sf says...: "Banned from Fakebook for mentioning T____ R______

Most Americans take freedom of speech for granted. But a few--those who have actually lived under communism--know how ruthlessly totalitarian regimes try to suppress "unapproved" speech, and how the society suffers for it.

Why is this relevant to Americans? Because the leftists who run on-line social media--mainly Fakebook, Twatter and Google-owned YouTube--are closing or crippling the accounts of Americans who post things the left doesn't like.

If you're a hard-working American trying to raise your kids and pay your taxes and hold down a job, or are trying to pass college courses, you've probably never heard of this. Or if you have, you think it's trivial. In that case, read the following account, written by someone who lived under the iron hand of totalitarian leftists. Trust me, it's worth your time. Great analysis (edited).
===
In 1988 Danusha Goska was a college student in Poland. She writes,

In 1988 Poland had felt as if communism would never end. We felt as if our lives were engulfed in a spiritual gray sludge. Everything was slower, stupider, dimmer, meaner, than anywhere else I'd lived, including impoverished nations in Africa and Asia.

Later she explains what she means by this: No word could be spoken, no thought expressed, contrary to the approved party line, without the speaker being punished by the State.

What kept you going were the flashes of heroism and defiance that could appear at any time, from any quarter.

Walking to class I would see some of these flashes: a popular one was a stenciled profile of Jozef Pilsudski (1867-1935). Pilsudski had pushed for independence when Poland was still colonized by Prussia, Russia and Austria. After WW1 Poland was given independence, but then just two years later (1920) the Soviets invaded.

To the Bolsheviks' surprise, a vast majority of the Polish peasants and working class, didn't welcome communism. Only a few academics and corrupt politicians did.

Greatly outnumbered, Pilsudski achieved a miracle, defeating the much larger Soviet forces, and Pilsudski became Poland's chief of state.

Tragically, 24 years later, after the end of WW2, with the help of communists in the U.S. government, the Soviets took over Poland again, and would end up ruling for decades.

This history gives you an idea of what a stenciled profile of Pilsudski meant in Poland in 1988--and why seeing it as I walked to class made my heart glad.

But walking home in the afternoon, the handsome silhouette was always painted over with white paint--as was the word "Solidarnosc." Solidarity was the labor union that had challenged Soviet rule.

Every day, Poles who hated communist rule would paint graffiti, and every day state workers would whitewash it all. The state erased the symbols of resistance, truth, history. They tried to erase Polish pride.

Not all the censorship by the Soviet empire was as heavy-handed as whitewashing graffiti. Sometimes you'd go to a party and see people who were much better dressed--and clearly better fed-- than average Poles. Their conversations were sprinkled with the trendiest expressions of American pop culture. They were extremely friendly.

They's say things like, "All this silly nostalgia. Before communism Poland was a feudal swamp. All this hand-kissing. You know Polish men only kiss women's hands as a way to keep them down. We all acknowledge that there should be some adjustments to the current system. But there's no going back."

These charming, attentive sophisticates were Soviet plants.

As strangled as speech was in Poland, it was worse in Czechoslovakia. After Russian tanks crushed the short-lived 1968 student rebellion that would later be called the Prague Spring, the Soviets allowed the Czechoslovaks more material goods but clamped down on any freedom of expression.

Poles had fewer material goods than their Czech neighbors, but their communist rulers allowed them more lattitude in complaining about their rulers than the Czechs were allowed.

This was expressed in a small joke: Two dogs meet at the border between Poland and Czechoslovakia. Each is trying to enter the other's country, and each is astonished by the other's goal. "Why would you want to enter my country?" they each ask the other.

The Polish dog says, "I want to taste meat."
The Czechoslovak dog says, "I want to bark."

In Czechoslovakia people who said critical things about the Soviets simply disappeared. Everyone knew what you couldn't say if you wanted to survive. You couldn't criticize anyone in the ruling class. Even whimsy--satire--risked disappearance or jail.

