[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [New post] Meditations On Twitter’s Silencing Of Daniel McAdams

Fri Sep 6 02:58:12 UTC 2019

I know Daniel McAdams a bit. He helped us get Republicans on board with
challenging unconstitutional U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen
by invoking the War Powers Resolution, among other contributions to peace.
I agree that this is sad and annoying - sad that this happened, sad that
Twitter management has this kind of unaccountable control over who can
participate in what has become a very influential platform for discussing
war and peace. I get why some people find the epithet "retarded" very
offensive. It was commonplace when I was in high school, and I had to work
at removing its use from my active vocabulary. But this kind of ad hoc
banning policy is not the right way to deal with this issue - it's a
dangerous threat to important free speech, as documented here.

===

Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1

On Thu, Sep 5, 2019 at 9:32 PM C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

>
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> *From:* Caitlin Johnstone <donotreply at wordpress.com>
> *Date:* September 5, 2019 at 6:48:24 PM CDT
> *To:* cgestabrook at gmail.com
> *Subject:* *[New post] Meditations On Twitter’s Silencing Of Daniel
> McAdams*
>
> Caitlin Johnstone posted: "Daniel McAdams, the Executive Director of the
> Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, was banned from Twitter last
> week. Officially, it was because he used the word "retarded" to describe
> the odious establishment propagandist Sean Hannity after notin"
>
> New post on *Caitlin Johnstone*
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?author=2> Meditations On Twitter’s
> Silencing Of Daniel McAdams
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/09/05/meditations-on-twitters-silencing-of-daniel-mcadams/> by
> Caitlin Johnstone <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?author=2>
>
> Daniel McAdams, the Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for
> Peace and Prosperity <http://ronpaulinstitute.org/>, was banned from
> Twitter last week. Officially, it was because he used the word "retarded"
> to describe the odious establishment propagandist Sean Hannity after noting
> the hilarious fact
> <https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/720/0*R1IFxa4o5XdDhjSM.jpg> that the
> Fox News host had been wearing a CIA lapel pin while "challenging the deep
> state". Unofficially, it was because McAdams has been operating for years
> at the apex of one of the most effective antiwar movements in the United
> States.
>
> An article from *Liberty Conservative News*
> <https://libertyconservativenews.com/foreign-policy-critic-daniel-mcadams-gets-kicked-off-twitter/>
> about McAdams' encounter with the business end of the Twitter censorship
> hammer reports that the outspoken foreign policy critic received a
> notification that his account "has been suspended and will not be restored
> because it was found to be violating Twitter’s Terms of Service,
> specifically the Twitter Rules against hateful conduct."
>
> "It is against our rules to promote violence against or directly attack or
> threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin,
> sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age,
> disability, or disease," the notification reads. "Additionally, if we
> determine that the primary purpose of an account is to incite harm towards
> others on the basis of these categories, that account may be suspended
> without prior warning."
>
> Now, unless Sean Hannity does in fact have some literal mental handicap we
> don't know about, it's not accurate to say that he was attacked or
> threatened on that or any other basis; rather, he was merely insulted with
> a common pejorative that is not widely considered to be politically
> correct. It is also certainly not accurate to say that the primary purpose
> of McAdams' now-defunct Twitter account was to incite harm toward others
> based on the aforementioned categories. Indeed, the article notes, the word
> "retarded" is used constantly on Twitter by users all around the world who
> never suffer any consequences for it; a quick Twitter search easily
> confirms <https://twitter.com/search?q=retarded&src=typed_query&f=live>
> that the word is used as an insult multiple times per minute. The reasons
> given for McAdams' suspension can therefore be regarded as bogus.
>
> wow. Guess they didn’t like his foreign policy views?
> https://t.co/1NdOxK1AjQ
>
> — Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) September 4, 2019
> <https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1169247885512384512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
>
> In reality, McAdams was suspended because there are people on Twitter who,
> either due to profession or obsession, make it their business to report any
> effective opponent of western imperialism at every opportunity to Twitter
> admins, many of whom apparently have a clear pro-establishment bias of
> their own. It's happened to me on more
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/04/02/how-an-assange-hater-got-my-twitter-privileges-suspended/>
> than one occasion
