JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE TRULY DANGEROUS TENDENCY OF OUR MAINLINE PRESS AND INTERNET TECH GIANTS/MEDIA TO BRING US SERIOUS CENSORSHIP DISGUISED AS PROTECTION FROM SCOUNDRELS - THE CASE OF ALEX JONES - "I DON'T AGREE WITH A WORD YOU SAY BUT I'LL DEFEND TO THE DEATH YOUR RIGHT TO SAY IT" - NOW THAT SUMS UP FREE SPEECH

John Chuckman


COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY NEIL JONES ON THE CBS NEWS



“Alex Jones deals in vicious stupidity. It's not free speech — it's incitement”



I want to make it clear that I do not like Alex Jones nor do I watch his programs. And I am an old-fashioned genuine liberal.

But, to my mind, the point of view of this opinion piece is dangerous to a free society.

Short of libel or other legally-defined acts, provable in court, free speech is free speech, full stop.

Deciding to redefine what it is that others are saying is what the kinds of governments do that none of us want to see in power.

But that seems to be the kind of world we increasingly find ourselves in, one where authorities define for us what it is we are to think, and the authorities really doing the defining originate in Washington. Is that a place today anyone regards as anything less than dangerous and threatening itself?

All of the major American hi-tech companies are busy doing just that, and I think we all of us know those companies are not the friends of a free society. They spy on people, they break various international tax laws, they are all in bed with American security services, and they all lie about what they do to their users. They are the servants of the "one-percent" and the war party in Washington

We see this over and over, as for instance our being told that America's industrial-scale extrajudicial killing program with drones is anything other than a system of organized state murder of people we literally know nothing about - "disappearing" people as the old Argentine junta used to do.

I truly am starting to fear dark times coming, only it isn't Alex Jones who'll bring them in.

It was a boyishly smiling man in the White House, everyone inaccurately described as a liberal, who did in fact start the mass killing of those guilty of nothing under law.

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Response to a comment quoting, 'Yelling “FIRE!” in a crowded movie theatre..."

Those are the words of an American Supreme Court Justice. Deciding about such matters is what courts are for.

It is not the job of any news organization to make or enforce that call.

But making that call is what we see increasingly by companies who already enjoy far too much power - the Facebooks, Googles, and other American hi-tech/media companies of far too much power already and far too vast in size.

Theirs is a privileged position in society, and they are beginning to seriously abuse it.

This is dangerous stuff, and I don't mean Alex Jones. It comes from the same folks who been burning and bombing their way through the Middle East for the last 15 years, killing at least two million people and creating armies of desperate refugees.

I do think they are immensely more frightening than any Alex Jones type.

And does any clear-thinking, critical mind believe all that horror is about freedom or democracy or rights?