The Michael Knowles Show - EXPOSED： Censorship and ＂The COVID Blacklist＂

00:00:00.680 If you spoke the truth about COVID-19 at any point from 2020 to 2022,

00:00:06.660 there's a good chance big tech companies suspended you for it, for spreading misinformation.

00:00:13.160 Sometimes scientific studies proved you right.

00:00:16.320 Sometimes the social media giants themselves admitted that you were right after the fact.

00:00:22.040 But in almost every case, it didn't matter.

00:00:24.900 The big tech giants got to decide what you could and could not say about the most far-reaching political issue in American life.

00:00:34.900 In fact, the biggest purveyors of misinformation were the big tech companies themselves.

00:00:41.940 And now that they've been caught, they're trying to memory hole the whole thing.

00:00:47.640 Fortunately, we have the receipts.

00:00:50.000 On August 28, 2021, Twitter announced that it had permanently suspended former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson from the platform

00:01:00.780 for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules.

00:01:06.320 In the tweet that finally got him booted, Berenson expressed skepticism of the COVID vaccines.

00:01:13.320 Quote,

00:01:13.540 For that, the reporter was permanently kicked out of the public square.

00:01:39.160 Until he wasn't.

00:01:40.340 On July 6, 2022, Berenson re-emerged on Twitter.

00:01:46.180 In the intervening 11 months, Berenson had sued Twitter in federal court,

00:01:51.420 claiming that Twitter had violated his First Amendment rights,

00:01:55.080 engaged in false advertising, and violated California's common carrier law.

00:02:00.840 For the first time ever in this sort of suit,

00:02:04.060 Twitter chose to settle out of court,

00:02:05.980 reinstate Berenson's account,

00:02:08.240 and admit that the reporter should not have been suspended at the time for saying what he said.

00:02:15.020 And the most obvious reason he shouldn't have been banned is that what he said was true.

00:02:21.260 Twitter had even tacitly admitted that what he said was true.

00:02:24.660 Until December 15, 2021, Twitter's COVID-19 misleading information policy prohibited false or misleading claims

00:02:34.200 that people who have received the vaccine can spread or shed the virus or symptoms or immunity to unvaccinated people.

00:02:43.920 But people who had received the vaccine could, and in fact did, spread the virus to plenty of people,

00:02:50.720 vaccinated, unvaccinated alike.

00:02:53.620 So, on December 16, Twitter quietly changed the rule to ban false or misleading claims

00:03:01.280 that people who have received the vaccine can spread or shed the vaccine or symptoms or immunity to unvaccinated people.

00:03:09.940 The COVID vaccines do not stop infection or transmission.

00:03:14.660 They never did.

00:03:16.200 But Joe Biden and Dr. Fauci and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky all said that they did.

00:03:22.460 They're, they're, they're, you're okay.

00:03:24.640 You're not going to, you're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.

00:03:28.820 When people are vaccinated, they can feel safe that they are not going to get infected.

00:03:33.180 Vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don't get sick.

00:03:37.300 Not a word of it true.

00:03:39.460 But big tech platforms treated it as true.

00:03:42.400 And they censored countless people, including journalists, including elected politicians,

00:03:49.480 including scientists, who dared to contradict the politically correct narrative of the entrenched powers that be.

00:03:58.260 Now, they want to sweep all that censorship, all that bullying,

00:04:02.560 all that misinformation from the big tech platforms under the rug,

00:04:07.760 and hope that we all just forget.

00:04:11.780 In October of 2020, Twitter locked the account of Scott Atlas,

00:04:16.960 a top science advisor to then-President Donald Trump,

00:04:20.540 for 12 hours over Atlas's claim that face masks didn't actually stop the spread of the coronavirus.

00:04:28.900 Atlas buttressed his claim by citing examples of places with widespread mask enforcement

00:04:34.740 that nonetheless saw COVID cases rising.

00:04:38.740 YouTube followed suit in August of 2021,

00:04:41.580 when it suspended Rand Paul, not only a U.S. senator, but a physician himself,

00:04:46.900 for expressing doubt as to the medical efficacy of cloth face masks.

00:04:52.380 Senator Paul backed up his skepticism by quoting peer-reviewed articles on the inefficacy of the masks.

00:04:59.860 Senator Paul and Atlas might as well have cited Dr. Fauci himself.

