WordPress Deplatforms Conservative Treehouse, NOT the First and Won’t be the Last!

Many of you have sent me the news that the Conservative Treehouse (aka The Last Refuge) has been notified by WordPress.com that they are being given the heave-ho and now must find a new host for their popular site.

When I saw the news of course I felt bad for them because I have been there.

Longtime readers here and at my blog, Refugee Resettlement Watch, which was birthed and began being hosted by WordPress in 2007 (and into early 2019), know that the same thing happened to me.

But, at least the Treehouse was given notice and time to remove their material.  I was shut down without notice and had to hire a professional webmaster to help me get my material, but even with that, all of my photos/graphs/charts and all of my thousands of subscribers did not make it to the new RRW.

Search engines (Google at least) still directs people to the old closed site.

(In the meantime, I had started Frauds & Crooks and got it removed from WordPress before they could do a job on it too.  I am at a hopefully safe host for now!)

By the way, I was not alone.  Creeping Sharia and Bare Naked Islam got the WordPress ax before I did.  I should have known it was coming.

I discuss all of that here in a panel discussion on Censorship at the Social Contract gathering in the fall of 2019.

So when I saw the news about the Conservative Treehouse, my first thought was why hadn’t the blogger(s) there made the move sooner.

You can read all about my communication with WordPress.com over their censorship by going here.  They said I had violated their “terms of service” after I contacted them to ask where was my site?

Upon review of your WordPress.com site we have determined that your content does not align with our Terms of Service or User Guidelines.

Signed by the Aline, the Community Guardian (that is not a joke!)

So, on July 2nd (this is all happening in 2019) I went back to the “community guardian” and asked these questions:

Can you tell me exactly what caused your concern about Refugee Resettlement Watch. This month marks the 12th anniversary of the launch of that blog with you. And, in recent months there has been little new activity there. So just wondering why it is now, after all this time, [it’s] not aligned with your terms of service.

Is there a particular post(s) that concerned you and if so could you direct me to them?

Have you had recent complaints about the blog even as it hasn’t been active for many months?

Were references to certain organizations a concern?

Would really love to know as I find another host for the nearly 9,000 posts archived at RRW.

Greatly appreciate any feedback you can give me!

Thank you!
Ann Corcoran

The Community Guardian responded.  She says flat-out they don’t have to give me any reasons!

Here is what I received in response on July 3rd.  We can call it the ‘go pound sand’ brush-off e-mail:

Upon review of your WordPress.com site we have determined that your content does not align with our Terms of Service or User Guidelines. As stated in our Terms, we may choose to stop providing service to an account at any time, for any reason, or none at all. We aren’t able to offer any further specifics.

We’ve canceled your WordPress.com subscription and refunded the purchase….

[….]

To download your content and take it elsewhere, the export tool below will be available for the next two weeks…

[….]

If you would like to continue using WordPress software for your site, you can import this file into a self-hosted WordPress installation with a different host.

Notice the threat!

Please keep in mind that other hosts may have similarly restrictive policies regarding this type of content. 

[Signed] Community Guardian

But, they never admit what exactly is the “type of content” they are censoring!

All of that was to preface my comments on this story at The Lid:

TECH TYRANNY: Silencing Conservative News With A Sick New Tactic — This Is Big

 

Go read it.  But, The Lid beware!  This form of censorship is NOT NEW! You are nuts to stay on WordPress.com. They will find you as soon as you become a threat to some group or individuals on the Commie Left.

If Biden and his comrades have their way we will be communicating by quietly traveling around the country and meeting in peoples’ basements!

EndnoteStory for another day!  Someone should investigate WordPress.com and the company that owns it Automatic!  

Everyone is Leaving Facebook and Twitter, what about you?

Editor: Don’t miss my update to yesterday’s report on the historic event in Washington, DC  on Saturday!

The stories are everywhere and each of you will have to make up your mind sooner or later.  I don’t have the energy this morning to go into all the ins and outs of what is going on with this social media revolution that began long before the 2020 Election was fully underway.

As for me, I am considering leaving both platforms for one major reason, in addition to the desire to no longer participate in building the anti-Trump Zuckerberg and Dorsey family fortunes, and that is that any social media account requires attention to followers daily and I just can’t do that and haven’t been for some time because I want to enjoy living for some portion of each day!.

I was going to apologize again today for being so remiss in responding to everyone’s comments etc. at my e-mail accounts and at Facebook so when many of you in recent days have sent stories (here is one) about the big moves to Parler, I figured it was time to apologize again for my lack of attention.

