Censorship and Civility in the Truth Movement

Up A Crooked Creek: Censorship and Civility in the Truth Movement

I’ve been censored many times. When I am completely honest with myself, however, I realize that some of those instances were not actually censorship but were forms of editorial discretion. Other instances were simply attempts by propagandists to downplay the truth.

Examples:

Editorial Discretion: When CommonDreams.org failed to respond to my article from 2003, it was making a decision that what I had to say was, for them, more of a nightmare than a shared dream. CommonDreams.org had published other articles that could be seen as related to 9/11 truth, but my approach was not to the editor’s liking. In response, I did not begin a public campaign against them but instead found many other sites to publish my articles.

Censorship: A leading alternative news site that regularly publishes 9/11 truth stories rejected one of my articles in late 2008, despite the fact that I had published there before. The editor responded very emotionally to the article, and suggested that it “attacked solid progressives.” The editor’s response was itself a great demonstration of what the article conveyed — that people have built-in mechanisms which keep them from seeing truth. In any case, I did not start a public campaign against the site and would never have thought of wasting my time and energies doing so. That’s because my goal is to reveal and communicate the truth.

Propaganda: When, in 2007, Wikipedia promoted highly dubious sources like “Mark Roberts” in an attempt to smear me, yet on the exact same subjects openly ignored sources like The New York Times and Underwriters Laboratories, that was not censorship, it was propaganda. But again, I did not start a campaign against Wikipedia nor did I try to strike back at the site despite the fact that it was intentionally working to defeat the truth.

I’ve found that, in nearly all cases, when faced with editorial discretion, censorship or propaganda, people will find other venues to share their information when they are not successful at one site. Again, that is because they seek to reveal the truth, not simply to commandeer one particular venue. Others, however, are curiously vindictive.

A vindictive campaign against 911blogger.com has been in play for a few years now. For those of us who have worked for the truth for many years it is not difficult to see why, because this is the leading 911 truth news site. And those who work to defeat the truth benefit from the destruction of the leading 9/11 truth sites. Unfortunately, a number of well meaning people have also been drawn into this charade and have spent time and energy, that would otherwise have been devoted to revealing the truth, arguing about non-issues.

Some have claimed that 911blogger practices censorship. The truth is that the moderators at the site decided long ago that certain users were overwhelming the site with divisive arguments not supported by evidence. These users focused on certain issues that the moderators and other users did not find useful or convincing. After tolerating and then warning the abusive users about such behavior, the moderators decided that the viability of the site required ongoing policy decisions to be made. Although the moderators made those policy decisions known to all, certain users continued to be abusive and found themselves banned. Now a new set of moderators runs the site, and have become the target of regular public attacks by people making claims of “censorship.”

Ridiculous, you say? Of course it is.

The only thing that would be worse would be for those vindictive troublemakers to begin making absurd accusations about why their abuse is not welcome at this one particular site. Better yet, they could co-opt supposed “journalistic” sources to make totally unsupported claims like the following.

* “[It] is now 100% confirmed that 911blogger is an enemy of the truth movement as a whole and is engaged in an open campaign of attack on good truthers.”

* “Blogger has been infiltrated by agents working for the other side”

Amazingly enough, The Rock Creek Free Press (RCFP) published these absurd and unsubstantiated allegations in its most recent issue. Yes, this is the same RCFP that was built on articles freely donated by people like myself, including this one, and this one, and this one. It is also the same paper whose very existence owes a great deal to publicity freely given to them by 911blogger. Maybe that’s what the editor of RCFP thinks “Free” means. RCFP feels free to benefit, financially and otherwise, from the work of honest 9/11 truth investigators, and feels free to use the standing it achieved through that work as a vehicle to attack the very people who have kept them in business.

That’s not just ridiculous, it’s despicable.

Most people can readily see that the success of the truth movement has nothing to do with a single website. There are those, however, who would have us believe such nonsense as they attempt to shut down the pursuit of truth entirely.

For the well meaning but unsuspecting folks who have been caught up in this garbage, I hope that we can return to a place of civility on the non-issue of “what hit the Pentagon”. To do so we must realize that freedom is really about making our own choices without being attacked, maliciously framed, and taken advantage of by ungrateful users. This includes the obvious right of website administrators and moderators to choose what information and users are harmful to their site.