00:05:04.140 Dr. Fauci, who, in the early days of the pandemic, when cases were surging,

00:05:09.820 urged Americans not to wear masks.

00:05:13.300 Right now, people should not be walking, there's no reason to be walking around with a mask.

00:05:17.920 When you're in the middle of an outbreak,

00:05:20.960 wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better,

00:05:24.420 and it might even block a droplet,

00:05:27.840 but it's not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is.

00:05:32.240 Fauci later came to reverse his position amid political pressure the very same month.

00:05:37.760 But it turns out Fauci actually had it right the first time.

00:05:41.780 In a quiet update to its mask policy on January 14, 2022,

00:05:46.940 the CDC finally conceded that the masks,

00:05:50.180 in particular the cloth masks that so many people wore throughout the pandemic,

00:05:55.020 did not provide especially effective protection against the virus.

00:06:01.580 At the time of Rand Paul's suspension,

00:06:04.860 YouTube prohibited claims that masks do not play a role

00:06:08.640 in preventing the contraction or transmission of COVID-19.

00:06:13.040 Today, YouTube no longer even mentions masks in its policy.

00:06:18.380 Right now, go to hallow.com slash Knowles.

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00:07:34.800 Dan Bongino, one of the most prominent conservative broadcasters in the country,

00:07:40.660 lost his own YouTube channel, with its nearly 900,000 subscribers,

00:07:45.900 five months after YouTube censored Rand Paul,

00:07:49.220 and for the same reason, mocking the efficacy of the masks.

00:07:53.540 But in the case of Dan Bongino,

00:07:55.760 he didn't just lose access to his channel for a week.

00:07:59.040 He lost it permanently.

00:08:01.060 Now, had Dan uploaded his offending video today,

00:08:06.060 he almost certainly would still have a channel,

00:08:09.220 since YouTube no longer prohibits calling the masks useless.

00:08:13.080 Since now, everyone agrees,

00:08:15.440 the masks are and always were pretty much useless.

00:08:19.820 But because Dan spread that true information

00:08:22.600 at a time that YouTube called it misinformation,

00:08:26.040 months before it stopped calling it misinformation,

00:08:28.160 Dan Bongino is still banned.

00:08:31.940 Back to the Capitol for a second.

00:08:34.340 Rand Paul is not the only Republican senator suspended by YouTube

00:08:38.040 for spreading so-called misinformation that turned out to be true.

00:08:42.740 In November of 2021,

00:08:44.760 Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson received a one-week suspension

00:08:48.220 for citing the Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System

00:08:51.780 and discussing vaccine-related injuries and deaths.

00:08:55.660 How can you help them fully recover if you're not willing to admit

00:08:59.840 that vaccine injuries are real?

00:09:03.860 But Johnson's claim was not only correct,

00:09:06.600 it was also pretty much universally acknowledged to be correct.

00:09:11.200 The risk of vaccine injury and even death,

00:09:14.420 specifically from blood clotting,

00:09:16.800 from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine,

00:09:19.060 was so clear that on April 23, 2021,

00:09:22.160 the FDA and CDC recommended a nationwide pause in its distribution.

00:09:28.700 On May 5, 2022,

00:09:30.840 the FDA considered the clotting risk to be so significant

00:09:34.140 that it banned the shot for children and teenagers

00:09:37.220 and limited its use for people 18 and older

00:09:40.880 only to those who, for whatever reason,

00:09:44.040 were medically ineligible to take one of the other vaccines.

00:09:47.600 Peter Marks, the FDA's Vaccines Lead

00:09:50.980 and Director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research,

00:09:56.520 explained,

00:09:57.880 If we see deaths and there is an alternative vaccine

00:10:01.280 that is not associated with deaths

00:10:03.300 but is associated with similar efficacy,

00:10:06.580 we felt it was time at this point

00:10:08.720 to make a statement on the product's fact sheet

00:10:11.720 that this was not a first-line vaccine.

00:10:15.100 Beyond the Johnson & Johnson vaccine,

00:10:18.600 the journal Science announced in January of 2022

00:10:21.560 that coronavirus vaccines may cause long COVID-like symptoms

00:10:26.500 and the risk from the mRNA vaccines of heart problems,

00:10:30.600 myocarditis and pericarditis,

00:10:32.380 particularly in young people,

00:10:34.480 has been well-documented and acknowledged by the FDA.

00:10:38.020 In any case, it is now incontrovertible

00:10:41.080 that the vaccines carry risks.

