Normally I do not base posts on single tweets, but this account by HealthRanger (hat tip Chuck L) on coming intensified censorship of what is deemed to anti-Israel information is credible.
HealthRanger is a tech-adjacent business operator. His account has over 300,000 followers, and is very much anti-genocide/anti-Zionist. He was quickly critical of Trump’s Zionist cabinet appointments, for instance. I have only skimmed some of his older posts. He was also opposed to the Covid vaccines, but does not appear to have kept harping on that topic as many diehards do. But being on that side of the issue has made him very much aware of the messaging control during the “get everyone vaxxed” era. Admittedly, he has some tweets on nasty, coming-to-your-theater-soon war tech that seem a bit woo woo. But that does not bear on him picking up on chatter regarding censorship plans.
Truth is famously the first casualty of war. It seems a no-brainer that an effort to limit negative information about how Israel is faring and criticism of Israel generally is a given if the US formally joins Israel in attacking Iran, as opposed to continuing to try to have it both ways by merely being a too-visible partner but not the front guy. So even if Health Ranger’s sources are wrong on the fine points, it seems hard to imagine that something like the censorship program he outlines is not in the works. Look at what we’ve seen already on campuses.
We saw from the Twitter files that the Biden Administration, for the most part, relied on getting social media platforms to accept the premise that barring “misinformation” was entirely valid, and would use that to often politely but sometimes not, press for certain content to be removed and authors penalized or banned. Facebook and Twitter also have the ability to promote and muffle content, and that was a softer censorship measures, simply dampening the visibility of disfavored-speak.
It seems very unlikely that the Trumpies would go the soft-gloved route. But that also means the fingerprints of First Amendment violations would be far easier to see….assuming, of course, that one could get judges to react on a fast enough turnaround.
This coming crackdown also confirms our conservative policy of always running on our own hardware and avoiding using Twitter meaningfully and Facebook at all. As we’ve long said, “If your business depends on a platform, you don’t have a business.”
One can assume, as with the Covid speech clampdown, that the focus will be on social media, as in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tik-Tok. Needless to say, we are about to see how hypocritical Team Trump’s free speech posturing was, and how Musk’s free speech absolutism pretenses will go out the window.
We’ll see how this rolls out, but I would anticipate that high profile YouTubers and podcasters will be first on the hit list.
The interesting question will be Substack. Substack has made a lot of noise not just about being a free speech space, but also being willing to litigate on behalf of its writers. Will they fall in with content-choking? Demands to unplatform certain writers? Or will they put up a fight?
Now to the tweet from Health Ranger. For convenience, I am embedding it (which only displays an opening portion) and the body below.
🚨 RED ALERT: WE ARE GOING INTO A MAJOR WAR AND THERE WILL BE EXTREME CENSORSHIP under a new Office of War Information (OWI for 2025) org! (But not named OWI.) Following my previous post on this subject, I received confirmation that the White House is indeed working up a social…
— HealthRanger (@HealthRanger) June 18, 2025
The full text:
RED ALERT: WE ARE GOING INTO A MAJOR WAR AND THERE WILL BE EXTREME CENSORSHIP under a new Office of War Information (OWI for 2025) org! (But not named OWI.) Following my previous post on this subject, I received confirmation that the White House is indeed working up a social media BAN LIST, and they will be rolling it out within days after the bunker buster bombs fall on Iran. The goal of course is to silence all dissent and control the narrative to be 100% pro Israel. But unlike the way the Democrats achieved this by routing ban lists through the DoD and offshore NGOs then back to Big Tech, in this case the bans will be handled domestically under the US Department of State, citing “national security” as the reason. I’m told there will be many THOUSANDS of accounts banned across all major social media, and lists have already been largely compiled. Rubio will have the list, and it’s not a coincidence that Rubio is also currently serving as the National Security Advisor, meaning he has the access channels to push a censorship list through. No word yet on whether web domains will be seized by State, but it seems possible.
SHARE THIS widely, and push back against right-wing censorship in the name of protecting Israel’s narrative. Every indy media journalist should loudly protest this, and we should demand that Trump denounce censorship and back away from this plan! Benz should soon be aware of this, and Jones, Carlson and others, if they aren’t already. Owen Shroyer, Harrison Smith, Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano, Glenn Greenwald, etc., will of course all be on the list, as will anyone with any significant reach who questions the pro-war narrative. YouTube will also be heavily pressured.
This isn’t the first time our government will have engaged in widespread wartime censorship, of course. From EBSCO: “U.S. Censorship and War Propaganda During World War II – During World War II, the United States implemented significant censorship and propaganda efforts to support its war objectives. As the conflict escalated, President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the need for organized propaganda and established various agencies, including the Office of War Information (OWI) and the Office of Censorship. These agencies aimed to disseminate information that bolstered public support for the war while suppressing dissenting views. Propaganda was delivered through an array of media, including films, posters, radio broadcasts, and comics, effectively mobilizing the American public and promoting wartime values. Iconic symbols, such as Rosie the Riveter, emerged to represent women’s contributions to the workforce while promoting a unified national effort. The OWI coordinated numerous campaigns to encourage military enlistment and the purchase of war bonds, as well as to promote resource conservation on the home front. Simultaneously, the Office of Censorship worked to prevent sensitive information from reaching enemy forces, leading to a complex relationship between government oversight and media freedom. Overall, this dual approach of propaganda and censorship was crucial in maintaining morale and commitment during a pivotal moment in U.S. history.”
