Former California state lawmaker Young Kim, 58, has flipped a blue congressional seat to the Republican Party, the second California seat the GOP has wrestled from Democratic control in the November 2020 election.
The Associated Press called the race for Kim on Friday, marking the defeat of Congressman Gil Cisneros (D-CA), who defeated Kim in the 2018 midterms after incumbent Congressman Ed Royce (R-CA) declined to seek re-election.
Kim emphasized the “promise of America” in a post-victory video, saying that America is a country “where an immigrant girl from South Korea can rise to be a representative in the United States Congress. And I will work to continue to keep that promise alive.”
According to The New York Times election tracker, the congressional seat was expected to lean toward Democrats, but Kim managed to secure victory with a slightly more than 1% margin as of Saturday evening. Thus far, Republicans have flipped ten seats while Democrats have only flipped three, and Kim’s seat is the fifth Republican flip that occurred in a district that the New York Times’ election tracker expected to lean toward a Democratic incumbent.
Kim will join Congress as a new member along with Congresswoman-elect Michelle Steel (R-CA), who holds the distinction of flipping the first seat in California red for the 2020 November election. Steel, who like Kim was born in South Korea, defeated Congressman Harley Rouda (D-CA) in a nearby Orange County congressional district.
“The Republican Party is growing. You know, me, with my accent, I still won and people actually, when we stick to the issues, and we just try to work with residents and work for residents, I think we’re going to keep winning,” Steel told Fox News earlier this week.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has indicated that GOP pick-ups in the House of Representatives is a positive sign for the future of the Republican Party.
“We have never been stronger in the sense of what the future holds for us — we have never been in a stronger position,” McCarthy told The Washington Post. “We won this by adding more people to the party. And we won this in an atmosphere where we were the one group that everyone guaranteed we would lose. And we’re the ones who won.”
A third California House seat taken by Republicans was flipped during a May special election, but the November race for the seat has not yet been called and the margins are slim. Currently, Congressman Mike Garcia (R-CA) leads Democratic challenger Christy Smith by just 104 votes — in a congressional district where 330,000 votes have thus far been counted. The seat was previously held by former one-term Congresswoman Katie Hill (D-CA), who resigned in 2019.
Due to the close margins in that race, it’s possible the outcome won’t be known until the final ballots are counted, which would be about a week from Saturday. (California law allows ballots postmarked by election day to be accepted until 17 days after the election). Prior to Garcia’s victory in May, Republicans hadn’t flipped a blue California seat in Congress since the late 1990s.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.
Trump supporters eating dinner on a sidewalk table in Washington, D.C. a few blocks from the White House were attacked by a mob who threw fireworks and bottles, forcing the diners to abandon their table at P.J. Clark’s at 16th and K St.
This is one of many attacks on Trump supporters being reported after the Million MAGA March ended, leaving small numbers of Trump supporters vulnerable to Antifa and Black Lives Matter thugs who were vastly outnumbered earlier in the day and generally behaved then.
Video of this attack was posted by USA Today’s Christal Hayes, “VIDEO: A group of Trump supporters were dining at P.J. Clarke’s near the White House and counter protesters started launching bottles and a firework at them. A man who was dining picked up a chair and threw it at some journalists.”
VIDEO: A group of Trump supporters were dining at P.J. Clarke’s near the White House and counter protesters started launching bottles and a firework at them.
Another Trump flag lit on fire here at Black Lives Matter plaza.
After a number of tense confrontations and fights, things appear to have settled down a bit between Trump supporters and counter protesters pic.twitter.com/pqGxGnfsv3
A Trump supporter used a white PVC pipe to swing at counter protesters here at Black Lives Matter plaza after someone in the crowd swiped his red MAGA hat. Police have increased their presence and have made barriers with their bikes due to rising tension pic.twitter.com/kSXMRwhNoH
Several high profile Democrat politicians ignored guidance related to the Chinese coronavirus when it appeared to be personally convenient — a realization that comes as Democrat politicians, such as Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, attempt to limit gatherings in personal residences ahead of the holiday season.
Democrat politicians have stood united in criticizing the Trump administration’s response to the virus, accusing the president and his supporters of not taking it seriously, particularly when it comes to wearing a mask and avoiding unnecessary public gatherings. However, several of these same politicians have violated their own purported beliefs — and self-declared moral standing — by removing their masks and engaging with crowds, even in recent days. Below are some of the most notable offenders.
1. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot:
A video from Saturday, November 7, shows Lightfoot standing in the midst of a large crowd, celebrating Joe Biden’s purported victory.
“This is a great day for our country. We get to take our democracy back,” she said as she stood in the midst of a large group as a mask dangled from her left ear.