00:10:43.980 In most cases, YouTube has gotten away

00:10:47.700 with tacitly changing its criteria

00:10:50.180 for censorship of claims about vaccines

00:10:52.740 by lumping it all under the prohibition

00:10:55.640 against claims about COVID-19 vaccinations

00:10:59.200 that contradict expert consensus

00:11:01.440 from local health authorities or WHO.

00:11:04.940 As YouTube perceives that expert consensus to change,

00:11:09.520 it can alter its enforcement policies

00:11:11.880 without ever having to explain why

00:11:14.020 or to acknowledge that it's doing so.

00:11:16.640 But in a couple of cases,

00:11:18.400 YouTube chose to articulate sweeping scientific claims

00:11:21.880 in its guidelines

00:11:23.040 and therefore had to rewrite those guidelines

00:11:25.940 when the scientific rationale for them

00:11:28.400 turned out to be false.

00:11:30.480 Until May of 2022,

00:11:32.800 YouTube prohibited claims that COVID-19 vaccines

00:11:36.120 are not effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19.

00:11:39.600 But by May, it had become clear

00:11:42.500 that the vaccines are not in fact effective

00:11:45.580 in preventing the spread of COVID-19,

00:11:47.860 as even the public health authorities had come to admit.

00:11:52.440 So that month, YouTube quietly and subtly

00:11:55.420 changed the prohibition,

00:11:57.540 now banning claims that COVID-19 vaccines

00:12:00.600 do not reduce the risk of serious illness or death,

00:12:04.500 a major movement of the goalposts.

00:12:07.060 It was a move in the right direction

00:12:09.680 for people interested in the truth.

00:12:12.620 But the shift didn't do a lot of good

00:12:14.680 for the countless creators

00:12:16.020 who had seen their videos taken down

00:12:18.860 and their accounts suspended

00:12:20.380 for spreading the truth

00:12:22.160 in violation of YouTube's misinformation policy.

00:12:25.860 The consequences of this censorship campaign

00:12:29.140 cannot be overstated.

00:12:30.960 It didn't just prevent professional content creators

00:12:34.940 from making money or racking up views.

00:12:38.300 It stopped news outlets from reporting the truth.

00:12:42.020 It stopped public officials from debating public policy.

00:12:46.600 It stopped ordinary Americans 0.98

00:12:48.740 from making their voices heard in the political process.

00:12:53.240 The big tech censorship regime,

00:12:55.920 more than perhaps any other factor,

00:12:57.840 reshaped our political order.

00:13:01.200 On August 10th, 2021,

00:13:03.720 Republican Congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene

00:13:05.820 found herself suspended from Twitter

00:13:08.220 for a full week for claiming that

00:13:10.840 there are too many reports of infection

00:13:13.560 and spread of COVID-19 among vaccinated people.

00:13:17.740 These vaccines are failing

00:13:19.200 and do not reduce the spread of the virus,

00:13:21.920 and neither do masks.

00:13:23.760 Vaccine mandates and passports 0.99

00:13:25.700 violate individual freedoms.

00:13:28.380 That last sentence

00:13:29.880 should not have raised objections

00:13:31.860 from even the most trenchant COVID alarmists.

00:13:35.880 No matter what you think of COVID,

00:13:37.820 it's difficult to argue

00:13:39.020 that mandates don't limit certain freedoms.

00:13:42.580 But the first part turned out to be correct, too.

00:13:46.060 In a self-governing republic,

00:13:48.420 you would imagine

00:13:49.240 that the people's elected representatives

00:13:51.480 would be given the widest degree

00:13:53.800 of latitude possible in the public square.

00:13:56.920 The COVID pandemic changed that dynamic,

00:14:00.040 as the gatekeepers of the public square

00:14:02.360 frequently gave preferential treatment

00:14:04.660 in discussions of public policy

00:14:06.660 to technocrats and scientists

00:14:09.020 over elected politicians.

00:14:11.680 But even scientists sometimes found themselves

00:14:15.020 on the wrong end of the big tech censors,

00:14:18.440 including, most ironically of all,

00:14:20.280 one of the people who helped develop

00:14:22.600 the mRNA technology used in the COVID vaccines,

00:14:26.740 Dr. Robert Malone.

