In 2021, they tried to destroy me for telling the truth This isn’t paranoia. Hard evidence shows the White House and media targeted my right to speak – and support my family. If not for all of you, they would have succeeded. Yeah, I’m still angry. Alex Berenson
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/in-2021-they-tried-to-destroy-me
I haven’t forgotten. Or forgiven.
Last week, a Congressional committee released a massive report detailing how the Biden Administration stampeded the First Amendment in 2021 during its doomed quest to force mRNA vaccines on every American adult.
By July, with the mRNAs failing and Covid deaths rising, the White House privately and publicly attacked Facebook, trying to make the world’s biggest social media company censor jab critics. Facebook executives were furious – and worried about the Constitutional implications of the pressure they faced.
Yes, a private company proved far more concerned about the First Amendment than the government officials sworn to uphold it.
At the heart of the pressure campaign: Andrew M. Slavitt, a Democratic operative and healthcare investor. Slavitt pushed Facebook for censorship both during his official stint as senior advisor to the Biden Covid response team, which ended in June 2021, and afterwards – when the documents show he secretly represented the White House in conversations with Nick Clegg, a senior Facebook executive.
As you know, I have sued Slavitt, along with other government officials and two Pfizer board members, in federal court in New York for their conspiracy to force Twitter to ban me in 2021.
The new documents may play a crucial role in my case, Berenson v Biden, because they show Slavitt was acting on behalf of the federal government, not merely as a private citizen, in July, even as he continued his campaign against me.
The Biden Administration began pressing social media companies for censorship soon after it took office.
But the campaign accelerated in July, as the White House realized the mRNAs were failing and it would quickly need to push a third “booster” shot, as well as vaccine mandates, which it had previously ruled out.
On July 16, 2021, President Biden said Facebook and other social media companies were “killing people” by allowing vaccine criticism. In response, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s then-second-highest-ranking executive, complained in a text chain with founder Mark Zuckerberg that the White House was blaming the company because of “a virus they can’t get control of.”
She later added, “Did Trump say things this irresponsible? If Trump blamed a private company not himself and his govt, everyone would have gone nuts.”
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(It’s not funny, because it’s true.)
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But the government censorship isn’t the whole story.
The media has barely mentioned the Congressional report since it came out last week – even though it proves top Biden Administration officials pressed social media companies to censor true statements from Americans, if the White House thought those statements would reduce vaccine uptake.
Why?
Possibly because left-leaning – ie, “mainstream” – media outlets were themselves screaming in 2021 for anyone who spoke against the vaccines to be censored.
I was reminded of this when I rewatched a April 2021 piece from Tucker Carlson that the Congressional report names as particularly annoying to the White House.
Near the end, Tucker mentioned Brian Stelter, who at the time hosted the CNN media criticism show “Reliable Sources.” (In August 2022, as ratings for the show asymptotically approached zero, CNN canceled it, an act of mercy for both Stelter and his viewers.)
And Stelter’s face filled my computer, I thought what I always think when I see it: that guy* tried to get Substack to ban me.
(*Guy is not the actual word I think.)
He did, too.
On Sep. 26, 2021 – a month after the White House and Pfizer had forced Twitter to ban me – Stelter interviewed Chris Best, Substack’s chief executive, on his show – and named me as someone who was “peddling disinformation.”
Stelter went on, “When do you decide that Covid misinformation, or malinformation, is not acceptable on your platform? Where is that line?”
To his eternal credit, Best did not back down, saying that it was crucial that “dissent is allowed, and discussion of unpopular things [is not] suppressed, we just think that’s an important principle for anybody.”
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So after watching that clip from Tucker last week, I tweeted this:
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And a friend texted me, saying, Hey, don’t call Stelter “Fatty.” It’s not nice, and it undercuts your serious points.
To which I say: in September 2021, after my Twitter ban, this Substack was both my only real outlet to the world and my family’s primary source of income. Brian Stelter decided I wasn’t worthy of having a public platform. He tried to convince Substack to break as Twitter had broken and cut me off.
He was wrong, wrong on the facts, and wrong to try to censor. I was right, right about the mRNAs, right about Covid, and right to believe in free speech. Stelter wanted to silence me, and functionally to bankrupt me.
You stood with me, and Substack stood with me, and together we won. But it was close, back in the fall of 2021 – and a lot of you wound up getting jabbed against your will, to save your jobs, or under extraordinary pressure from friends and family. I know, because you told me.
I will never forget, I will never forgive.
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