“I just want to say, for all those people who voted, you made this happen,” Lightfoot said as the crowd cheered, clapped, and shouted.
The Chicago mayor did not appear to be overtly concerned by the lack of social distancing among members of the group and continued to speak to them without a mask covering her face.
“We should absolutely celebrate this victory. We should savor every minute of it. But the hard work starts tomorrow,” she added:
Just days later, Lightfoot, alongside the Chicago Department of Public Health and the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, launched the “Protect Chicago” strategy, described as an effort to urge Chicagoans to “change their behavior through targeted regulations, strong messaging, and a community-based outreach strategy.”
Part of that effort includes a stay-at-home advisory and a ten-person cap for social events, whether indoors or outdoors. According to the press release, the limit “applies to events such as weddings, birthday parties, business dinners/social events, and funerals, and is applicable to any venue where a meeting or social event is taking place, including meeting rooms.”
Lightfoot also advises Chicagoans to cancel their Thanksgiving plans to combat the Chinese coronavirus:
The press release specifically encourages residents to “use remote modes of communication like phone or video chat instead of visiting friends or family, especially on holidays such as Thanksgiving.”
Lightfoot did not express the same concerns mere days ago as she celebrated in the streets with dozens of Biden-Harris supporters. She has since defended her participation in the street celebration.
“There are times when we actually do need to have a relief and come together, and I felt like that was one of those times,” she said during an appearance on MSNBC. “That crowd was gathered whether I was there or not.”
2. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker:
Pritzker, who recently warned that another stay-at-home order could be forthcoming, also joined a crowd in the streets following the media’s declaration of Biden’s purported victory:
According to Patch, the governor’s public visit “occurred less than 24 hours after Pritzker’s administration had announced the governor had been exposed to COVID-19 at an ‘external meeting’ Monday and would again quarantine as a precaution.”
On Thursday, just days after congregating with a large crowd, Pritzker warned that the state will “quickly reach the point when some form of a mandatory stay-at-home order” if “things don’t take a turn in the coming days.”
“With every fiber of my being, I do not want us to get there. But right now, that seems like where we are heading,” he stated.
3. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo:
Like Lightfoot, Cuomo has issued additional restrictions in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, including the 10 p.m. closure of gyms, bars, and restaurants, as well as a limit on gatherings at private residences. Occupancy, according to the governor, should not exceed 10 individuals.
Cuomo, who said that he would have “decked” Trump if not for his status as governor, has also been spotted in public without a mask on more than one occasion despite his insistence that masks are “cool”:
Cuomo has also done little, if anything at all, to combat the large crowds of Black Lives Matter protesters who have repeatedly taken to the streets over the past several months. Yet, he has discouraged churches and synagogues from operating.
4. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio:
Like Cuomo, the New York mayor has remained incredibly selective on the enforcement of coronavirus restrictions in recent months, banning large gatherings but making an exception for large Black Lives Matter protests.
“This is a historic moment of change. We have to respect that but also say to people the kinds of gatherings we’re used to, the parades, the fairs — we just can’t have that while we’re focusing on health right now,” he said over the summer. Additionally, contact tracers were reportedly instructed not to ask individuals if they had attended widespread protests.
In April, de Blasio and his wife were spotted strolling through a park without masks.
5. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer:
Schumer has routinely criticized Trump’s response to the Chinese coronavirus and has repeatedly emphasized the importance of wearing masks, yet he took to the streets of New York on Saturday, removing his mask while triumphantly celebrating with a large group of Biden-Harris supporters:
It remains unclear why Schumer found it appropriate to remove his mask among such a large crowd, given his emphasis on the importance of them:
Notably, Schumer’s mask hung below his nose during a joint press conference on Thursday:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
6. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
On Monday, the speaker listed mask-wearing and social distancing as essential “to save lives.” However, neither stopped her from getting a blowout at a San Francisco hair salon as such businesses remained shuttered in the city in late August. Surveillance footage of Pelosi’s visit showed the maskless speaker walking through the salon. She ultimately went with the “Marion Barry defense” and accused the salon of setting her up and demanded an apology.
More recently, Pelosi defended holding a dinner for incoming members of Congress as Democrat leaders abroad urge Americans to cancel their traditional Thanksgiving plans.
“It’s very spaced,” Pelosi reportedly said:
Leaders changed the format at the last minute on Friday following the immense backlash. According to Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, there was “no group dinner.” Instead, members picked up boxed meals.