Of course the Soviets allowed the illusion of a legal process, a court of appeal. But like Kafka's Joseph K, the result was always defeat: After Joseph is falsely accused of a never-named crime, and seeks justice, he's told "It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary." "A melancholy conclusion," he replied. "It turns lying into a universal principle."

Fast-forward to July 8th of this year:

Eleven days ago I posted, on what I had naively thought of as "my" Facebook page, a link to an article in Front Page Magazine on the persecution by the British government of T _ _ _ _ R _ _ _ _ _ _ _, a British citizen journalist and human rights activist.

One day later Facebook sent me this: "We removed one of your posts because it doesn't follow the Facebook Community Standards. We created our standards to help make Facebook a safe place for people to connect with the world around them." The message added that I would not be allowed to post to "my" page for seven days.

But during this week "my" page was still visible, and others could post attacks on my position. And in a truly Orwellian twist, Fakebook also barred me from responding to attacks posted to "my" own page.

I immediately asked Fakebook exactly what post of mine they were citing as the violation triggering my banning. Their bullshit reply:
"We reviewed your post again and it doesn't follow our community standards."

[This is how they always respond. 'We won't tell you but repeat that you're banned.' By not telling you, you'll be more inclined to err on the side of submission in future posts.]

I have a few Fakebook friends who are far left. A handful belong to what I can only call Team Anti-Western-Civilization. Though white themselves, they consider white people, Americans, Christians and Jews as uniquely evil, and insist that if whites hadn't corrupted them, people of color and non-Western cultures would be wise and peaceful.

Moments after a friend announced my banning, two far-left British women posted that I deserved the ban because I'd linked to an article that supported T _ _ _ _ R _ _ _ _ _ _ _. Both posted links to mainstream British media claiming T _ _ _ _ R _ _ _ _ _ _ _ was evil.

Fakebook, Twatter and others have now banned hundreds of users worldwide. Mentioning T _ _ _ _ R _ _ _ _ _ _ _ favorably results in an instant ban on all the above sites.
Moreover, opponents of T.R. routinely do what my far-left Brit readers did: the minute they know Fakebook has banned an "enemy" they post dozens of ghastly, slanderous posts to the banned person's page, knowing that the banned person can't respond for at least a week.
Freedom of speech allows everyone do discuss and debate, openly. We run our ideas past others, who often disagree. We research and modify our ideas in response to valid criticism. This is how science is supposed to be done.

But if people can't speak freely without penalty, the rest of us only hear what those in power allow. What that produces is that "spiritual grey sludge" I mentioned earlier. Those who oppose free speech attach lead weights to human society, to the human soul, to our search for truth.

Opponents of free speech always lose. Dogs want to bark. My ancestral people showed that even under Nazis and Soviets, dogs find a way to bark. If I regain access to Facebook I will simply do what Poles who covered walls with graffiti of crows, gnomes, and anchors did. I will resort to code that will be understood, but that will fly under the censor's radar.

Powerful elites suppress what they fear. Facebook and the rest are suppressing free speech about T _ _ _ _ R _ _ _ _ _ _ _. What is it about T.R, and those who write about him--or even link to articles by others that write approvingly--that frightens Fakebook?

What is Mark Zuckerberg afraid of? How about the BBC, YouTube, Twitter? We can only guess--and the guesses are disquieting.

The complaint about T.R. is that he's worked for years to expose the complete failure of British police, media, judiciary and politicians to protect Britain’s most vulnerable citizens: young girls who were tricked, kidnapped, repeatedly raped, broken, and sex-trafficked--by Muslim grooming gangs. British judges have sent T.R. to prison as a warning to others not to make the same charges.

Change is possible. It can happen in a peaceful, civilized way, or not. But peaceful change can only occur if free speech is restored. If free speech continues to be suppressed, change will come, but the process may not be either peaceful or civilized.