The mainstream is censoring itself into irrelevancy

Long live the real world.

Censorship is fashionable in the West. So much so it has become endemic in our culture, barely discussed and thinly disguised by censors as misinformation, disinformation and the newly-minted malinformation.

What was once hidden to avoid accusations of manipulation and even to avoid embarrassment is now championed. Welcome to our brave new world where the anxious now run multi-billion dollar technology companies.

The main purpose of censorship is removal of troublesome information. The censor categorizes some things as unacceptable and seeks to erase it so the ordinary citizen is not exposed to its damaging effects.

In the chaotic world online, where everything is digital, anything can be copied and recopied without loss to the original. The prevention of propagation is not always possible so the fallback position is to discredit anything the hapless plebs get to see. This stuff is dangerous, it is wrong, it is malinformation.

But these initiatives are behind the times. People want information. Ordinary folks want to make sense of their world, and increasing numbers have grown suspicious of the mainstream channels.

From broadsheets boasting unimpeachable pedigree to famous television networks and global social media platforms ever more people have become suspicious about what they are seeing and curious about what they are not.

Censorship is typically omission. Search engines suppress results and sometimes remove them completely.

Social media platforms already use algorithms to tailor content to user interests, so are easy to manipulate.

Mainstream news goes furthest and promotes approved narratives as well as avoiding discussion of awkward topics. When called upon to do so it will assist in character assassinations of those the Establishment fear most.

As frustrating as this kind of manipulation is it does provide insights into what we are dealing with.

Those in a position to censor are fearful of the content they banish from public view. Although the official story is always presented in terms of preventing hate or online harm.

We witnessed this technique during the Covid pandemic response. All the major outlets engaged in narrative management, desperate to convince a worried public that alternative views would lead to unacceptable medical outcomes or death.

But time has demonstrated the observation that it is during emergencies and fast-moving events that we need a range of opinions most. Many of the censored claims by doctors and scientists who challenged the orthodoxies of the Covid response have been proven right over time.

In those keen to control the narrative we see evidence of groupthink at play. The coordination across different media outlets, websites and other platforms is obvious, extending even to rivals promoting identical narratives. Once seen it is difficult to take seriously. All of it looks fake.

The coverage of the Ukraine war in Western nations was a case in point. Like Covid censorship it quickly moved from narrative management to fiction.

We were continuously treated to elaborate analyses of how the Russians would be defeated any day now. More sober commentary online painted a picture almost completely the opposite, with a confident Russia systematically defeating Ukraine despite the enormous support from NATO countries.

While it is fascinating to see this kind of disconnect from reality it prompts an important question. Who does this? Who has a need for this kind of narrative control? Why are they so obsessive about it? What do they fear that they would resort to easily disproved lies?

Peeking behind the curtain reveals anxiety and neurosis, not groups confident in their position.

At times we witness almost comical overreactions from Establishment players and their agents. Increasingly as we see organizations, public bodies, news networks and celebrities denounce some person or event it is underwhelming. None of it rings true. They just expose themselves as part of some scripted machine.

We talk much of elites, but it would be more accurate to consider them as the privileged. Bill Gates is a famous example. His position gives him access to favourable media coverage. This enables him to sell books and reach large audiences. He has influence.

This is helped along because many in the media aspire to be something like him; wealthy and famous with a jetset lifestyle. From a distance it looks impressive, and those books quickly make it on to best-seller lists.

But increasingly he is openly mocked as a joke, a one-trick pony whose heyday was the 1980s in a different world.

What kind of elite is this? The WEF pronouncements are similar. They sound like bad science fiction and are broadcast at us with the kind of breathless reverence only possible in an echo chamber. No one heckles. No one ever challenges them, and the media ensure any criticism of their position is not reported.

This is all artificial, which is the real reason for the paranoia. Many movers and shakers occupy seemingly enviable positions in society, but how seriously should we take them? How many have earned their status in any meaningful sense? How many feel confident in their positions knowing they are really playing a rigged media game?

They seem to be the kind of people who cannot easily value real world things, like the hard-won reputations of companies. These are just another resource among many that can be burned through to meet some goal like woke posturing.

This includes all the media entities, the newspapers, the TV networks, social media platforms and more. Most are dying because of their obvious bias.

For some people money does grow on trees and that is more of a disadvantage than it sounds. A bored globalist elite who have more money than sense behave in insensible ways.

Is this what we are seeing here? If so it is an inept way to operate, like the grandchildren of great industrialists burning through the family fortune. Except we see the media, beholden to their cultural masters, destroy the reputation of media organs fewer and fewer now consume as they amplify the message of a deranged elite class who lack confidence in their plans.

Increasingly what we see from the media is pathetic. I find myself now actively avoiding any mainstream source of information. The use of promoted narratives to suppress actual stories is becoming too blatant to ignore.

In Britain climate extremists are given generous coverage, including sympathetic interviews and considerable exposure of their core positions. But all discussion of their funding sources is forbidden despite some of it originating from overseas.

It is obvious why this happens as it exposes power structures at odds with official narratives. The powerful cannot reveal their favoured clients as too many people will understand how the country is really run and how out of kilter the official narratives really are.

We see similar efforts to protect other initiatives a healthy society would openly debate. Mass immigration, radical feminism and transgender agitation are presented in constrained ways. Serious challenges are uncommon. Rare successes in reaching wide audiences with alternative views are quickly condemned as extremism. This becomes tiresome for people who pride themselves on trying to remain informed.

All this effort to hide information, to discredit the naysayers, to stop us accessing anything outside the approved narrative points to deep insecurity. The confident are wide open to scrutiny. Take it or leave it. The neurotic need control. Any challenge to the official line is met with anger and denouncement. Judgment not discussion.

Are these the masters of the universe we fear?

It may sound ridiculous as many are convinced we are dealing with criminal masterminds. But increasingly we see cracks in their expensive narrative. The most blatant is the expense itself. All those minions don't come cheap. This is an empire built on money not loyalty. And for what?

The willingness of media outlets to harm themselves in this way is not unique. We have all seen the companies embracing unpopular woke causes and alienating their customers.

Disney, a media conglomerate with global reach, seems to be in some kind of death spiral, unable to escape their narrative vortex as audiences abandon them. And yet on they plod, piling up the flops as their message reaches fewer and fewer people.

Ultimately the mainstream is dying. The reason is elites burn through social capital for greater ambitions they lack the confidence to simply present for debate.

But they will eventually run out of capital, and we seem to be rapidly reaching this point.

From our perspective the mainstream is becoming less relevant. It still sways many, but not all. More now seek out novel forms of information as they lose trust in news media.

The future landscape will likely be complex. Some innovations will be impossible to predict. But the urge to become informed is ever present in these confusing times.

Importantly this will be difficult to control by our cultural masters. It is all slipping through their fingers and that is reason to rejoice.

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