"The sinister, authoritarian urge lurks inside the hearts of all men. I endeavor to oppose censors whether they are waving a holy book or a rainbow flag, and I am happy to find common cause with other liberty-loving people whether they are carrying a holy book or a rainbow flag." I cannot tell you how much i love this sentiment. I will stand with it forever. I think a sacred space should be made for vitriol. It is not evil, it is a sign of imbalance that needs attention. censoring will make it worse. it will fester.
I am really glad it resonated with you as well! I often lament the lack of principles among so many today. And I also like your approach regarding vitriol. Thanks so much for the read!
I am late to read this. Thank you for linking in Notes today.
If I went through point-by-point on everything I like about this essay/article/post/thingy, and also quoted back every humorous, delightful turn of phrase, my comment would be half as long as the piece on which I comment.
I will quote but one of the many quotable moments, not because it is superior to the rest, but because it was near the end, hah!
"...except for Hillary Clinton who is clearly an 8th-dimensional, demonic reptile lord." 80's me says, "Big time!" 🤣
Your skill with witty prose and well-crafted phrasing tends to make me nauseatingly gushy, and I am endeavoring to be less slobbery, so I will simply conclude with: very well done! I look forward to catching up on more that I have missed.
Wow! I am truly humbled by your extremely kind comment :) I am so grateful to have a kindred spirit such as yourself take the time to give my articles a read (whenever time should permit haha), and I am really glad to hear that you are enjoying the quirky content I am tossing up here.
And, yes, if there is one thing I hope I can convey to my audience, it is that Hillary Clinton is clearly an 8th-dimensional, demonic reptile lord 🤣
The amazing thing is that her true identity is so thinly-veiled! It is beyond my comprehension how so many people groove on that 8th-dimensional, demonic reptile lord. They are the same people who love Newsom, who I strongly suspect is spawn of like kind.
Bravo sir! Another banger. If only a man looked at me the way you look at Brandenburg. Le sigh. I agree with you. Let's just call out the Nazis. The new bill should be DOA and no matter what party they're in if they are voting for FISA or this backdoor precedent setting action they gotta go. As Joliet Jake says, " there's nothing I hate more than IL nazis" we can always push the pedal to the medal and drive across the bridge so to speak but the 1st is the 1st. Well done and great jokes aplenty. 👏
This article has been most instructive, thank you Apollo.
"This warrants repetition. Hate speech is free speech."
I was unaware of the entire Al-Sabah kerfuffle. Thank you for that information.
Elon Musk is a very interesting character on the world chessboard. One to keep an eye on, for sure. Until they unban everyone that is STILL banned for misinformation, I will keep my opinion the same as Kat Denning.
(Mostly because this quote still makes me laugh.)
"Twitter is for idiots, and instagram is twitter for people that can't read."
You are very welcome, Antila! Thank you for the read and for the kind words. I learned quite a bit about communication law and several false flags myself while researching this, and I had studied this stuff at university haha. It bolstered my conviction that free speech must be broadly and boldly protected.
To that end, I share your sentiment that everyone banned for "misinformation" (which today largely just means "inconvenient information" when used by our Elites) should be unbanned immediately, and that it is a failure for Musk not to do so. It is interesting to note that almost immediately after I published this, Musk did finally unban Alex Jones, which I was glad to see.
I also concur that Musk is indeed just one complex character among others in a complex game of world chess. And one worth keeping an eye on... for good or bad. That quote from Kat cracked me up as well. I wonder if that makes Substack Twitter for people who can? haha
And you nailed it! The comic panels in here are from Preacher. I recently revisited the series, and it is still one of the best, most badass books out there. I also added a caption citing the source, so thank you for asking the question!
"Free speech is the foundation for any group that values freedom."
Hear hear! Perfectly, pithily put.
I've only ever seen a few parts of the Preacher show, some of which seemed good and very on point (like Herr Starr's Grail academy training sequence haha), and some of which seemed a bit off the mark for me personally. I can say the book is one helluva ride though. It is a crazy mix of fascinating characters and thought-provoking themes with insane pacing, violence, sexuality, and comedy. In some respects kind of reminds of a Verhoeven film now I think about it... hmmm. Anyway, if you ever do check it out, pop back in and let me know what you think!
