Let this column be a wake-up call to those Conservatives and Republicans who are under the impression that there is just a bias in social media and big tech that just favors the left. What we face in the midst of an election and after is much worse. I ask that you stay engaged to this piece to understand the multi-pronged approach to eliminate conservative thought.

First, something that is understood by most on the right is the perspective of the legacy media. We know that CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, etc. have had a liberal reporting bias since the inception of nearly all of them. But in the age of Trump, they have gone much further. These news outlets have become non-stop attack machines against the president who completely deny the sharing of any perspective opposite of their own.

In and of itself, free markets generally take care of things. That’s not the case in this age of media. Prior to the Coronavirus pandemic, CNN was barely registering in any measurable way in ratings. MSNBC did a little bit better. Hard print subscriptions to the Times and Post were also struggling, even as the standard bearers of everything anti-Trump. These media sources have excelled in the digital realm because they are specifically the options given by the bosses, but more on that later.

Here’s the thing, no matter the struggles of these companies, they are financed by the likes of AT&T, Amazon, Comcast and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. These companies are able to continue with their propaganda machines because they are financed by leftist magnates. In legacy media, Fox News is really their only competitor.

Fox also is not a down-the-line conservative network. They have nightly opinion hosts who are conservative, something the likes of CNN does not admit to. Even so, Fox reports on the same anti-Trump stories that their competitors have created.

Fox can claim something that their two cable competitors cannot — that they have a large organic audience. As people have stayed home during the pandemic and had a thirst for news, CNN and MSNBC’s ratings have increased.

Apparently, these legacy media outlets do not even realize that they are foaming from the mouth. In a recent total lack of self-awareness, on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” with Brian Stelter, a show that is supposed to make an honest attempt at examining media sources, had an “interesting” segment.

Stelter, with a full group of leftist panelists, played clips from very popular self-proclaimed conservatives which ripped into Joe Biden, as you would expect. The conversation after the clips would be comical if it wasn’t so sad.

Stelter asked guest Errin Haines “when you see entire media companies essentially exist to tear down Joe Biden, is there an equivalent of that on the left, tearing down Trump?”

Stelter seemingly had not watched his own network before with that question, but Haines put her straight face on with this amazing answer:

“There really isn’t. What I would say is it’s really a diet of this type of information that a lot of these voters are getting,” Haines replied. “A lot of the voters I talk to, I can — when I interview them, I do hear them saying a lot of the talking points that sound very familiar from some of these shows that I try to listen to when I’m out on the campaign trail or when I’m home, watching TV. You can hear these comments being echoed by voters.”

This is just one example of the non-stop barrage from the leftist media. The good news is there are more conservative and constitutional outlets than ever before. The bad news is the next information I will share with you – big tech is working overtime to eliminate dissemination of conservative thought and they have the power to do it.

You may have noticed that social media giants Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (Google) have been deleting, demonetizing, suspending and shadow banning content that they disagree with for a long time. Now, they are taking action at an even more alarming rate. It isn’t even an issue with just conservative content, but anything the media and the Democrats have deemed against their idea of what is acceptable.

The newest fad in leftist tech is to ban anything that is not a Democrat talking point on the practice of medicine. If any content is shared, even by renowned medical doctors, it can only be to be deemed in agreement with the anti-American World Health Organization.

The “fact-checkers” for these social media companies are also people with a vested interest against the very entities that they are fact-checking. Examples are media such as USA Today for Facebook and former Kamala Harris Press Secretary, Nick Pacilio, who recently suspended Donald Trump, Jr’s twitter account for sharing information on Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ.)

Leftist big tech’s decisions to clamp down on its users who share medical information that they don’t want out there is not only stifling the First amendment given their legal protections, they have also probably caused the deaths of thousands. They, the legacy media and the Democrats, have intentionally suppressed the positive effects of HCQ solely because it is an anti-Trump political maneuver.

Another aspect of social media is their preferred sources. If you post stories from certain sources, particularly on Facebook, they throttle down the amount of followers who can actually see posts on a timeline. For example, The Standard has far less clicks from Facebook than it did a year ago. While organic clicks have stayed the same, Facebook connections have been minimized. Believe it or not, congressional Democrats want Facebook to be more authoritarian.

