Social media is dangerous. It’s easy to lose your real life to a virtual one. One school district in Seattle, Washington has decided it’s had enough of students suffering from the designed dangers of social media. In a 91 page complaint filed against the parent companies of the social media platforms TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat, Seattle Public Schools, recently joined by the Kent School district, asserts that these companies have specifically curated their social media sites to be addicting to youth by “exploit[ing] the neurophysiology of the brain’s reward systems,” and that “the content Defendants curate and direct to youth is too often harmful and exploitive (e.g., promoting a ‘corpse bride’ diet, eating 300 calories a day, or encouraging self-harm).”

The complaint also specifies how as social media usage has increased, so have mental health problems, such as:  depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and suicidal thoughts (revealing that “from 2009 to 2019 there was an on-average 30 percent increase in the number of students… who reported feeling ‘so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row that [they] stopped doing some usual activities.’”

The Seattle School District’s detailed complaint alleges that social media harms users in the following ways:

• Social media has been designed to manipulate users’ brains via social reciprocity and intermittent variable rewards.

• Social media is designed to create dopamine loops to keep users hooked.

• Social media capitalizes on “fear of missing out” (FOMO) to keep users coming back.

• Social media curates the feed to keep users on longer.

• Social media pushes content that is often inappropriate, immoral, and harmful.

• Social media encourages dangerous behavior.

• Social media can cause teens to act disruptively, including sexual behavior, self-harm, vandalism, and violence.

It’s no secret that social media is harmful. That cry has been sounded so often, it’s now apt to fall on deaf ears. It allows every user to be the star of the story. It demands constant attention, so you don’t lose followers or miss new features and stories. It pressures users to show off their best life, rewarding the diligent with likes and follows. Users defend this form of entertainment as an effective way to connect with others, whilst sidestepping the reality that it’s mostly just a waste of time. It’s easy to get on, difficult to leave, and many (if not most) people have developed a habit of checking it whenever they have a second of downtime. Even though the minimum age for most social media is 13, it’s not uncommon for younger users to already be hooked. It’s designed to be addicting, and often lets you stumble (or guides you) into things you can’t unsee and can’t get away from.

Social media is difficult to regulate, hard to get rid of, and deeply enmeshed in American society, making it a problem difficult to solve. The lawsuit filed by Washington’s Seattle and Kent Public School districts is a good place to start – and a glimpse of what it would look like for schools to take the safety of children seriously. Parents, grandparents and church leaders, please take note: Protect kids from the designed dangers social media platforms pose.

“We cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.”
~2 Corinthians 13:8

It’s no secret that most of the major social media companies want to suppress speech, specifically that of conservatives, but they are becoming more emboldened and blatant in their intentions. Not only do they censor truth, but they also shamefully promote their radical, sinful agenda. In a recent interview, Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, talked about how difficult it has been to moderate the platform, specifically referring to COVID-19 “misinformation.” Wojcicki talks about the obvious things that must be censored, such as illegal content, but then she states that the “misinformation” surrounding COVID-19 is much more of a gray area. She gives numerous excuses as to why they need to suppress this information, such as advertisers wanting to withdraw from the site and remembering the “role that Youtube plays in society.”

Knowing the enormous influence that a large platform such as YouTube has, Ms. Wojcicki clearly has an agenda that she wants to push. But the censorship power she wields on her own platform isn’t enough for Wojcicki; she says that she wants governments to

“have more control of online speech…to pass laws … that be very cleanly and clearly defined such that we can implement it.”

Most social media companies would act as if it is an inconvenience to have such restrictions put on them, but I think Wojcicki gives an inside look into how she and other social media platforms really feels. They wouldn’t be upset, but rather they would be ecstatic since they now have an excuse to censor all the “misinformation” they want. Wojcicki and the rest of these big tech rulers don’t care about free speech in any shape or form, although many of them claim to. All they care about is pushing their agenda on the populace, and if getting the government involved is what it takes, then so be it.

This interview with YouTube’s CEO shows a disturbing trend among the Left in general – they are becoming more flagrant in their intentions to suppress, indoctrinate, and control. We can see it taking root in schools, social media companies, and even in a lot of everyday liberals. For example, in a poll from Rasmussen Reports, 55 percent of Democrats want to “fine Americans who choose not to get the COVID-19 vaccine,” and almost half of Democrats want to “fine or imprison” people who question the vaccine. But the most disturbing statistic among these polls is that 45 percent of Democrats want to force those who refuse the COVID-19 vaccine to “temporarily live in designated facilities or locations.”

The average American used to say they valued freedom above all else, but it is becoming more and more clear that Democrat values and priorities are changing. It used to be unthinkable that any of the above restrictions or punishments would actually be considered, let alone come to pass, yet here we are with almost half of Democrats in favor of imprisoning COVID-19 dissenters. While the majority of Americans are opposed to this ludicrous idea, it is disturbing that about one quarter of the population would even consider it. In truth, Democrats don’t want a fair fight where information can be easily obtained for either argument; they just want to suppress, censor, and fight dirty against anything with which they disagree.

Government schools are another area in which liberals are becoming more blatant in their actions. At first, we were told there was no harmful indoctrination such as Critical Race Theory or LGBT propaganda in school curriculum, but they are slowly starting to admit that there is. On TikTok you can find a crazy number of deranged teachers fully admitting to being part of the LGBT movement in front of their students, often very young students. Also, you can find teachers celebrating the fact that they indoctrinate students with LGBTQIA lies. Many of these students are as young as preschoolers or kindergarteners. The former governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, has admitted that he thinks parents should have no say in government schools. He is on record as stating,

“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

Liberals used to laugh at us and call us “conspiracy theorists” for what they are now admitting to publicly. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, people have to stop sending their kids to public schools if they are at all able to do so. Even if you think your kid is good enough or “strongly rooted” in your family’s beliefs, they are still kids, and highly susceptible to suggestion. We have to do everything we can to fight this corrupt and evil system.

With the Left becoming more shameless in promoting their extreme social agenda, we must also consider the long-term impact. As I said earlier, Wojcicki believes that she plays a large role with a significant impact on society, and as much as I hate to admit it, she’s right. YouTube is a platform used by millions of people across the world, including many of my friends and even myself. While YouTube does have its benefits, such as access to many conservative voices, it also has a very dark side, especially if you are not politically astute.

Most of the YouTube recommendations I receive are for conservative voices, as that is my most frequent search. However, sometimes I get recommendations from YouTube or through YouTube Shorts (basically this is YouTube’s version of TikTok) for weird LGBT or BLM propaganda. Some of the most atrocious and ungodly things are posted on YouTube Shorts. Anyone can post pretty much whatever liberal propaganda they want (this is not an exaggeration) and be sure that YouTube will not censure the content because it aligns with their corporate agenda.

Despite awareness of YouTube’s unscrupulous tactics, many parents allow their kids to use the site with little to no supervision whatsoever. I understand it may be hard, and perhaps too restrictive, to keep teenagers off the site, but that is a conversation for another time. At this moment, I am concerned about parents who let their three-year-old go on the site, unsupervised, to do whatever they want. In such a scenario, it is impossible to know what that child will come across as he spends hours a day scrolling through countless videos. With Susan Wojcicki as the CEO of YouTube, innumerable innocent children will be exposed to this degenerate propaganda. Hopefully soon, more and more people will acknowledge and stand against the radical Left’s bold and flagrant indoctrination strategies that are promoted as truth by YouTube and other online platforms.

This is how it’s going down, my friends—the eradication of speech rights for conservatives, that is. The stage was set years ago when “hate speech” laws were passed.

The Left argues that any rhetoric that is or may be in any distant way at any time related to acts of violence should be banned. So, if I say that volitional homosexual acts and relationships are abhorrent to God as Scripture teaches, and a lone, crazed, alienated, Godless sociopath or a few hundred alienated fatherless, Godless anarchists—people who may or may not have read my words—commit acts of heinous violence against homosexuals—my words should be banned. Of course, the banning of my words necessarily requires the banning of God’s Word as well as the words of any theologically orthodox Christian since the inception of the church.

If I say that humans born with healthy, normally functioning penises are male and can never be female, and some man deceived into having sex with a man who pretends to be a woman kills the deceiver, my expression of a moral proposition must be banned.

When Lila Rose, founder of the pro-life organization Live Action, tweeted, “Abortion is violence,” abortionist Dr. Leah Torres tweeted back this:

This is violent rhetoric. It is objectively false and meant to incite others to commit crimes against clinics, patients, and health care providers. This is what domestic terrorism looks like.

Note the three arguable claims Torres makes: 1. She says Rose’s claim is false, 2. She says Rose’s claim is meant to incite others to commit violent crimes, 3. She says Rose’s tweet constitutes domestic terrorism. How convenient that those claims are precisely the type of claims leftists now say are not protected by the First Amendment. See how that works?

