So Neil Young (who yes, is apparently still alive) had a temper tantrum and rage quit Spotify for the thought crime of hosting the rightwing, neo-Nazi, antivax, Bernie Sanders-endorsing fascist Joe Rogan on their platform. The has been who amounts to little more than the butt of one chorus in a Lynyrd Skykyrd song was soon joined by some nobodies and Donald Trump’s nieces (?) or something like that.
The embarrassingly pathetic nature of this should go without saying. Neil Young, it should be noted, is the guy who performed an entire show with a coke rock in his nostril and later released an entire album bashing Monsanto. Now he wants to cry and demand Joe Rogan be censored because Rogan hosted a prestigious doctor and vaccinologist who invented the underlying technology behind the mRNA vaccines on his podcast because he criticized Pfizer. Lord give me the strength.
Isn’t it interesting that these "boycotts" always seem to go against the alternative media. The mainstream press lies at least as much as they do (WMD, babies being thrown out of incubators, “moderate rebels,” Russia hacked the power grid, Russia hacked the voting booths, muh Russian collusion, "hand up don't shoot," Haven Monahan raped Jackie on broken glass, Kyle Rittenhouse drove ACROSS STATE LINES!!!! to murder three black people," etc. etc.)
For crying out loud, these “reputable” journalists tried to convince us that Russia or perhaps China were shooting invisible, secret laser beams into the brains of our diplomats to give them headaches or whatever with the farcical Havana Syndrome.
The state department released a report saying the most likely cause of "Havana Syndrome" was *drum roll* crickets.
Just look at the following four polls and ask yourself, how did the public get these things so wrong?
1) A full 70% of Americans thought Saddam was behind 9/11 on the eve of the Iraq war. That’s not that they thought Saddam had WMD, they thought he was behind the attacks on New York.
2) 41% of Democrats (and 28% of Republicans) said they thought the odds of being hospitalized if you came down with Covid (the Delta variety) was over 50%. The right answer is between 1 and 5% and probably more like 1.
3) 41% of liberals (and almost 15% of conservatives) think the police kill over 1000 unarmed black men a year. (In 2019, the actual number was 13.)
4) 67% of Democrats and over 40% of Republicans think Russia tampered with 2016 vote tallies to get Trump in office; not that Trump colluded with Russia, but that Putin hacked voting machines that became impenetrable four years later.
Interesting how so many Republicans are “anti-science” but in the wrong direction.
But digressions aside, where are people getting these ridiculously wrong ideas from? Was it from Joe Rogan?
No, these false ideas implanted predominantly by the mainstream press have lead to, in just the above cases, a catastrophic war, an absurd geopolitical blunder that has pushed Russia into China's orbit, deadly riots and calls to "defund the police" instead of well-thought out reform that has helped see the murder rate skyrocket 30% this year and disastrously overwrought lockdowns that, as the recent John Hopkins meta analysis put it,
"Lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, while they have imposed enormous economic and social costs."
But John Hopkins University is a well known institution full of ant-science conspiracy theorists, of course.
Yet despite this Godawful track record, many in the traditional mainstream press shill for censorship of the alternative media over and over again without a hint of self awareness. For example, The New York Times has an entire unit dedicated to fighting "misinformation" which basically boils down to demanding platforms censor certain creators. This unit is lead by professional tattletale Taylor Lorenz who last year blatantly lied about what tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen said. When called out for this, there was, of course, no apology, just like there were no apologies for Kyle Rittenhouse no Nicholas Sandman. (Although quite the libel payout in the latter’s case.)
Instead, she and many other mainstream journalist types just complained about harassment and do ridiculous studies to figure out how many mean tweets she got after lying through her teeth.
“Toxicity” lol.
Oddly, the Brookings Institute didn’t do an analysis on how much harassment Marc Andreessen endured after Lorenz’ lies.
Then, after they’re finished whining about being “harassed,” they just go right back to demanding platforms censor people they don't like for "misinformation" as if they hadn't just got caught lying through their teeth.
It's utterly embarrassing and extremely destructive to free speech even if “they’re private companies and have the right to do it.” (A highly debatable preposition for another time.)
At least Neil Young outing himself as a censorious crybaby has made one thing crystal clear (and it’s good to know the truth and drop all illusions): The 60s counterculture “stick it to the man” shtick was all fake. It was nothing but an act. They were all just bootlickers who wanted to do drugs and sleep around.
Pathetic. Just pathetic.
Neil Young and Joni Mitchell were anti-establishment until the establishment financed their new lifestyle. Having had bought them at an exorbitantly high price, the establishment merely had to show them the receipt for proof of purchase in order for Neil and Joni to have an opinion…