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Censorship Industrial Complex

‘Silicon Curtain’ Is Protecting Government Censorship

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6 minute read

From Heartland Daily News

By AnneMarie Schieber

Citing Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” metaphor describing the Cold War division of Europe, health care policy expert Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told an audience, “We are now in the middle of a Silicon Curtain of censorship descending across the previously free West.”

In a keynote address at The Heartland Institute’s Benefit Dinner in Chicago on September 13, Bhattacharya said public health is the new “fig leaf” for justifying government censorship.

“Free speech is in dire danger in the U.S.,” said Bhattacharya. “The government will use its power to suppress criticism [of] its own misinformation.”

Bhattacharya is a plaintiff in Murthy v. Missouri, in which the Supreme Court lifted a preliminary injunction directing the Biden administration not to “coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to suppress protected speech” and remanded the case to a lower court.

“This gives a way to the government to censor at will,” said Bhattacharya. “All they have to do is send emails and algorithms to social media companies without naming a single person—just name ideas not allowed to be said online.

“The First Amendment, in effect, is an unenforceable dead letter,” said Bhattacharya.

Under Fire for Opinions

Bhattacharya, a medical doctor and professor of medicine, economics, and health care research policy at Stanford University, rose to prominence when he published The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) on October 4, 2020, with epidemiologists Martin Kulldorff and Sunetra Gupta. The declaration criticized COVID lockdowns and urged authorities to focus on keeping children in school and protecting the elderly instead of imposing broad-based restrictions.

Although the writers were highly recognized for their work and associated with Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford Universities, respectively, powerful government figures denounced them. Francis Collins, then director of the National Institutes of Health, and Anthony Fauci, then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the trio “fringe epidemiologists” in emails that were made public later.

Ostracized and Blacklisted

Bhattacharya was ostracized by other professors at Stanford and was blacklisted on Twitter. When Elon Musk purchased the social media giant, he discovered the list and shared it with Bhattacharya.

Google “de-boosted” the GBD, which was posted online and signed by more than 940,000 doctors, researchers, and concerned citizens. Facebook banned posting of it altogether.

Using internal government emails they obtained, the plaintiffs showed the government was controlling social media companies by threatening to regulate them out of business if they didn’t abide by the Biden administration’s censorship demands.

The White House also used universities to help with the censorship work, which the government is prohibited from doing directly. Bhattacharya brought up the case of the Stanford Internet Observatory, which received government grants to develop algorithms to target a particular idea. The government shared that information with social media platforms.

Rising Worldwide

Europe, Canada, the U.K., and Australia have led the way on legislation to control speech, Bhattacharya told the audience. The bills and laws ostensibly outlaw violence, pornography, and hate on the internet, carry Orwellian names, and establish authorities to do the enforcement.

These include the Digital Services Act in the E.U., the Online Harms Act in Canada, and the Online Safety Act of 2023 in the U.K. A bill in France establishes a digital “safety” commission for the same purpose.

“It is dangerous to let governments have control over the definition of hate,” said Bhattacharya. “It’s even more dangerous to allow government to determine what is misinformation because science and medicine depend on free speech to operate properly.”

Censoring Political Opponents

Scott Jensen, a medical doctor and Minnesota state senator who ran against Tim Walz for governor in 2022, says his respect for Bhattacharya is immense. Jensen was a prominent critic of COVID-19 policies, and Facebook censored his election page. Jensen lost the race, and Walz went on to implement some of the most draconian COVID-19 restrictions and is Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate in this year’s election for president.

“Dr. Bhattacharya’s willingness to present and stand by a contrarian narrative—which ultimately proved to be profoundly wise—will go down in history as an act of immense courage in the face of smothering government censorship fueled by behemoth, profit-driven technological companies,” said Jensen.

“American’s First Amendment rights are under attack by a political elite, but Dr. Jay Bhattacharya continues to stand in the breach and do whatever is necessary to protect and defend free speech,” said Jensen.

AnneMarie Schieber ([email protected]is the managing editor of Health Care News.

 

Censorship Industrial Complex

Jordan Peterson reveals DEI ‘expert’ serving as his ‘re-education coach’ for opposing LGBT agenda

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

The Ontario College of Psychologists has selected Jordan Peterson’s “re-education coach” for having publicly opposed the LGBT agenda.

