Illustrative Image
Written by Eric Zuesse
On 1 June 2023, Benzinga headlined “Elon Musk’s Twitter Loses Yet Another Head Of Trust And Safety”, and reported that,
Since Musk’s takeover, the microblogging platform has faced mounting criticism for its perceived lack of effective safeguards against harmful content. Irwin’s departure comes at a challenging time for Twitter as it grapples with retaining advertisers who are wary of appearing next to unsuitable content on the platform.
At Twitter, Irwin had taken on a high-profile and often scrutinized role of handling content-moderation issues. She had previously defended the social media giant under its new owner.
What this signifies is that the ultimate censors are the major advertisers. The big-bucks corporations determine where to advertise and where not-to (which sites will get the advertising money, and which won’t) — they ultimately control censorship — and are controlled by “the blob” of the mega-investors who control the mega-corporations and who consist of, basically, the billionaires (the actual censors of the mainstream news-media). If they (if THAT group) don’t like a particular platform — whether it’s Twitter, or the New York Times, or CNN, or Fox News, or the BBC, or NPR, or whatever — then the advertisers or ‘donors’ (in any case, the controlling owners) will abandon it, and that site or ‘news’-medium will then be losing money and so won’t be able to pay its executives and its workers, and it will shrink and then fold.
The REAL audience is the super-rich, who control all of the mega-corporations.
THEY determine what constitutes ‘acceptable’ content, including what constitutes acceptable news to report.
They also control the lobbyists. And they also fund the careers of the successful political candidates. And thus, the Government’s officials represent THEM — that group, the billionaires.
They control both the corporations, and the ‘non-profits’ (or ‘charities’) and the Governments that are run by the successful politicians.
In short: THEY — that small group — POSSESS VASTLY TOO MUCH POWER. It shapes what the majority of the public will believe about public affairs. And, thereby, it crushes democracy.
The standard ways to ‘overcome’ excessive power — the collective dictatorship by, and for, and on behalf of, the billionaires — have been anti-monopoly laws, and regulatory enforcement, and other merely symptomatic methods of ‘cure’ of this disease, the disease of aristocracy, the disease of excessive concentrated wealth; but the billionaires THEMSELVES are the problem, the disease, of dictatorship, by that aristocracy, of the mega-wealthy.
THEY ARE THEMSELVES THE PROBLEM. Their presence is democracy’s disease.
It’s not their persons that constitute the disease of this collective dictatorship, the dictatorship by the super-rich; it is instead THEIR BEING RICH ENOUGH TO MAKE AUTHENTIC DEMOCRACY IMPOSSIBLE — that is the cause of this disease.
The only way to cure this disease — the aristocratic disease — will be any way that will cause billionaires to disappear from the country by socializing enough of those persons’ wealth so as to bring each one of them down to a sensible legally specified maximum net worth that will henceforth be lawful within the given country. Anything above that level, which might be a net worth of a hundred million dollars, or maybe even down to a net worth of only ten million dollars, will become automatically an asset of the Government, which Government must then actually represent the interests of the majority of the nation’s residents, NOT of campaign donors or of any other wealth. A Government isn’t supposed to be a private corporation — profit or ‘non’-profit — which is controlled on the one-dollar-one-vote basis, but is instead supposed to be controlled on the basis of one-person-one-vote: for the public’s interest, not for any aristocracy’s interest. The Government must represent the land’s residents, and NOT the land’s wealth. It must be, like any authentic democracy is, one-person-one-vote rule, instead of what a corporation is, which is one-dollar-one-vote rule.
A democracy is the very antithesis of a corporation. This fact must become recognized, no longer ignored, by law. It must be imposed by law.
Formerly democratic countries are increasingly becoming actually controlled by their super-rich, becoming aristocracies instead of democracies. That trend must be reversed. This is the only way to do it. It must be done by law; it can be done ONLY by law. The alternative is increasing dictatorship, increasing aristocracy.
When the super-rich are basically making the laws, there is no hope for democracy. And this is the way things naturally are. This is a law of nature in the social sciences. Irrespective of whom the super-rich are, they constitute the disease that destroys democracy. Where they exist, any democracy will die. Their existence is incompatible with democracy.
On 13 June 2023, America’s National Public Radio headlined “These millionaires want to tax the rich, and they’re lobbying working-class voters”, and reported that many Americans oppose increasing taxes on the rich, and that a few rich do support the idea. But how many people recognize that the super-rich are democracy’s disease and are actually responsible for the Government’s problems? Why don’t the public know this fact? Is it because few (if any) of the super-rich want them to?
How many Americans know that the richest 0.1% of Americans own $17.60 trillion, while the poor half — the poorer 50% (a group 500 times as large) — of Americans own $4.16 trillion? Can anything justify such enormous inequality of power? (Wealth is the power to hire and to fire: it is all of the carrots, and most of the sticks: it is the vast bulk of the power that exists in just about any society.) How many Americans know that the scientific studies that have been done are consistently showing that America is an aristocracy not a democracy, and that the most detailed such analysis found that the “Top 400 donors” to political campaigns had donated 29.86% of all the money donated to political campaigns, and that the “Top .01%” (the richest ten-thousandth) had donated 57.16%? How can that be a democracy? It can’t. It’s a fraudulent ‘democracy’, an aristocracy that merely calls itself a “democracy” — and only the billionaires’ agents and their fools would be saying otherwise (that it somehow is a democracy). It’s simply a fraud. And fraud is supposed to be unacceptable.
NOTE: This news-commentary, about censorship, was offered as an exclusive to each one of the major news-media in the U.S.-and-allied countries, and was rejected by each of them. Regardless of political orientation, liberal or conservative, each one of them rejected this article. Is that fact an additional item of evidence for its thesis?
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.