RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/02/citing-wikipedias-leftist-bias-and-propaganda-sites-co-founder-launching-competing-free-speech-site/

“The days of Wikipedia’s robust commitment to neutrality are long gone”

Long understood to be a an unreliable resource by serious academics, journalists, and bloggers, Wikipedia has more recently gained a broader reputation for leftwing bias.

Indeed, one of its co-founders notes that Wikipedia entries on socialism and communism are little more than propaganda and that he is launching a competing free-speech encyclopedia site.

Once considered a somewhat viable place to get a rudimentary handle on a topic, Wikipedia has arguably become a repository of “left-wing advocacy essays.”  This change does not sit well with one of Wikipedia’s co-founders, Larry Sanger.

Fox News reports:

Big tech has faced repeated accusations of bias and censorship, but one platform has escaped much scrutiny: Wikipedia.

The online encyclopedia, which claims “anyone can edit”, is the 13th most popular website in the world, according to Alexa’s web rankings. Google gives it special placement in search results.

But critics – including Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger – tell Fox News that many Wikipedia pages have become merely left-wing advocacy essays.

“The days of Wikipedia’s robust commitment to neutrality are long gone,” co-founder Larry Sanger said.

“Wikipedia’s ideological and religious bias is real and troubling, particularly in a resource that continues to be treated by many as an unbiased reference work,” he added.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/philip-carl-salzman/2021/03/05/lies-of-the-racism-industry-n1430366

Nothing has been more common during the last years than accusations of “racism.” President Biden has said that he is going to lead a “great battle…to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country.” This great “anti-racism” crusade is not directed at anti-Semites who despise Jews and blame the ills of the world on them. Nor is it aimed at the Nation of Islam, the Black Muslims, who hate whites and especially Jews. Yet these cases would seem to qualify as racism. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines “racism” as “Belief in superiority of a particular race; antagonism between different races.” The Random House Dictionary of the American Language defines “racism” as “a belief that human races have distinctive characteristics that determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.”

But contrary to common usage as specified in dictionaries, racism has been redefined by sociologists as “prejudice plus power,” so that only white people, who are falsely claimed to exclusively hold all of the power, can be said to be racist. This is convenient for the anti-racism industry, because once racism is so defined and white people identified as power-holders, then all whites are automatically white supremacists. Now a definition cannot be said to be a lie, because it is always an arbitrary investing of meaning in a word or phrase, but it can be said to be a novel usage, deviant from common understanding, and it can be identified as tendentious, aimed at advancing a presumed conclusion prejudicial to some party. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/rep-swalwell-sues-trump-over-alleged-role-in-capitol-assault/ar-BB1ehpJX?ocid=Peregrine

In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., Friday, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell has sued former President Donald Trump and some of his allies, including his son Donald Trump Jr., personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, and GOP Rep. Mo Brooks, over their alleged roles in the events leading up to and surrounding the Capitol assault on Jan. 6.

In the 65-page suit, Swalwell, who was a House impeachment manager during Trump’s second Senate trial, alleges that they all directly incited the violence at the U.S. Capitol by putting out “a clear call to action” that some in the crowd responded to.

“Trump directly incited the violence at the Capitol that followed and then watched approvingly as the building was overrun,” the lawsuit alleges.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/dissidents-and-doublethinkers-in?token=e

https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2021/3/2/22309605/the-silenced-majority-bari-weis

I know a lot of people who live in fear of saying what they really think. In red America and in blue America — and, perhaps more so, on the red internet and the blue internet — we are in the grip of an epidemic of self-silencing. What you censor, of course, depends on where you sit.

My liberal friends who live in red America confess to avoiding discussions of masks, Dominion, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, the 2020 election and Donald Trump, to name just a few. When those who disagree with the surrounding majority speak their mind, they suffer the consequences. I think here of my friend, the conservative writer David French, who for four years endured an avalanche of horrific attacks against himself and his family for criticizing the Trump administration that ultimately required the intervention of the FBI.

But there are two illiberal cultures swallowing up the country. I know because I live in blue America, in a world awash in NPR tote bags and front lawn signs proclaiming the social justice bonafides of the family inside.

In my America, the people who keep quiet don’t fear the wrath of Trump supporters. They fear the illiberal left.

They are feminists who believe there are biological differences between men and women. Journalists who believe their job is to tell the truth about the world, even when it’s inconvenient. Doctors whose only creed is science. Lawyers who will not compromise on the principle of equal treatment under the law. Professors who seek the freedom to write and research without fear of being smeared. In short, they are centrists, libertarians, liberals and progressives who do not ascribe to every single aspect of the new far-left orthodoxy.

That’s the opening of an essay I wrote about America’s self-silencing majority for The Deseret News Magazine, published this week. It was my effort to explain the widespread phenomenon — and seeming contradiction — of doublethink in our democracy.