Torres is also the author of this since-deleted tweet:

You know fetuses can’t scream, right? I transect the cord [first] so there’s really no opportunity, if they’re even far enough along to have a larynx.

She later claimed the “cord” was not referring to babies’ vocal cords but, rather, to their umbilical cords. So much better. So much less violent.

Those with eyes to see recognize that leftists are using their special skill in manipulating language—also known as sophistry—to turn good into evil and protected speech into violence requiring censorship.

Leftists argue that saying the election was “stolen” should be banned because some far-right anarchists who hold similar views engaged in violence. Therefore, a few words about the phrase “stolen election”—the newest bugbear used by dishonest leftists to crush the civil rights of conservatives—are in order.

The claim that “an election was stolen”—you know, like Hillary Clinton has claimed for four years—means that an election lacked integrity. Some may claim it was stolen via, for example, Russian interference, or algorithmic manipulation, or ballot-harvesting, or voting irregularities regarding signatures, or unconstitutional changes in election requirements, or the counting of late ballots, or Big Tech’s censorship of the Biden crime family’s corruption that likely affected votes, or dead people voting, or a combination of shady acts by shady actors. Someone needs to tell the liars and paranoiacs in the Democrat Party that the term “stolen election” is not a code word for “attack the Capitol.”

If, however, “stolen election” is a secret code word used to initiate violent lawlessness, then surely Hillary Clinton should be thrown in the slammer—a lot. Here are two of her many seditionist/insurrectionist statements:

You can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you.

and,

[T]here was a widespread understanding that this election [in 2016] was not on the level. We still don’t know what really happened. … you don’t win by 3 million votes and have all this other shenanigans and stuff going on and not come away with an idea like, “Whoa, something’s not right here.

The fact that her alleged attempts to incite insurrection and/or sedition failed shouldn’t matter. The law prohibits even attempts to incite insurrection or sedition.

Trump and many other Americans said the election was “stolen” in the sense that myriad dubious acts took place that cast doubt on the fairness and integrity of the election. Some anarchists—angry about a boatload of corrosive leftist words and deeds, including election malfeasance—breached the Capitol. Therefore, leftists argue, anyone who attended the pro-Trump protest or voted for Trump must be banned from all social media, kicked out of elected office, lose their private sector jobs, or never be hired. Social media newbie Parler must lose all access to the Internet. Americans must lose their medical insurance and recording contracts.

Via a Royal Proclamation, Randall Lane, Forbes Magazine editor, has threatened to harm any company that hires Kayleigh McEnany, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway, Stephanie Grisham, or Sean Spicer—Trump’s former press secretaries:

Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. We’re going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we’d approach a Trump tweet. Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away.

He actually wrote, “Let it be known.” Can the left get any more arrogant and oppressive? Rhetorical question.

Trump (again, like Hillary before him) and many decent, law-abiding citizens claimed the election was “stolen.” Some far-right anarchists also believe the election was stolen. Those far-right anarchists stormed the Capitol. Ergo, in the mad, mad, mad, mad world of cynical leftists, Trump is responsible for the storming of the Capitol. Anyone who attended the protest is responsible for the violence—including even those grandmas who abhor violence and didn’t know the violence was happening. Anyone who has prepared food for Trump is responsible because they helped sustain the life of a man who caused a 90-minute seditious violent protest. Anyone who sold food to anyone who prepared food is responsible for the violence. And any of Trump’s kids’ college friends who may have met Trump and thought he was not Hitler is responsible for the violence—obviously.

So, why aren’t YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter being tossed off the Internet, since all were used to organize both the Capitol riots and the BLM riots of 2020?

Why isn’t Kamala Harris who didn’t condemn BLM violence until late August, three months after it began, being accused of fomenting violence?

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi waited until three months after the BLM riots began to condemn them, did she facilitate violence and property destruction through her silence?

What about Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the inaccurate, leftist 1619 Project, who said in the middle of the BLM riots that “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.” Was she guilty of inciting more property-destruction?

The goal of leftists isn’t really to prevent violence. Appeals to thwarting violence are merely stratagems for preventing the dissemination of ideas leftists hate. They must link ideas they hate to violence in order to undermine foundational American principles. How do I know? Because the linguistic ground is shifting. We are now hearing calls for banning or “reining in” “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and discourse that “harms,” because—the argument goes—such information may lead to violence.

AOC recently said,

We’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation.

So, who determines what constitutes “disinformation and misinformation”? Remember Dr. Leah Torres calling Lila Rose’s statement “false”—in other words, disinformation or misinformation? And remember when just before the election CNN asserted—without conducting any investigation—that the New York Post story about Hunter and Joe Biden was “disinformation,” and then conveniently, after the election, declared it a legitimate news story?

If leftist rhetoric about violence, disinformation, misinformation, harm, and hate leads eventually to imprisonment of dissidents—i.e., conservatives—no problem. All conservatives need to do to avoid the inconvenience of imprisonment or “enlightenment camps” is agree with Big Brother, take some Soma, burn some books, and shut up.

At least leftist rhetoric won’t lead to violence—will it?

The arc of the shady leftist universe is long, convoluted, and bends toward injustice, tyranny, and a senile old man who’s shuffling around looking for his moral compass and a milkshake.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/audio_Leftists-Exploit-Violence-to-Cancel-Conservatives-.mp3

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I am finally doing it: creating profiles on social media platforms that are friendlier to conservative points of view and that do not censor speech. This month I also installed Brave as my new web browser, ditching Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, and I am very happy with the change.

Why am I motivated to make these changes now? Like so many others, I have had enough of the interference, outright censorship, suppression of conservative views, and suspension of accounts (which some people refer to as “Facebook Jail”). I am fed up with the unwelcome disclaimers by social media giants and partisan search engines that suggest my opinions and news posts are untrustworthy and/or dishonest. For these reasons, I have decided to say “goodbye” to liberal social media platforms.

I am leaving Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to join unbiased platforms such as MeWe, Parler, and Rumble.

Those who work behind the scenes at Facebook have admitted that they use algorithms to push religious–particularly conservative–content to the bottom of the pile, thereby rendering it effectively worthless on their platform.

Not only have the despots at Twitter had the gall to flag the tweets of President Donald J. Trump, we have also seen them suspend the New York Post’s account for posting an alarming story about the contents found on Hunter Biden’s laptop computer just before the election, thereby affecting the election.

On this topic, our friend, Dave Olsson, pointed out in a post on his blog how Google manipulated search results leading up to the presidential election. He quotes The Epoch Times which reported that:

Google shifted a “bare minimum” of six million votes in the Nov. 3 presidential election by pushing its political agenda onto its users, a research psychologist has claimed.

In an interview with Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Dr. Robert Epstein, a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California, suggested that the big tech company’s search manipulation could have prompted millions of Americans to shift their votes toward Democrats.

There is no doubt that Big Media and Big Tech not only operate from a left-leaning social/political worldview but also that they are activists for Leftist causes, promoting anti-family, anti-freedom narratives while at the same time suppressing conservative news and opinions.

Over the past several years, Big Tech has dispensed with any pretense of neutrality. Those of us who have used social media platforms to get our messages out to a wider audience have seen how these tech giants have become emboldened to counter, flag, suspend, and censor our posts and content.

In the meantime, these same Big Tech Overlords are working hard to persuade and deceive our unsuspecting neighbors. We, the discerning public, have no means to flag or post a “fact check” to the misleading, deceitful, explicit, and disturbing content promulgated by Leftists. Their storylines go unmolested.

You might think that advertising runs the internet, but it is the behemoth of data behind the advertising curtain that generates the real profits. As we use and engage with websites and social media, we are being followed all the time: tracked through our phones, watches, tablets, cars, smart speakers, and a multitude of other gadgets, gizmos, and devices.

This profusion of collected data, public demographics as well as personal preferences, truly has generated billions of dollars for these tech companies, but at what price?

So why are we–socially conservative, Christian citizens–allowing Google, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to profit from our data?

We shouldn’t. In fact, we must make a plan to migrate away from these exploitative platforms to freer alternatives.

If you have had enough of politically motivated bias and suppression, I encourage you to join me and thousands of other conservative activists in starting accounts at MeWe (instead of Facebook), Parler (instead of Twitter), and Rumble (instead of YouTube).

Instead of using Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge as your web browser, switch to Brave.

Rather than choosing Google, Bing or Yahoo as your Internet search engine, consider Duck, Duck Go, which does not track you, collect your IP address or personal information, or create any kind of personal profile about its users.

Abandoning these tech giants is a simple and practical way for conservatives to take action in the political arena. Information is power–the less you give, the less you empower those who oppose the values you espouse and defend.

To the best of my knowledge, these alternative platforms are safe and guaranteed not to interfere with our exercise of free speech. The following information regarding MeWe and Parler will help you understand the benefits of joining their platforms.

MeWe is a privately owned platform started by Mark Weinstein. You won’t find ads, spyware, algorithms, censorship, facial recognition, or fact checkers on MeWe. Unlike with Facebook, your personal data is not sold.