00:14:28.380 On January 3, 2022,

00:14:30.780 Twitter permanently banned Dr. Robert Malone

00:14:33.660 for repeated violations

00:14:35.540 of its COVID misinformation policy.

00:14:39.020 And what had Dr. Malone said

00:14:40.820 that was allegedly wrong?

00:14:43.020 He claimed on an episode

00:14:44.460 of the Joe Rogan podcast

00:14:45.620 The ban was awkward from the start.

00:14:55.720 One imagines that a man

00:14:57.300 who helped to invent mRNA vaccine technology

00:15:00.280 might know a thing or two more

00:15:02.280 about the vaccines

00:15:03.260 than would the random Twitter sensor

00:15:05.720 with the power to ban him.

00:15:07.920 But things got especially awkward

00:15:09.860 a little over two weeks later

00:15:11.460 when on January 19,

00:15:13.740 the CDC admitted that natural immunity

00:15:16.500 had proved stronger than vaccination

00:15:18.980 during the Delta wave of the virus.

00:15:22.220 And not just a little stronger,

00:15:24.260 six times stronger.

00:15:26.680 Twitter never specifically banned claims

00:15:29.340 relating to natural immunity,

00:15:31.560 preferring instead to lump

00:15:33.240 all of its vaccine censorship

00:15:34.860 under the catch-all prohibition

00:15:36.980 against false or misleading information

00:15:39.780 that misrepresent the protective effect

00:15:41.960 of vaccines.

00:15:43.780 Of course, Dr. Malone's comments

00:15:45.820 on the effectiveness

00:15:46.720 of natural immunity versus vaccines

00:15:49.100 was neither false nor misleading.

00:15:51.800 But Twitter never had to admit its error.

00:15:54.840 And one of the nation's

00:15:55.940 most knowledgeable voices on mRNA vaccines

00:15:58.960 was booted from the platform.

00:16:02.820 In March of 2021,

00:16:04.840 in response to a question

00:16:06.160 about whether or not people

00:16:07.640 who had recovered from COVID infection

00:16:09.760 needed to vaccinate themselves as well,

00:16:12.960 Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff

00:16:15.380 responded,

00:16:16.920 no.

00:16:17.900 Thinking that everyone must be vaccinated

00:16:20.240 is as scientifically flawed

00:16:22.240 as thinking nobody should.

00:16:24.520 Those with prior natural infection

00:16:26.580 do not need it.

00:16:28.500 Fortunately,

00:16:29.440 Professor Kulldorff

00:16:30.420 did not have his account

00:16:31.920 permanently taken away from him.

00:16:34.100 Call it Harvard privilege, perhaps.

00:16:36.440 But Twitter did see fit

00:16:38.080 to slap a warning label underneath it.

00:16:40.840 This tweet is misleading.

00:16:42.560 Find out why health officials

00:16:44.000 recommend a vaccine for most people.

00:16:46.600 Of course,

00:16:47.500 the only thing misleading

00:16:48.620 about the post

00:16:49.520 was the warning label,

00:16:51.160 since Dr. Kulldorff's original claim

00:16:53.120 turned out to be correct.

00:16:54.700 And plenty of public health experts

00:16:57.300 and authorities,

00:16:58.400 notably Kulldorff himself,

00:17:00.420 did not recommend

00:17:01.540 a uniform vaccination

00:17:02.960 for everyone.

00:17:04.620 Now, so far,

00:17:05.980 we've been talking a lot

00:17:07.280 about Twitter and YouTube.

00:17:09.320 But we can't forget about Facebook,

00:17:11.680 which instituted

00:17:12.540 its own COVID speech codes,

00:17:14.500 which were, at times,

00:17:15.740 even more expansive

00:17:16.700 and absurd

00:17:17.440 than those of its peers.

00:17:19.500 In addition to rules

00:17:21.020 about the discussion

00:17:21.780 of masks and vaccines

00:17:23.300 and transmission,

00:17:24.180 Facebook also took a hard line

00:17:26.820 against certain theories

00:17:28.480 about the virus's origin.

00:17:31.080 In the early days of COVID,

00:17:32.780 news reports

00:17:33.560 and state propaganda

00:17:34.820 blamed the outbreak

00:17:36.200 on a bowl of bad bat soup 0.99

00:17:38.720 at a wet market

00:17:39.580 in Wuhan, China.

00:17:41.040 Some rotten pangolin, too,

00:17:43.300 might have played a role,

00:17:44.460 according to those reports.

