Speak!: On Misinformation, Disinformation, and Censorship
What do we do when verifiable reality is fragmented, flipped on its head, or erased altogether?
Do you solemnly swear/affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God/under the penalty of perjury?— sworn testimony oath in the United States legal system
When the preacher in a Black Baptist church effectively discloses a hidden, deeper, particularly poignant truth the congregants will often say, “Preach!” Maybe, we should do the same call-and-response when people have the courage to speak inconvenient truths or voice unpopular, but important, opinions in the public forum: Speak!
The Information Age has ushered in an age of unprecedented illusioneering around “truth”— advertised conceit, anti-science “science,” social media sizzle reels, and computer and algorithms that reinforce rather than challenge prejudices and preferences (all to serve you better, of course). These and other manipulative technologies serve to hollow out, coarsen, and tribalize common discourse, increasingly preventing earnest, informed exchange. Subjective desire to experience the world in self-reinforcing and self-gratifying ways has created a whole new industry that puts lucrative and convenient self-augmentation above empirically verifiable independent reality.
Without any larger truth to “push back” and without a wider and deeper external reference to contextualize and situate our own learning, growth, and partiality we are finding ourselves swimming in a sea of relativism and reinforced ignorance. Truth becomes what ever we feel at the time, regardless of what that feeling is based upon. This is not progress. This is regress. We are not being “freed” to multiply and contribute our realities to a more inclusive truth. We are being balkanized and trained to entrap ourselves in our individualized perceptions.
The so-called powers that be and their increasingly monopolized and corporatized media love this trend. Discontent is now officially disallowed: You can believe whatever you believe on the individual level! “Be whatever you want to be,” but whatever you do, don’t compare notes and try to voice a collective, well-referenced “hey-wait-a-minute-that’s-not-true” . Any challenge to power can now be labeled as “misinformation” and any revelation of a darker, obscured crime against humanity will be deemed either “disinformation” or “conspiracy theory”.
So yes, we have fully arrived at Orwellian doublespeak. So-called leaders and policy-makers of “liberal democracies” are illiberally using their government and corporate media power to label YOUR verifiable truth “misinformation” and “disinformation” to justify censorship and erasure, while THEIR clearly false actual misinformation and disinformation is sanctioned as truth to be circulated and repeated.
Case Examples: “Anatomy Lessons”— How Editors and “Experts” Managed Public Perception Amid Contrary Evidence on Covid-19
I really began to see how this information inversion worked in July and August of 2021. At that time, YouTube removed four of my videos on my channel, Citizen Zeus. These videos involved commentary on emerging peer-reviewed scientific research which indicated “vaccine failures accelerating in Israel and the U.S.” as well as the superiority of natural immunity. This research showed that natural immunity not only protects people well against Covid, better than vaccines alone, but makes additional vaccination, along with its inherent risks, unnecessary. The CDC’s own data confirms this conclusion. This “cleansing” of YouTube of inconvenient truths happened right after the CEO of Pfizer visited the White House, and White House administrative adjuncts began contacting YouTube directly to censor videos that might stimulate “vaccine hesitancy” (i.e. free and informed consent) and thwart the achievement of its own policy aims.
To my knowledge, this is the first time in modern medical history where natural immunity was not being recognized as both sufficient and superior to vaccines for immune protection, proving that corporate profiteering and official censorship, misinformation, and disinformation had officially “captured” pretty much every major institution (including academia, media, science, and public health). Even though Dr. Anthony Fauci himself has touted the superiority of natural immunity in the past, he refused to affirm what he already knew when posed a direct question about natural immunity by mainstream media doctor Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
A second example: A small slice of my letter to the editor of Harper’s Magazine on the topic of disinformation was published in the November 2021 issue, but what was most interesting was HOW the editors changed what “I” had written to reflect there own biases and the prevailing “conventional wisdom”:
Here was the Harper’s edited version of “my” writing:
I found Bernstein’s exploration of disinformation to be disappointingly dated. He gives only passing mention to examples from the past few years—QAnon, the U.S. Capitol attack, conspiracies about the origins of COVID-19, and of course, the endless debates around masks and vaccines. By skirting the gravity of these issues, Bernstein misses two alarming evolutions that are happening right now: that of misinformation, from the level of counterfactual assertion to captured consensus; and that of disinformation—the deliberate manipulation of knowledge to skew, punish, and entice—from a tactic of dictators to something that some constituents in liberal democracies cheerfully embrace. Zeus Yiamouyiannis Penryn, Calif.