MeWe is a free platform but does offer an upgrade to MeWe Pro for a small monthly fee.

Parler is a privately owned platform started in 2018 by John Matze and Jared Thomson. They created the platform after becoming “exhausted with a lack of transparency in big tech [and] ideological suppression.”

Parleys are the Parler equivalent to tweets. While they can be longer than tweets, they are limited to 1,000 characters.

As with Twitter, Parler uses hashtags to broaden the reach of your content and ensure that your parleys will be seen.

Parler allows you to comment, echo (share), and vote (like) people’s parleys, and also gives you the ability to moderate comments.

The switchover to these new platforms will take some time, but I hope to have completed the migration and closed all of our Facebook and Twitter accounts by Memorial Day 2021. I encourage you to do the same. We should not allow Big Tech to stifle the dissemination of our conservative beliefs and online influence. Abandoning these large left-wing platforms is one practical way to do so.

Read more:

Farewell Twitter, Goodbye YouTube (The Stream)

YouTube, Twitter Against Trump (The Epoch Times)

REPORT: Zuckerberg Spent Half A Billion Dollars Coercing States To Adopt Pro-Dem Turnout Measures
(The National Pulse)

I want to assure you that the title to this article is not click bait. Rather, it reflects the very open sentiments of the extreme leftist, political commentator Keith Olbermann. He has made himself perfectly clear.

Before I share his exact words, though, I want to be perfectly clear as well. My answer to the question of whether Christian conservatives will soon be prosecuted by the millions and removed from American society is an emphatic (but qualified) no.

It is an emphatic “no” because there is no way that tens of millions of Christian conservatives would simply stand by and let this happen. Not a chance.

It is a qualified “no” because, in part, it has happened already. Christian conservatives have been prosecuted for their Christian beliefs. We have been imprisoned for our beliefs, right here in America in the 21st Century.

More broadly, we have been marginalized and muted by the cancel culture and the spirit of intimidation. And the more we cower and capitulate, the worse it will get. Now is the time to stand up and speak out. And while Olbermann’s sentiments may be extreme, they are not isolated.

I have documented for years how Christian conservatives have been likened to Hitler, to the Nazis, to the KKK, to ISIS, and that was long before Donald Trump appeared on the political scene.

I have supplied verbatim quotes of protesters wishing that we would be thrown or the lions or killed in other ways.

And, again, this had been totally unrelated to hostility towards President Trump. The hatred was in response to our conservative, biblical ideology, most particularly, when it came to LGBTQ activism. And no matter how loving or gracious or compassionate we were, we were still branded haters, people who were a danger to society. People who should be removed.

As one reviewer on my Facebook page stated,

It’s people like this so called ‘Doctor’ are what are wrong with the world.

People like him need to be bound and tied by their hands and feet, beaten repeatedly in the head with their book of fairy tales until they are twitching from never [sic] damage and bleeding profusely from their ignorant heads.

Yes, “people like him,” meaning, people like you, too, if you share my beliefs. By no means was I the sole target of this demented person’s rage.

As for Olbermann, whose words reach far more people than that Facebook review, he said this on October 9:

The task is two-fold. The terrorist Trump must be defeated, must be destroyed, must be devoured at the ballot box. And then he, and his enablers, and his supporters, and his collaborators, and the Mike Lees and the William Barrs and the Sean Hannnitys and the Mike Pences and the Rudy Gulianis and the Kyle Rittenhouses and the Amy Coney Barretts must be prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society while we try to rebuild it and rebuild the world that Trump has nearly destroyed by turning it over to a virus. Remember it.

(He also referred to Trump supporters as “maggots” and “morons” in his rant).

Of course, this is beyond unhinged, and I pity Olbermann more than anything. He is certainly zealous. And I’m sure there are good things he stands for. But this is completely beyond the pale, totally irresponsible, and very dangerous.

Thankfully, this was not delivered on network TV but rather on Olbermann’s new YouTube channel (which now has 123K subscribers). And while the clip has 8.6K thumbs up, it also has 7.3K thumbs down.

But without question, his words reflect the seething hostility that exists toward Christian conservatives in many quarters in America today. We dare not underestimate it.

And even though this clip is more than one month old, I bring it up today because of the attitudes already surfacing in the apparent electoral defeat of Trump. No need to hold back any longer!

Yet this is not simply because many of us voted for Trump. As I noted, the hostility was there long before he came on the scene, and it will be there long after he is gone.

It is an ideological hatred more than a political hatred, a hatred based on deep moral differences, a hatred that can easily turn violent, as it often has through the centuries and in recent months.

That’s why it’s fair to ask: on what charges will people like us be prosecuted and convicted? (Let’s be more specific: on what charges should Amy Coney Barrett be prosecuted and convicted?)

And, how, exactly, will people like us be “removed” from society? Prison? Concentration camps? Something worse?

Again, I haven’t the slightest fear of something like this happening in the immediate future here in America. The country would have to fall to depths beyond our imagination for that to happen so quickly. But every step in that direction is a dangerous step, and every step should be resisted.

It is true that Trump has inflamed hostilities with his own irresponsible rhetoric. We must continue to separate ourselves from those words and sentiments.

But let’s not deceive ourselves. Trump is not the ultimate issue. It’s our beliefs. Our faith. Our values. Our Bible. Our God.

It’s about to get really ugly here in our land. Resolve to stand strong. Resolve to speak the truth. Resolve not to be moved by fear. Resolve not to live for the praises of people. Resolve not to be marginalized.

And determine not to respond to hatred with hatred. Let’s show the Keith Olbermanns of the world who we really are. Let’s overcome evil with good.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org. 

The headline to this article is not sensationalistic. It is not click bait. It is truth. Shocking truth. Yes, Instagram has designated videos of live worship on the streets to be in violation of community guidelines, calling the content “harmful.” Let the outrage be felt and heard.

Sean Feucht is a worship leader and songwriter who recently ran for political office in California. He is also a conservative Christian.

On June 23 he tweeted, “This is what we’ve come to in America!

“Instagram is now classifying my WORSHIP videos as ‘harmful or false information’

“Religious Liberty? Freedom of Speech? Big Tech censorship?”

Included in the tweet was a screenshot from Instagram, explaining that the company had removed his video post because it was violation of Community Standards. (Oh, those dread community standards again!)

Specifically, Instagram stated, “Story removed for harmful or false information.”

What on earth does this mean? What can it possibly mean?

Feucht’s tweet got the attention of Missouri’s U.S. Senator Josh Hawley who tweeted, “Cancel culture meets #BigTech. Now @instagram is censoring a Christian worship leader who wants to post videos of praise and worship from places where there has recently been unrest. And that doesn’t meet ‘community standards’? Can’t wait to hear the explanation for this.”

A few years ago, I repeatedly challenged Facebook for censoring some of my posts for alleged violation of community standards, exposing the rank hypocrisy of their decisions.

For example, my factual, fairly-worded post dealing with LGBT issues would be deemed hateful, while the most blasphemous, unimaginably profane, anti-Christian Facebook pages were allowed to operate without restriction. Seriously?

Thankfully, in most cases, with the help of an internal contact, Facebook reinstated my posts (or, restored my status). But other colleagues of mine did not fare so well, having their pages permanently shut down for alleged violation of the dreaded (and oh so ambiguous) community standards.

It seems that “hate” meant one thing for one group and something entirely different for the other. (For a recent video exposé, see here.)

When it comes to YouTube and Google, the battle continues, with large channels like Prager U still experiencing discrimination and unequal treatment. (Where are all the social justice warriors calling for equality? Somehow, they don’t seem to be raising their voices for Prager U.)

In my own experience, after having over 1,000 of my channel’s videos branded unsuitable for advertising in a single stroke (!), YouTube has actually been fair with me, even surprising me at times by what it approves for monetization. At the same time, we know that the other shoe could drop at any moment and suddenly, we could be banned.

It is a big mistake to put our trust in Big Tech.

What happened with Instagram, though, seems even more bizarre and extreme. What on earth were the all-powerful censors thinking?

There are endless videos on Instagram showing disturbing clips from the recent protests and riots, all of them somehow in conformity with community standards. (Right now, over on Twitter, I’m watching a video of the “CHOP” call from Seattle, with specific reference to guillotines. I imagine similar videos can be found on Instagram.)

But when a video is posted showing Christian worship in the midst of these protests, it is removed for alleged “harmful or false information.”

Since there is nothing “false” about the video, then it must be considered “harmful” – hence the headline to this article.

Is this actually what Instagram meant? Could they possibly be claiming that worshiping the Lord on the streets of our divided cities is harmful?

If so, I would encourage every worship leader and every worship team to hit the streets of their own communities, posting similar videos and sharing them as widely as possible, starting on Instagram. (Hey, it’s a great thing to do anyway and just what America needs.)

If Instagram has made a mistake, I hope they own up to it and say, “We totally blew it! There is no excuse.” Otherwise, this means spiritual war.