Regardless of all that though, HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO YOU TOO! 🎁⛄🎄🕯🥳
I had to look up Verhoeven, and I have seen so many of his films and didn't know I was a fan up to now. Thanks for that. I if I get hold of the book for Preacher i will. Ok time for sleep, peace!
Fantastic read as always even if it was "way too long." Took me a whole 10 minutes to read!!!
First amendment is fascinating in today's climate considering it covers Religion, Peaceful Assembly, Press, and the most important part (at least in my eyes),the grievances of the American people being redressed.
Maybe the current establishment feels a redress is putting on the "sparkling red shoes" or like the red dress in Tobe Hooper's underrated "I'm Dangerous Tonight?" Kind of an ironic title considering the topic.
Haha thank you! I try to bring the glamour and glitter, the fashion and fame, to every article! Great point about the actual breadth of the 1st Amendment generally, as well as the redress clause specifically. It is so vitally important to our entire society that it can be scarcely overstated, yet much like the 2nd Amendment it is poorly understood by so many even despite its brevity.
I love the idea of likening "redress" with the power of the "red dress" in "I'm Dangerous Tonight"! The government loves to let people don that dress for a summer of fiery and deadly--but mostly peaceful--mayhem, but if people try to use it for actual redress from, say, election fraud, they get tossed in the Mangler!
Musk did it again! Takes real balls to free Alex Jones. His interview with Tucker humanized him, I believe, to many people. I was not a fan of his but he really comported himself well.
Way too long of an article that doesn’t feel like it’s really saying much, but I appreciate learning that Henry Kissinger was literally a comic book villain.
Haha! I just don't feel like I have time for these novel-length posts I guess even if I definitely liked parts of it enough to read about half, like the part where Henry Kissinger was a Fantastic Four villain. I'm totally showing everyone that and crediting you even though it's not that relevant to your actual post.
I appreciate you checking out the post, sharing out the parts you did enjoy, and the good-faith reply. And of course, if you don't like this post or this style of post then that is entirely your prerogative. Different strokes and all that :)
As such, you will likely want to stop reading here haha, but just in case you (or anyone who skips to the comments section) is interested: a bit of explanation. If nothing else, other writers may find this peek behind the curtain interesting, and if not, hey, it's free.
So, I am well aware that my idiosyncratic style of writing is not for everyone haha, which is A-OK. It is that style that differentiates me from the many other voices here on Substack, and one that my readership does enjoy, for which I am eternally grateful (and amazed).
I will say though that, to paraphrase Gandalf, my posts are neither too long, nor too short, they conclude precisely when they mean to! I trust the Muses ;) This is to say: it may be a long post according to some modern metrics or personal taste, but I would disagree that it is "way too long" in any objective sense, and I surely would take exception to that accusation being levied by someone (as I interpreted the above reply, at least) who had not finished reading the article, as each part of the article complements and develops the larger theme, i.e., we must understand the actual (modern) history and scope of free speech, including the catastrophic effects of its erosion, in order to galvanize its defense against the siren song of censorship once again luring us toward the craggy shores.
This message is delivered through the unifying framework of the ongoing tale of Elon's Twitter acquisition, and is itself (as referenced early on and in the title) a continuation of a series I have been developing around this story. Full disclosure, I had thought about breaking this episode into smaller "chapters" at one point, but each section--loosely delineated by lined "breaks" and header images for readability--contributes a vital lion robot to the larger Voltron.
Opener and closer: Topical, ongoing Elon/Twitter censorship context, i.e., the current cudgel of "anti-Semitism," which runs through the entirety of this work
Part 1: History and reality of free speech protections in U.S. (with some comparison abroad) to dispel common misconceptions
Part 2: Dissection of free speech as a partisan issue
Part 3: Examples of government malfeasance being insulated and facilitated by authoritarian suppression of speech under the guise of civility, safety, and even faux-incompetence
Part 4: Examples of Jewish free speech advocates defending the rights of groups diametrically opposed to them (KKK, Nazis, Holocaust deniers) to showcase the most principled defenses of free speech by the group being weaponized in the current wave of censorship
Opener and closer: See above. Summation of current situation and necessity to protect free speech. Also, epilogue explicating my views on the various responses to prominent figures like Elon.