Here was the original version of this same letter to the editor:
The Harper’s September, 2021 cover story, “Disinformed: How We Get Fake News Wrong,” is disappointedly dated. It gives only passing mention to the most important disinformation examples of the past two years—Q Anon and the January 6, 2021 insurrection, the Wuhan lab leak theory and the possible origins of SARS-CoV-2, and the debates around mask-wearing and Covid-19 vaccines. In skirting these issues, the author misses the alarming evolution of misinformation from counterfactual assertion to captured consensus and the transformation of disinformation (manipulating knowledge to deliberately skew, punish, and entice) from something dictators do to something liberal democracies cheerfully triumph.
Notice any significant differences?
The editing was mostly clerical, but there were notable exceptions. Harper’s editors chose to have “me” say “conspiracies about the origins of COVID-19” rather than “the Wuhan lab leak theory about the possible origins of Covid-19” (which by the way is now considered to be the MOST LIKELY explanation). The editors also changed my punch line rather significantly: My actual words went from [disinformation is something] “that liberal democracies cheerfully triumph” to the much more constrained Harper’s rendition— “that some constituents in liberal democracies cheerfully embrace”. I was not only making the case that leaders (not simple constituents) were “embracing” authoritarian disinformation but championing it as a legitimate form of liberal governance, the exact opposite of historical liberalism. That emphasis and point was erased in the editing process. The more revolutionary implications were thus sanitized.
This may seem like a fairly academic distinction without much consequence, but what happens when you literally remove information critical to the life and well-being choices of people, as happened around vaccinations. Hundred of thousands if not millions of lives have been DIRECTLY affected by this distortion, inversion, and erasure of information that legitimately challenges the official line, and to my knowledge, no one has yet been penalized for publishing false information that has killed people in the service of official propaganda, yet many millions have been punished with job losses, health injury, and social exclusion and discrimination who stood up for verifiable if uncomfortable truths that went against official propaganda.
You can try to sound the bell, but the editors of Harper’s and other outlets can remove the clanger. Here are some observations and a warning from that same letter to the editor (written in August 2021) and did not see the printed page until now:
Real and grounded scientific objection and alternative hypotheses are being outright banned or erased. Case in point: Dr. Robert W. Malone, the inventor/progenitor of mRNA [vaccine technology] has been removed from the English version of Wikipedia and called pseudo-scientific for daring to question an uncritical embrace of vaccines.
(A)dvocating for alternative Covid-19 therapies [i.e. Vitamin D, fluvoxamine, ivermectin] that have a long track-record of safety, things that can be verified and responsibly, proactively, and empirically address crises and save lives, are now being treated on par with the January 6 insurrection and “Stop the Steal” election delusion resulting in active lying and destruction of life, property, and democracy.
This matters. Lives are being lost unnecessarily by this blanket refusal to engage non-politicized and non-economically aggrandized truth. And the destructive decline will go on, unless we come to grips with empirical facts. If the Pfizer vaccine is waning in effectiveness, as it is, not only against disease but hospitalization amid the delta variant, there have to be other responses. If we reward failure with even more contracts and money, as with the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, we should not be surprised to see ourselves trillions of dollars poorer and even worse off than before.