So, no hatred. No carnal aggression. No fleshly anger. And, of course, of course, of course, no violence.

But lots of prayer. Lots of worship. Lots of preaching. And lots of standing up and being heard. If not now, then when?

Ironically, as if to drill the point home, as I as writing this article, I spotted another tweet from Sen. Hawley from a few hours ago. He wrote, “Now @Twitter is actively censoring Bible verses? Seriously? Why?”

Hawley retweeted another tweet from Sean Feucht, stating, “Not only is big tech blocking worship videos, now they’re blocking Bible verses about PEACE!

“RT if you believe social media needs more peace, more worship, and less censorship of Jesus followers.”

Feucht included a screenshot of tweets from Beni Johnson, then using the handle @prayfor5, which at present is not appearing on Twitter. Her tweets, posting Bible verses, were blocked, with the note, “This Tweet may include sensitive content.”

So, worship is deemed “harmful” and Scripture verses about peace are deemed “sensitive content.” Really?

Let us, then, flood Big Tech with the Word and worship. And let us report and challenge every unjust infraction about the practicing of our faith.

It’s beyond time.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com.

A recent article written primarily by a medical doctor in Alabama claimed that, “The way in which the media has pushed fear nonstop amounts to psychological warfare against this country.” He added, “If it hasn’t occurred to you that we have heard one story and essentially one story alone for literally two months, well, that should have aroused suspicion.” Is this doctor correct? Or is the media doing its best to be responsible in the midst of an unprecedented crisis?

I’m quite confident that nothing I write here will influence what the media is doing for two reasons. First, who am I that massive media organizations should listen to me? Second, fear sells and money talks.

That being said, the question remains: Is the media responsible in its reporting, helping its audience to act wisely during a pandemic? Or is the media using fear tactics to get more viewers, listeners, and readers? And if the latter is true, does this amount to sustained psychological warfare?

Obviously, “the media” is such a generalized term that almost anything good or bad can be said about it. But if we focus on the major, secular voices on TV, we can fine tune both our questions and our answers.

One of the secrets of psychological warfare (called psywar by the military) is to try to convince enemy troops that surrender is sweet, that it is better to capitulate than to continue to fight, that defeat is inevitable.

In keeping with this, an Air Force colonel shared with me that during World War I, psywar pamphlets were airdropped among the German troops.

Shortly after the end of the war, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, the Chief of Staff of the Kaiser’s Army, complained:

“In the shower of pamphlets which was scattered by enemy airmen our adversaries said and wrote that they did not think so badly of us; that we must only be reasonable and perhaps here and there renounce something we had conquered. Then everything would soon be right again and we could live together in peace, perpetual international peace. As regards peace within our own borders, new men and new Governments would see to that. What a blessing peace would be after all the fighting. There was, therefore, no point in continuing the struggle.” (From the USAF Special Operations School: Psychological Operations.)

And what were the results of this strategy? Military historian Stanley Sandler writes:

“As German Army discipline wavered or broke, these leaflets became responsible for defections on a large scale. Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler termed Allied military psywar ‘psychologically efficient.’”

Today, we are not having pamphlets dropped on us from the sky in order to break our spirits. But we are hearing a constant flood of bad news. Of distressing and depressing news. Of fearful statistics. And we are reminded daily of the danger of violating the status quo.

Does this mean that all these media outlets are ill-intentioned and motivated only by financial gain? Certainly not.

Does this mean that the talking heads all share a nefarious agenda and are under some hidden, central control? Not at all.

Does it mean that none of them are trying to do some good? Absolutely not.

But it does mean that, for whatever reason, we are basically being told that COVID-19 is the only story out there, that America is a real mess, and that things could get even worse in the days ahead.

Really now, is all of that meant to be helpful? Encouraging? Useful?

Or, to approach this from a different angle, ask yourself this: If the goal of the media was to help Americans function in a healthy and hopeful way during this difficult time, would their reporting be the same?

Doing a daily talk radio show, and with lots of interaction with the public on social media, I have been sounding a “fear not” message for the last two months. Yes, the virus is very serious, but it’s not the end of the world, and there’s no need for panic.

At the same time, I have had to counteract the attitude of fear and panic that arises by being subjected to day and night negative reporting. (Add in partisan politics, and you have a real toxic mix.) And in order to starve our fears and feed our faith and our practical wisdom, we cannot sit glued in front of the TV or computer screen.

But this is part of the vicious cycle of 24-hour news networks. The same stories get repeated endlessly, seriously undermining our ability to think for ourselves. Are we not getting brainwashed by it all?

But there’s another angle to consider, and that’s the angle of control.

Dennis Prager recently wrote that “the ease with which police state tactics have been employed and the equal ease with which most Americans have accepted them have been breathtaking.”

Could this have happened without the media’s incessant, fear-producing drumbeat?

Prager pointed to four principle signs of a police state, one of which was, “A Mass Media Supportive of the State’s Messaging and Deprivation of Rights.”

He explained,

“The New York Times, CNN and every other mainstream mass medium — except Fox News, The Wall Street Journal (editorial and opinion pages only) and talk radio — have served the cause of state control over individual Americans’ lives just as Pravda served the Soviet government. In fact, there is almost no more dissent in The New York Times than there was in Pravda. And the Big Tech platforms are removing posts about the virus and potential treatments they deem ‘misinformation.’”

Recently, YouTube removed a viral video by two medical doctors in California who disputed the state’s safety recommendations.

According to YouTube, “We quickly remove flagged content that violate our Community Guidelines, including content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of local healthy authority recommended guidance on social distancing that may lead others to act against that guidance.”

In other words, disputed opinions offered by medical doctors (in this case, emergency room doctors) will be banned.

Does this concern you? What might be banned next? Can you not assess the information for yourself and make an informed choice?

A colleague with a massive Facebook page (I can’t share more details at this moment) had a viral post removed because a so-called fact checker deemed it false. Yet the content was entirely spiritual in nature.

So, not only do we have the 24-hour droning drumbeat of fear-based, often sensationalistic reporting, but we have a dangerous form of censorship as well.

Does that constitute a form of psychological warfare? You can decide for yourself.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

Everyone who’s conscious knows that Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are in the tank for “progressivism”—also known as “Cultural Regressivism that Undermines Decency” (CRUD). While the hive at Google manipulates its algorithms to hide information that regressives don’t like, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook Overlords censor with the kind of tyrannical oppression that in the good old days liberals and radicals feared and loathed. Now that liberals and radicals control the levers of power, they have abandoned all previous philosophical commitments to freedom and liberty. A new explosive undercover video by Project Veritas exposes the extraordinary and deceitful machinations of Google to manipulate access to information in order that regressivism can gain and maintain yet more power. In other words, Google—like its fascistic government precursors—exploits its monopolistic power to propagandize, thereby securing its iron grip on power. Resistance is almost futile.

With his face and voice concealed, a Google insider warns about the implications of the confluence of Google’s power, reach, and bias:

What’s scary is that Google’s deciding what’s important and what’s not important. They are… effectively deleting conversations from the national narrative. It reminds me of… a book called 1984. That should have been a warning…. Google’s… deciding what gets read, what gets consumed, what people are able to click on, what appears. It reminds me a lot of fascism…. When videos get pulled off of a platform, that’s… a form of censorship…. People have no idea that it’s happening. They still think that Google’s an objective source of information and it’s not.

Secretly recorded conversations with Google executive Jen Gennai reinforces the claims of the Google insider, further revealing Google’s Leftist bias, arrogance, and determined efforts to use its power to influence the next presidential election:

The reason we launched our [Artificial Intelligence] principles is because people were not …. saying what is fair and what’s equitable, so we’re like, “Well, we are a big company. We’re going to say it.”… [M]y definition of fairness and bias specifically talks about historically marginalized communities, and that’s who I care about. Communities who are in power, and have traditionally been in power, are not who I’m solving fairness for. Our definition of fairness is one of those things that we thought would be like obvious, and everybody would agree to, and it wasn’t…. [T]he same people who voted for the current President did not agree with our definition of fairness.

Gennai’s/Google’s—let’s just say Gennoogle—Gennoogle’s definition of fairness differs not only from the definition held by the “people who voted for the current president” but also from the definition held by many others. Many people understand “fairness” to mean “impartial or just treatment without favoritism” or “the quality of treating people equally.”

“Historically marginalized communities” refers to identity-peddlers’ four favorite categories of humans:  blacks, women, homosexuals, and cross-sex “passers.” Leftists like Gennoogle have been forced to add “historically” to marginalized, since these groups have pushed from the margins to the center which will not hold.

Clearly Gennoogle has no interest in genuine fairness. “Fairness,” like hatred, inclusivity, safety, tolerance, and equality, means exactly what the googley Humpty Dumptys choose it to mean. Who cares if theologically orthodox Christians or political conservatives are treated unfairly. That’s their problem to solve, dagnabbit!

