Trump’s been deleted from internet, and any one of us could be next

Kit Knightly

Donald Trump has been deleted from the internet. He hasn’t been put behind a warning or had his followers reduced, or been forced to switch platforms. He’s gone.

Snapchat. Twitter. Facebook. YouTube. Google. Amazon. Instagram. Shopify. Twitch. Tiktok. Gone.

And he’s the President of the United States. If they can do it to him, they can do it to anyone.

Indeed, that’s the message being sent. It’s an intimidation move, designed to frighten people into policing themselves.

Many people have picked up on this already.

And this, kids, is called a digital execution. And If they can do it to the most powerful man on the planet, guess who could be completely banned from using the internet next, for whatever reason these companies, who sell your data to corporations and intelligence agencies, want. pic.twitter.com/SWX546s2Cy

— Amir (@AmirAminiMD) January 10, 2021

This gives Facebook/tech/Zuck THE MOST POWER. If he can shut the president up/off he can shut any of us up/off

— Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) January 7, 2021

But unfortunately, many more are still lost in what they falsely believe to be the heady scent of victory. They’ll realise their mistake eventually, but it may be too late for us all by then.

It didn’t even stop at Trump, either. Tens of thousands of other people were banned in the following days.

For years the refrain from people defending censorship on social media – ironically, people who would usually identify as “socialists” – has been that private companies have the right to police their platforms as they see fit, and if you don’t like it you can switch to another social network.

…but now those other social networks are being shut down too.

It started with Gab a few years ago, but the recent assault on Parler was even stronger. Gab survived, Parler has not. The tech giants got together and stamped the life out of a smaller competitor. (Pretty sure antitrust laws are there to prevent exactly that scenario, but nevermind.)

The whole week since the “Capitol Hill Riot” has been one long display of dominance. A peacock fanning its tail or a silverback banging on tree trunks.

They are telling us who’s in charge, but some people are refusing to listen.

A common meme doing the rounds among “liberal” voices – who are these days well-schooled in missing the point – goes something like this: “If he’s too dangerous to have a twitter account, why does he have the nuclear codes?”

But, of course, the real question is – if they don’t even let him have a Twitter account, do you honestly think they let him anywhere near the nuclear codes?

Do you really think he has, or had, any power at all? Do think Joe Biden does?

Do you think the same architecture that just publically castrated the “most powerful man on Earth” and the “leader of the free world” will suddenly start doing what it’s told when a “progressive” voice is in charge?

If they don’t bow to the will of the people now, why should they ever?

They won’t. They never have.

We’ve been told, in very clear terms, who has the power. And it is certainly not us, nor is it our elected representatives.

In fact, it’s not anyone with either democratic mandate or legal accountability, but rather a series of nameless executives, faceless bureaucrats and a succession of tech-billionaires forming a new breed of royalty.

Deleting Donald Trump wasn’t just “panic response” to the “violence” on Capitol Hill, and it wasn’t a punishment for the man himself – It was a calculated display of honesty. A declaration of intent.

A notification of the limitations we’re all going to face as the increasingly dystopian new normal shapes a different kind of society.

It’s all been clearly co-ordinated. The Deep State and big business and the media working together. Police are instructed to create unrest on Capitol Hill, allow “rioters” into the building. The media report it as an “attempted coup”, while the social networks remove all of Trump’s denunciations so he can be blamed for “inciting violence”.

They created the lie. They spread the lie. They silenced anyone who would gainsay the lie. They have, as Karl Rove would put it, “created reality”, and now we’re here analysing it.

It was a big lie, this time, because it had to be. Because the man – or rather the office – was big. But for Joe Bloggs it can be a small lie. “he posted child porn” or “he was spreading hate” or “he was denying the pandemic”.

The precedent has been created. They can ban anyone they want and make up the reasons later.

Frank Zappa famously said:

The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.

Well, we’ve been shown the wall, and we’re being encouraged to cheer because the first person to run into it was Donald Trump. Rather predictably, millions have fallen for it.