7. Biden-Harris supporters:
Biden-Harris supporters swarmed the streets after several media outlets called the presidential race for Biden last weekend, earning little to no criticism from champions of coronavirus restrictions, who have criticized Trump for holding massive outdoor rallies in the weeks leading up to the election:
It remains unclear how many Democrat politicians will adhere to their self-imposed restrictions and effectively “cancel” traditional Thanksgiving plans, though Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) reportedly plans to hold Thanksgiving over Zoom.
The United States Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a case from California growers who claim a state law allowing labor union officials to make contact with workers during nonworking hours is violating their private property rights.
The San Francisco Chroniclereported on the development:
The state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board adopted the rules shortly after California’s passage in 1975 of the nation’s first law allowing farmworkers to join unions. They allow union representatives onto farmers’ property for an hour before work, an hour after work and during the lunch hour, for up to 40 days a year.
The state Supreme Court upheld the regulations in 1976, and growers did not challenge them for another 40 years, a period in which the nation’s high court became more conservative and protective of property rights. In a lawsuit by a strawberry grower in Siskiyou County and a grape and citrus fruit farm in Fresno, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in May 2019 that the state was not interfering substantially with the owners’ control of their property by allowing union entry for limited periods.
On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court granted review of the growers’ appeal, which was supported by state and national farm organizations. The justices will hear arguments early next year and are due to decide by the end of June whether the state is violating the growers’ property rights.
“The Constitution forbids government from requiring you to allow unwanted strangers onto your property. And union activists are no exception,” attorney Joshua Thompson of the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represents the growers, said in the Chronicle report.
Mario Martinez, a lawyer for United Farm Workers, told the Chronicle he was “disappointed” by the court’s decision.
“A court review of California’s legislation appears to be another attempt to unfairly discriminate against farmworkers, but we look forward to persuading the court that the Ninth Circuit decision should be upheld,” Martinez said.
In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled that union organizers could enter employers’ property only in the “rare case” that the union could show “unique obstacles” preventing it from contacting employees in alternative ways.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority in the 6-3 decision, which overturned National Labor Relations Board regulations allowing unions broader access.
Unions have claimed in the past that it is difficult to reach workers because of their shifting work schedules, lack of public meeting spaces, and the challenge of reaching workers without permanent housing.
“In the current case, the federal appeals court said last year that the board’s explanation satisfied the Supreme Court’s 1992 requirement to show ‘unique obstacles’ to ordinary contact,” the Chronicle reported. “The dissenting judge, Edward Leavy, described landowners’ right to exclude unwanted visitors as ‘one of the most fundamental sticks in the bundle of property rights.’”
Black Lives Matter protesters harassed a Black woman wearing a Trump jacket and pushing a stroller through BLM Plaza. The attack led to a fight and left two little girls in tears.
A group of anti-Trump protesters began harassing a Black woman wearing pro-Trump clothing while she pushed a baby stroller through Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House on Saturday. The family had just left the Million MAGA March.
A video tweeted by Daily Caller journalist Shelby Talcott shows the woman and her young daughter walking down a street in Washington, DC, pushing a baby stroller. A woman to the right can be seen taking cell phone pictures of the family.
“Get the f**k away from my family,” the mother says as others begin to crowd around her. The mother continues yelling as a man and a woman approach her family from behind.
A man with a Don’t Tread on Me flag steps in and attempts to intervene in the conflict, the video shows. The woman attempts to steal the flag from the man and a fight breaks out.
Another Daily Caller video shows the danger the BLM protesters put the family in. During the fight, the man with the flag is pushed backward and falls on a young girl.
D.C. Metro police officers quickly moved in from where they had been observing the situation develop and attempted to separate the group.
As the fight develops, the mother moves her kids to a safe position and yells at police to arrest the woman involved. Police can be seen placing a man in handcuffs who started throwing punches at the man with the flag.
The videos end showing the pre-teen girls screaming in terror as they watched the scene unfold.
In a video showing the aftermath, a man wearing a “F**k Racism” shirt yells at the Black woman, “Why did you bring your kid here?”
“You need to press charges,” another woman says.
“I want to press charges,” the mother responded.
One of the officers responded that he was going to lock up everyone involved in the attack on the family.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, fired off the perfect response after Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) asked Republicans to stop confirming President Donald Trump’s federal judiciary nominees.
What’s the background?
Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote Graham on Thursday requesting he stop conducting hearings on Trump’s judicial nominees to allow media-declared president-elect Joe Biden to fill the court vacancies instead.
"Now that the 2020 election has concluded, it is clear that the American people have overwhelmingly rejected a second term for President Trump. President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris are already implementing their transition plan," Feinstein said.