When I looked into breaking apart the article into the smaller posts along the aforementioned lines, I found that though each had value in and of itself, they really worked best in tandem, synergistically, and that even if some people (*cough cough*) might be more likely to get through each part in separate, serial form, I was not convinced that population would be substantially higher than those willing to read through the current version in its entirety, especially because I had not published anything in about a month (this article took quite a bit of research and rearranging), and I thought readers would appreciate a larger, "meatier" treat to dig their teeth into after the wait. (I actually polled people on Notes, and this seemed to be the consensus view.) Furthermore, the soul of the piece would be lost if scattered amongst several serialized horcruxes, essentially forcing the reader to go back and read the whole series in one sitting anyway if they were to get the full thrust of the work.
As I hope is already becoming clear, the article is indeed saying quite a bit, on several levels. On the broadest level, it is methodically explaining and defending the necessity of free speech from multifarious angles. On a more granular level, it is concretely dispelling several common misconceptions that I have not seen addressed in this way elsewhere (such as the misconceptions around Schenk that Michaela has kindly shared), sedulously exposing criminal conspiracies that flourished under regimes of suppressed speech in a principled non-partisan/bipartisan fashion that is rare today, and being one of the few pieces I have come across (save the Dark Horse pod and System Update episode I cite) that dares to encourage inquiry about the atrocities being reported on in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in real-time today. There are enormous amounts of references and links in support of all these points, including (if I may) a unique and fantastically curated selection of case studies from the Jewish community itself. And to top it all off, I have nestled in a hearty helping of (attempted) jokes, easter eggs, and pop culture references (like the hilarious Kissinger/FF4 appearance that Michaela also got a kick out of) to make the piece enjoyable, unique, and even a bit surprising along the way.
All of this, from the structure to the references, was chosen to be informative to the free speech advocate, but perhaps even more so, to systematically head off censors at each turn, demolishing their talking points and sealing off their ideological escape routes in an attempt to provide a resource that will prove both:
1) able to please liberty lovers, but also
2) to serve as silver bullet of sorts destroying the usual tricks and traps employed in deceitful defense of tyrannical censorship regimes.
Sadly, I would contend that is indeed not only quite a lot to say, and that it requires a great deal of space to do so, but it is also tragically vital today in the face of increasingly common and vociferous attacks on our God-given rights. I also have not seen many other people attempting to defend the much-maligned "conspiracy theorist" in the manner this article does.
tl;dr Sorry if it wasn't for you. We can agree to disagree. Thanks for checking it out and for the shares regardless ;)
Thank you for taking the time to read through this, Scott! It's about twice as long as my previous record-setter (2x the value haha!) and took quite a strain my on the little hamster running on the wheel in my brain, so I appreciate your time and your kind words.
And I totally agree. There was no shortage of appropriate (and appropriately chilling) quotations from Goebbels on this matter, but that 1934 speech really struck me as distilling down so much around the issue of propaganda and how it is wielded with such devastating, complete efficacy against the masses. And we have had so many technological advances since then that make it that much more effective in the hands of all those three-letter organizations you mentioned! (You can read the whole speech here btw, that was just one of many lines that struck me. Goebbels was a lot of terrible things, but he was also tragically brilliant in his field: https:/research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb59.htm)
People would indeed do well to realize that across the world we are ALL (myself very much included) living under the shadow of the "great" propagandists, from Bernays to Goebbels, and the groups wielding their techniques. God only knows how much of what we believe to be basic fact today is actually just another fabrication! A robust defense of free speech is one of the best (only?) tools we have to at least attempt to defend ourselves.
"The sinister, authoritarian urge lurks inside the hearts of all men. I endeavor to oppose censors whether they are waving a holy book or a rainbow flag, and I am happy to find common cause with other liberty-loving people whether they are carrying a holy book or a rainbow flag." I cannot tell you how much i love this sentiment. I will stand with it forever. I think a sacred space should be made for vitriol. It is not evil, it is a sign of imbalance that needs attention. censoring will make it worse. it will fester.