Gennai reveals the supreme arrogance of Google, which presumes to make “things more fair” by supplanting the will of the people as expressed through the duly elected executive and legislative branches of the government with Gennoogle’s reconceptualization of “fairness”:

The White House and Congress won’t play a role in making things more fair, so people are holding us accountable to fill the gap of what should be done.

Gennai makes clear the presumptive supremacy of the Google hive mind over the elected representatives of the people:

We got called in front of Congress multiple times, and we’ve not shown up because we’re like, we just know they’re going to just attack us. We’re not going to change our mind. There’s no point in just sitting there being attacked over something that we know we’re not going to change…. They can pressure us, but we’re not changing.

Gennai adds more flesh to the bones hinted at in her allusion to Trump, his supporters, and “fairness”:

Elizabeth Warren is saying that we should break up Google…. [S]he’s very misguided. That will not make it better, it will make it worse because now all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation…. a small company cannot do that.

We all got screwed over in 2016…. so now we’ve rapidly been like, “What happened there? How do we prevent it from happening again?”

Evidently in panic mode after the exposé was released, Gennai penned a futile effort to recast her damning words and malign Project Veritas:

[T]hese people lied about their true identities, filmed me without my consent, selectively edited and spliced the video to distort my words and the actions of my employer, and published it widely online.

While Google engages in unconscionable, secretive efforts to manipulate public opinion and to silence conservative employees through fear of loss of employment, she’s outraged about being secretly recorded?

Surely a smart human like Gennai knows that all documentaries and exposés “selectively” edit. The ethical issue is not whether an exposé is selectively edited. The ethical issue is whether it was edited in such a way as to distort someone’s words. Gennai tries to prove that Project Veritas distorted her words about the 2016 election, saying she never suggested Google objected to Trump’s election per se but rather to “foreign interference”:

In a casual restaurant setting, I was explaining how Google’s Trust and Safety team (a team I used to work on) is working to help prevent the types of online foreign interference that happened in 2016.

If Gennoogle’s concern were really with online foreign interference, what sense did her statement about being “screwed” mean, since Russian attempts at foreign interference didn’t affect the election outcome. Leftists like Gennoogle believe they were “screwed” by Trump’s winning. They were not “screwed” by Russian attempts to interfere. Does Gennai think all Americans just fell off the turnip truck?

Project Veritas asked the Google insider about the meaning of this statement from an internal Google document:

In some cases, it may be appropriate to take no action if the system accurately affects current reality. While in other cases, it may be desirable to consider how we might help society reach a more fair and equitable state via product intervention.”

The Google insider translated into plain English what “helping society” looks like in the Google hive:

What they want to do is they want to act as gatekeepers between the user and the content that they’re trying to access. They’re going to come in, they’re going to filter the content. They’re going to say, “Actually, we don’t want to give the user access to that information because it’s going to create an outcome that’s undesirable to us.”

This exposé will come as no surprise to former Google employee Mike Wacker, recently fired for publicly criticizing Google’s “outrage mobs and witch hunts.” Wacker shared that the Google outrage mobs (OMs) demanded Google have nothing to do with the conservative Heritage Foundation, calling its president Kay Cole James the Grand Wizard of the KKK. For those who don’t know, Kay Cole James is black and endured egregious racist attacks when growing up.

You may wonder exactly how the OMs could justify calling a black woman the Grand Wizard of the KKK. Well, this particular OM has concluded, apparently with no scientific proof, that masquerading as the opposite sex is analogous to race, and, therefore, opposing things like co-ed restrooms and locker rooms—which the Heritage Foundation does—is analogous to racism.

Wacker revealed that one Google employee was reported to Human Resources (HR) for sharing a National Review article, and another was reported for appearing “to be promoting and defending Jordan Peterson’s comments about transgender pronouns,” which allegedly made some Google employee “feel unsafe at work.” #eyeroll

What other subjective, often-changeable feelings will Google OMs conclude are analogous to race? Will those employees who disagree with the hive’s assumptions about those other feelings be safe in that “nonpartisan,” inclusive space to express their views? And what if the OMs are wrong? What if cross-sex identification, cross-sex hormone-doping, surgical mutilation, and co-ed private spaces are, in reality, neither good nor right?

While Wacker lost his job, Blake Lemoine retains his job as senior software engineer at Google. The name Blake Lemoine may sound familiar. He made the news in 2018 for calling Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn a terrorist for writing an op-ed critical of the obvious bias against conservatives and Republicans within tech companies like Google and Facebook.

Wacker reports that in internal Google employee forums, Lemoine also said this:

If you think that trans women aren’t women then you can either keep it to yourself or GTFO [Get the f**k out]. Google’s corporate policies are crystal clear on that.

While Google employees are free to say that “transwomen”—who are objectively, immutably, scientifically verifiably men—are women, others are not permitted to say “transwomen” are men. Deviate from the deviant narrative and off with your head!

Trouble seems to follow Lemoine—who identifies variously as a pagan priest and Gnostic Christian—wherever he goes. The “bisexual” Lemoine who is in a “non-monogamous” relationship with his wife enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2003 and then in 2004 “realized he did not like working with U.S. Army troops.” When the Army refused to allow him “to quit the Army,” he went on a work strike and then a hunger strike. He was court-martialed and discharged for bad conduct.

Before whistle-blower Mike Wacker, there was former Google engineer James Damore who was fired in 2017 after he wrote and distributed a measured internal memo replete with evidence in which he criticized Google for, among other things, being “an ideological echo chamber.” Can’t have any Google employee pointing out that the emperor brooks no dissent. Off with his head!

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Dark-Underbelly-of-Google.mp3

IFI Fall Banquet with Franklin Graham!
We are excited to announce that at this year’s IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st.

Learn more HERE.

We all know about the leftist leanings of the so-called masters of the universe, the internet giants. We all know about the discriminatory treatment that many of us on the right are experiencing. The question is: How do we respond? Do we pick up our marbles and leave? Do we build our own platforms? Do we stand up and fight? Or perhaps it’s a combination of all of the above?

Recently, Lawrence Jones, editor-in-chief for Campus Reform, opined that conservatives are being lazy here. In his words, “Go create your own platforms.”

Jones, who is a libertarian, believes that the social media giants are free to run their companies however they want to, and if we don’t like it, we should go elsewhere.

In the end, we may have no choice but to do that very thing, and at this moment, millions of dollars are being invested in the development of new platforms.

As for Campus Reform, it is one of the most important voices today when it comes to exposing the radical leftist agenda on our college and university campuses.

That being said, I take issue with Jones’ assessment for a few reasons.

First, we helped build these very platforms. Conservatives like you and me helped build YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and Google.

Some of us have spent thousands of hours developing videos or posting blogs or making comments, getting our message out with regularity and interacting with millions of others in the process.

Why should we simply walk away without pushing back? Why should we concede defeat when we have hardly begun to stand?

Second, when we came on board, no one told us that these platforms would be biased against us.

Had we known this up front, many of us would not have gotten involved in the first place.

Instead, what we understood was that these were neutral platforms. These were networks where we could connect with our friends. These were accessible places where we could share our videos. These were settings where we could intersect with people from all backgrounds.

It would be akin to a new bank opening in our city, offering the most attractive interest rates and the best customer options. So, we gladly switch our accounts to that bank.

It is only then, once the bank has our money, that we find out they are using the profits to fund radical, anti-Christian causes. And to add insult to injury, in the fine print, there’s a severe penalty for early withdrawal.

Obviously, the analogy is not meant to be exact. (So, please back off, dear critics.) But it is meant to convey a point: Had we known the facts at the outset, we would not have put our money in that bank.

At this point, having made substantial investments of time and energy, building our audiences and our platforms, we’re not ready to simply walk away.

Third, for some of us, the whole goal is reach and impact. In my case, AskDrBrown is a non-profit ministry, so we live and breathe to reach others with our message. We’re here to make the maximum impact on the maximum number of people, and that means not just preaching to the choir.

So, as long as YouTube allows us to post our videos, we will continue to use that platform, since we reach millions of people who otherwise would not know about us.

Day and night, we receive hateful, ugly comments from critics and bashers. Day and night, quite literally 24/7, we receive comments from dissenters and from seekers.

So, since it is one of our goals to shine God’s light in dark places, we’re not prepared to walk away just because we are being unfairly treated.

I’m sure many other conservatives, be it for moral or spiritual or ideological reasons, feel the same way.

Fourth, there is something that everyone can do, and it’s quite simple.

Focusing on YouTube in particular, if you like the content you’re watching and the channel has been demonetized, then support that channel directly.

At present, the moment one of our videos goes live, it gets flagged by YouTube as not suitable for all advertisers, forcing us to request a manual review. In some cases, the videos are approved; in other cases, not. (So, to be clear, the videos are not being blocked or removed. They’re being demonetized.)

As much as possible, we are challenging YouTube to be fair and consistent. That’s all we’re asking for.

