Censorship, Intimidation & Rising Tyranny

There was an outcry from free speech advocates on Aug. 24, 2024 when Telegram messaging app CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France principally over "lack of moderation" on the app-or failing to monitor and censor or ban the "viral circulation of false information" and the protest organizing communities using it. Durov had earlier said Telegram would remain a neutral platform, but various governments, such as France and Britain, contend it allows extremists to conduct crime. Yet some have drawn a comparison between a private, encrypted messaging platform and a phone company, which is not supposed to be generally surveilling private calls.

Video platform Rumble's CEO Chris Pavlovski noted that France had crossed a red line. Indeed, we seem to be moving into a new stage of escalating censorship. For the past several years we've seen more covert censorship-with political interests colluding with Big Tech companies to promote certain information and suppress counter-information (labeled misinformation or disinformation). Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, admitted the U.S. administration pressured behind the scenes to censor important information. Algorithms and direct targeting led to some being shadow banned or kicked off platforms.

But now we see more coercive measures being applied, with the passage of laws and rules to intimidate or punish those not toeing the line of the prevailing agenda-moving us into the era of open mass censorship. And this is happening in many countries.

On his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), tech billionaire Elon Musk retweeted the following from End Wokeness on Aug. 24: "UK mass arrests citizens for memes; France arrests founder of Telegram; Ireland tries to ban ‘mean memes'; Brazil forces X to flee the country; Australia tries to censor X posts; EU tries to blackmail Elon Musk; DOJ [U.S. Dept. of Justice] jails someone for a meme; [Venezuela's] Maduro blocks all access to X. Free speech is under attack all across the globe."

This comes at the same time as the globalist drive gains momentum, with more power being handed to the United Nations, especially in terms of digital censorship agreements.

Where is all this leading?

U.S. and British ruling class press to control speech

Globalist elites see controlling information as vital. In the United States, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton recently expressed this in a CNN interview: "If the platforms, whether it's Facebook or Twitter X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don't monitor the content, we lose total control, and it's not just the social and psychological effects. It's real harm" (Oct. 5).

John Kerry, who succeeded her as secretary of state, shortly before lamented in a World Economic Forum session that the U.S. Constitution stands in the way of needed censorship, stating that "if people go to only one source . . . and they're putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to . . . be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence" (Sept. 25). The answer for him was his party "winning enough votes that you're free to be able to implement change."

But in other countries, change is coming rapidly. Legal expert Jonathan Turley, author of a book on free speech, notes: "For years, I have been writing about the decline of free speech in the United Kingdom and the steady stream of arrests. A man . . . was arrested for an anti-police t-shirt. Another was arrested for calling the Irish boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend a ‘leprechaun.' Yet another was arrested for singing ‘Kung Fu Fighting.' A teenager was arrested for protesting outside of a Scientology center with a sign calling the religion a ‘cult.' Last year, Nicholas Brock, 52, was convicted of a thought crime in Maidenhead, Berkshire" ("‘It's Not OK Any More': The United Kingdom Cracks Down on Free Speech," Aug. 22).

Summer protesting and rioting broke out across the country after a mass stabbing incident in Southport, England was wrongly attributed to a Muslim immigrant-igniting a lot of pent-up anger over immigrant crime and seemingly two-tiered policing going easier on immigrants. Citizens were warned that even just passing along inflammatory misinformation about the rioting on social media could result in arrest.

Elon Musk retweeted this post on Sept. 1: "Breaking: A woman that filmed the anti-open border riots in Britain and shouted ‘we want our country back' has been sentenced to 20 months in prison." Musk also repeatedly challenged Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer on the allegations of two-tier policing even in the recent uprising.

Shockingly, Britain's censorship rules are being pressed on people in other countries, including U.S. citizens. Sir Mark Rowley, head of London's Metropolitan Police service, has threatened to arrest people outside the United Kingdom for unacceptable X posts. When asked if the likes of Elon Musk could be arrested, Rowley said that "being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law . . . and whether you're in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you."