"In light of that, it is imperative that the Judiciary Committee cease to process judicial nominations and allow President-Elect Biden the opportunity to appoint judges following his inauguration on January 20, 2021," she added.
What was Graham’s response?
Graham responded with a resounding "no," according to reporter Sam Brodey.
"The Senate Judiciary Committee will continue to process judges nominated by President Trump. We have confirmed over 220 and look forward to confirming even more," Graham said.
Update here—comment from Sen. Graham’s spox on the Feinstein letter:"The Senate Judiciary Committee will continue… https://t.co/TaHiRxT0DI
In addition to having three Supreme Court nominees confirmed, Trump has added a whopping 53 judges to U.S. federal appeals courts and 164 judges to federal district courts.
Currently, an additional 31 of Trump’s federal district nominees are awaiting confirmation, and another two of Trump’s appeals court judges are awaiting confirmation.
This is why analysts predict that as much as $1 billion could be spent on Georgia’s two runoff elections for their U.S. Senate seats, for control of the Senate hinges on those two races.
Currently, Republicans — who have held a majority in the Senate since regaining the majority after the 2014 midterms — have control of 50 seats. If they lost both runoff races, Democrats would have effective control of the Senate since media-declared vice president-elect Kamala Harris would serve as the Senate’s tie-breaking vote.
But, if Republicans win just one of the races, they would maintain control of the Senate and prevent a Biden administration from implementing its agenda — and further cement Trump’s judicial legacy.
In our post on Friday night — OUR FIRST OF MANY — We revealed how they stole the battleground states!
The fix was in. The current results of the Presidential election in Pennsylvania reported to the public are fraudulent because they are close to statistically impossible.
On election night President Trump totally ran away with the election in Pennsylvania.
President Trump was ahead of Joe Biden by nearly 700,000 votes! It was an insurmountable lead.
The President was still ahead in Pennsylvania with 56% of the vote to Biden’s 43% the next morning.
The President was winning Pennsylvania and held a 675,000 vote lead in the election over Joe Biden.
What happened next was corrupt and criminal as the Democrats went about to steal Pennsylvania for Biden.
They took a Trump landslide and they criminally flipped it to Joe Biden.
The President won 2.7 million votes compared to Biden’s 1.4 million votes. The President’s votes were nearly twice as many as Joe Biden’s!
But what happened next was shocking. Pennsylvania began counting ballots by mail. There was no reporting on how many votes were outstanding at the end of election night. There was no reporting ever that we are aware of where the state announced how many votes were left to count after the election.
They just kept counting.
The state also allowed votes to come in for three more days after the election. Of course, these were all mail-in ballots. We do not know how many mail-in votes came in during these three days. The Republicans were not allowed to observe the counting of these votes even though a court order was in place demanding that the state do so. These actions go against Pennsylvania’s constitution which state that the voting process is to be determined by the legislature. The change in ruling was implemented by the executive and judicial branches. This is an important issue with the Trump campaign in their complaints against the state as they try to undo the injustices in Pennsylvania.
Today the state is reporting more than 2.5 million mail in ballots. This number was never seen before in this state. As the mail-in ballots were counted, the state began cutting into the President’s 675,000 vote lead and eventually they gave the election to Biden. Biden won 2 million of the 2.5 million mail-in ballots.
How could the President receive only one fifth of the mail in ballots after crushing Biden in in-person voting on Election Day? The answer is: this was basically impossible. And here’s why.
When we looked at these statistics and we identified a pattern that is virtually mathematically impossible. The President won two thirds of the Election Day vote. But with the basic exception of Philadelphia, the President won around 80% of the vote in each county in the state. (See the blue line in basic the chart below showing the percent of total election day votes won by President Trump.) Philadelphia is so large that it offsets these numbers and brings the President’s results down to around 65% of the state’s votes on Election Day.
What happened with the mail in votes is almost statistically impossible (See the orange line below). In almost every county throughout the state, the President was awarded a percent of votes 40% less than the percent the President won on election day (see the grey line below). If Trump won a county by 80% of the vote on Election Day, he won 40% of the mail-in vote for a county. If the President won 60% of the vote on Election Day, he won 20% of the mail-in vote in another county. This pattern occurred in almost every county with the only noticeable exception of Philadelphia, where the President only earned 30% of the vote on Election Day.
These numbers are so consistent that they are almost certainly fraudulent. This NEVER happens in data sets. Below is the data by county (Note the counties are listed alphabetically – number 51 is Philadelphia):
Again, the fact that the mail-in votes and Election Day votes mirrored each other as revealed in the diagram above is basically impossible. Also, the extent of separation is very large at 40%.
They got caught.
