Full-Court Suppression Operation Underway: WordPress Burns Bloggers Who Question Sandy Hook

It’s been a disturbing couple of weeks for truthers and for those who fight the battles against degeneracy.

There was the takedown of Alex Jones’ content across numerous social media platforms. Though the folks at The New Nationalist (TNN) are not big InfoWars fans, we don’t like to see censorship.

We also saw a defamation and suppression campaign waged against whistle blower Michael Whalen and Nathan Stolpman relative to podcasts that shed light on a possible child trafficking operation in Portland, Oregon.

Then came word of the sudden and suspicious death of child trafficking investigator Jenny “Taskforce” Moore.

We then learned of the arrest of a writer in Canada who was on probation for JQ blogging. Fathom that. I’m reluctant to write anything about this story at this time because I don’t wish to inadvertently make his situation worse. I don’t imagine he would have returned to blogging. So what did they arrest him for this time? Thought crimes?

This was followed by the sudden realization that popular alt-news site Fellowship of the Minds was taken down by WordPress for violating its terms of service. Memory Hole has the details.

Reports continue to emerge about other alt-news and truther sites, such as Jay Dyer’s, suddenly disappearing from the Web.

TechCrunch offers the only explainer article I’ve found thus far that sheds any light on WTF is happening at WordPress. Of course, in reading the article, you have to suffer the author’s anti-free-speech philosophy and low blows.

Personally, I find nothing more galling and hypocritical than so-called “journalists” debasing the free speech rights of bloggers with whom they don’t agree.

Here’s the bottom line about the WordPress blackout without the stupid and hateful rhetoric. Shorter read, less bullshit.

The Storyline: WordPress Succumbs to Sandy Hook Pressure

Leonard Pozner’s fingerprints are turning up on a slew of recent censorship actions against alt-news sites. For those who don’t know the name, Pozner is the alleged farther of an alleged boy who was allegedly shot and killed during an alleged mass shooting event at an allegedly operational school called Sandy Hook Elementary.

Pozner is suing Alex Jones for publicly questioning the Sandy Hook event, and he has put pressure on Internet companies to remove truther content. But it doesn’t stop there. Posner, according TechCrunch, has been scouring the Internet for ANY and ALL unsympathetic stories related to his son and demanding service providers take them down.

Inevitably, this led to the doorstep of WordPress, which provides both website software and Web hosting services. WordPress is a server for nearly 32 percent of websites and provides content management software for 60 percent of sites on the Web, according to W3Techs.com.

Pozner figured out that instead of going after individual publishers, he could be more effective by going after their service provider. Initially, WordPress, which is owned and operated by Automattic, stood its ground, according to reports. In response to Pozner’s complaint(s) about copyrighted images of his son, it sent out its standard response.

This apparently prompted Pozner to contact The New York Times (aka The New York Slimes), which ran a hit piece on WordPress/Automattic. The Slimes contacted the company, and the company told the rag that the posts Pozner complained about weren’t in violation of WordPress’ user guidelines or copyright law.

After The Slimes published its shitty article criticizing the company, WordPress apparently bowed to pressure, apologized to Pozner, created a new policy and yanked entire websites offline. I sense there a lot more to this story that we’re not being told. Political pressure? Legal threats? Blackmail? Who knows.

Here’s its new policy:

TechCrunch clarifies that “the policy affects blogs hosted on WordPress.com, not self-hosted blogs using WordPress software.” (Whew!)

Torchy’s View

I’m a strong believer in the general right of businesses to deny services. This is one of my principle beliefs and may not reflect the views of everyone here at TNN.

By this principle, applied in a macro sense, businesses should be allowed to boycott or divest from transactions with Israel or the Israeli government. In a micro sense, a small-town Christian baker should be able to refuse to make a cake celebrating the civil union of a homosexual couple. And a restaurant should be able to deny someone service because they don’t like their politics.

Of course, it doesn’t mean these businesses should be granted protection from criticism for their actions. It should be expected that practicing free speech has social consequences and refusing service has economic consequences. That’s the way freedom works. But these consequences should never ever involve imprisonment, government fines, gang stalking or violence.

In this framework, I believe social media companies and WordPress have a right to decide what content it wants to host. I don’t like censorship, and I wish they wouldn’t do it but, in my view, it should be their right.

As “consumers” of these services (for lack of a better term), we have a right to criticize, boycott and take our dollars and traffic elsewhere. For example, I do my own small part by checking the labels of the products I buy. I quickly put back on the shelf anything “Made in Israel” and give preference to items “Made in the USA.” Similarly, Hollywood has the right to produce garbage, and I have the right not to watch it.

As Internet denizens, we can shun Twitter, Facebook, Google, New York Slimes, WordPress, etc. and support — via time, traffic, dollars — other tech startups that don’t share their policies.

Message to WordPress: There’s a Better, Fairer Way

Dumping ALL of the content of someone’s entire website is a punishment for which no crime was committed. Fellowship of the Minds, for example, published articles about a diverse swath of topics and issues. Dumping the entire website without recourse or warning was a vile, hateful and vengeful thing to do.

A better, fairer way to go about it would involve sending the website owner a notice of discontinuation of service by a particular date. This would allow the author time to backup their website, archive their years of hard work and migrate somewhere else, if they so choose.

Meanwhile, this recent turn of events should be a loud siren blast to all truth writers out there: Consider yourselves warned, back up your work, and take your business elsewhere!