do cover stories other than Ukraine, and some of the content is not bad. But even if everything they broadcast were bad, so what? Is the solution to RT and Sputnik spouting half-truths to give power to government ministers to decide what is true and not?

Do you really believe that the standards they use would be to fairly, objectively, without fear or favor regulate speech not for their own benefit but only in service of the truth?

After the past 3 years, if you believe that you are simply deluded. Disconnected from reality. Our MSM is corrupt, in the pocket of a movement and a political party, and cannot possibly be trusted to tell you the truth or even let you discover it yourself. Government officials lie to you every day, many times a day.

The primary tactic of American liberalism (Dem Party version) is to police and control the flow of information online by silencing, de-platforming, excluding and otherwise punishing anyone who questions of dissents from their pieties and decrees of Truth and Falsity. https://t.co/PicjIuK62q

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 4, 2022

Think about it for a second: how many political commercials do you watch and think: “surely everything that politicians says is true, objective, fair, and wholly correct!”? How could it be, when their opponent says the opposite–are they both right? If not, then perhaps they aren’t the ones to decide what information you may have.

Even the best politicians–the best people, in fact–spin things. It is in our nature to do our best to persuade others to our view. That is why it is so important that all views are allowed to be spoken.

Yesterday Ed wrote a story about a bombshell NBC report that blew wide open the Paul Pelosi story. According to the police, Pelosi himself opened the door and was nowhere near the attacker when they arrived.

Instead of leaving or getting behind the officers, he apparently went back to his attacker of his own volition. It was only then that he was attacked. We have no idea why he did it, but it certainly changes the spin on things.

NBC, after airing this report and putting it on their website and Twitter, simply deleted the tweet and the report without explanation. It “did not meet their standards,” but gave no reason why. Was it false? Or just inconvenient? It smells of coverup. It is difficult to see how this has an innocent explanation or at least a non-embarrassing one.

NBC Today has removed this video from its website https://t.co/Zs7ksKsjs7 pic.twitter.com/jVRFUgOEYv

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) November 4, 2022

Watch the video. Is NBC retracting the report? They won’t say, so far. Or did the reporter merely tell a truth that undermines the Democrat narrative for the election? I know which I would bet on. Do you trust NBC to play it straight? The San Francisco police? The FBI?

The Washington Post even argued that the public should be kept in the dark–really, they did say that–to avoid fueling conspiracy theories. That is a novel idea from a newspaper reporter.

If some little wannabe tyrant in France can now dictate to US social media sites who can and can't be heard, then so can Iran, China, Russia, or whatever country you think is most Bad.

Should Iran or Russia be able to force US sites to ban anti-government outlets or dissidents?

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 4, 2022

If the US government colludes with social media and MSM outlets to shape The Narrative™ to their liking, isn’t it likely that they are doing so with our allies around the world? Wouldn’t it be unlikely that they didn’t? What the Biden Administration did was blatantly unconstitutional, but it probably would be legal to lean on our allies who have much stricter laws and no First Amendment to restrict their control over information flow.

And these allies are quite open about using those powers. They even brag about it.

👋 @elonmusk

In Europe, the bird will fly by our 🇪🇺 rules.#DSA https://t.co/95W3qzYsal

— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) October 28, 2022

Imagine if you will, seeing something like that Tweet being published in the 70s or 80s. Civil libertarians around the world would go crazy in opposition, as well they should. Now, as certified members of The Elite™, they almost always cheer on the censors–except for parents who think pornography and grooming literature should not be put in front of children. They still decry censorship, but only when their child pornography is threatened.

Otherwise, it is vital to ensure a clear, concise, and consistent Narrative™.

As I noted on Fox, Chomsky often says: "Even Herman Goering was in favor of free speech for those he agreed with."

All these episodes – DHS appointing that deranged #Resistance fanatic as "disinformation czar" – are because US Govt wants the power to decree Truth and Falsity: pic.twitter.com/3auPF1yvBx

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 4, 2022

I scoffed when Donald Trump first said that the media was “the enemy of the people,” believing that it was destructive hyperbole. Now I think he was prescient.

It’s not that I believe everything I read is a lie. It’s that I can’t tell the difference anymore, and that is how they like it. Finding the truth gets harder every day, despite the fact that I am bombarded by more content than almost any human being in history. Lots of people lie and always have. But I was naive enough to believe that somebody in the media thought truth was important.

Silly me. Instead, they are now just mouthpieces for the Establishment™.

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist anymore to believe you are constantly being lied to. You are constantly being lied to. Unfortunately, that is just the truth of the matter.

It is not the job of the government, big tech, or the media to decide what is true or what we should believe. It is the job of a free people to take their role as citizens seriously and try to parse it out the best they can when they have to.

The free flow of information is messy. It can be confusing. It can even be infuriating. I hear from liberals all the time things I know beyond doubt are lies, and much that I pretty much know are lies but haven’t bothered to research. I don’t take conservative information to be gospel because propaganda is a tool every establishment uses. We all do, at times. Spinning the truth is a fact of life.

We have juries because long ago we as a people decided that the best, if imperfect, way to get to the truth on important matters is to lay the facts out, let the arguments and spin happen, and trust in the common sense of the average person. Not because the system is infallible, but because it is the best system we can devise.

Allowing RT and Sputnik to spew their truths and untruths and allowing people to judge it is no different than allowing a defense attorney to defend his client. He may be guilty. He may not be. But we let him have his say in court. Summary executions are not our way, and shouldn’t be.

Leave that to the Che Guevaras of the world, who revel in killing. “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.” I prefer juries, both in court and metaphorically in politics as well.

Free speech truly is the lifeblood of a liberal society. Without it, everything else will wither away. The transnational elite has declared war on free speech, and in doing so has declared war on liberal democracy.

We cannot let them win. And if that means defending RT and Sputnik, count me on their side in the war against censorship.