Again, the day might come when these doors will close to us entirely. Or new and better platforms might be developed. Or the whole face of the internet might take a dramatic new turn.

But for now, let’s stand up and speak out and push back. The door is not yet slammed in our face.

This article was initially published on AskDrBrown.org

Why is it that organizations like the SPLC can designate conservative Christians as hate groups while ignoring radical leftists like Antifa? Why is it that Facebook and Google and YouTube and Twitter appear to punish conservatives disproportionately for alleged violations of community guidelines?

The answer is as disturbing as it is simple. The left believes it is so morally and intellectually superior to the right that it can see nothing wrong with its extreme positions and hostile words. Is it wrong to be intolerant of bigots? Is it wrong to hate (or even punch) a Nazi?

In short, if I’m a member of the KKK, is it wrong for you to disparage and mock me? If I’m a dangerous homophobe, is it wrong for you to vilify and exclude me? If I’m a hate-filled propogandist spreading dangerous lies, is it wrong for you to mark me and marginalize me?

Of course, there are double standards on all sides of the debate, on the right as well as on the left. And there is more than enough hypocrisy to go around, from the most progressive to the most conservative.

All of us also have our share of blind spots, so we tend to condemn in others what we justify in ourselves. Welcome to human nature.

Still, it is conspicuous that the same behavior gets treated differently by the leftist elite (including many a university professor) and by watchdog groups like the SPLC and by the internet giants.

Back in 2004-05, when I first began to address gay activism, I was widely mocked for saying, “Those who came out of the closet want to put us in the closet.”

The response was consistent: “No one wants to put you in the closet!”

A few years back, I noticed a change in tone: “Bigots like you belong in the closet!”

But of course!

While being interviewed on a Christian TV program back in 2011, I quoted the comment of a Christian attorney. He told me that those who were once put in jail (speaking of pioneer gay activists) will want to put us in jail.

For having the audacity to say this on Christian TV, I was vilified and maligned.

Yet when Kim Davis was jailed in 2015 for refusing a court order to grant same-sex marriage licenses, there was widespread rejoicing on the left: “Kim Davis is ISIS! Lock her up!”

Again, I’m aware of double standards on all sides, and it’s a point of personal reflection and self-examination in my own life.

For example, I believed that, in 2004, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom should have been disciplined for issuing same-sex marriage licenses in violation of the law. Yet I believe that Kim Davis was within her rights in refusing to issue such licenses and her home state of Kentucky failed to protect her, under the law.

These are debates we can (and should) have.

What I’m talking about here has to do with fundamental attitudes, with the basis of our judgments, with the inability to see wrong on one’s own side. I’m talking about a dangerous hypocrisy. (For the record, I never compared Gavin Newsom to Muslim terrorists.)

In my May, 2016, article “Is Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg a Well-Intended Liberal with a Massive Blind Spot?”, I referenced the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann, the notorious Nazi mass murderer, who was apprehended by two Israeli agents while living quietly with his family in Argentina.

They had to wait for several weeks before smuggling him out of the country, during which time they spent many hours in private conversation with him, somehow managing to restrain themselves from taking the law into their own hands.

During one of the conversations, one of the agents realized that Eichmann had given the order to exterminate the village in which his wife’s family lived, killing every single one of them.

When asked how he could do such a thing, Eichmann seemed perturbed, responding, “But they were Jews.”

Of course he gave the order to kill them. What else was he to do?

Again, to be clear, I am not comparing the SPLC or Facebook or Google to Eichmann and the Nazis. That would be as bad as leftists comparing conservatives to Nazis. Not a chance.

I’m simply pointing out that in Eichmann’s twisted world, he was only following orders and doing what was right.

So also, in Antifa’s twisted world (although, again, I emphasize, not as twisted as that of the Nazis), they are doing what is right in violently opposing the tyrannical right. Somebody’s got to do it!

Thankfully, there is an ongoing, healthy push-back against this liberal hypocrisy. In fact, just this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called out the SPLC for using hate group labels to “bully” conservatives. Let their hypocrisy be exposed.

But remember: You have been prejudged as guilty, so your mistreatment is well-deserved.

It is this highly bigoted attitude we must overcome with truth, reason, determination, and love.

This article originally posted at Townhall.com.

It’s often difficult to distinguish truth from satire on websites like The Onion and the Babylon Bee, and a few days ago many woke up to this headline:

Southern Poverty Law Center Apologizes for Mislabeling Group as Anti-Muslim Extremists, Agrees to $3.3M Settlement

But it’s a real news story, not a joke. It’s from Accuracy in Media, and here is a short excerpt from its report:

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has a history of flagging its political opponents as “extremists,” apologized to Muslim anti-terrorism group Quilliam and its founder Maajid Nawaz for wrongly naming them in their Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists…

The SPLC also agreed to pay a $3.375 million settlement, which Quilliam and Nawaz intend to use to fund work fighting anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamist extremism, according to a statement from the SPLC.

So the SPLC has actually admitted defamation, but only against one Muslim organization.

Here is what the Alliance Defending Freedom’s Jeremy Tedesco had to say in response to this news:

“It’s appalling and offensive for the Southern Poverty Law Center to compare peaceful organizations which condemn violence and racism with violent and racist groups just because it disagrees with their views. That’s what SPLC did in the case of Quilliam and its founder Maajid Nawaz, and that’s what it has done with ADF and numerous other organizations and individuals.

This situation confirms once again what commentators across the political spectrum have being saying for decades: SPLC has become a far-left organization that brands its political opponents as “haters” and “extremists” and has lost all credibility as a civil rights watchdog…

SPLC’s sloppy mistakes have ruinous, real-world consequences for which they should not be excused.”

National Review’s news writer Jack Crowe also posted on this news and following his article, a video was included that summarizes some of the SPLC’s outrageous defamation examples in 90 seconds.

The Washington Times reported this:

“A coalition of 45 prominent conservative groups and figures called Wednesday on those partnering with the Southern Poverty Law Center to sever their ties, saying the center’s credibility has been further eroded by this week’s defamation settlement.”

The coalition is also threatening a lawsuit against the SPLC and issued warnings to CEOs and news editors who are complicit in the defamation by citing the group’s anti-Christian bias. Here is the text of the joint statement which was also signed by the Illinois Family Institute’s executive director David E. Smith:

JOINT STATEMENT BY ORGANIZATIONS DEFAMED BY THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER

We, the undersigned, are among the organizations, groups and individuals that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has maligned, defamed and otherwise harmed by falsely describing as “haters,” “bigots,” “Islamophobes” and/or other groundless epithets. We are gratified that the SPLC has today formally acknowledged that it has engaged in such misrepresentations.

In an out-of-court settlement announced today, the Southern Poverty Law Center formally apologized in writing and via video for having falsely listed Maajid Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation as “anti-Muslim extremists” in one of the SPLC’s most notorious products, The Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists. It also agreed to pay them $3.375 million, tangible proof that the SPLC, which amounts to little more than a leftist instrument of political warfare against those with whom it disagrees, fully deserves the infamy it has lately earned. For example, in addition to its settlement with Nawaz and Quilliam, the organization has had to disavow multiple misstatements and other errors in its reporting in the past few months.

Journalists who uncritically parrot or cite the SPLC’s unfounded characterizations of those it reviles do a profound disservice to their audiences.

Editors, CEOs, shareholders and consumers alike are on notice: anyone relying upon and repeating its misrepresentations is complicit in the SPLC’s harmful defamation of large numbers of American citizens who, like the undersigned, have been vilified simply for working to protect our country and freedoms.

With this significant piece of evidence in mind, we call on government agencies, journalists, corporations, social media providers and web platforms (i.e., Google, Twitter, YouTube and Amazon) that have relied upon this discredited organization to dissociate themselves from the Southern Poverty Law Center and its ongoing effort to defame and vilify mainstream conservative organizations.

The list of signatories can be read following the statement here.

It is also interesting to note this update on the SPLC’s finances from the The Washington Free Beacon:

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a left-wing nonprofit known for its “hate group” designations, now has $92 million in offshore investment funds, according to financial statements…

The controversial organization reported $477 million in total assets and $132 million in contributions on its most recent tax forms, which cover Nov. 1, 2016 to Oct. 31, 2017. That represents an increase of $140 million in its total assets from the previous year. Millions flowed to the group following the deadly Charlottesville, Va. attacks from employees at companies including JP Morgan Chase and Apple as well as from actors such as George Clooney.

Google, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, Apple, and evidently the SPLC’s itself represent some “deep pockets” when it comes to potential lawsuits and settlements.

Earlier this week I reported how YouTube had come under attack from various LGBT websites and YT channels and social media accounts. The internet giant had committed the cardinal sin of playing conservative Christian ads on LGBT channels. How dare they!

To add insult to injury, YouTube had previously demonetized many of these LGBT videos, just as YouTube demonetized hundreds of my videos. They were deemed not appropriate for all advertisers. Now, YouTube had the gall to advertise a video like “Can You Be Gay and Christian?” on these very same channels. This was too much to bear.

