As IF Times

link:  https://www.naturalnews.com/2024-12-03-european-journalists-leaving-x-despise-free-speech.html

In 2006, a group of young people including Jack Dorsey started a little company named Twitter which was in fact only a side venture of their main project at the time.  Twitter was originally meant as a short messaging application allowing only a few characters to be sent, so the messages had to be brief and to the point.

The idea gained traction amongst early adopters and by 2013, after an IPO raising $1.8 billion, it was valued at $25 billion.  While that was an eye popping number, Elon Musk came along in 2022 and paid $44 billion to buy the entire company.  While numerous other social media messaging platforms have appeared since Twitter, now rebranded as X, this platform remains the most widely used and referred messaging platform in the world….not to mention the most influential. It is so influential that some authoritarian governments, such as Brazil’s, actually banned the use of X by their population.

Nowadays, X is the source for the most up to date information on every event worldwide since everyone who uses it can be a conduit for news. How quaint to think about the environment of a few decades ago when you had to wait for the 6 o’clock news.  Even professional journalists had to have an exposure to the platform to stay current with world affairs.  Of course, the flip side to the flood of current information was the proliferation of opinions on any given topic, many of which are considered controversial.

Until Elon Musk purchased and rebranded the platform, Twitter took it upon itself to censor posts which were not in line with the views of the owners.  Thus, as in most media companies, the views of conservatives were censored or just outright banned. Twitter fell into being an echo chamber for left leaning views as did all other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

As Musk took control of the company, he reinstated the principle of free speech to the platform and thus, X truly regained its reputation as being the forum for the exchange of ideas, opinions and news.  To this day, users from across the ideological spectrum use X for their messages to the public, from celebrities, to the plain folk, from politicians to tyrants (often the same).

An odd thing happened since Musk’s takeover.  Now that X is a conduit for freedom of information and opinion, legions of once active social justice posters have publicly left the platform, including most recently over 300 European journalists.

If you think about it, why do journalists even exist?  Their notional job is to report news and events.  Currently, with eyeballs everywhere and with access to platforms such as X, we don’t need a middleman to tell us that a house is on fire.  We can observe that by ourselves.  Information is available, it’s current and it’s accurate.  Journalism these days consists of reporting on an event and supplementing it with commentaries entirely misleading or inaccurate.  Thus, a burning house will be characterized as a result of policies not friendly to climate change.  A couple of people seen sneezing at a venue constitutes evidence of a massive pandemic. It’s as if you ordered a meal at a restaurant and the waiter regales you with a narrative of how the food was artfully prepared by culturally sensitive craftsmen using only natural ingredients and socially acceptable techniques.  So, basically you get a free side dish of sanctimony that you didn’t ask for.

We don’t need middlemen to report the news. It reminds me of the old cliché about consultants; they look at your watch and tell you what time it is…for a fee.  The 300 ‘journalists’ quitting X are enacting a real life ‘Blazing Saddles’ moment, they are threatening their own livelihoods in protest of not being able to spin the news their way.  They’ve all but admitted that they no longer control the narrative, thus they are superfluous.  The past dozen years or so have exposed the majority of media to be fatally biased at best or are loyal mouthpieces of the governing establishment at worst. How often have we seen numerous media outlets use exactly the same phraseology to characterize an event… as if it were orchestrated?

We can say without exaggeration that Elon Musk has single-handedly restored free speech to the world.  He has allowed people to see that their views, though not blessed by the mainstream, are not unique; that many feel the way that they do.  This is an enormously powerful revelation and will have an enormous negative impact on authoritarian governments everywhere.

Donald Trump will go down in history as the only man to have ever won 3 national elections. As the results emerged last night, it became clear that the message he has been promoting resonated with an increasingly large swath of voters.

However, even among the media who were notionally pro Trump and certainly among many conservatives, there was still only guarded enthusiasm as everyone is residually scarred by the sudden change in voter numbers in 2020 when Trump had also apparently secured the requisite numbers for victory. The Charlie Brown, Lucy, football scenario lingered in their minds.

There is a scene in the 1983 comedy film, Yellowbeard, in which a blind beggar asks for some food from a Pirate.  The Pirate tells the blind man that he can have some chicken and proceeds to hand him a chunk of bread.  The blind beggar thanks him profusely for the ‘chicken’ and scurries away.  I’m reminded of this scene because of the masterful job of gas-lighting that the left have managed to impose over their years in power.  Regular people were made to doubt even what was clearly evident in front of them in favor of the narrative coming from the left.  Even very conservative media and many people in the general population were not ready to believe the news of a Trump victory.  They had become programmed to become cynical and fearful of optimism after years of a constant barrage of propaganda. Relentless browbeating from all fronts made people accept almost anything as truth.  It almost worked.

Donald Trump refused to be beaten.  He and a very small core population did not succumb to the narrative pushed daily from the left.  While at first marginalized and scorned, his persistence of message gathered more and more believers as it became more and more evident that the nation was collapsing badly on all fronts; economically, culturally, politically and upon the world stage.   As we all know by now, his message of optimism gathered more and more adherents during his campaign, even as there were several assassination attempts on his life. His stature as a hero, one who would literally put his life on the line for citizens, resonated with a growing number of people disenchanted with the inauthentic heroes posted by the left. He was the real guy. He wasn’t manufactured.  Rational people can sense authenticity and his support exploded across all demographics.   Perseverance in the face of adversity is as an American trait as it gets and Trump personified this. People love and identify with stories of overcoming bullies. Detractors could only point nebulously to his unlikeable personality.  Can’t please everyone.

But despite the left’s gas-lighting, their balkanization of the population into their own interest groups and the pleading of ‘celebrities’, the people could feel empathy with Trump’s message.  At the base of it all, most people just want to be left alone to pursue a life with their families. They don’t want to be told how to comport themselves, how to look after their families and to be taxed at every turn.  They didn’t want their tax dollars spent on distant wars, for questionable causes and for illegal entrants.  They reject all the ‘isms’ imposed upon them.  The problem was always that they did not have anyone to strongly champion their cause. They could see the bullying by the left in their attempts to imprison and bankrupt both Trump and his supporters and even exposed him to physical harm.  Trump’s steadfast refusal to back down struck an enormous chord with people who needed a real champion.  This message resonated with some very influential people such as Elon Musk, Robert  Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, all former Democrats who came to support Trump’s vision for America.  They recognized the dangerous path that the nation was on and they chose to support decency for the future.   Decency is not abstract.  It is not what a celebrity tells you it is.  It is comportment by oneself that is performed even when no one else is aware of it but you.  Most people know this and they see that decency in Trump.

The reality is that the US is the only place left in the world in which freedom of speech and of actions are uniquely celebrated and encouraged.  Every other nation in the world has minor to severe restrictions on what their citizens are allowed to do…including all of the notional free countries of the West. The hysterical handwringing from the left on a potential tyrannical regime clearly disregards those 3 recent tyrannical years of forced vaccinations, masking, confinement and restricted travelling enforced by police against people’s wills.

Finally, the euthanizing of P’Nut the squirrel was a clarion call for people who were enraged by bureaucratic tyranny imposed by the state at all levels.  The lack of judgement in so many facets of people’s lives demonstrated by this cruel event probably prompted even the most cynical to vote Trump.  If there’s one tyrannical edict I’d like to see mandated by the incoming administration it would be that people need to be rational and to think for themselves.  The time for groupthink is over.