In recent weeks I have been canceled by Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, all without explanation.
I tried in each case but was unable to get one. In fact, I was even blocked on Facebook from any explanation other than the most generic “community standards” blather. I never used Instagram much in the first place.
In the case of Twitter, I was attempting to make my return after many months—I had left on my own in disgust at the bias, not to mention the mysterious disappearance of my followers—hopeful that it might be a more collegial space with Elon Musk in the process of purchasing the company and promising free speech.
No such luck.
What I got for my troubles was something extremely bizarre. I was asked to authenticate myself by identifying one of six squares that contained an inaccurate shadow. I had to do this fourteen times, but on the fifteenth, I was told I was in error and sent back to one again. This happened several times. It was an obvious shell game set up by someone at Twitter. I was never admitted—or told anything, for that matter.
I have no idea how many others were receiving the same treatment, but so much for Twitter—with or without Musk.
This is no joke. We are living deep in an era of thought control. For writers even slightly on the right, it is extending into many areas. I am someone who once wrote for the likes of Simon & Schuster, Random House, Universal Studios, and Warner Brothers. It is highly unlikely—almost impossible—that I could do so now.
And, of course, those are the big players with the big audiences and mass distribution, the major access points to middle America, those few that are left not on one side or other of our great divide and who might be persuaded of something.
Those of us anywhere to the right of Trotsky are not allowed to talk to them. (That’s an exaggeration, but not by much.)
So every day when I get up, I have a moment of anxiety when I turn on my computer. It is supposed to open automatically on The Epoch Times where I now write as well as get a substantial amount of my news? I am worried that it will still be there, whether I and/or it will be branded “misinformation” and “disappeared”?
Long may The Epoch Times—and those few others like it—thrive. And thank you so much to the readers who keep them alive!
Nevertheless, this is all starting to remind me of the Soviet Union that I visited twice on cultural exchanges during the early glasnost (in the late ‘80s). In fact, the America of today has for some time.
I remember visiting two apartment buildings that were named Screenwriter I and II. They housed favored writers, screenwriters or not, and were sought after because, I was told, they contained the best medical clinics in Moscow on the ground floor.
In the Soviet Union, decent medical care was only available to party officials and others—scientists and cultural workers—who played along.
Writers who didn’t had to find other access. The greatest writing of Soviet times was the clandestine samizdat (literally “self-publishing” in Russian), those who obviously had the courage to buck a vicious system—the Solzhenitsyns, the Mandelstams, and so forth. Financial remuneration, not to mention the best medical care, was not for them.
Of course, we are building our own more open-minded structures, some in publishing, others in film. They all have good intentions. But for the most part, we are only allowed to preach to the choir. We are kept off in a corner, segregated.
Somehow this must be overcome. We must be able to reach the masses because we are the masses, not them.
What is going on in our country today is a full-on attack on free speech under a duplicitous, fascistic facade of making sure the public is correctly informed, that there is no “misinformation” (the big lie word of our times).
So when I say I’m a Soviet writer now, I hope you know I mean those great writers who wrote samizdat in opposition to a totalitarian state. I have nowhere near their courage. I have nowhere near their depth. But I identify with them because my country is on the verge of being turned into theirs.
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