Twitter is more infamous for suspending accounts, shadow banning users and more recently, removing followers from the more popular conservative accounts. Facebook has also become more aggressive in suspending accounts which they deem to be sharing misinformation. YouTube is known for deleting content it is politically opposed to as well as eliminating an account’s ability to make money off of it.

To go with the hammer being thrown down on free speech by social media, Google is the most manipulative and seemingly unnoticeable cog in the left’s Axis of Evil. Google is the most powerful company in the world and its search machine and news aggregate, unbeknownst to most, manipulates data so you only see the media sources they approve of politically.

Dr. Robert Epstein – a liberal Harvard professor and Google researcher who voted for Hillary Clinton – testified to congress that in 2016, Google manipulation may have cost President Trump as many as 2.6 million votes. But he warns the situation is even more dire for the 2020 election. Epstein now estimates that as many as 15 million votes could be affected by Google’s manipulation.

The algorithms that Epstein suggests are set to manipulate the sources that Google provides to its users have not only laid bare his own research, but now the companies who are suppressed are crying foul. Recently, conservative outlet Breitbart became so weary of their perceived loss of traffic that they studied it. On May 1, when a Google search for “Joe Biden” was initiated, Breitbart received 30,000 impressions from the search. Fast forward to five days later, the impressions dropped to zero. This pattern has remained across conservative media.

As Epstein recently told The American Spectator, “[Google is] the gatekeeper of information,” Epstein says. “If they don’t want kids to know Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, they will suppress that search result or change the answers…. Through their search engine biases, they are influencing elections, not just here, but around the world. I lean left and supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. But I am speaking out because I love freedom and democracy. Google is a threat to both.”

As I type this piece, I went to the Google News homepage. The page is loaded with anti-Trump stories and contains 36 Government/Politics/Coronavirus-related stories. All but seven of the stories came from left-wing news outlets. Those seven were Fox News, Forbes, The Washington Times, The Hill and National Review. National Review is the only one of those with a dedicated conservative outlook.

The final leg of the “Axis of Evil” is the Democratic Party and they are more self-explanatory. You can draw your own thoughts on the Democrats. The Democrats, legacy media and big tech are the three dimensions and they combine with each other to create the axis.

As a review, the Democrats have a far-left message, the media is their press that spreads the message exactly and big tech throttles any opposing messages with greater frequency every day. You may say, these are private companies so they can do as they wish. But they operate as platforms, meaning that the US government gives them protections against lawsuits as long as they guard free speech. This is where you and Congress come into play.

Thus far, Congress has been too late in reacting to this and some of its most conservative members don’t seem to have a strong enough plan to combat. Many of your favorite members have raked in quite a lot of campaign money from Google.

Recently, in an interview on Tucker Carlson Tonight, conservative Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) was able to point out the problem. The problem was his answer, that we must elect a Republican congress this year. For one, the GOP held the Congress from 2010-2018 while this issue festered. Secondly, if the Axis has a near total blackout of your point of view, it becomes quite difficult to win an election. Democrats are literally able to do and get away with anything, it is a wonder Republicans ever win anything.

Many other conservatives, including one of my favorites – Mike Lee – have adopted a very lenient approach to big tech. The approaches fail to realize that these monopolies are given a lot of leeway and they aren’t meeting their end of the bargain. It is up to you, the citizen, to put a constant press on Washington.

Something else for you to do is frequent the good guys in the media. The Standard (of course,) The Blaze, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, The Federalist, The First, Newsmax, One America News and PJ Media to name a few, provide well-researched coverage that tells the truth. These sources also oftentimes provide a live feed that allows freedom from cable providers, another financier of the far left. The free app PlutoTV is also available for your phone, Roku or Smart TV and it includes many of the sources mentioned above. Make sure you are constantly sharing these sources and do not share untrustworthy sources even if they may seem to be on the right side.

Why use such a dramatic term like the “Axis of Evil”? Because they are. These entities are colluding to shut you up because they detest your point of view. The entities are colluding to win an election and it will be difficult to overcome that. These entities are colluding to suppress how violent it currently is across the country and their leftist ideas. These entities are colluding to rewrite America’s history.

Just think of what will happen should they be successful in this election and continue their iron-fisted progression? At least a generation of Marxism!

 

Preston Baines can be reached on Parler/Twitter @prestonbaines and at prestonbaines@gmail.com.

 

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