The Twitter world was set ablaze, and a number of YouTubers expressed their disappointment and anger. (See my previous article for details.)

In reality, though, this was not really a very big story.

This very week, I received word that an ad encouraging gay men to get HIV testing appeared before one of my videos. These things happen, and I doubt YouTube can be 100 percent sure that an offending ad will never pop-up.

But it’s not the end of the world. No one was raped or molested or tortured or robbed or killed.

And I seriously doubt that the conservative Christian ads were appearing day and night on these LGBT channels. In fact, for the most part, I keep seeing reference to the same one or two ads appearing on the same one or two LGBT channels. What’s the big deal?

But now, this is a story. A big story. A cause for moral outrage. A cause calling for justice. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.

Outrage Overkill

Already this week, the story has been covered by Forbes, Business Insider, the Advocate, and the Independent (UK), along with a host of other sites, including LGBTQ Nation, Pink News, and the Verge. (There are too many to link here.) It’s even made it to the Spanish language Posta site. (Perhaps other languages too?)

YouTubers with large followers have weighed in as well, including Phillip DeFranco, with 6.1 million subscribers (his video had more than 1.2 million views in less than two days; and, again, I could cite many more YouTube examples).

Almost every story included clips (or still shots) from our “Can You Be Gay and Christian?” video. And for the most part, interviewers have focused on FTM transgender Chase Ross, one of the most offended parties involved and one of the first to speak out on YouTube.

As a result, our video has been swarmed by angry members of the LGBT community, with one woman rallying others to take over our video feed. (She posted, “Where are all my gay motherf—kers at? We taking over this b—ch.”)

Prager U remains in a legal battle with Google and YouTube over the truly outrageous treatment it received. In contrast, what happened with our ads running on a few LGBT channels is hardly a story at all, let alone a cause around which people should rally.

The negative exposure has been such that we went from a 10-1 positive response (roughly 670 to 70, which would be a typical ratio for videos watched by our subscribers) to barely 2-1 positive (at present, 2,098 to 929).

Of the nearly 1,100 comments (it would be much higher if we didn’t have to delete lots of posts for incredibly vulgar and offensive language), many are quite ugly. They include choice comments like, “die you old bast—d”. And, “oh and some people can’t help being gay it’s just like what paedophiles like you can’t help you dumb a– doctor can’t do jack sh-t no one will miss you when i kill you.” And, “you look like pedophile colonel sanders.” And, “Breeders are f—ing disgusting.” And, “I seriously hope that every single one of you twisted, evil monsters that liked this video are hit by a bus. This isn’t exaggeration. I want the plague you’re spreading wiped off the face of the planet.” (Remember: There are others too vile to print, even while omitting some of the profanity.)

And every day, the outrage grows greater. How dare YouTube do such a monstrous thing!

And the more it is reported, the more the story grows, until it has become a cause for social justice. Just look at how unfairly LGBT’s are being treated!

It’s On

Again, as I stated earlier in the week (and as the Advocate fairly quoted me), we never intended for our video to be advertised on LGBT channels, and my preference is that it not be advertised there. I had no desire to go into someone’s own “territory” and present to them something they didn’t want to see. Nor did I ask for a veritable flood of profane comments and negative responses. (On the flip side, we produced the video to be viewed, so we’re thrilled with the day and night publicity, even if it’s negative. Let the message get out!)

Yet all the while, Prager U remains in a legal battle with Google and YouTube over the unfair treatment it received, treatment which really was outrageous. In contrast, what happened with our ads running on a few LGBT channels is hardly a story at all, let alone a cause around which people should rally. But rallying they are, and so the story now takes on a life of its own. We’re watching it unfold in front of our eyes.

But let me not end here by merely observing what is happening. Instead, may I ask for five seconds of your time? I’m simply asking you to click on the link to my video, and give it a thumbs up. (If you haven’t watched it yet, it’s only 6 minutes long, so watch and then respond. You can even leave a comment!)

One viewer said, “It’s a gospel version of a Prager U video.” Sweet!

Your five second investment of time will help us push back against the tide of angry LGBT activists and their allies. If the battle is on, then let it be on. And may truth triumph in the end.

This article originally posted at Stream.org.

A Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) investigation discovered that the left-wing nonprofit is closely tied to four of the largest tech platforms on the planet, which routinely consult or collaborate with the SPLC in policing their platforms for “hate groups” or “hate speech,” and the findings were corroborated by Facebook itself.

“[The SPLC is on a list of] external experts and organizations [that Facebook works with] to inform our hate speech policies,” Facebook Spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja informed the DCNF in an interview.

Facing users away from the right

Budhraja explained how outside groups are consulted by Facebook through one to three meetings in order to fashion its hate speech policies, but she would not name which specific organizations it worked with and insisted that they represent all political affiliations.

She then used a May 8 SPLC article that accused Facebook of inadequately censoring “anti-Muslim hate” in an attempt to prove the social media giant does not fully submit to the SPLC.

“We have our own process, and our processes are different and, I think, that’s why we get the criticism [from the SPLC], because organizations that are hate organizations by their standards don’t match ours,” Budhraja insisted, according to the DCNF. “That doesn’t mean that we don’t have a process in place, and that definitely doesn’t mean we want the platform to be a place for hate, but we aren’t going to map to the SPLC’s list or process.”

Following right-leaning users’ numerous complaints over the years about the bias of Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube, dozens of nationally renowned conservative leaders banded against the Internet platforms last month by issuing a statement condemning them for their censorship and suppression of conservative speech.

“Social media censorship and online restriction of conservatives and their organizations have reached a crisis level,” their joint statement read, according to Newsbusters. “Conservative leaders now have banded together to call for equal treatment on tech and social media.”

At the time, the SPLC was already suspected for contributing to the platforms’ liberal bias.

“The participants called for the tech giants to address the key areas of complaint, including lack of transparency, when removing content and deleting accounts and the imbalance of liberal content advisers – such as the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Fox News reported.

Amazon and the SPLC – a perfect left match

But Amazon trumps Facebook when it come to collaborating with the SPLC.

“Of the four companies, Amazon gives the SPLC the most direct authority over its platform, the DCNF found,” the DCNF’s Peter Hasson reported. “While Facebook emphasizes its independence from the SPLC, Amazon does the opposite: Jeff Bezos’ company grants the SPLC broad policing power over the Amazon Smile charitable program, while claiming to remain unbiased.”

In fact, an Amazon spokeswoman announced where the Internet giant gets its final word, but she would not say whether her company considers its leftist source as being unbiased.

“We remove organizations that the SPLC deems as ineligible,” the company’s spokeswoman told the DCNF. “[Amazon grants the SPLC that power] because we don’t want to be biased whatsoever.”

One of Amazon’s charitable programs under scrutiny for being in cahoots with the SPLC’s political agenda was targeted.

“The Smile program allows customers to identify a charity to receive 0.5 percent of the proceeds from their purchases on Amazon,” Hasson pointed out. “Customers have given more than $8 million to charities through the program since 2013, according to Amazon. Only one participant in the program, the SPLC, gets to determine which other groups are allowed to join it.”

It was found that the Smile program frowns upon conservatives, Christians and Jews, alike.

“Christian legal groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom – which recently successfully represented a Christian baker at the U.S. Supreme Court – are barred from the Amazon Smile program, while openly anti-Semitic groups remain, the DCNF found in May,” Hasson noted. “One month later, the anti-Semitic groups – but not the Alliance Defending Freedom – are still able to participate in the program.”

Another excuse was also given by Amazon for the way it directs its users to charities using its own – and the SPLC’s – standards and criteria.

“Charitable organizations must meet the requirements outlined in our participation agreement to be eligible for AmazonSmile,” an Amazon spokesperson told Fox News. “Organizations that engage in, support, encourage or promote intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence, money laundering or other illegal activities are not eligible. If at any point an organization violates this agreement, its eligibility will be revoked. Since 2013, Amazon has relied on the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Southern Poverty Law Center to help us make these determinations. While this system has worked well, we do listen to and consider the feedback of customers and other stakeholders, which we will do here as well.”

Tweeting for the SPLC

The other social media giant also determines its enemies and allies, according to the SPLC.

“Twitter lists the SPLC as a ‘safety partner’ working with Twitter to combat ‘hateful conduct and harassment,’” Hassan impressed. “The platform also includes the Trust and Safety Council, which ‘provides input on our safety products, policies and programs,’ according to Twitter. Free speech advocates have criticized it as Orwellian.”

Twitter admitted it worked with some social policy groups, but would not single out the SPLC.

“[Twitter is] in regular contact with a wide range of civil society organizations and [nongovernmental organizations],” a Twitter spokeswoman told the DCNF.

Googly over the SPLC

And the world’s biggest web browser also taps into the SPLC’s political profiling scheme.

