On Fearing Freedom—Plus Thanking Substack for Standing up to the Censorship Bullies
Add Your Signature in the Comments to Join Me in Thanking the Founders
“It was the fear of freedom, with all its dangers, that got the Germans into trouble in the first place.… Free inquiry on a free platform is the only practice that distinguishes a free from a slave society.”
—Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45 (Kindle, paperback, audiobook)
“The greatest attack on language is censorship and this must be resisted at every level. You cannot have a free society without free speech, period. Any attempt to argue that others must be protected from offense and hurt feelings should be utterly repudiated. No government, no company, no fact-checkers can ever be the arbiters of truth.”
—Michelle Stiles, One Idea To Rule Them All: Reverse Engineering American Propaganda (Kindle, paperback, audiobook)
Nudging Us to Fear Freedom
If I had been told a decade ago I would be frittering my time arguing with people about why censorship is bad and why free speech must be treasured, I wouldn’t have believed it.
I mean, who objects to freedom? Okay, dictators and their psychophants, yes, but I’m talking about real people, not the uncanny-valley villains trying to rule the world.
And who would be so arrogant as to claim they have the right to silence others? And how could anyone be naïve enough to think that—once empowered to mute citizens—governments, agencies, nonprofits, and corporations would not abuse that power? Have these people never opened a history book?
It was around 2016 when I first noticed the propagandists’ subtle efforts to nudge the public toward acceptance of the idea that some speech should be censored, some information should be bowdlerized, some people should be silenced.
This sociological conditioning is what Jacques Ellul calls “pre-propaganda” in his seminal Propaganda:
“Direct propaganda, aimed at modifying opinions and attitudes, must be preceded by propaganda that is sociological in character, slow, general, seeking to create a climate, an atmosphere of favorable preliminary attitudes. No direct propaganda can be effective without pre-propaganda, which, without direct or noticeable aggression, is limited to creating ambiguities, reducing prejudices, and spreading images, apparently without purpose.… The ground must be sociologically prepared before one can proceed to direct prompting. Sociological propaganda can be compared to plowing, direct propaganda to sowing; you cannot do the one without doing the other first.”
First They Came for the “Nazis”
But don’t worry, Facebook told us, only naughty, nasty little Nazis will be censored—not good, sweet little people like us.
Then 2020 hit, and the totalitarians threw the Disinformation Playbook at doctors, scientists, journalists, and other critically-thinking folks for questioning their Big Lies, followed up by Italian-mother–sized helpings of gaslighting, coercion, and pressures to self-censor.
When all that failed to shut up the bravest voices, they established the Ministry of Truth, installed the Thought Police, hired a mercenary army of fact-chokers, enlisted the COVID kapos, and tried (and in some cases, succeeded) to strip inconveniently credible doctors of their licenses for possessing a functioning brain, conscience, and spine.
And thus censorship became normalized, and people claiming to be fighting Nazis started pouting, throwing tantrums, and threatening to run away if Substack—one of the few remaining havens of free speech untainted by the Censorship Industrial Complex—didn’t violate its writers’ freedom of expression in the name of “safety.”
After the launch of Substack Notes in April 2023, the beggings for muzzlings grew full-throated as the authoritarians used their free speech to shriek for the silencing of others.
Then in November 2023, The Atlantic published a hatchet job titled Substack Has a Nazi Problem, provoking a new wave of wailings from the censorship bullies that has spilled over into 2024.
In that article, Jonathan Katz identifies sixteen (Heavens! Just a few more dominos till world dominion is unlocked!) Substack newsletters that had “overt Nazi symbols, including the swastika and the sonnenrad, in their logos or in prominent graphics”—without substantiating those claims.
I have to wonder how many of them are using that symbol satirically—like the mask artwork on the cover of CJ Hopkins’s The Rise of the New Normal Reich that earned him a no-expenses paid trip to Berlin’s criminal court on January 23 courtesy of Germany’s humor-deficient Thought Gestapo (update: see this article for the triumphant conclusion).
But let’s just give Jonathan the benefit of the doubt and say they’re all legitimate Nazi publications. And then imagine if his pearl-clutching article had been titled “Substack Has a Communist Problem” (and boy, are there a heck of a lot more communist newsletters than sixteen, not to mention those sporting its softer, rebranded sibling that goes by socialist). Why does that ideology get a pass when it was responsible for roughly 140,911,000 more deaths than fascism?
If Substack started purging communists, the stench of McCarthyism would be inescapable, but it’s okay when the silencer is aimed at the Nazis because they’re so obviously the baddies, I guess? (The Nazis are kicking themselves in their graves for not hiring better PR agents.)
