Our wish for this and every Fourth of July –

May all our American readers, commenters, contributors, associates, critics, visitors and passers-by have a happy Independence Day!

Step by step, Facebook is becoming a medium for the communication of Leftism only.

Its existing policy of censoring conservative opinion is to be ever more strictly implemented, to the point – we foresee – of total suppression.

It has now put itself under the orders of “90 left-wing organizations”.

Brent Bozell writes at Media Research Center (MRC):

On Sunday [June 30, 2019], Facebook Chief Operations Officer Sheryl Sandberg announced the company’s latest efforts to institutionalize the demands of 90 left-wing organizations into the company’s operations, including disturbing efforts geared toward the 2020 elections.

Brent Bozell is making this widely known on behalf of a coalition of conservative organizations.

Media Research Center President (MRC) Brent Bozell issued the following statement Tuesday on behalf of The Free Speech Alliance, a coalition of more than 50 conservative organizations committed to combating online bias and censorship: 

Sheryl Sandberg just announced that she is allowing the ACLU and 90 left-wing organizations to dictate nearly every aspect of Facebook’s policies. This will let the left dominate the most powerful social media platform on the face of the earth. That raises significant legal and statutory issues that should worry both left and right.

Facebook hasn’t released the names of these groups, but the crux of their plans is clear – the influence of everything Facebook does from hiring more liberals to control of all content. That goes so far as to include advertising, partnerships and control of the product itself.

Now these left-wing groups have the power over every post a conservative makes. Facebook can’t be a free marketplace of ideas with the left controlling everything and the firm’s No. 2 [Sheryl Sandberg] overseeing and embracing all they are doing.

The company getting in bed with these liberal organizations – especially in its efforts to prepare for the 2020 elections – should be deeply alarming to the conservative movement, Congress, potentially the FEC, and indeed all Americans.

This was a big mistake on Facebook’s part. We hope they will rethink the decisions they have made.

They won’t.

Corinne Weaver, also at MRC, writes more about the decision:

Facebook released an update of its so-called “civil rights” audit June 30. The results did not bode well for conservatives, as the company committed to work with left-wing groups in every facet of its business.

The audit announced a “Civil Rights Task Force”, led by COO Sheryl Sandberg, which will rely on third-party “civil rights expertise” to make decisions. The task force will address all key departments of the business from content and partnerships to human resources. It will exist to “ensure civil rights concerns raised by outside groups are escalated promptly to decision-makers so that they can be considered and acted on quickly”.

[The audit] called for even more censorship than Facebook already has … hate speech to be censored even more, as well as “hateful ideologies”.

Humor will be removed as a protected category. [“Any humor that could be construed as an attack should be removed.”] …

Scrupulous human scrutiny is needed:

“Under-enforcement of hate speech policies” … [has meant] that only 65 percent of posts removed for hate speech were removed automatically, as opposed to being subject to human review.

Conservative opinion as such is classed as “hate speech”. All of it must go.

By this means the Facebook honchos expect to get the Left into power – forever.

Why persons who have made billions in this sweet land of capitalism want to hand it over to socialists, who will turn it into a vast permanent refugee camp, remains an impenetrable mystery.

Our Facebook page is still “suspended” although the declared three days of our punishment – for “violating” its “community standards” by posting a link to a documentary on the spread of sharia in Britain – are over.

This is the notice we have tried and failed to place today on Facebook:

We exist to criticize religion, including the religion of Leftism – one of the two worst. The other “worst”, equally appalling, is Islam.

If we are to be suspended for criticizing Islam – and soon it will probably be for criticizing the Left – we have these choices:

(1) We can become self-censoring to try and avoid suspension. In other words, cave to Facebook’s tyranny, accept limits to our freedom of expression. This would be to concede a victory to Facebook, and to frustrate the purpose for which we exist. So obviously we will not do it.

(2) We can abandon using Facebook immediately. This too would be giving in to Facebook’s bigotry. So we won’t do that either.

(3) Carry on as usual, risking frequent suspension. The Facebook algorithm that censors us is probably programmed to effect a policy of “X strikes and you’re out” – meaning the end of our page.

We were warned three months ago by one-who-knows (not a Facebook employee) that we probably have about three months to go before we will be censored out of existence. That censorship has started. Four days ago we were abruptly suspended for three days for “violating” Facebook’s “community standards”. Beware the word “community” in all political contexts. It implies that the Group is always more important than the Individual, and that is the notion at the heart of all collectivist ideologies.

One of our highly valued supportive commenters informed our readers on our behalf (since we could not write a thing or even “like” a comment) that we were being suspended. If our page were to be abruptly terminated, no notice to our readers would be possible of course. And this could happen, because we are choosing the third way we have listed: to carry on as usual, risking suspension and elimination. There would be no sense in doing anything else. It is what we are for.

So we are posting this to warn our readers that we might disappear from time to time or even permanently. If we are abolished, it will be entirely against our will. We’ll be very sorry indeed to lose our much appreciated supporters, constructive critics, like-thinkers and followers who help to make our page a valuable intellectual resource that pays the price that must be paid for freedom – eternal vigilance.

As we say in our Articles of Reason on our website – which will survive, and to which we hope our Facebook readers will turn if we lose this page:

Many a belief can survive persecution but not critical examination.

That is why they fear us and try to silence us.

3 hours later: Our “suspension” is over. We can post again.

We expect that next time we will be shut out for longer.