Name: The Left’s Long War on Conservative Free Speech | National Review
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The Left’s Long War on Conservative Free Speech | National Review

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n the competition of ideas, you can’t win the game if you’re not on the playing field.That’s why Silicon Valley bigwigs’ stubborn refusal to put business above their own personal partisan biases doesn’t just rankle; it reeks. Equal access to social media is not just about sharing food pics, pet videos, makeup tutorials, and travelogues. It’s about ensuring the ability to disseminate and distribute political speech on the world’s biggest platforms.Although I started in the metro newspaper industry in 1992, my years as an independent conservative blogger and Internet entrepreneur have been the most journalistically enriching. I launched my first website in 1999, my namesake blog in 2004, my first group blog and video content platform HotAir.com and my YouTube channel in 2006 (where I broadcast reports from Iraq), my Twitter account in 2008, my second group website Twitchy.com in 2012, and my documentary-style web series, “Michelle Malkin Investigates,” for CRTV.com in 2016.I don’t just preach the First Amendment. I practice it for a living.Early adopter status was important for us non-leftists who saw the disruptive influence and narrative-setting opportunities that new media and social media offered. I was ridiculed by mainstream-media colleagues for wasting time on the Internet, derided as “just a blogger” (which I proudly turned into a hashtag), and mocked for starting a Twitter aggregation business long before corporate media outlets copied the idea.Over the years, I’ve joined other independent conservative social-media users in exposing coordinated “flag-spamming” campaigns against right-wing personalities and causes. Pro-life, pro-border-security, and anti-jihadist journalists and activists have all been selectively gagged on Google/YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. I’ve worked with a few good-faith employees at these companies who tried to treat conservatives fairly. But in the unhinged era of the anti-Trump resistance, intermittent purges, “accidental” suspensions, and suspicious deletions of conservative content have spiked to a level of systemic censorship.Twelve years after its founding, Twitter has abandoned its corporate motto of “Defend and respect the user’s voice.” Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, set to testify before Congress in two weeks, admitted his company’s left-wing bias and dismissed revelations from his own engineers, who confided to undercover Project Veritas journalists that they were creating algorithms to “ban a way of talking,” “down rank” users based on politics, and employ “machine learning” to create special triggers and keywords — “the majority of (which) are for Republicans.”In April, the brilliant anti-leftist street artist Sabo disappeared from Twitter without warning or explanation.My friend and CRTV.com colleague Gavin McInnes was silenced on Twitter recently for absolutely no good reason and remains suspended.Prager University, with which I collaborated on a new video about immigration and border security, has been suppressed on Facebook, and it’s clear it was no accidental glitch. One of the videos yanked was conservative millennial vlogger and CRTV.com host Allie Stuckey’s piece called “Make Men Masculine Again.”Author and philosopher Stefan Molyneux, whose video podcasts have 250 million views, was also silenced by speech suppressors on YouTube, which arbitrarily issued community-guideline-violation strikes against him for videos including an interview with British journalist Katie Hopkins and a discussion on the Death of White Males.My friend and conservative-social-media guru Nick Short, of the Security Studies Group, was one of thousands of conservative activists who discovered they’ve been throttled by Twitter’s use of a “complex and opaque Quality Filter algorithm that has the effect of disproportionately restricting the voices of conservatives under the guise of limiting harmful or abusive users.”Same as it ever was. For three decades, the far-left has waged continuous war on conservative free speech in every available space.They have organized militant boycott campaigns against the Right’s most effective advocates on talk radio — including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and Laura Ingraham. They pressured advertisers to withdraw from Dr. Laura Schlesinger’s national TV show when she was at the height of her popularity and mainstream commercial success.Democrats have exploited national tragedies from the Oklahoma City bombing to the Tucson massacre to try to regulate lawful, peaceful conservative free speech and enact an Orwellian Fairness Doctrine under the guise of decency, diversity, and equality.The “new” war on conservatives on the Internet is the same old attempt by desperate liberals to shut down their competitors in the marketplace of ideas. If you can’t beat ’em, deplatform ’em. That’s the progressive way.The right-wing solution is not to lie down, but to win over more converts, find new ways to disseminate our news and views, and turn up the heat. I’ve been doing it for 25-plus years and have no intention on cooling off, giving in, or shutting up. Speak for those who have no voice. Support those speaking for you.And one last action item: Remember this in November. The ballot box is one of the mightiest platforms we have. Use it or lose it.Copyright © 2018 Creators.comIN THE NEWS:ByThe polling aggregator on the website RealClearPolitics shows the margin in polls led by Joe Biden in a blue font and the ones led by Donald Trump in red. For a while, the battleground states have tended to be uniformly blue, except for polls conducted by the Trafalgar Group.If you are a firm believer only in ...ByThe polling aggregator on the website