A week used to be a long time in politics but one day is all it took for an unelected bunch of authoritarians to close down one of the most popular new-media commentators out there, Alex Jones. This is the most significant political development since Trump was elected as it calls into question our power to protect freedom of speech, one of the absolute pillars of the free state.

Do we want China/Google/Apple etc deciding on our “access levels”, or do we trust free people to winnow out the good from the bad? Under the US Constitution’s First Amendment, Congress does not have the right to abridge freedom of speech – but it seems a bunch of unrepresentative nerds in Silicon Valley think they do. Whilst they have no legal monopoly on new-media channels, they have an almost complete practical lock-hold on them.

Apparently, Zuckerberg himself made the final decision to cut Jones off from Facebook, a clear example of the regal power these individuals now seek to wield. Unelected yet extremely powerful, they are a real threat to our liberties and need treated as such.

The fog is clearing and even utopians suffering from their usual myopia must be able to see the shape of things to come. Looming out of the mists is a bleak-looking place, previously heavily cloaked behind the obfuscation used by the deep-staters to conceal their control of the power and the money.

This moment brings to mind Caesar allegedly muttering “the die is cast”, when in contravention of his order to return to Rome alone he waded with his Legion across the Rubicon which marked the border of Italy. Thus began the Civil War which he would win to initiate a four-century long dictatorship, transforming the Republic into a family business, an Empire.

Crossing a small river demonstrated the future dictator’s intent, and our bunch of immature odd-balls with their strange social skills (see Zuckerberg drinking water in the Senate hearings) are launching an inane assault, demonstrating why they are congenitally unsuited to being the arbitrators of public policy.

They have certainly not learned the lessons from Milton’s Areopagitica which covered all the usual arguments nearly four centuries ago. The elite would describe themselves as reasonable but they must think we are not, for as Milton argued, all individuals should have open access to information on which to base their decisions, that they must have “freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing”.

Now these near-monopolists, whose only “genius” is often to buy up their competitors so that they can retain all their markets’ revenue and power, are obviously coordinating their counter-productive attempt to strong-arm Infowars out of business. They are unwise, and their actions have made Jones leap to even greater prominence while also hardening opposition to this self-referential elite.

They bring to mind how kings centralised power in the old tribal communities and took control of their newly minted “subjects”. We’ve seen this before and we don’t need to go through it again.  Time to flick the switch, to cross our Rubicon but go the other way, taking out the dictator and his supporters.

How to fight back? Peacefully, of course, by protesting on the streets and never stopping until Trump can implement his reforms, Brexit is that stated at the time of the Referendum and the Silicon Valley guys and gals global tax “avoidance” shenanigans are openly reviewed by even better lawyers than they can afford.

We all need to make clear to the politicians that universal suffrage came long after we earned our fundamental rights. Many in the UK are, I am sure, already on a proxy-war footing as regards our incredible hate speech laws. These appear to allow anyone, including some Scottish police employee to decide they are insulted on behalf of others and can then attempt to see a comedian incarcerated for “hurt feelings” over a humorous video. No threat, real or implied, of violence needed.

Voting does not trump rights, which are basically being re-defined on-the-go as a result of the hate-speech blizzard fanned by the hard left. These numpties would be Communist Party members today if their predecessors had not lost the argument back in the 80s, managing a niggardly 0.1% of the vote. Now they have morphed into Momentum and sling the weaponised words of racist, hater, fascist and far-right to slander anyone engaging them in argument.

We live in a democracy which can never be perfect as we are all very imperfect human beings. However, there will always be those who believe they have found the grail, seen the light and have the duty to issue those who pass muster with Certificates of Correct Thinking – at first, they only wish to cut off your right to speak but as we push back they generally move onto your head.

The base of our democracy was not built on votes but was set firmly on rights earned and enacted in law, long before universal suffrage had been gained. That base is now under attack, and no legislator, company or individual business owner has any right to undermine it, let destroy it. That way lies blood.

So, we fight for our rights or our wee experiment in democracy is over and we can be enslaved again – and we would deserve to be. That is why we must fight now as elections mean nothing if your right to sway them through argument had been stripped away when Zuckerberg crossed his Rubicon.

Never apologise, never explain and never surrender.

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