DemRats can’t help themselves. Each & every one of them is a little Stalinist waiting to pounce.
Dems Blast “Threat” Of “So-Called Journalists” As Taibbi, Shellenberger Expose “State-Sponsored Thought-Policing”
Update (1300ET): Well, that escalated quickly…
As one might expect, the Judiciary hearing on the “weaponization” of federal agencies, featuring Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger as witnesses was full of fireworks, facts, and ad hominem friction.
Out of the gate, Ranking Member Democratic Del. Stacey E. Plaskett labeled the two “so-called journalists” as dangerous and a “threat” to former Twitter employees.
She claimed that Republicans brought “two of Elon Musk’s ‘public scribes'” in “to release cherry-picked out-of-context emails and screenshots designed to promote his chosen narrative – Elon Musk’s chosen narrative – that is now being parroted by the Republicans” for political gain.
Always accuse your opponent of what you are guilty of. That’s the Alinsky playbook & this affirmative action tard follows it to the letter.
Taibbi snapped back…
Taibbi fires back: “I’m not a so-called journalist. I’ve won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and I’ve written 10 books.”
Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) refers to @mtaibbi and @ShellenbergerMD as "so-called journalists." pic.twitter.com/Pq8qtCPgoe
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 9, 2023
“I’m not exaggerating when I say you have called two witnesses who pose a direct threat to people who oppose them,” Plaskett said after the video.
Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, had a simple response to her accusations:
“It’s crazy what you were just saying.”
“You don’t want people to see what happened,” Jordan continued.
“The full video, transparency. You don’t want that, and you don’t want two journalists who have been named personally by the Biden administration, the FTC in a letter. They say they’re here to help and tell their story, and frankly, I think they’re brave individuals for being willing to come after being named in a letter from the Biden FTC.”
"The GOP has talked long enough about the problem of censorship. It’s time to act."https://t.co/9VEnkuKDQm
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) February 23, 2023
Twitter Twat Knows Nothing About Anything
.@vijaya channels her inner Hillary Clinton and no longer can recall anything she did pertaining to censorship and shadowbanning during her time at Twitter. pic.twitter.com/ioUieYQ66m
— Merissa Hansen (@merissahansen17) February 8, 2023
BREAKING: @ElonMusk says he bought Twitter because it was “important to the future of civilization” to correct the “thumb on the scale” imposed by Big Tech Censorship. pic.twitter.com/8qJH59k5oY
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) February 15, 2023
Feeling the heat?
As Glenn Greenwald chimed in from Twitter: “To Democrats, “journalist” means: one who mindlessly and loyally endorses DNC talking points. “
Unshaken, Matt Taibbi continued, when he was allowed to respond, laid out what he and Shellenberger had found in their research of The Twitter Files:
“The original promise of the Internet was that it might democratize the exchange of information globally. A free internet would overwhelm all attempts to control information flow, its very existence a threat to anti-democratic forms of government everywhere,” Taibbi said.
“What we found in the Files was a sweeping effort to reverse that promise, and use machine learning and other tools to turn the internet into an instrument of censorship and social control. Unfortunately, our own government appears to be playing a lead role.”
Taibbi pointedly added that “effectively, news media became an arm of a state-sponsored thought-policing system.”
“It’s not possible to instantly arrive at truth. It is however becoming technologically possible to instantly define and enforce a political consensus online, which I believe is what we’re looking at.”
Democrats only response to Taibbi and Shellenberger’s facts was to get personal…
Dems are really dredging up the bottom of the barrel to attack Taibbi and the #TwitterFiles. Remember when maligning journalists was a free press assault?
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 9, 2023
Remember DWS? She was forced to quit as DNC Chief because WikiLeaks proved she cheated for Hillaryhttps://t.co/VhgCw40ZdF
As we detailed earlier, journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger are testifying before the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government today. Both journalists were involved in the ‘Twitter Files’ disclosures, in which we learned that the government was directly involved in censoring disfavorable speech.
“Our findings are shocking,” writes Shellenberger at his blog. “A highly-organized network of U.S. government agencies and government contractors has been creating blacklists and pressuring social media companies to censor Americans, often without them knowing it.”
Ahead of the appearance, Taibbi released his prepared remarks. He also dropped a new and related Twitter Files mega-thread on ‘THE CENSORSHIP-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX’ which will be submitted to the Congressional record which, according to Taibbi, ‘contains some surprises.’