RealClearPolitics shows the margin in polls led by Joe Biden in a blue font and the ones led by Donald Trump in red. For a while, the battleground states have tended to be uniformly blue, except for polls conducted by the Trafalgar Group.If you are a firm believer only in ...ByVaping is supposed to be a form of harm reduction, that is, allow nicotine addicts to have access to the drug without the harmful tars and chemicals in cigarettes that cause cancer, heart disease, and other maladies.Last year, the Journal of the American Heart Association published a study finding that vaping ...ByVaping is supposed to be a form of harm reduction, that is, allow nicotine addicts to have access to the drug without the harmful tars and chemicals in cigarettes that cause cancer, heart disease, and other maladies.Last year, the Journal of the American Heart Association published a study finding that vaping ...VideoDuring her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Judge Amy Coney Barrett revealed her empty notepad to Sen. 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John Cornyn (R., Texas).BySenator Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) has sent a letter to FBI director Christopher Wray asking him to clarify whether the agency possesses documents from the laptop of Hunter Biden, Fox News reported on Sunday.The request comes after the&nbsp;New York Post revealed various emails written by or sent to Hunter Biden, who ...BySenator Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) has sent a letter to FBI director Christopher Wray asking him to clarify whether the agency possesses documents from the laptop of Hunter Biden, Fox News reported on Sunday.The request comes after the&nbsp;New York Post revealed various emails written by or sent to Hunter Biden, who ...BySometimes when Joe Biden offers yarns about his childhood, I think of a Woody Allen bit from his stand-up days in which the comic tells the story of being invited to a Halloween party while visiting the Deep South in the early 1960s. Allen decides to dress-up as a ghost, and throws on a white sheet and sets off. ...BySometimes when Joe Biden offers yarns about his childhood, I think of a Woody Allen bit from his stand-up days in which the comic tells the story of being invited to a Halloween party while visiting the Deep South in the early 1960s. Allen decides to dress-up as a ghost, and throws on a white sheet and sets off. ...ByThe nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court exposes the Left’s disdain for women who are not like them. As accomplished scholars, jurists, and mothers, Barrett and Ginsburg represent the very best of the legal profession. But their confirmation ...ByThe nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court exposes the Left’s disdain for women who are not like them. As accomplished scholars, jurists, and mothers, Barrett and Ginsburg represent the very best of the legal profession. But their confirmation ...By &amp;Our health-care system is experiencing rapid, powerful change, far more consequential than is generally recognized. Although these changes are welcomed by many in the health-policy community (see our assessment a year ago), even those who applaud them have been surprised at their speed and impact.What follows ...By &amp;Our health-care system is experiencing rapid, powerful change, far more consequential than is generally recognized. Although these changes are welcomed by many in the health-policy community (see our assessment a year ago), even those who applaud them have been surprised at their speed and impact.What follows ...ByIf you know how to read the ether, you can hear whispers of what is really happening, what is wrong, and, sometimes, what is coming.The Wall Street Journal is an indispensable daily firehose of facts and figures: new unemployment claims, GDP growth, IPO prices, movements within asset classes. If you were like ...ByIf you know how to read the ether, you can hear whispers of what is really happening, what is wrong, and, sometimes, what is coming.The Wall Street Journal is an indispensable daily firehose of facts and figures: new unemployment claims, GDP growth, IPO prices, movements within asset classes. If you were like ...ByJoel Kotkin, the Presidential Fellow of Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., has written extensively on demographics, housing, and issues related to income inequality in the 21st century. Kotkin often blends research on demographics with historical reasoning, and he has chronicled the decline of ...ByJoel Kotkin, the Presidential Fellow of Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., has written extensively on demographics, housing, and issues related to income inequality in the 21st century. Kotkin often blends research on demographics with historical reasoning, and he has chronicled the decline of ...ByAccording to a 2015 email, then–vice president Joe Biden met with a top executive at Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm that paid Biden’s son, Hunter, $50,000 a month to sit on its board. 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n the competition of ideas, you can’t win the game if you’re not on the playing field.That’s why Silicon Valley bigwigs’ stubborn refusal to put business above their own personal partisan biases doesn’t just rankle; it reeks. Equal access to social media is not just about sharing food pics, pet videos, makeup tutorials, and travelogues. It’s about ensuring the ability to disseminate and distribute political speech on the world’s biggest platforms.Although I started in the metro newspaper industry in 1992, my years as an independent conservative blogger and Internet entrepreneur have been...

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Michelle Malkin

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The Left’s Long War on Conservative Free Speech | National Review

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