YouTube's abuse of power — favors the Party Line — and libertarians' inadvertent contribution to that

20 August 2020

The Great American Plutocracy will not rest . . .

. . . until every vestige of free and accurate speech is gone from the United States.

Consider the following censoring nonsense

This from self-righteous YouTube:

[Our] policies prohibit hate speech, harassment, and deceptive practices, including content that aims to mislead people about voting or videos that are technically manipulated or doctored in a way that misleads users . . . and may pose a serious risk of egregious harm.

We always enforce our policies consistently without regard to political viewpoints and do allow exceptions for content with sufficient educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic (EDSA) value.

Other timely examples include:

Removing content that contains hacked information, the disclosure of which may interfere with democratic processes, such as elections and censuses.

For example, videos that contain hacked information about a political candidate shared with the intent to interfere in an election.

Removing content encouraging others to interfere with democratic processes . . . .

In less deceptive words . . .

When the American Establishment's propaganda line is opposed — even by glaringly true information that was hacked out of Secrecy's Vaults and leaked — YouTube will suppress it.

In essence, YouTube's corporatists are saying that the American public should never have known about the evils that Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks revealed.

Not to mention similar domestic nastiness allegedly publicized by Cozy and Fancy Bears, regarding Democratic Party National Committee rot in 2016:

In 2016, the group was accused of breaking into the DNC's servers alongside a second hacking group -- APT-28, aka "Fancy Bear" -- that researchers and U.S. intelligence services have linked to the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency.

APT-28 was accused of playing the more significant role, stealing DNC emails and data and then dumping it online to harm the Democratic party.

In other words, the Russians' alleged interference "harmed" the Democratic Party by showing the American public how corruptly the Democratic hierarchy operates.

The Rooskies committed this allegedly horrible and massively influential deed by releasing the DNC's own emails.

How's that for typically twisted Establishment logic?

"If we do evil, it's only bad when foreigners find out about it and tell our American victims."

Truth is harmful, right?

Maybe we should put a warning on children's cereal boxes. Just to start them down Propaganda Road with the right attitude.

Maybe we could electrify their school seats, so that Teacher can jolt them — whenever they say something not previously approved for public release by the Reality Suppression Machine.

Then, there's the accompanying (and characteristically American) libertarian penchant . . .

. . . for conflating governance and economic monopoly, without recognizing which one is dominantly more malicious.

I had to laugh yesterday, when libertarian Reason naively suggested that:

Perhaps . . . a political system in which so many Americans have lost faith is one that shouldn't exercise as much power over people's lives as does the government with which we're saddled.

When millions of Americans who will have to live with the outcome of the election "do not think either of the major-party presidential candidates would be a good president," it's a good sign that the consequences of elections should be less important.

[M]aking government less important might lower the stakes a bit so that it doesn't matter all that much when unfit candidates win office.

2020)

How could we accomplish what Reason so naively suggests?

Libertarians are consistently deluded, regarding where repression, suppression and enslavement really originate.

Government is so vastly controlling exactly because — libertarians (like those at Reason) have deregulated everything so much, that power-abusers like YouTube — and virtually every other large corporation — have been able to turn and magnify Governance into an oppressive Corporate Handout Apparatus — that exclusively benefits Fat Cats — and robs everyone else.

This is a curious form of seriously crazy blindness on Libertarianism's part. The political philosophy's unwillingness to examine how Reality actually works, aggravates the very power problem that it seeks to correct.

Foolishly, libertarians reflexively reject Karl Marx's insights into how the System of Corralled Capital works toward individual Liberty's harm.

How do they think that we got to this Corporatism-dominated place that we are in?

Who do they think really runs the United States?

How do they imagine those Oligarchical folk achieved the control that they have?

Magic?

A simple rejection of freedom in America?

Peculiar obtuseness on the citizen population's part?

There is no one quite so gloriously idealistic, and so unrealistically stupid, as a libertarian.

The moral? — Give monied entities power — and they will always abuse it

For instance, did you see that Goodyear is apparently trying to tell people how they should think politically?

TV channel WIBW (Topeka, Kansas) reported that:

A photo seen circulating on social media shows a slide that was presented during a diversity training showing what’s acceptable and what isn’t acceptable as part of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company’s zero-tolerance policy.

Under acceptable: Black Lives Matter (BLM), Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride.

Listed as unacceptable: Blue Lives Matter, All Lives Matter, MAGA Attire, Political Affiliated Slogans or Material.

If we limited these corporations' ability to loot and keep wealth, they would be much less able to buy, feed and further magnify — the oppressive Government that Reason complains about.

If one does not recognize the actually strangling hand, one is dead meat.

We would think that a competent Liberty-seeker would know this. Apparently not.

PeteFree.com

YouTube's abuse of power — favors the Party Line — and libertarians' inadvertent contribution to that