Pray for freedom, pray for peace and pray for liberty. It seems the tyranny has merely shifted from the Left to the Right, but it’s still tyranny and it’s still extreme censorship. The Left censored under the label of “misinformation” and the Right will censor under the label of “anti-Semitism.” It will be labeled anti-Semitic to oppose war, in other words. If you don’t agree to bleed for the Zionists, you will be silenced. Decentralize rapidly. Shift to decentralized, independent platforms. I don’t know if Rumble will obey State Dept. censorship demands, as Rumble has been very strong defending free speech so far, so we’ll see. Torba will absolutely NOT give in to censorship demands. Bitchute will likely defend free speech as well. Brighteon will remain fully in accordance with the First Amendment (I am the founder of Brighteon), recognizing that dissenting speech plays a critical role in the very process of democracy. Bastyon is already decentralized and will remain so (censorship is impossible there). Watch for extreme censorship of popular podcasts via the podcast sites such as the “bean” site and Spotify, too. This is going to get far more insane and ugly than any level of censorship during COVID, fyi.
Is it time to start publishing Naked Capitalism on paper? The samizdat-times are-a-coming
We’re too small and not enough social media platform dependent to be worth the bother. We’re not, say, Scott Ritter or Max Blumenthal, who get a lot of traffic and profile from YouTube and podcasts, which are easy to choke. We don’t have either the reach or the social media platform dependence for us to rate.
The censors will hope, emulating the Covid censorship and even more the ICE raid strategy, that by making some big, high profile shows of force, that pretty much everyone else will self-censor. There was plenty of that in the “get vaxxed” era.
Speaking of Scott Ritter …
He famously gets excited in interviews but while appearing with Judge Napolitano, Ania K and people like that he usually tries to maintain an appropriate level of decorum. On his own show(s), however, he allows himself rather more latitude. Last night (17 June) on ‘Ask the Inspector’ (episode 272), he completely blows up three or four times. If you want to see the man pulling out all the salty-Marine stops, check it out.
Pamphleteers were all the rage in the late 18th century, here’s one from the Jacobins in 1792…
https://digitalcollections.libraries.ua.edu/digital/collection/u0002_0000006/id/7978/rec/1
I am thinking about the Creel Committee of the First World War and the slightly later Palmer Raids. It is not mentioned much, but the repression by the government was immense from 1917-21.
Needless to say, we are about to see how hypocritical Team Trump’s free speech posturing was, and how Musk’s free speech absolutism pretenses will go out the window.
Let’s keep that in front of our eyes.
War is the health of the state, Randolph Bourne. We are seeing how the state uses war to control its own citizenry: There are the crackdowns in Russia and Germany, the endless state of emergency in Iran and in Syria, the pressure on the citizenry in Turkey, the deterioration in England, and the evanescence of the Bill of Rights in the US of A. Yet the state lives on.
I see today that someone is circulating an article about Kamala Harris from 2024 — She’s Speaking about how Iran is a major enemy. A reminder of the delusions of the elites.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2024/10/08/is-iran-really-washingtons-greatest-adversary-00182908
The U.S. Uniparty is only too happy to censor.
If you have access to a concrete wall, or sidewalk, or a pillar supporting an overpass, and you have a piece of chalk and something to say, then you know what you must do. Say it.
Just took a look at Bastyon. Glad to know about it.
It’s a testament to the strength of the propaganda that crude oil is currently trading down 89 cents on early Wednesday morning east coast time. So much for market efficiency. Seems that the markets, like the press, take the official statements of the Israeli and US governments as true.
Also, as was likewise true in the gulf war propaganda about “Iraq has WMDs,” the New York Times is leading the “Israel is winning” Zionist propaganda effort in the press. This is problematic because much of the rest of the US press follows the lead of the NY Times or even simply reprints what the NY Times reports.
There’ll be an increasingly severe clampdown. Below is a particularly strident, stupid example of the line that TPTB in the West are selling, but it is the official line and as the real world increasingly breaks in on TPTB’s narrative in the coming months, they’ll increasingly regard it as an existential matter to suppress dissent.
Control of the skies: Israel achieves in 48 hours what Russia couldn’t in 3.5 years;
The two wars confirm what military planners have said for decades about the importance of air superiority.
https://www.jns.org/control-of-the-skies-israel-achieves-in-48-hours-what-russia-couldnt-in-3-5-years/
Israel announced that it had gained aerial superiority over western Iran, including Tehran, 48 hours after the start of “Operation Rising Lion,” something Russia hasn’t been able to do in three-and-a-half years of war in Ukraine.
Why one succeeded while the other failed was the subject of a report by The Wall Street Journal on Monday. The most obvious reason is that the Israel Air Force is more capable than the Russian Air Force.
British Air Marshal (ret.) Edward Stringer, who oversaw the air campaign in Libya in 2011 and headed operations for the British Ministry of Defense, told the WSJ that the key reason the IAF succeeded is that it surpasses Russia’s in culture, training and innovation, while combining intelligence and cyber capabilities.
“All the Russians have is pilots. They grow these pilots to drive flying artillery, and that’s it,” he said.
Honestly, do these people even listen to what they are saying?
Honestly, do these people even listen to what they are saying?
Only to compete in making more extreme, unreal claims.
The point of these statements is to no small extent that they are an ideological litmus test of individuals’ fealty to the Party line, as Orwell suggested in 1984, IIRC. Hence, the more unreal the claim — the more detached from reality — the better, from that POV.
Lest we forget —
‘Naturally, the common people don’t want war … but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.’
— Hermann Goering
‘The Americans cannot build aeroplanes. They are very good at refrigerators and razor blades.’
— Hermann Goering
Me: Things don’t change much….
E Mail trees?