Douglas Murray – Heroism 2020: Defense of Our Own Civilization

What is the I.D.W. and who is a member of it? It’s hard to explain, which is both its beauty and its danger.

Most simply, it is a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities who are having a rolling conversation — on podcasts, YouTube and Twitter, and in sold-out auditoriums — that sound unlike anything else happening, at least publicly, in the culture right now. Feeling largely locked out of legacy outlets, they are rapidly building their own mass media channels.

“As for determining ‘truth,’ at least for the purposes of feature writing, Aristotle nailed it: ‘To say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true.’”

Aim: To investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life. Zimbardo was interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards or had more to do with the prison environment.

“Her lover looks to her for a clue as to which door to picks, and she gives him a signal. But which door did she send him to? That is the central question of the tale.”

Sophie’s choice refers to an extremely difficult decision a person has to make. It describes a situation where no outcome is preferable over the other. This can be either because both outcomes are equally desirable or both are equally undesirable.

Facebook has announced changes to its Terms of Service that will allow it to remove content or restrict access if the company thinks it is necessary to avoid legal or regulatory impact.

Users of Facebook’s app have started receiving notifications regarding a change to its Terms of Service which states:

“Effective October 1, 2020, section 3.2 of our Terms of Service will be updated to include: “We also can remove or restrict access to your content, services or information if we determine that doing so is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate adverse legal or regulatory impacts to Facebook.”

“The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”

The Twitter Trust and Safety Council brings together independent expert organizations from around the world that advocate for safety and advise us as we develop our products, programs, and the Twitter Rules. At the end of 2019, we expanded the Council to include experts from even more countries and diverse perspectives.

The Council is composed of several advisory groups, each focused on issues that are critical to the health of the public conversation. We also set up temporary groups on specific topics. The groups are: Online Safety and Harassment, Human and Digital Rights, Child Sexual Exploitation, Suicide Prevention and Mental Health, and Dehumanization.

Membership is voluntary, and membership does not imply endorsement of any decisions made by Twitter, nor do members speak on Twitter’s behalf. A small number of organizations on the Council requested not to be named. We will continue to evaluate ways to add perspectives and gather feedback from members.

Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to emails obtained by The Post.

The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.

“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email reads.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Email: outreach@articlesofunity.com
Date: 9/9/20

#Unity2020
Articles of Unity

Twitter engages in voter suppression by censoring a coalition of private citizens from speaking about a Unity ticket for the Nov 3rd Presidential election.

Abraham Lincoln resolved “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.” Unity2020 is a Presidential Draft organized by a coalition of citizens who believe our nation is in peril, and that the two major political parties have each presented presidential candidates who are unfit to lead the country. Our Unity Ticket is designed to draw equally from both parties, as well as to activate non-voters. We have a ballot access plan that poses a credible threat to the establishment, should we succeed.

Pursuant to this mission, hundreds of Unity2020 members tweeted #JustSayNoToDonaldAndJoe during the final night of the RNC on August 27th. The hashtag struck a chord, exploding in popularity among thousands of additional Twitter users who joined in the discussion. At its peak, Twitter reported “13.9k others are tweeting about this,” and our message was making an impression on nearly one hundred thousand Twitter users. The hashtag was trending, and drove an unprecedented spike in traffic to the Unity2020 website, at ArticlesOfUnity.org.

Abruptly, Twitter banned links to ArticlesOfUnity.org and suspended the accounts of many Unity2020 members. This suspension included the Unity2020 Twitter handle @ArticlesOfUnity, which has 25.5k followers. We conducted a thorough internal audit and found nothing that would substantiate our suspension. To date, Twitter has offered no public explanation for these actions despite a large outcry against this apparently flagrant act of censorship. Notably, Twitter has given millions of dollars in donations to political causes and is routinely accused of censoring messages for political reasons, particularly views that challenge the political establishment.

Two days after Twitter’s censure of Unity2020, Eric Weinstein reportedhe was speaking directly with Twitter Co-Founder and CEO Jack Dorsey about the matter. Twitter has since unblocked the ArticlesOfUnity.org link from being shared, but continues to flag the link as suspicious in private messages and deboosts any tweets that link to the website. Furthermore, many suspensions remain in effect, including the official @ArticlesOfUnity Twitter account and the individual accounts of Americans who support the Unity2020 movement. We view this peculiar, partial reversal as an admission of overreach, and we call on Twitter to immediately lift all restrictions and to give a detailed public explanation as to why they took place and ensure that this does not happen to those who challenge the political status quo moving forward. Follow @AoUHistory for a record of censored tweets.