At the time since I wrote this, mRNA vaccines were increasingly failing. They were not the cure-all they were touted to be. In fact, more recent research shows alarming injury and NEGATIVE EFFICACY associated with vaccines. Not only are the mRNA vaccines in particular NOT preventing transmission and hospitalization, but the vaccinated are now exhibiting GREATER rates of infection and higher rates of death than the unvaccinated. This is apparently due to the the new mutating Omicron variants and the tendency of vaccines to “fixate” immune systems on the original spike proteins, thus undermining the more complete, adaptive, and robust responses of naturally acquired immunity.
This reality would have been signaled far sooner if officials had not misinformed the public by labeling people who had gotten a vaccine as UNVACCINATED if they were infected, hospitalized, or died within 14 days of their vaccination shot. Why is this consequential? Upwards of half of the infections, hospitalizations, and deaths happened within those 14 days, no doubt heavily impacted by vaccine-induced immunosuppression.
This would be like taking half of the problems you got wrong on a test and eliminating them. You would go automatically from an failing to passing, from 58% (an F) to 73% (a C) [Calculation: (58/(58 + (42-21)) = 73)] simply by “defining out” half the problems you got wrong! Worse yet, all the infections, hospitalizations, and deaths cases within 14 days of an initial vaccination (or the second dose of a two-shot vaccine in some calculations) were notated as “unvaccinated”! That would be like giving your bad grades to your A-student neighbor. Now her “unvaccinated” 92% “A” score is a 76% (C) because you shifted your 21% wrong to her test [Calculation: (92/(100 + 21) = 76)]. Her score now is only a few percentage points better than yours! We’ve gone from F vs. A to C vs. C! Obviously, applying the same process to vaccinations would make the reporting of their “grades” an exercise in gross misrepresentation.
The gravity of this distortion of plain facts is confirmed in Alex Berenson’s screenshot below. It is a screenshot, because once word got out, this data was SCRUBBED from the official Alberta, Canada health statistics site. Note how many of the cases occurred in the first 14 days— about half.
This cannot be overemphasized: Yes, if you die, become hospitalized, or contract Covid within 14 days after an initial vaccination your condition is listed as “unvaccinated.” Why is this? The drug companies found that your immune system is SUPPRESSED for two to three weeks after vaccination INCREASING your risk, so they just decided to shift that risk to “unvaccinated” by redefining what it means to be vaccinated (i.e. “vaccinated” = vaccine shot + 14 or more days, “unvaccinated” = no vaccine or vaccine shot + less than 14 days. Talk about extreme misinformation: You are literally vaccinated but not counted or defined as vaccinated.
This same Orwellian redefinition even came to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary where the term “anti-vaxxer” was extended to people who were against vaccine MANDATES, even if they themselves were vaccinated. Similarly, the definition of “vaccine” has now been broadened to include drug therapies meant to limit symptoms and not simply prevent disease, erasing the whole point of traditional vaccines.
So with such drastic inversions in the plain meanings of things, including the very definition of truth itself, what can we do? There are a few things:
Don’t allow your language, concepts, and principles to simply be redefined based on fashion, political correctness or whim: Example: When Title IX, for instance, says “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance”, “sex” explicitly means biologically female. It does not mean “gender” or men identifying as women (i.e. trans women). Women’s and girls’ sports means biologically female sports. Therefore, under the law, women and trans-women are not the same. If you want to advocate for trans rights, you will need to pass another law that does not infringe upon the rights of women and girls. If this important distinction between sex and gender cannot be upheld, then females will be re-discriminated against in favor of males identifying as “female”, undermining the whole purpose of Title IX.
Insist on INDEPENDENT, credible, provable, multi-tested reasoning and evidence. If some agency, person, or alleged authority uses their own say-so and doesn’t provide data and verifiable proof, don’t believe the claims: Pfizer, et. al. claimed their vaccines were “safe and effective” by press release NOT data release. It took just a little over 108 days for the FDA to supposedly review the 450,000 pages of vaccine-trial data and approve the Pfizer mRNA vaccines and give them the rubber stamp. That same FDA wanted 75 years to fully disclose the same set of data after a freedom of information filing. With this obvious stonewalling, it doesn’t take a genius to conclude, “If you don’t want me to look under the hood before I buy it, then it’s probably dangerous, poor quality crap.” In other words, don’t take the word of someone trying to sell you something. If you don’t get utter transparency and answers to your questions, walk away.