So if Substack were to capitulate and deplatform Nazis, would they apply the same criteria to communists and then socialists and then those espousing every other ideology and religion with a history of gore? Because that’s pretty much all of them, and then we’ve run through Martin Niemöller’s entire poem and only a few bland equivocators would be left standing.
Prophesying Cancel Culture, Benjamin Franklin wrote in his Apology for Printers in 1731:
“If all Printers were determin’d not to print any thing till they were sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed.”
Over half a century later, George Washington captured the corrosive nature of censorship in a March 15, 1783, letter to officers of the army:
“If Men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind; reason is of no use to us—the freedom of Speech may be taken away—and, dumb & silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.”
In Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley admonishes:
“The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information. A dictatorship, on the other hand, maintains itself by censoring or distorting the facts, and by appealing, not to reason, not to enlightened self-interest, but to passion and prejudice, to the powerful ‘hidden forces,’ as Hitler called them, present in the unconscious depths of every human mind.”
Huxley’s observations about the younger generations’ indolent slide into slavery presaged the relinquishment of rights today’s indoctrinated cheer on:
“Recent public opinion polls have revealed that an actual majority of young people in their teens, the voters of tomorrow, have no faith in democratic institutions, see no objection to the censorship of unpopular ideas, do not believe that government of the people by the people is possible and would be perfectly content, if they can continue to live in the style to which the boom has accustomed them, to be ruled, from above, by an oligarchy of assorted experts. That so many of the well-fed young television-watchers in the world’s most powerful democracy should be so completely indifferent to the idea of self-government, so blankly uninterested in freedom of thought and the right to dissent, is distressing, but not too surprising.”
He then offers a note of hope:
“The young people who now think so poorly of democracy may grow up to become fighters for freedom. The cry of ‘Give me television and hamburgers, but don’t bother me with the responsibilities of liberty,’ may give place, under altered circumstances, to the cry of ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ If such a revolution takes place, it will be due in part to the operation of forces over which even the most powerful rulers have very little control, in part to the incompetence of those rulers, their inability to make effective use of the mind-manipulating instruments with which science and technology have supplied, and will go on supplying, the would-be tyrant.”
Substack is playing a consequential role in such a revolution by enabling individuals to share information freely—and free of corporate, government, and other dubious influences. That is why pay-to-say lickspittles like The Atlantic are so keen on stigmatizing Substack, which threatens not only their existence but the regime narratives they are bankrolled to propagate.
We are witnessing a historic moment during which the Communication Reformation is rendering the dinosaur media obsolete. Now in its dying thrashes, the MSM is lashing out at the platform whose slingshot has already dispatched the lethal stone.
Talking hairdos no longer serve as the priesthood mediating our perception of reality because we now have the ability—thanks in part to Substack—to communicate directly with genuine, uncorrupted experts ranging from scientists to doctors to data analysts to journalists to attorneys to everything around and in between.
The power is now in the hands of the people rather than the mind-manipulators because we can evaluate primary sources, eyewitness testimonies, documentary evidence, and scientific studies for ourselves without their distorting lenses and advertiser-driven, triple-letter–agency-scripted narratives. We can now see what they have tried to keep hidden, and we can expose their deceptions and reveal the forces pulling their jaw strings in real-time.
Substack founders got it right when they chose to empower We the People with the ability to block and mute those we find detestable. Like Tom Smothers said (later written into the congressional record):
“The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.”
We’ve already seen what happens when Big Tech plays Big Brother, and it’s the Road to Nowhere.
Rather than accomplishing the purported goal of diminishing hate, it achieves the opposite effect thanks to ironic process theory—and now you’ve sacrificed free speech and the power to moderate your own online experience on top of escalating the divisive rhetoric.
People Running About with Lit Matches
In the ultimate irony, Ballantine Books produced an expurgated edition of Fahrenheit 451, having failed to absorb the book’s exhortation about the hazards of censorship. While the 1967 “Bal-Hi” edition was initially aimed at high school students, the excised version had supplanted the original by 1973.
Had it not been for an eagle-eyed Missouri high school English teacher and his students alerting Bradbury to this sacrilege, the original might have been memory-holed forever.
In 1979, Ballantine published a restored edition under its Del Rey Books imprint. It featured a Coda by Bradbury in which he rails against the growing acculturation to censorship:
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/ Seventh‐day Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc‐mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.”
Bradbury then explains how, in Fahrenheit 451, Fire Captain Beatty:
“described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever.”