I am really glad it resonated with you as well! I often lament the lack of principles among so many today. And I also like your approach regarding vitriol. Thanks so much for the read!
I am late to read this. Thank you for linking in Notes today.
If I went through point-by-point on everything I like about this essay/article/post/thingy, and also quoted back every humorous, delightful turn of phrase, my comment would be half as long as the piece on which I comment.
I will quote but one of the many quotable moments, not because it is superior to the rest, but because it was near the end, hah!
"...except for Hillary Clinton who is clearly an 8th-dimensional, demonic reptile lord." 80's me says, "Big time!" 🤣
Your skill with witty prose and well-crafted phrasing tends to make me nauseatingly gushy, and I am endeavoring to be less slobbery, so I will simply conclude with: very well done! I look forward to catching up on more that I have missed.
Wow! I am truly humbled by your extremely kind comment :) I am so grateful to have a kindred spirit such as yourself take the time to give my articles a read (whenever time should permit haha), and I am really glad to hear that you are enjoying the quirky content I am tossing up here.
And, yes, if there is one thing I hope I can convey to my audience, it is that Hillary Clinton is clearly an 8th-dimensional, demonic reptile lord 🤣
The amazing thing is that her true identity is so thinly-veiled! It is beyond my comprehension how so many people groove on that 8th-dimensional, demonic reptile lord. They are the same people who love Newsom, who I strongly suspect is spawn of like kind.
I think of this every time I see Hillary Clinton. Every. Time.
https://memes.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/d6fb69f9-d5cc-4aa2-a18d-964b9a943762
Yeeesssss! LMAO
I will now also think of that every time I see Hills. 🤣
Bravo sir! Another banger. If only a man looked at me the way you look at Brandenburg. Le sigh. I agree with you. Let's just call out the Nazis. The new bill should be DOA and no matter what party they're in if they are voting for FISA or this backdoor precedent setting action they gotta go. As Joliet Jake says, " there's nothing I hate more than IL nazis" we can always push the pedal to the medal and drive across the bridge so to speak but the 1st is the 1st. Well done and great jokes aplenty. 👏
The echoes of truth are diminished and your post is needed as a refresher as the chains are again circling the pillar of freedom. Veritas est aeterna
Absolutely beautifully phrased.
This article has been most instructive, thank you Apollo.
"This warrants repetition. Hate speech is free speech."
I was unaware of the entire Al-Sabah kerfuffle. Thank you for that information.
Elon Musk is a very interesting character on the world chessboard. One to keep an eye on, for sure. Until they unban everyone that is STILL banned for misinformation, I will keep my opinion the same as Kat Denning.
(Mostly because this quote still makes me laugh.)
"Twitter is for idiots, and instagram is twitter for people that can't read."
I snagged the last comic, is that from Preacher?
You are very welcome, Antila! Thank you for the read and for the kind words. I learned quite a bit about communication law and several false flags myself while researching this, and I had studied this stuff at university haha. It bolstered my conviction that free speech must be broadly and boldly protected.
To that end, I share your sentiment that everyone banned for "misinformation" (which today largely just means "inconvenient information" when used by our Elites) should be unbanned immediately, and that it is a failure for Musk not to do so. It is interesting to note that almost immediately after I published this, Musk did finally unban Alex Jones, which I was glad to see.
I also concur that Musk is indeed just one complex character among others in a complex game of world chess. And one worth keeping an eye on... for good or bad. That quote from Kat cracked me up as well. I wonder if that makes Substack Twitter for people who can? haha
And you nailed it! The comic panels in here are from Preacher. I recently revisited the series, and it is still one of the best, most badass books out there. I also added a caption citing the source, so thank you for asking the question!
Free speech is the foundation for any group that values freedom. I haven't read the comic but I watched all of the tv series. Happy holidays!
"Free speech is the foundation for any group that values freedom."
Hear hear! Perfectly, pithily put.
I've only ever seen a few parts of the Preacher show, some of which seemed good and very on point (like Herr Starr's Grail academy training sequence haha), and some of which seemed a bit off the mark for me personally. I can say the book is one helluva ride though. It is a crazy mix of fascinating characters and thought-provoking themes with insane pacing, violence, sexuality, and comedy. In some respects kind of reminds of a Verhoeven film now I think about it... hmmm. Anyway, if you ever do check it out, pop back in and let me know what you think!
