Americans are currently in the midst of a virtual “book burning” akin to the ones we look back on in shame.

* Catholics torched the writings of Protestant reformer Martin Luther.

* The Nazis lit a towering bonfire of books by Jewish and leftist writers such as Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud and Upton Sinclair.

* And many 1950s Americans, spurred by Senator Joseph McCarthy, hunted for pro-communism books to burn.

Today’s censorship tactics are largely aimed at conservative ideas, theses, reference books, historical accounts and philosophy in general. While I have always found most of my best pieces of conservative wisdom in physical hard-covered books, most of us are going online these days, where conservative principles, in their original form and as originally presented by their authors, are becoming increasingly harder to find, due to the Big Tech search engines giving preference to Marxist thought and scrubbing conservative thought from their sites.

There are people in power who would be just fine with the erasure of all conservatism and America’s Founding principles, along with the erasure and / or the revision of U.S. history — already occurring — and the destruction of our culture and heritage. They also understand just how powerful the internet can be in any effort to change the entire course of the country, particularly due to the last election.

Big Tech and Big Media, organizations such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, CNN, MSNBC, and the majority of mainstream media [with even Fox News lurching a bit leftwards] hold most of the microphones, and they aim to continue exerting as near total control as possible. They are also united in their hardcore socialist worldview, that they intend to force upon all America, and this is why they work day and night to silence any opposing view on the internet, branding the messenger as “ignorant” or “dangerous”. And now, all America bears witness to conservative media, technical and scientific writers and writers of all genre, alternative health news and opinion bloggers being censored at break-neck speed.

Silencing dissenters’ opposing views on the internet is not any different than burning a library filled with Inconvenient TRUTH and controversial books.

Unless Google’s executives tie their pants open at the end of the bed and jump into them each morning, they put their pants on the same way as every red-blooded patriotic conservative American, and as such, our rights and our livelihoods are every bit as important as theirs, and we have the right to determine for ourselves where and how we seek and obtain information. We have the right to seek any experts on any issue who may disagree with the status quo, to access opposing points of views.

Or does Google and the rest of Big Tech deem us too ignorant to discern between fact and fiction? They hope we are too ignorant, so their control of the internet can be used to further spread Marxist “progressive” Democratic Party propaganda and work towards the deeper indoctrination of our society in their own damnable bullshit lies.

What is a government called once it has a total lock on all information the public is allowed to access? China. North Korea.

Pick your communist government of choice where alternative information is outlawed.

When Alex Jones and Laura Loomer were de-platformed, they lost their access to millions of followers and they lost millions of dollars too. It isn’t exactly the same for Facebook users who receive 30 day bans, but it works along the same premise, and while I only have 1382 Facebook friends, I still lost access to them for a total of one year and two months within the past three years.

And Jones and Laura Loomer are not alone. I regularly write for The Federal Observer and Slant Right, both of which have constantly been hit hard by the social media sites and Facebook. This can mess with donations and other funding, such as advertisement receipts and make it extremely difficult for publications to meet expenses. And although I haven’t a clue on the finances of either of the aforementioned, many conservative publications, especially newspapers, have seen no other option but to fold.

Basically, Big Tech and Big Media can and will starve content creators out of business if they don’t like what the websites and videos have to say.

Don’t get me wrong. I find some of the points of view that have been censored to be repugnant. But free speech is free speech.

If you truly believe in our First Amendment right to dissent, share our grievances, and have a free press, even abhorrent opinions are covered. While the extreme levels of this crackdown have hit more extreme websites first, never think that it won’t continue until only a homogenized and politically correct media is all we have left.

This purge of alternative points of view is nothing less than virtual book burning. If content creators are discredited, financially starved, and hidden from view, we’ll soon only have one point of view available. It will be that of the people who hold all the microphones, the people who control all the platforms.

Sure, we will still have our loyal friends and readers, but we will lose the ability to reach other people. And even if those other people come looking for the information we provide, they won’t be able to find us. Libraries and libraries of alternative content will be online but the doors will be chained shut by search engines and social media outlets. Other pieces of information – information that is critical of the government or the politically correct cause of the day – will be completely destroyed, removed from the internet, removed from Amazon, and turned into virtual ash.

Maybe because the purveyor couldn’t afford to keep it online because he or she was starved out of business. Maybe because the decision-makers of what we’re allowed to see decided we weren’t allowed to see that.

Decisions are made based on the information available to people. When that information is limited, so too are our choices.

I’m defending the right to express what one believes, regardless of how heinous I may find their opinions.

We’ve all read this quote by Martin Niemoller, a prominent Lutheran pastor during the days of Nazi Germany.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.

The thing that many people don’t realize is that Niemoller was originally pro-Third Reich and enthusiastically embraced the teachings of Adolph Hitler. But then in 1934, he met Hitler and discovered his own telephone had been tapped by the Gestapo. He suddenly saw that he had been complicit, through his support, in what had become a maniacal dictatorship and ethnic cleansing, and from that day forth, Niemoller vehemently opposed Hitler.

You see, everything changed when he got more information.

It changed when he learned the truth about what was espoused by the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, the only news available at that time in Nazi Germany. It changed when he learned things that the government kept hidden.

Those people cheering the fall of Alex Jones or Laura Loomer and other conservatives, the “Alt-Right,” and any other politically incorrect information will be very surprised when they are targeted next. They’ll be shocked when their writings are destroyed and their websites are hidden.

That’s how the slippery slope of censorship works. It’s fine when it happens to the so-called “conspiracy theorists” or those with whom you disagree.

But it’s going to be a shock when your own books are thrown on a bonfire because the needle of what the government or Big Tech deems acceptable has moved.

~ Justin O Smith

~ The Author ~
Justin O. Smith has lived in Tennessee off and on most of his adult life, and graduated from Middle Tennessee State University in 1980, with a B.S. and a double major in International Relations and Cultural Geography – minors in Military Science and English, for what its worth. His real education started from that point on. Smith is a frequent contributor to the family of Kettle Moraine Publications.