CENSORSHIP OF THE BLACK LEFT

In recent days and weeks both Black Power Media and Revolutionary Blackout Network have received what are called “strikes” on YouTube which ban them from uploading new content for one week. Just as in the game of baseball, on YouTube three strikes put a channel out if received in a 90-day period.  At Black Agenda Report we have long noted that the drive to censor is directed most heavily towards the Black left.

The regime of censorship began in earnest during the 2016 presidential campaign as Hillary Clinton sought to paint Donald Trump as a Russian agent, “Putin’s puppet,” as she said. From that time on she and her friends in the corporate media and surveillance state did everything they could to continue the falsehood. There are many things one can say about Trump but he is no Russian asset. But it was the Democratic National Committee law firm that paid for the Steele Dossier, a phony document meant to make the case against Trump.

We have seen an ever-worsening atmosphere since the 2016 election and Trump’s unexpected triumph. The neoliberal capitalist order has worked to make sure that no outsider will have a voice, even though Trump proved to be like every other American president and followed the same imperialist directive. Fear of someone succeeding electorally from outside the duopoly created greater censorship immediately after the election.

The group Propornot, whose work appeared in the Washington Post, the paper of the surveillance state, whose owner, Jeff Bezos, provides cloud computing services for the CIA. Propornot created a list of those said to be under Russian influence, and included Black Agenda Report. The Russian influence trope continues and the same people still want to silence anyone who presents a narrative that might gain traction among the public.

Now that Dr. Cornel West has announced his candidacy for the Green Party presidential nomination, those outlets which give him a space to talk about politics domestically and internationally are under attack. It isn’t surprising that it is the Black outlets that are receiving this treatment from YouTube and from other platforms as well.

It is ironic that the left media needs the very platforms that are so closely aligned with the state and that the liberal class is playing the biggest role in this censorship regime. It was the Democratic Party, after all, that used the state apparatus and corporate media to begin what Trump accurately called a witch hunt against him.

The man whose politics have been described as fascistic, who has been labeled as the most racist president, is one whom they cannot defeat politically. That is because the Democratic Party isn’t really much different. And so they are at a loss as to how to secure victory without silencing anyone who might expose their fraudulence. So it is the liberal class that has led the fight to silence the left.

It isn’t surprising that Black left channels are feared. The state has been in a quandary for the last three years ever since the uprisings in the wake of the killing of George Floyd inspired millions of people to protest. They fear that that mobilization that sprang up then can happen again. Now they are facing an unpopular presidency. Joe Biden is the candidate foisted upon Democratic voters and who won because of great antipathy towards Trump, the most polarizing president in modern history. Biden acted as he always has, as an errand boy for neoliberalism. He has offered people so little despite propaganda efforts to paint him as a progressive. They remain in a state of panic, hoping to prove themselves to be different than what they have shown themselves to be. This trickery can only be accomplished by silencing those who tell inconvenient truths.

For the past year the duopoly has shoveled billions of dollars in public money into a futile effort to weaken Russia. But that will not result in victory for Ukraine. There will at best be a stalemate that will continue the suffering for the people the US claims to care about.

But while the US props up Ukraine’s economy, including its pension system, and keeps the Ukrainian government afloat, people in the US are kicked off of Medicaid, are losing their SNAP benefits,  and live with a presidential administration which will not defend any of the things the Democratic Party claimed to care about, and which keep millions of people in debt peonage from student loans. Cobbling together a last-minute plan does little to help the people after the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s half-hearted and pitiful attempt to win last year’s midterm election.

This conundrum explains why the Cornel West candidacy is so dangerous as are the outlets which allow him to speak about the issues that matter to millions of people, issues they’re told can’t be addressed. And so the corporate media and the liberal class join in condemning his candidacy. The Nation magazine, allegedly left, asks West to run as a Democrat, a sure way to be the latest sheepdog, the latest person to sacrifice the needs of millions of people to prop up what can’t be propped up. And that is why it is important to silence outlets like Black Power Media and Revolutionary Blackout Network. It is Black people who still keep the Democratic party together and who must be convinced that they can’t stray from its orthodoxy.

The Democrats are so zealous in their censorship that they end up giving their rivals positive press. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., he from the famous political family, is running as a Democratic candidate for president. He is more of a gadfly than a serious candidate, and is probably not one who the Democrats should worry about, but a party whose goal is to fool people into voting for them sought to silence Kennedy at a hearing on censorship.

Kennedy has exposed himself as a dilettante unsuited for a high-profile political campaign and some of whose pronouncements are troubling to the Democrats’ rank and file. He wouldn’t be a threat to a party that had an interest in working on behalf of the people. But so great is their need to lie that they gave him gravitas while silencing him.

They shut down anyone who tells the truth about the Democrats. When Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s laptop was found with incriminating emails, the media colluded with the Biden campaign to kill a true story. The younger Biden was hired at a $50,000 per month salary to do nothing except be a Biden for a Ukrainian gas company. The laptop contents proved that everything Biden’s detractors said was true. As the Vice President, he met with his son’s employer and at the very least peddled influence.

When the story broke, Twitter and Facebook followed Biden campaign dictates and banned this accurate information from their platforms. Which brings us back to Black Power Media and Revolutionary Blackout Network. They are easy targets and pose great danger to the oligarchy as they expose Cop City and allow a prominent outsider to be heard on the campaign trail.

The Washington Post tagline is, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”  That is certainly true. Unfortunately, the corporate media are ruling-class outlets make certain that the people are kept in the dark. It follows that the Black left will be censored in order to keep the leaky ship afloat.