Your choice has to be an actual choice. Choose based on YOUR best, principled assessment, even if you will incur consequences: If someone has to “mandate” something, i.e. force it on you, then it is either inferior, dangerous, self-interested or all three. “Free and informed” consent whether for vaccines or sexual activity, means “uncoerced” and “knowing the possible dangers”. You wouldn’t want to be forced to have sex with a person. Additionally, you would want to know if a prospective sexual partner was married or had a sexual disease. Why, then, should you be forced to take a vaccine uninformed of its possible dangers? If someone doesn’t want to have sex with you, they are not “sex hesitant” or “sex resistant”. They are decisively “sex no.” And if you don’t listen to that, it’s called rape. The same is true with vaccines and any other choice with personal and interpersonal consequence. This is something Biden should have understood when he broke his promise not to impose mask or vaccine mandates. What can you do? Hold your line. Whether it is attempted sexual assault or attempted health assault, no means no.
Work against censorship in all its forms: Draw a bright line between “threat speech” and other forms of speech (hate speech, offensive speech). Being made to feel uncomfortable is different than being threatened. We all need to be challenged in our ideas and our views, whether we like it or not. This is called democratic public discourse. We don’t need to be attacked in our persons with doxxing, physical violence, or threats of violence. This is called stalking. In addition, no factual information should be labeled “misinformation.” I shouldn’t have to bow to the consensus of “local health authorities’ (LHA) or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) medical information about COVID-19” if I can prove I am right, and/or I explicitly state it as my opinion. It is one thing for Twitter or Facebook or YouTube to provide those annoying “enhanced” links that give the establishment line next to my post, but it is another thing altogether to delete my videos on YouTube, not because they are counterfactual but because they don’t toe the establishment line.
Admit when you are wrong, and gracefully accept admissions of error on the part of others: Credibility, just like freedom, is as easy to lose as it is difficult to gain. When one of the writers I follow on Substack asked his university class, “ Who trusts public health officials”?. Not only did merely 10% raise their hands, but a full half of them laughed out loud. When you push logic and plain-as-day facts past their breaking points (“the boy who cried pandemic?”), and then continue because you don’t want to look foolish or admit you are wrong, you end up not only looking MORE foolish, but losing any FUTURE credibility you might wish to have. Why should anyone listen to you? The incessant refusal of certain authorities to admit they are wrong (i.e. Biden is STILL encouraging mask use even after both the science AND the courts have ruled against it) ensures he will never be taken seriously again.
Avoid overreach. Course-correct and work to repair the damage of contradictory rules and breached trust: Not being a Republican, I nonetheless was impressed with Florida governor Ron DeSantis when he walked back his initial overzealous position that would have mandated no one be required to wear masks in his state, including in private businesses. He course-corrected and then passed a much more respectful, reasonable, and embracing anti-mandate law that allows for choice for or against mask wearing on the part of individual citizens, encouraging businesses to follow the science and simply keep workers out when they are symptomatic with disease. This is the way it’s supposed to work. We all have our beliefs, but standing up for them DOES NOT mean forcing them on others, pro or con. Choice, voice, and inclusion are important and can be accomplished without favors, promotions, or agendas that cater to some at the expense of others. Data-confirmed science can be the mediator.
Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Well said Zeus! I was talking to a friend in the health field the other day about covid, the vaccine and all the studies by well respected medical doctors/ scientists that are being silenced, after going back and forth a bit I asked her “when did getting a second opinion on our health become misinformation?” Her answer was “good point!” 😊
Good point. Well said!