Regardless of all that though, HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO YOU TOO! 🎁⛄🎄🕯🥳
I had to look up Verhoeven, and I have seen so many of his films and didn't know I was a fan up to now. Thanks for that. I if I get hold of the book for Preacher i will. Ok time for sleep, peace!
YOU. ARE. SO DREAMY!
Fantastic read as always even if it was "way too long." Took me a whole 10 minutes to read!!!
First amendment is fascinating in today's climate considering it covers Religion, Peaceful Assembly, Press, and the most important part (at least in my eyes),the grievances of the American people being redressed.
Maybe the current establishment feels a redress is putting on the "sparkling red shoes" or like the red dress in Tobe Hooper's underrated "I'm Dangerous Tonight?" Kind of an ironic title considering the topic.
Haha thank you! I try to bring the glamour and glitter, the fashion and fame, to every article! Great point about the actual breadth of the 1st Amendment generally, as well as the redress clause specifically. It is so vitally important to our entire society that it can be scarcely overstated, yet much like the 2nd Amendment it is poorly understood by so many even despite its brevity.
I love the idea of likening "redress" with the power of the "red dress" in "I'm Dangerous Tonight"! The government loves to let people don that dress for a summer of fiery and deadly--but mostly peaceful--mayhem, but if people try to use it for actual redress from, say, election fraud, they get tossed in the Mangler!
Musk did it again! Takes real balls to free Alex Jones. His interview with Tucker humanized him, I believe, to many people. I was not a fan of his but he really comported himself well.
Me waking up to see the Dogefather had actually let A.J. back on Twitter:
https://memes.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/fc81f9b2-5b81-4770-bdbb-6be4fd67d18e
You are a literal dictionary of memesmith
haha thank you! It's just how my warped brain makes connections lol
Way too long of an article that doesn’t feel like it’s really saying much, but I appreciate learning that Henry Kissinger was literally a comic book villain.
Way too long of a comment that isn't saying anything, but I appreciate the engagement!
Haha! I just don't feel like I have time for these novel-length posts I guess even if I definitely liked parts of it enough to read about half, like the part where Henry Kissinger was a Fantastic Four villain. I'm totally showing everyone that and crediting you even though it's not that relevant to your actual post.
I appreciate you checking out the post, sharing out the parts you did enjoy, and the good-faith reply. And of course, if you don't like this post or this style of post then that is entirely your prerogative. Different strokes and all that :)
As such, you will likely want to stop reading here haha, but just in case you (or anyone who skips to the comments section) is interested: a bit of explanation. If nothing else, other writers may find this peek behind the curtain interesting, and if not, hey, it's free.
So, I am well aware that my idiosyncratic style of writing is not for everyone haha, which is A-OK. It is that style that differentiates me from the many other voices here on Substack, and one that my readership does enjoy, for which I am eternally grateful (and amazed).
I will say though that, to paraphrase Gandalf, my posts are neither too long, nor too short, they conclude precisely when they mean to! I trust the Muses ;) This is to say: it may be a long post according to some modern metrics or personal taste, but I would disagree that it is "way too long" in any objective sense, and I surely would take exception to that accusation being levied by someone (as I interpreted the above reply, at least) who had not finished reading the article, as each part of the article complements and develops the larger theme, i.e., we must understand the actual (modern) history and scope of free speech, including the catastrophic effects of its erosion, in order to galvanize its defense against the siren song of censorship once again luring us toward the craggy shores.
This message is delivered through the unifying framework of the ongoing tale of Elon's Twitter acquisition, and is itself (as referenced early on and in the title) a continuation of a series I have been developing around this story. Full disclosure, I had thought about breaking this episode into smaller "chapters" at one point, but each section--loosely delineated by lined "breaks" and header images for readability--contributes a vital lion robot to the larger Voltron.