“Google uses the SPLC to help police hate speech on YouTube as part of YouTube’s ‘Trusted Flagger’ program … citing a source with knowledge of the agreement, [and] following that report, the SPLC confirmed [in March that] they’re policing hate speech on YouTube,” Hassan recounted. “The SPLC and other third-party groups in the ‘Trusted Flagger’ program work closely with YouTube’s employees to crack down on extremist content in two ways, according to YouTube.”

The strategic process effectively weeds out conservatives so users can get their fill of leftist content.

“First, the flaggers are equipped with digital tools allowing them to mass flag content for review by YouTube personnel,” he continued. “Second, the groups act as guides to YouTube’s content monitors and engineers who design the algorithms policing the video platform, but may lack the expertise needed to tackle a given subject.”

But this underhanded scheme has gone virtually undetected – with good reason.

“The SPLC is one of over 300 government agencies and nongovernmental organizations in the YouTube program – the vast majority of which remain hidden behind confidentiality agreements,” Hassan divulged.

The SPLC’s fake labels abound

Adding insult to injury, the SPLC has a track record showing that its designations are based more on left-leaning sentiments and emotions than on fact.

“The SPLC has consistently courted controversy in publishing lists of ‘extremists’ and ‘hate groups,’” the DCNF reporter maintained. “The nonprofit has been plagued by inaccuracies this year, retracting four articles in March and April alone.”

The SPLC’s anti-Trump agenda was recently exposed when it had to retract a series of its stories a few months ago.

“The well-funded nonprofit – which did not return a request for comment – deleted three Russia-related articles in March after challenges to their accuracy followed by legal threats,” Hassan recalled. “All three articles focused on drawing conspiratorial connections between anti-establishment American political figures and Russian influence operations in the United States.”

Its pro-Muslim bias was exposed the following month.

“The SPLC removed a controversial ‘anti-Muslim extremist’ list in April, after British Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz threatened to sue over his inclusion on the list,” Hassan continued. “The SPLC had accused the supposed-extremists of inciting anti-Muslim hate crimes.”

Those who have been vocal against Islamic Sharia law and Muslim militancy have regularly been targeted by the SPLC – including Somali-born women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who also made SPLC’s list.

“Ali – a victim of female genital mutilation who now advocates against the practice – is an award-winning human rights activist, but according to the SPLC’s since-deleted list, she was an ‘anti-Muslim extremist,’” Hassan informed.

Last August, Ali condemned Apple CEO Tim Cook for donating major funds to the SPLC and described the leftist nonprofit the following way:

“[The SPLC is] an organization that has lost its way, smearing people who are fighting for liberty and turning a blind eye to an ideology and political movement that has much in common with Nazism,” Ali declared, according to the DCNF.

United States Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Benjamin Carson was emblazoned on the SPLC’s “extremist watch list” in 2015 because his political worldview aligns with conservatives.

“When embracing traditional Christian values is equated to hatred, we are approaching the stage where wrong is called right and right is called wrong,” the neurosurgeon Carson proclaimed on Facebook after discovering his name on SPLC’s list. “It is important for us to, once again, advocate true tolerance. That means being respectful of those with whom we disagree and allowing people to live according to their values without harassment. It is nothing but projectionism when some groups label those who disagree with them as haters.”

It took four months of backlash from conservatives for the SPLC to apologize and remove the “extremist” label from the 2016 Republican presidential candidate, who is now serving under the Trump administration.

And there have been severe consequences to the SPLC’s intentional mislabeling, as witnessed six years ago.

“Floyd Lee Corkins – who attempted a mass shooting at the conservative Family Research Center in 2012 – said he chose the organization for his act of violence because the SPLC listed them as a ‘hate group,’” Hassan noted.

Anyone or any group not aligned with the SPLC’s ultra-leftist ideas is a prime candidate for the nonprofit’s smear campaign, and its credibility has been challenged on a regular basis.

“The SPLC receives criticism from across the political spectrum for its smearing of conservative and centrist individuals and organizations,” Breitbart News reported.

As a result of the smears, some nonprofit organizations are hit financially by receiving less contributions.

“Conservative groups, like the Alliance Defending Freedom, also face regular smears by the SPLC,” Breitbart’s Allum Bokhari stressed. “As a result, they are barred from Amazon’s charity program.”

Even former President Barack Obama at one time chastised the SPLC for its extremist agenda.

“The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center was [even] too extreme for the Obama administration – but it’s just fine for Silicon Valley,” Fox News commented. “The Obama-era Justice Department once scolded the SPLC for overstepping ‘the bounds of zealous advocacy,’ after the organization labeled the non-profit Federation for American Immigration Reform a ‘hate group.’”

This article was originally published at OneNewsNow.com

Maybe you once thought that the left wanted tolerance and diversity, but in reality, tolerance and diversity have never been the goals of the left, especially the radical left. Instead, it wants to suppress and silence opposing views, and the further left you go, the more extreme the intolerance.

For those who have still not come to grips with this, let these recent examples jar you.

It is bad enough that states have been passing legislation banning counseling for minors struggling with same-sex attraction, even if they have their parents’ backing. But now, there are reports that some states are considering banning such counseling for people of any age. (I was informed of this last week by a Christian counselor in California.)

In other words, it could be illegal for a 30-year-old man with unwanted same-sex attractions to go for professional counseling that focuses on helping him deal with and even overcome these attractions. This is a monstrous violation of individual freedom, not to mention a serious misrepresentation of scientific data, as if all “conversion therapy” was harmful.

Taking things one step farther, “A church in Michigan has come under intense attack this month [meaning, February] after posting on Facebook that it was holding a workshop at the church for girls who are struggling with essentially LGBT thoughts.”

So, not even a church is allowed to help its young people who struggle with unwanted same-sex thoughts. I guess freedom of religion and, even more fundamentally, freedom of self-determination only goes so far. How dare a church do such a thing!

The pastor Jeremy Schossau, stated that, “‘It is hard to believe how much vile filth has been sent our way,’ adding that many of the emails contained gay pornography. ‘We’re talking 10,000 emails and posts and messages and phone calls. It’s just been virtually nonstop.’”

Ah, the sweet, gentle voice of tolerance and diversity!

On a very different front, Pamela Geller explained to Milo Yiannopoulos that, “Google has scrubbed all internet searches . . . of anything critical of jihad and Sharia. So, if you Google jihad and you Google Sharia and you Google Islam, you’re going to get Islamic apologetics, you’re going to get ‘religion of peace.’ Whereas my site used to come up top, page one for jihad and Sharia or Islam, or JihadWatch did, you can’t find it now. They scrubbed 40,000 Geller posts of Google.”

She continued, “You know what? It’s Stalinesque.”

Geller wasn’t exaggerating, and her example is just one of many.

But all you have to do is label something as “hate speech” these days, and you can get it removed from social media in a hurry.

A friend of mine had his Facebook page shut down for sharing Bible verses about homosexual practice – I mean verses without commentary.

Another friend had his Facebook page shut down for posting medical data about the health risks associated with homosexual practice.

These are just two examples out of many more, where colleagues have been warned, if not censured and then censored.

Even Joe Rogan, hardly a conservative activist, noted how “squirrely” things have become with “hate speech” labelling on social media. (The context of his comment was his interview with Douglas Murray, himself anything but a conservative activist, noting how Murray’s discussion with atheist Sam Harris was somehow labelled hate speech, thereby in violation of Twitter’s community guidelines.”)

Over at Harvard University, a Christian club has been penalized for daring to live by its biblically-based code for leaders. As reported by Todd Starnes, “A well-respected Christian student organization at Harvard University has been placed on probation after they allegedly forced a bisexual woman to resign from a leadership position for dating a woman.

“The Crimson reports that Harvard College Faith and Action was put on ‘administrative probation’ for a year. The group is largest Christian fellowship on campus.”

So, a Christian club cannot require its leaders (not its members) to live by Christian standards, which begs the question, Could the leader of a campus Islamic club be a professing Christian? Or could the leader of a campus PETA club be a meat-eater? Or could the leader of the campus atheist club be an Orthodox Jew?

By why ask logical questions? The left wants to enforce its intolerant groupthink on everyone else. Leftist tolerance is a myth.

Just consider the recent debate on gun control in the aftermath of the tragic shooting in Parkland, Florida. Regardless of which side of the debate you’re on, was any tolerance shown to Dana Loesch (representing the NRA) at a CNN-sponsored town hall? Not only was she called a murderer and bad mother, but Jake Tapper actually asked her if she and her husband had security to escort them out of the building.

Is it stretching things to imagine that there could have been physical violence against Loesch? We’ve already seen how violent the left can get at places like Berkeley, where “punch a Nazi” becomes the rallying cry.

This doesn’t mean that we respond with violence and anger. God forbid.

But it does mean that we start speaking up more loudly, clearly, fearlessly, and persistently. And in the appropriate ways, as with the new “Internet Freedom Watch” initiative announced by the NRB (National Religious Broadcasters), we fight back.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org