I will let you know what I decide to do.

That said, I am still using Twitter to find out a lot of what is going on even as I have nothing earthshattering to add myself.

Here is a tweet I pinned to my account yesterday that I am going back to from time to time to laugh and cheer up.

To set the stage an obviously black pro-Trump supporter is holding a flag as a white elitist motorist drives up and either attempts to grab the flag or otherwise does something aggressive.

“All that HATE!!!!”

So there is the value of Twitter for me!

P.S.  Our cable guy comes today to set us up to receive Newsmax TV.  Bye Bye Fox News.

NY Times Editor Resigns; No Diversity of Opinion Allowed

If you are like me and saw this story yesterday, you probably said, well heck I knew that, and moved on to more interesting reading.

However, reader Cathy sent me the newly unemployed editor’s letter to AG Sulzberger and I found it a very worthwhile read, so I’m posting a bit of it here with a link to the whole stinging rebuke, of not just the NYT, but of most of the legacy media today.

If you don’t know about the controversy here is a story by Howard Kurtz of Fox News today.

Message to you (and to me!), if they are calling you a “Nazi” and a “racist” wear the label with pride because it means you have gotten under their skin.

Bari Weiss to the NYT:

(with a little emphasis from me)

Dear AG,

It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times.

[….]

But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

[….]

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist…

[….]

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public. And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

Part of me wishes I could say that my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm.

Keep reading, it gets even better.

 

Google Making it Harder to Find News the Left Doesn’t want You to See

Less than a week ago I told you about how Facebook is blocking sites like VDARE that apparently the woke and oh-so-smart people at Facebook don’t like, and it is no surprise to see Google hard at work doing the same.

Here is Robert Spencer, whose blog Jihad Watch has been the go-to site for the latest news about the ‘religion of peace’ for going on two decades, finding the site buried by Google.

And, look who is here—Imam-extraordinaire Omar Suleiman!

From Frontpage magazine (hat tip: Judy):

Google Erases the Existence of Those Who Speak Unwelcome Truths

http://www.danielgreenfield.org/

Daniel Greenfield, the peerless Shillman Fellow and FrontPage writer, tweeted the news on May 7: “Google just erased my Sultan Knish blog and Front Page Mag articles from the first pages of results for my name doubt very much this is accidental.”

I did too, so I checked for myself, and sure enough: a Google search for “Robert Spencer” now does not bring up Jihad Watch, where most of my writing outside of books has been published for the last seventeen years, but it does give you defamatory and distorted attack pieces from the far-Left Southern Poverty Law Center*** and the Saudi-funded Bridge Initiative, and nothing that doesn’t portray me and my work in the most unfavorable possible light.

This latest example of the tech giants’ determination to silence all dissenting voices reveals one often overlooked fact: they are desperately afraid.

Suleiman arrested with CAIR and Linda Sarsour as they protested Trump refugee policies and blocked a corridor on Capital Hill. See my post just a week ago about Suleiman: https://fraudscrookscriminals.com/2020/05/10/islamist-watch-warning-beware-woke-muslims/

Google is so afraid of Jihad Watch, in fact, that it is going to great lengths to make you think that the site (which you can find here) doesn’t exist at all.

Several years ago, under pressure from the Texas-based imam Omar Suleiman, Google changed the algorithm for its search results so as to bury anything critical of Islamic jihad violence or Sharia oppression of women. Jihad Watch, which for years had been the first result in a Google search for “jihad” (back when Google searches were based solely on relevance and the popularity of the site), fell off the front page of “jihad” searches.

Now Google has gone even farther to make sure you don’t see Jihad Watch. Just this morning, I was looking for an old Jihad Watch article from a few years ago that I needed for a citation, and I entered an exact phrase from that article into the Google search bar. What came back were two sites where the article had been republished, but no indication that it had ever been at Jihad Watch at all.

In George Orwell’s dystopian novel of a totalitarian society, 1984, to which far more people refer than have actually read the book, the dissenter Winston Smith’s job in the Ministry of Truth involves erasing from all historical records any mention of people who have been declared “nonpersons.” Foes of the regime aren’t just vilified. Their very existence is erased. Dissent is easy to control if all record of it ever having been enunciated is eradicated, and Google has apparently taken a page from Orwell’s book.

