UPDATED: What is happening in the UK right now is the biggest assault on our civil liberties in history and is causing the worst recession for 300 years. You may argue that in order to stop the spread of a disease where the average death is at 82.4 years, a year greater than UK life expectancy, such measures are justified. I support your right to do so. But I might counter that since all prior lockdowns failed to stop Covid, then why should this make any difference and that, in any way, the response is disproportionate and unwarranted. But big media does not want that debate to happen at all. The GroupThink of the media and political classes just must not be challenged.
And most folks agree with that line. They want more lockdowns, they want no dissent. We who try to ask questions face abuse and harassment or, should we go on a protest of more than two people, arrest. Just as it was in suppressing revelations about the Biden crime family ahead of the US election which, demonstrably, swung the result, big media is complicit in all of this.
Last night, Youtube took down the channel of TalkRadio, one of the few UK media outlets which has again and again questioned lockdown. After howls of protest, that call has now been reversed but what happened is shocking nonetheless.
TalkRadio is not a radio station that pushes the wild fantasies and conspiracy theories of David Icke or Piers Corbyn. It simply asks the hard questions that the whole media should be asking, in holding leaders to account, but has disgraced itself in not asking.
YouTube’s Covid-19 guidelines from May 2020 state that “YouTube doesn’t allow content that spreads medical misinformation that contradicts local health authorities’ or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) medical information about COVID-19.” This includes bans on:
Content that discourages people from consulting a medical professional or seeking medical advice.
Content that promotes diagnostic methods that contradict local health authorities or WHO.
Content that disputes the efficacy of local health authorities’ or WHO’s guidance on physical distancing or self-isolation measures to reduce transmission of COVID-19.
If a channel violates policies such as this three times, it will be shut down. Talkradio has fallen foul of the third of these rules. Please, whatever your views on lockdown, for a second consider this: a media outlet has been blocked from reaching a wider audience for questioning Government policy. Just how frightening is this?
Youtube, Twitter, Facebook can swing elections by suppressing material, they can block out content that challenges Government policy and the liberal left has stayed silent because it hated Donald Trump so much that it cared more about the result than the process and because largely it supports the lockdown, caring not a jot about the destruction of large swathes of the private sector or about civil liberties.
We on the right believe in free markets, not just in an economic sense but in the exchange of ideas. We do not need to silence the opposition to win the debate. We welcome our opponents saying what they actually believe.
Comrade Orwell is once again shown for the visionary he was. Once again I commend to you to the little introduction to Animal Farm which lefty teachers ensure that their students fail to read, lest they consider the possibility that George was not one of them.