The red-liners always start with the best of intentions, whether sincere or ostensible. Eventually, the markings reveal themselves for the bloody stab wounds they are, but by then, the damage has already been done, sometimes irreparably so.
Substack is one of the only platforms whose founders have remained unwavering in the face of successive blitzkriegs by lavishly funded propagandists and their minions, making it a rare safeguard of the “free inquiry on a free platform” Milton Mayer held aloft as “the only practice that distinguishes a free from a slave society.”
Thomas Jefferson once wrote to James Madison that he “prefer[s] dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”
Those who have endured the ever-tightening screws of crystallizing totalitarianism understand free speech is our first-line barricade against servitude, and Substack is the keystone in that wall.
To , , and , I say: Thank you for standing up to the censorship bullies. Thank you for not letting them heckle you into compromising your principled commitment to free speech. Thank you for making Substack a beacon of integrity amidst the morass of tyranny-enabling vassals. Thank you for sheltering the torch of liberty America’s founders risked their lives to light.
To my readers: If you are reading this article and want to join me in thanking Substack for standing firm against the crybullies, please indicate so in the comments, and we will deliver a thank-you letter to buttress the signatures of free-speech champions Elle Griffin gathered in this letter and Note.
The Substack Censorship Wars
To read my entertaining and edifying exchanges with censorship bullies on Substack Notes, see Round 1 of The Substack Censorship Wars:
Subscribe if you want to get early access to Round 2 when it’s published:
In a textbook demonstration of narcissistic projection, those arguing for censorship to supposedly protect others from “mean” words and violent acts waged ferocious verbal attacks on me, including calling me a “misogynist” who is “complicit in neo-Naziism” in one breath and a “dumb bitch” in the next. Another made statements about me with racist overtones Peter Nayland Kust astutely called out as “bigoted and prejudicial language” and “harassing speech.” One even floated the idea of “incit[ing] a mob on social media to kill Margaret Anne [sic] Alice” in a failed attempt to rile me.
Enjoy traveling through the menticided minds of those who practice hate in the name of love as they serve up everything on the logical fallacies menu, from ad hominems to straw men to argument from repetition to appeals to emotion and authority.
© Margaret Anna Alice, LLC
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How Propaganda & Censorship Changed Our World
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“I was particularly inspired by the poem that was read by Tess Lawrie, ‘Mistakes Were NOT Made’ written by Margaret Anna Alice, a profound and deeply moving reflective poem around some of the illegitimacies of the Covid era and its emotional impact. Margaret Anna is joined by some other experienced poets in this anthology. You might spot their work, yet this collection of verse shows that neither literary genius nor knowledge of iambic pentameter is needed to artfully express the pain and frustration in our hearts during this time.”
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To help boost search availability and rankings, please consider purchasing copies as well as rating and reviewing it (it has all five-star reviews as of the time of this writing). The description reads:
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“What unites them is that they have given those looking for answers, factual evidence. They have alleviated fear and given us hope. They have shown us all that if our opinions fall outside those deemed acceptable by mainstream media, we are not alone.
“The subject of COVID is often too sensitive to introduce into polite conversation. Battle lines are drawn and more often than not there’s no amount of data, facts or opinion that will change perspectives. However, we believe that once people understand that their opinions have been formed based on information that has been heavily censored and that most legacy media are now instruments of propaganda, they will be more inclined to entertain the possibility that all is not what it seems.
“The endeavour of this book is to bring thoughtful voices together to sing as one choir. The diversity of these voices that harmonise may allow others to hear the music. Over the last three years solo voices have too often been drowned out of the discourse.
“For once you see it, you can’t unsee it. You’ll understand the power of censorship and propaganda to conceal the lies and dishonesty that now underpin our societal foundations.”
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If you would like to join me in thanking Substack founders Hamish McKenzie, Chris Best, and Jairaj Sethi for resolutely defending free speech against the censorship bullies, please add your signature below.
Their principled position has cost them financially given the departure of major Substackers such as Jonathan Katz and Casey Newton. Let’s show them we appreciate their refusal to compromise what makes Substack stand out from the cowardly and complicit platforms that have caved to the crybullies and even colluded with government to violate the free speech rights of individuals. And let’s encourage others to join Substack to more than offset the losses they have experienced.
THANK YOU, SUBSTACK, for choosing freedom over fear! 🙏💪🙌
I was going to thank you passionately for what you shared in today's blog, Margaret Anna...where do I "sign"?? It is truly horrific what is happening in our once great country. Once the "thought police" are firmly entrenched it will take an Act of Divine Wrath to upend them.
FIGHT ON, courageous Warrior Person!!