> <https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/twitter-has-shut-down-my-account-for-abusing-john-mccain-25e7be909f4d>,
> and we may be sure that it happened to Daniel McAdams last week as well.
>
> Which is annoying. It's annoying to know that at some point I'll probably
> slip up and say something imperfectly in an increasingly restrictive speech
> environment which gets me permanently banned from that platform. I like
> Twitter. I'm good at it. I've recently concluded that it's pretty much
> useless for dialogue, but it is a great way for one person to get
> unauthorized ideas seen millions of times per month by people who might not
> feel like reading an entire article. I'll be very put off when the
> banhammer finds my pretty face.
>
> But you know what's even more annoying? What's even more annoying is that
> we live in a society where insulting a murderous war propagandist like Sean
> Hannity gets you silenced and marginalized, but *being* a murderous war
> propagandist like Sean Hannity does not. *Being* a murderous war
> propagandist like Sean Hannity gets you rewarded with fame and fortune at
> every turn.
>
> I'd like us to reverse this, please.
>
> I'd like to live in a society where promoting mass military slaughter is
> the thing that gets someone de-platformed and shunned, not using a rude
> word to insult someone who promotes mass military slaughter.
>
> A society where a US president killing mountains of people around the
> world
> <https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-persistent-myth-that-trump-opposes-war-11c3453d4917>
> attracts more media attention than his rude tweets.
>
> A society where being a warmonger is just as taboo and reviled as being a
> serial killer or a child rapist.
>
> A society where people get their news from reporters who tell the truth
> about what's happening, not from veterans of depraved intelligence
> agencies <https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/23/cnn-msnbc-15-spooks-mccabe/>
> whose entire professions have been devoted to deceit and disinformation.
>
> A society so sensitive to the horrors of war and the realities of its
> power dynamics that black bloc protesters would put more energy into
> disrupting appearances by people like Henry Kissinger and John Bolton than
> people like Milo Yiannopoulos.
>
> A society so emotionally awake and empathetic in the way it operates that
> sociopathy and psychopathy become more of a disabling handicap than
> schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
>
> A society so healthy that we no longer spend our creative energy figuring
> out ways to kill and exploit and manipulate each other and instead spend it
> figuring out ways to collaborate with each other and with our ecosystem for
> the benefit of everyone.
>
> A natural society, the kind we imagined as small children that we would be
> inheriting, instead of this insane stew of oligarchic psyops and cultural
> mind viruses which rewards sociopathy and elevates social cannibals.
>
>
>
> That society is already here in embryonic form, only hidden beneath a fog
> of confusion about what we are and where the stable ground of sanity is.
> Some of that fog was created accidentally, as the result of a species
> suddenly evolving extra brain matter at an unprecedented speed and
> stumbling out of the trees into a world of WiFi and processed meats. Most
> of the fog has been created deliberately, with countless generations of
> powerful humans inflicting narratives upon their subjects which further
> advantage the powerful and further disadvantage the powerless.
>
> But sanity is right there, patiently waiting underneath the insanity.
> Waiting for us to open our eyelids and part the fog and remember our
> natural state. It's right here, closer to us than our own breath, so simple
> and obvious that we can spend our whole lives overlooking it.
>
> It's that comfy homely chair where you can let your bum nestle into the
> folds of the earth, the vantage point from which you truly don't mind what
> happens, you're just curious as to what you'll do next.
>
> It's that quiet still place from where inspiration bubbles up, just below
> the babble of the unreliable narrator of our patterned thinking mind.
>
> It's that place between sleep and at rest, right before the clamor of
> thoughts bustle in.
>
> It's where ideas spring from in the middle of the night or in the middle
> of a shower, from that relaxed, happy state that peeks through when you
> forget yourself for a moment.
>
> It's right here, just below the surface of the made-up matrix of mind gunk.
>
> This is the place from which our sane society will be birthed into the
> world.
>
> Sink in and live from here whenever you remember to.
>
> Let it be birthed through you.
>
> ________________________
>
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> *Caitlin Johnstone <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?author=2>* | September
> 5, 2019 at 11:48 pm | Tags: censorship
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=censorship>, Daniel
> McAdams
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=daniel-mcadams>,
> peace <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=peace>,
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