A man in Pakistan was actually arrested on behalf of the U.K. for disinformation in reposting early reports that a Muslim asylum-seeker had been arrested in connection with the Southport stabbings (NBC News, Aug. 22).

European overreach

The international enforcement threat is not limited to Britain. When Thierry Breton of France was still commissioner for the Internal Market of the European Union earlier this year, he was very concerned about Elon Musk doing an interview with former U.S. president and presidential candidate Donald Trump on X that could be watched in Europe! So he sent a letter ordering Musk to implement "mitigation measures" against the "the amplification of harmful content" (Aug. 12). He was basically warning Musk to direct the narrative and appropriately censor to meet EU standards, lest he be liable for billions of dollars in fines!

Outrage from conservative U.S. lawmakers was followed by the European Commission distancing itself from Breton's letter as unauthorized, but its overall substance is consistent with EU stances.

This European law can serve to push a woke agenda onto U.S. companies and others around the world-regulating businesses that trade with Europe and firms supplying those companies. As Prof. Turley points out, the right of free speech "is again under attack from another European government, which is claiming the right to censor what Americans are allowed to say about politics, science and other subjects. Indeed, the threat from the European Union may succeed in curtailing American freedom to an extent that the Axis powers could not have imagined" ("Europe's Plot to Regulate Political Speech in America," The Hill, Aug. 17). Or worse, as he points out, progressive U.S. politicians have urged and welcomed its implementation.

Within Europe itself, the censorship push is in full swing. As one headline notes: "Spanish Government to Restrict Freedom of Information to ‘Save Democracy'" (The European Conservative, Sept. 18). This involves a registry of media outlets, allowing the socialist government "to dictate who media outlets' shareholders can be, their sources of financing, and how much government institutions will spend on advertising with them. Any media outlet not on the register will likely be branded ‘pseudo-media'"-to discredit them.

Then there's this headline: "German ‘Citizens Council' Wants to Criminalize Disinformation" (Brownstone Institute, Sept. 23). Another article points out that countering the government line about basically anything is viewed as "anti-democratic and/or delegitimizing the state in a way that endangers security" (C.J. Hopkins, "The Hate-Crime Commissar of New Normal Berlin," Sept. 15).

Yet another headline reads: "German Police May Soon Enter and Search Homes Secretly" (Independent Sentinel, Aug. 15). This includes installing spyware on computers and phones and covert home searches-only to be used in exceptional circumstances. But who decides that? As this piece notes, "There is always an excuse to impose totalitarianism."

A dark time is coming

These various stories go hand in hand with a push to exalt the United Nations into global governance, the most authoritarian facet of which concerns control of the Internet and information integrity-entailing censorship and surveillance. Surprised? Perhaps not at this point.

The sad fact is that a European-based and globalist tyranny is rising-and the English-speaking nations are beginning to submit to it while they yet hold more power. These developments were foretold in the Bible.

Daniel 2 and 7 and Revelation 13 and 17 present the final rise of an ancient worldly power with its roots in Babylon-an end-time revival of the Roman Empire, the political bloc and its leader referred to as the Beast. These passages also show this empire to be a controlling religious power in union with a great false church.

Under this evil system, God's true servants will be persecuted as they avoid the infamous mark of the Beast, denoting allegiance to the system and its turn from God and His laws. This mark is not a digital ID, as some imagine, but that could be a way that people's adherence to the system is surveilled, regulated and controlled.

The totalitarianism we've seen in past human history was forerunner to the ultimate one that's coming.

Stay alert. Stand for what's right. We may well suffer for that, but we can trust in God to see us through. In the end, His Kingdom will bring an end to tyranny!

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Censorship, Intimidation & Rising Tyranny

There's a big push by today's governments to control speech and information. The signs are very concerning-but they are just the beginnings of something far worse to come.

U.S. and British ruling class press to control speech

European overreach

A dark time is coming