Opener and closer: Topical, ongoing Elon/Twitter censorship context, i.e., the current cudgel of "anti-Semitism," which runs through the entirety of this work
Part 1: History and reality of free speech protections in U.S. (with some comparison abroad) to dispel common misconceptions
Part 2: Dissection of free speech as a partisan issue
Part 3: Examples of government malfeasance being insulated and facilitated by authoritarian suppression of speech under the guise of civility, safety, and even faux-incompetence
Part 4: Examples of Jewish free speech advocates defending the rights of groups diametrically opposed to them (KKK, Nazis, Holocaust deniers) to showcase the most principled defenses of free speech by the group being weaponized in the current wave of censorship
Opener and closer: See above. Summation of current situation and necessity to protect free speech. Also, epilogue explicating my views on the various responses to prominent figures like Elon.
When I looked into breaking apart the article into the smaller posts along the aforementioned lines, I found that though each had value in and of itself, they really worked best in tandem, synergistically, and that even if some people (*cough cough*) might be more likely to get through each part in separate, serial form, I was not convinced that population would be substantially higher than those willing to read through the current version in its entirety, especially because I had not published anything in about a month (this article took quite a bit of research and rearranging), and I thought readers would appreciate a larger, "meatier" treat to dig their teeth into after the wait. (I actually polled people on Notes, and this seemed to be the consensus view.) Furthermore, the soul of the piece would be lost if scattered amongst several serialized horcruxes, essentially forcing the reader to go back and read the whole series in one sitting anyway if they were to get the full thrust of the work.
As I hope is already becoming clear, the article is indeed saying quite a bit, on several levels. On the broadest level, it is methodically explaining and defending the necessity of free speech from multifarious angles. On a more granular level, it is concretely dispelling several common misconceptions that I have not seen addressed in this way elsewhere (such as the misconceptions around Schenk that Michaela has kindly shared), sedulously exposing criminal conspiracies that flourished under regimes of suppressed speech in a principled non-partisan/bipartisan fashion that is rare today, and being one of the few pieces I have come across (save the Dark Horse pod and System Update episode I cite) that dares to encourage inquiry about the atrocities being reported on in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in real-time today. There are enormous amounts of references and links in support of all these points, including (if I may) a unique and fantastically curated selection of case studies from the Jewish community itself. And to top it all off, I have nestled in a hearty helping of (attempted) jokes, easter eggs, and pop culture references (like the hilarious Kissinger/FF4 appearance that Michaela also got a kick out of) to make the piece enjoyable, unique, and even a bit surprising along the way.
All of this, from the structure to the references, was chosen to be informative to the free speech advocate, but perhaps even more so, to systematically head off censors at each turn, demolishing their talking points and sealing off their ideological escape routes in an attempt to provide a resource that will prove both:
1) able to please liberty lovers, but also
2) to serve as silver bullet of sorts destroying the usual tricks and traps employed in deceitful defense of tyrannical censorship regimes.
Sadly, I would contend that is indeed not only quite a lot to say, and that it requires a great deal of space to do so, but it is also tragically vital today in the face of increasingly common and vociferous attacks on our God-given rights. I also have not seen many other people attempting to defend the much-maligned "conspiracy theorist" in the manner this article does.
tl;dr Sorry if it wasn't for you. We can agree to disagree. Thanks for checking it out and for the shares regardless ;)
Thank you for taking the time to read through this, Scott! It's about twice as long as my previous record-setter (2x the value haha!) and took quite a strain my on the little hamster running on the wheel in my brain, so I appreciate your time and your kind words.
And I totally agree. There was no shortage of appropriate (and appropriately chilling) quotations from Goebbels on this matter, but that 1934 speech really struck me as distilling down so much around the issue of propaganda and how it is wielded with such devastating, complete efficacy against the masses. And we have had so many technological advances since then that make it that much more effective in the hands of all those three-letter organizations you mentioned! (You can read the whole speech here btw, that was just one of many lines that struck me. Goebbels was a lot of terrible things, but he was also tragically brilliant in his field: https:/research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb59.htm)
People would indeed do well to realize that across the world we are ALL (myself very much included) living under the shadow of the "great" propagandists, from Bernays to Goebbels, and the groups wielding their techniques. God only knows how much of what we believe to be basic fact today is actually just another fabrication! A robust defense of free speech is one of the best (only?) tools we have to at least attempt to defend ourselves.