Of course, Jihad Watch is one of the least of the concerns of Big Tech. They’re erasing all manner of people who dissent from the Leftist agenda. Greenfield notes that “Google controls 80% of search. That means it controls what the internet looks like. And it’s continuing to erase conservatives from the internet. I’m just the latest victim. Its censorship and creepy surveillance have reached new heights during the pandemic.”

And help may be on the way….

Continue reading here.

*** One of the funniest things I ever read from someone who had newly been labeled a hate GROUP by the Southern Poverty Law Center was Daniel Greenfield’s post in 2012  when he learned he (with his blog Sultan Knish) had been added to the SPLC’s Hate GROUP list.

HOW I BECAME A HATE GROUP

Here are just a few snips:

When I went to sleep last night, little did I know that while outside sirens competed with car alarms in the symphony that is New York City, I had already been declared a hate group.

Being declared a hate group wasn’t in my plans for the day, but like winning the lottery, it seems to be one of those things that happens when you least expect it. Except that as the little bald man in front of the bodega tells you, you have to play to win, but you don’t even have to buy a ticket to be declared an official hate group.

My first response on finding out that I was now a hate group was to look around to see where everyone else was. A hate group needs the “group” part, and one man and a cat don’t seem to be enough. Even when the cat is a well known bigot who hates mice, birds, car alarms that go off in the middle of the night, the plumber and sudden noises.

Still the Southern Poverty Law Center had listed, “Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield” as one of their “Active Anti-Muslim Hate Groups…”  

I suppose I found this so funny because the SPLC has done the same to me (I have a cat) too!

Once again, as I mentioned here recently, they have labelled my other blog Refugee Resettlement Watch (which is just me) a hate GROUP.

Clearly, the mainstream media never questions their research and is willingly led around by their noses.

Conservative Leaders Pen Letter to Facebook in Response to Assault on Free Speech

Well they didn’t specifically stand up to Facebook in defense of VDARE, but VDARE is presumably an early causality of Facebook’s speech “Oversight Board” or perhaps is a test run to see how upcoming purges will be received.

If you hadn’t heard about the silencing of VDARE, learn about it here at VDARE  itself and make VDARE a regular stop on your daily reading list.  I just now googled VDARE and the first item that came up was not its website, but this headline (VDARE | Southern Poverty Law Center) and that is because Google is also (as you are surely well aware) in the silencing business too.

Here is a VDARE story from yesterday you should see about a black sniper killing an 80-year-old couple visiting their son’s grave in a Delaware veterans’ cemetery.  Have some fun and see if you can post it at facebook!

Report: Black Male Murders White Couple In Their 80s With Sniper Rifle—Revenge For Ahmaud Arbery?

Now here is what 60 conservative leaders sent to Facebook last Friday:

Conservative Leaders: Get Rid Of Facebook Censorship Committee

Brent Bozell

The conservative Free Speech Alliance, led by Media Research Center founder and President L. Brent Bozell, III, and including more than 60 conservative leaders, among whom are CHQ Managing Editor George Rasley and American Target Advertising President of Corporate Affairs attorney Mark J. Fitzgibbons, yesterday released the following statement about Facebook’s new Oversight Board and efforts to decide what content should be taken down from the site:

While leftist organizations savaged him, we supported CEO Mark Zuckerberg when he talked about making Facebook a marketplace of ideas and spoke forcefully saying the company “must continue to stand for free expression.”

Yet leftist forces within and outside of Facebook have condemned him for this, agitating for the company to become an arbiter of what is, and isn’t truth; and therefore what should and should not be presented on Facebook. Facebook wants the public to believe that its new Oversight Board will help solve the problems “about what content to take down or leave up.”

Conservatives warned from the start that any new oversight mechanism was fraught with danger. Our fears were well founded. This new board will damage Facebook more than it can imagine.

[…..]

It is too early to tell how such this board would rule. [Not really, it looks like VDARE was a test run.–ed] But it is terrifying to imagine how a powerful, leftist group like this might view control conservative speech — speech that defends free enterprise, traditional marriage, religious freedom, the lives of the unborn, free speech and gun rights, to name but a few.

The answer in social media has often been to call such beliefs “hate speech,” the club the left has used to beat their opponents into submission on college campuses and online. And it has been a code word for anti-conservative censors like the Southern Poverty Law Center to shut down speech it doesn’t like.

Go here for more of the letter and to see who signed it.

Now head on over to VDARE  (vdare.com) and see what Facebook and the Southern Poverty Law Center do not want you to see!