by Vince McLeod.

17 January 2023

With the release of the Twitter Files recently, it’s now official that the US Government colluded with major social media to manipulate public perception. We now know that the US Government, through the FBI, was able to request Twitter to take down posts they didn’t like. This is not only a violation of the American First Amendment, but contravenes the very spirit of free speech laws.

That the governments of the world collaborate with the mainstream media is not a new idea. Operation Mockingbird demonstrated almost 50 years ago that the US Government planted intelligence officers in mainstream media entities, for the specific purpose of pushing pro-Establishment propaganda. The Twitter Files are just another example of this long-established pattern.

Domestic propaganda was openly used by George W Bush to manipulate public perception in favour of his administration’s policies. Doing so was illegal, but that didn’t concern Bush any more than the legality of invading Iraq did. Then the open use of domestic propaganda was given a massive boost when Barack Obama made it legal.

Ten years ago, in the middle of the Obama reign, the alternative media dominated what were then the alternative media platforms. The mainstream media was still clinging to print, television and radio. But the mainstream media came to realise that the internet was the future. They began to take social media seriously.

However, an obstacle remained. People preferred alternative media. They enjoyed the more casual interactions with smaller media entities. This led to high levels of trust, something the mainstream media no longer enjoyed since acting as cheerleaders for the Iraq War. It meant that all the intelligence operatives embedded in mainstream media could no longer control the narrative.

The solution? Ban the alternative media!

Once the Establishment realised that the horse of narrative control had bolted, they retreated to their fallback position of banning all alternative narratives. Mass censorship was the strategy used by authoritarians in the past, whether Nazi or Communist, so it’s no surprise that neoliberal authoritarians would do the same.

The image above shows what happened to the Google traffic of VJM Publishing on the 5th December 2020, after the Establishment decided they’d had enough of us. Our organic traffic was restricted from 200 or so hits per day to less than 50. It was as if someone reached into the Google algorithm and pressed a button that said, “Throttle traffic to VJM Publishing!”

Joe Biden’s America considers dissenters to be domestic terrorists. Jacinda Ardern’s New Zealand is no different. Agree with the authorities and fall in line, or you’re a terrorist. Given this attitude, it’s not surprising that Western governments are doing everything they can to destroy those who will not submit.

The Twitter Files are proof that little has changed since Operation Mockingbird in the 1970s. Western governments still use embedded intelligence agents to control the narrative, only they now do this with social media as well as legacy media.

Indeed, little has changed since 1928, when Edward Bernays wrote that, “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

That invisible government, now global, still intends to manipulate the opinions of the masses. So now that the opinion-forming mechanisms have transitioned from radio, television and newspaper to social media and search engines, the invisible government has taken over the Internet.

The ongoing Twitter Files saga is utterly undeniable proof that all of the major social media portals are heavily infiltrated by Establishment operatives. It turns out that, as Joy Pullmann put it, “Twitter, Facebook, Google, et al., are part of government propaganda operations.” Whereas the US Government used to plant intelligence officers in CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post, they now plant them in Twitter, FaceBook, Google and Reddit.

Predictably, the Establishment will scream about how all this is conspiracy theory, and how none of the mainstream social media platforms or search engines have intelligence officers on their staff, and how, even if they did, they’re not censoring anything. But people who have followed the history of governmental interference in mainstream media will understand that the Twitter Files haven’t shown proof of anything unexpected.

What the Twitter Files have shown proof of is government officials working to destroy free speech rights, which in Western countries are protected under human rights legislation. This is therefore proof of a human rights abuse – but don’t hold your breath waiting for prosecution.

Thanks to widespread censorship pushed by Western governments, it’s now impossible to trust the narrative coming from mainstream Internet sources any more than the narrative coming from legacy media. Smart people will follow alternative media outlets, such as CounterSpin Media and VJM Publishing, to get facts and evidence instead of a globalist, corporatist, Establishment agenda.

For more of Vince McLeod’s thought, check out his Amazon author page.