Alex Berenson Freed From Twitter Jail

Alex Berenson speaks on censorship and freedom of speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 26, 2021. (CPAC/Screenshot via NTD)

Commentary

On July 5, COVID vaccine critic Alex Berenson was reinstated on Twitter after being "permanently" suspended over allegedly violating the blue bird's COVID-19 "misinformation" policy.

On Substack, Berenson writes: "The parties have come to a mutually acceptable resolution. I have been reinstated. Twitter has acknowledged that my tweets should have not led to my suspension at that time."

What's perhaps most concerning about Berenson's story is the government's potential role in censoring him.

Last year, Congress repeatedly confronted CEOs of social media platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter in order to combat “misinformation and disinformation plaguing online platforms.” In the summer of 2021, the federal government more aggressively pressured social media platforms to crack down on perceived dangerous COVID misinformation. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared it was an “urgent threat." In July, President Joe Biden rashly rebuked social media companies, claiming, “They’re killing people.” He continued, “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people.”

Perhaps Twitter should have censored Biden for uttering such a demonstrably false claim.

Recent data (reported by Alex Berenson) from Manitoba, Canada, show higher death rates among the vaccinated. And this is after controlling for age since vaccinated individuals tend to be older.

As Berenson previously said on Tucker Carlson, the Biden administration's vocalized pressure on Twitter to clamp down on seemingly false COVID claims last summer was "contemporaneous with" his permanent suspension.

What's deeply sad about the Berenson saga is he's a marginalized outcast in mainstream circles. Both sides of the political spectrum view him to be an anti-vax quack who distorts and hyperbolizes COVID data to push some kind of conspiratorial propaganda. The Atlantic published a hit-piece on him last year entitled "The Pandemic's Wrongest Man."

I’ve been in both liberal and conservative circles where he has been openly mocked as some kind of mentally deranged activist. Demonization and condemnation of Berenson’s fearless reporting from the start of COVID has become completely accepted.

Other than regular appearances on Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson—which is an incredible privilege—Berenson is deemed too controversial for other platforms. Even podcasters and commentators in the alternate, contrarian ("IDW") space don't go anywhere near him. It’s shameful.

The pandemic has produced a mass hypnosis effect. Many prominent figures who shared real cynicism toward our increasingly politicized institutions abandoned reason and skepticism because the vaccines symbolized "objective science" (unlike leftist postmodernism). Except they didn't—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and public health authorities appeared to repeatedly distort the data and misled the public in order to maximize profits and meet quotas.

Dr. Marty Makary and Dr. Tracy Hoeg’s new essay in Common Sense with quotes from top CDC scientists captures the disturbing rot of the establishment with the greatest responsibility to medically inform the public.

The bizarre new Big-Pharma-capture of once-critical journalistic outlets has led to publications refusing to report on the new Alex Berenson news. Other than Fox News, The Daily Mail, and The Epoch Times, virtually no major publications have covered Berenson's landmark settlement.

What's more, a good friend of mine who's a reporter at a top U.S. publication pitched a story about Berenson to his editors and they outright rejected it without any reason. Mainstream media appears to not want to cover a story that would seemingly vindicate an “anti-vax conspiracy theorist.”

Such are the censorious times we live in.

Thank goodness for indomitable truth-seekers like Alex Berenson.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.