In a June 16 op-ed published by the National Post, Canadian psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson revealed that U.K. citizen Harry Cayton will guide him through the mandatory training.

“In the last week … the College has re-established contact, after months of unnecessary delay, which occurred in violation of their own order and guidelines. They have made me an entirely new offer, all the while insisting that this was their intent all along, which it most clearly was not,” Peterson said.

“All they really want, it turns out, is one two-hour session, which will not involve any ‘social media’ training,” he further explained. “This will be conducted by a man — one Harry Cayton — a citizen of the U.K., who is neither social media expert, according to the College and is definitely not a psychologist.”

Harry Cayton, a supposed expert on “professional regulation and governance,” is known professionally for promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

In 2021, he was appointed to conduct an independent review of the British Columbia Law Society’s governance structure, specifically examining how it supports DEI goals.

Additionally, in 2022, while appearing on Ascend Radio’s podcast, Cayton argued there should be more DEI regulations in professional associations.

Peterson has promised to make the details of his “re-education” public, questioning why the College wishes to hide what Cayton plans to discuss with him.

Peterson also explained that he will publicize the training “so that people who are interested can decide for themselves what is going on.”

In January 2024, Peterson lost his appeal of the board’s decision to compel him to undergo mandatory re-education, meaning that he must attend the training or risk losing his license to practice psychology in Ontario.

Peterson also revealed that his “legal options have” now “been exhausted” after Ontario’s highest court rejected his appeal of the College’s 2022 ruling that his public political statements ran afoul of the administrative board’s rules and that he must therefore submit to, and personally pay for, a “coaching program” on professionalism.

Peterson is a widely-known critic of Canada’s increasingly totalitarian government. He has also spoken frequently on the need for young men to accept and take on personal responsibility. While he has seemingly inspired others to explore Christianity, he has not yet espoused a personal belief in any religion, though he affirmed his wife Tammy in her decision to convert to Catholicism in 2024.

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Telegram founder Pavel Durov exposes crackdown on digital privacy in Tucker Carlson interview

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From LifeSiteNews

By Robert Jones

Durov, who was detained in France in 2024, believes governments are seeking to dismantle personal freedoms.

Tucker Carlson has interviewed Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who remains under judicial restrictions in France nearly a year after a surprise arrest  left him in solitary confinement for four days — without contact with his family, legal clarity, or access to his phone.

Durov, a Russian-born tech executive now based in Dubai, had arrived in Paris for a short tourist visit. Upon landing, he was arrested and accused of complicity in crimes committed by Telegram users — despite no evidence of personal wrongdoing and no prior contact from French authorities on the matter.

In the interview, Durov said Telegram has always complied with valid legal requests for IP addresses and other data, but that France never submitted any such requests — unlike other EU states.

Telegram has surpassed a billion users and over $500 million in profit without selling user data, and has notably refused to create government “backdoors” to its encryption. That refusal, Durov believes, may have triggered the incident.

READ: Arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov signals an increasing threat to digital freedom

French prosecutors issued public statements, an unusual move, at the time of his arrest, fueling speculation that the move was meant to send a message.

At present, Durov remains under “judicial supervision,” which limits his movement and business operations.

Carlson noted the irony of Durov’s situating by calling to mind that he was not arrested by Russian President Vladimir Putin but rather a Western democracy.

Former President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev has said that Durov should have stayed in Russia, and that he was mistaken in thinking that he would not have to cooperate with foreign security services.

“In the US,” he commented, “you have a process that allows the government to actually force any engineer in any tech company to implement a backdoor and not tell anyone about it.”

READ: Does anyone believe Emmanuel Macron’s claim that Pavel Durov’s arrest was not political?

Durov also pointed to a recent French bill — which was ultimately defeated in the National Assembly — that would have required platforms to break encryptions on demand. A similar EU proposal is now under discussion, he noted.

Despite the persecution, Durov remains committed to Telegram’s model. “We monetize in ways that are consistent with our values,” he told Carlson. “We monetized without violating privacy.”

There is no clear timeline for a resolution of Durov’s case, which has raised serious questions about digital privacy, online freedom, and the limits of compliance for tech companies in the 21st century.

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