00:17:46.680 But, we were told,

00:17:48.420 the outbreak

00:17:49.060 had absolutely nothing to do

00:17:51.400 with the Wuhan Institute

00:17:53.000 of Virology,

00:17:54.420 mainland China's

00:17:55.340 first-ever Level 4 biolab

00:17:57.840 that just so happened

00:17:59.400 to be studying

00:18:00.260 bat coronaviruses.

00:18:02.740 It didn't take long

00:18:04.280 before people

00:18:05.020 connected the dots.

00:18:06.700 However,

00:18:07.640 if they connected

00:18:08.380 those dots on Facebook,

00:18:10.200 they could have had

00:18:10.960 their posts suppressed

00:18:12.380 and their accounts suspended.

00:18:15.100 In February of 2021,

00:18:17.140 Facebook formally banned

00:18:18.580 suggestions that COVID

00:18:20.080 had leaked from the Wuhan lab

00:18:21.640 from its platform.

00:18:23.440 Facebook was following

00:18:24.420 the official line

00:18:25.440 of the World Health Organization,

00:18:27.280 which in March of that year

00:18:28.600 had reported

00:18:29.520 that the lab leak theory

00:18:30.900 was extremely unlikely.

00:18:33.880 Since the earliest days

00:18:35.380 of the pandemic,

00:18:36.680 China had pressured 0.68

00:18:37.660 the WHO

00:18:38.420 to reject any suggestion

00:18:40.640 that the virus

00:18:41.780 had emerged

00:18:42.640 from the Wuhan Institute

00:18:43.860 of Virology.

00:18:45.160 But after the WHO's

00:18:46.860 March report,

00:18:47.880 evidence only continued

00:18:49.140 to mount

00:18:49.800 that the virus

00:18:50.720 had something to do

00:18:52.060 with the lab,

00:18:53.380 causing the WHO

00:18:54.300 to reverse its story.

00:18:56.500 There was a premature push

00:18:59.080 to reduce one of the options

00:19:02.380 like the lab theory.

00:19:05.400 Lab accidents happen.

00:19:07.280 It's common.

00:19:08.960 Facebook lifted its prohibition,

00:19:11.420 albeit a little bit too late

00:19:13.160 for the people

00:19:13.880 who were shut up

00:19:15.020 for speaking the truth

00:19:16.500 too soon.

00:19:17.840 Facebook banned

00:19:19.480 any post

00:19:20.840 for four months

00:19:22.280 about COVID

00:19:24.080 coming from a lab.

00:19:26.060 Of course,

00:19:26.500 now even the Biden administration

00:19:27.820 is looking into this.

00:19:29.060 Right.

00:19:29.780 Accidents do happen,

00:19:31.620 but the premature push

00:19:33.440 to promote

00:19:34.320 a single,

00:19:35.420 politically convenient,

00:19:36.880 and often scientifically

00:19:38.240 incoherent narrative

00:19:39.880 about the coronavirus

00:19:41.280 is more than just

00:19:43.120 an accident,

00:19:44.380 a whoopsie-daisy,

00:19:45.860 a no harm,

00:19:46.600 no foul.

00:19:47.760 It was a ruthless

00:19:48.860 system of censorship

00:19:50.160 that silenced

00:19:51.560 scientists,

00:19:53.200 journalists,

00:19:54.440 politicians,

00:19:55.780 publishers,

00:19:56.660 and ordinary people

00:19:58.120 who had the temerity

00:19:59.880 to question

00:20:00.820 the entrenched powers.

00:20:02.680 It was a years-long

00:20:04.300 political scandal

00:20:05.400 that continues

00:20:06.560 to this day

00:20:07.500 as big tech companies

00:20:09.420 attempt to

00:20:10.520 move us along,

00:20:12.140 make us forget

00:20:12.820 the whole thing

00:20:13.600 ever happened.

00:20:15.240 We cannot forget.

00:20:18.000 We cannot allow them

00:20:19.700 to make us forget.

00:20:22.260 And with whatever

00:20:23.300 political power

00:20:24.280 we've still got,

00:20:25.940 whatever political power

00:20:27.620 we may manage

00:20:29.260 to recover,

00:20:30.780 we cannot let them

00:20:32.580 do it again.

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The Michael Knowles Show - November 03, 2024

EXPOSED： Censorship and ＂The COVID Blacklist＂

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