It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.
~ Equality 7-2521 (Anthem by Ayn Rand)
(Credit: Nkrita/Wikimedia Commons)
With the more recent spate of “cancellations” on Big Tech social media platforms, I have a feeling that we in the West have something to learn from Soviet dissidents who, at the time, risked their freedom and their very lives to disseminate “subversive” writings to their countrymen.
Today it would seem that nobody is immune to the heavy hand of censorship from sources both public and private.
My first experience with being cancelled for my political comments1 was with Just Right, a radio program I co-host with Bob Metz and formerly broadcast on CHRW 94.9 FM in London, Ontario. It was September 2015 and the term “cancel culture” had yet to be coined but the seed had been planted with what, at the time, was being referred to as “call-out culture.”
As Bob and I turned to broadcasting our program on Shortwave (which increased our listeners five-fold) and relying on social media to popularize our message we soon realized that being cancelled by our opponents was a tool of theirs that would never cease.
We have had Just Right Media Facebook ads not approved because Facebook would not allow us to post political ads directed at United States citizens.2
We have had a video taken down from YouTube because it mentioned alternative opinions regarding the SARS-CoV-2 virus.3 [Watch it on Rumble]
And another was taken down that featured the distinguished professor, Salim Mansur commenting on the 2020 election steal.4 [Watch it on Rumble]
We have not been able to monetize several of our videos on YouTube because our political opinions were deemed “not suitable for most advertisers” which is simply their way of saying that our opinions did not conform to their ideological doctrine.
My personal Twitter account was temporarily suspended5 for daring to suggest to Justin Trudeau that he “learn to code.”6
And Just Right Media is only one small voice in the public arena.
In 2017, in one of the first and most public instances of cancel culture, Dr. Jordan Peterson had his Gmail account deleted ostensibly because he was against compelled speech. True to form, Dr. Peterson did not stand for it and the decision was immediately overturned following his publicizing of the action.7
Today we see renowned and celebrated experts such as Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA technology, being “cancelled” from Twitter. Here he is on GETTR explaining the supposed reason for his cancellation.
As the list of truth-sayers dwindles on the largest of the social media platforms and their voices are being drowned out by the legacy media and government, I shudder to think that the only way that may be left for people like me to publish our views is through samizdat.
Samizdat noun
Clandestinely circulated self-published literature which was forbidden and suppressed in the Soviet Union.
As World War III—The Great Reset marches onward we who go against doctrine may soon find that the only way to publicize our opinions is by slipping leaflets in people’s mailboxes under cover of darkness or by friend-to-friend concealed in a handshake (should handshaking no longer be the conspicuous action of COVID subversives and refuseniks).