We looked at other states that were not swing states and the lowest percent in mail-in ballots less than the President’s Election Day votes was 40% but this occurred very rarely. We also spoke with Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, the inventor of email and polymath, on Friday and he told us he is seeing similar patterns in voting data from this year’s election.
We believe we are on to something here.
Dr. Shiva found the same exact vote reallocation (stealing) strategy in Michigan this week.
On Tuesday Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai posted this video on his YouTube channel. The video went viral.
Dr. Shiva, Phil Evans and Bennie Smith found the same exact pattern in Michigan as we found in Pennsylvania.
Dr. Shiva looked at the top four counties in Michigan.
The first thing Dr. Shiva noticed was in three major counties Trump’s margin was reduced by a minimum of 138,000 votes.
The transfer was done by a computer algorithm that linearly transferred the votes from Trump to Biden.
Dr. Shiva found that the vote transfer was greater in Republican precincts than Democrat precincts.
In early voting in Oakland County Dr. Shiva says the algorithm was “too perfect” and that 40,000 votes were taken from Trump and given to Biden.
The same thing occurred on election day. The algorithmic line again is “too perfect.”
Dr. Shiva found the same phenomena in Macomb County and Kent County in Michigan. The same algorithm was put into place.
They found the same beautiful straight line in all of the counties which is impossible. They did not see this same algorithm in Democrat counties like Wayne County.
Dr. Shiva detected the weighted race algorithm that transferred votes from President Trump to Joe Biden.
Tens of thousands of votes were transferred to Sleepy Joe this way.
This is the same phenomena we found in Pennsylvania.
Now Dr. Shiva found the same “weighted race allocation” in several Michigan counties.
It is clear that corrupt Democrats in Pennsylvania did all they could to steal the 2020 Presidential election for Joe Biden. There was no excitement for the Biden campaign and there still isn’t. Republicans are convinced he cheated.
They did the same thing in Michigan.
But we caught them.
Bringing justice to Pennsylvania and Michigan is a key step in addressing election fraud and addressing the massive Democrat fraud in the 2020 election process.
(If you have any information related to this post that you would like to share, please contact the author of this report. Also, some additional information was provided based on comments already received.)
“Don’t be evil” may no longer be Google’s official company motto, but it remains the last sentence of its Code of Conduct. As part of not being evil, Google maintains that “everything [it does] in connection with [its] work…will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct.”
Apparently, Google does not deem it unethical to fire an employee for expressing the research-based view that differences between the sexes/genders may include occupational proclivities. Google must not consider it unethical to blacklist conservative or otherwise nonleftist news sites, websites, and users. Google must believe that autocompleting searches with patent nonsense represents the highest ethical standards. Google maintains that factual search results representing the world as it is amounts to “algorithmic unfairness” and changing them to desired results using “Machine Learning Fairness” is highly ethical. That is, nonideological, nonaltered search results represent unfairness, while fairness is the result of informational affirmative action results manipulation—in some cases. Algorithmically ranking search results in favor of leftist or left-leaning politics and down-ranking conservative or right-wing sites is most ethical. It must consider rating the “Expertise/Authoritativeness/Trustworthiness” of websites using Wikipedia as meeting the highest ethical standards. Fact-checking only conservative or nonleftist news, often wrongly, is highly ethical. Discrimination against populist political movements and campaigns and favoring other, establishment movements and campaigns meets the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct. YouTube’s routinely demonetizing and censoring conservative or otherwise nonleftist content is ethical. Bombarding users with political ads based on their search profiles, and especially bombarding nonleftists with items having a leftist perspective, represents the highest ethics. Blatant declarations of the intent to prevent the reelection of a US presidential candidate using search rankings meets the highest standards of ethics, especially since “(1) biased search rankings can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20% or more,” as Robert Epstein and Ronald E. Robertson conclude.
In the wake of the riots across US cities over the past several months, I ran a Google search for “left-wing violence.” The top two results, from The Guardian and the New York Times, respectively, were entitled “White Supremacists behind Majority of US Domestic Terror Attacks in 2020” and “Far-Right Groups Are behind Most US Terrorist Attacks, Report Finds.” This is a highly ethical result, no doubt, especially when information on leftist violence was sought and no shortage of such articles exist. This is especially ethical, since the search analytics industry has found that the top three search results on Google drive over 70 percent of clicks. The top ten search results for the question, “Will Democrats steal the 2020 election?” included five articles about the prospect of Trump stealing the election, while all ten of the top ten results for “Will Trump steal the election?” were actually about the prospect of Trump stealing the election.
All but leftists realize that Big Digital corporations like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and others lean left and squelch opposing views—to the point of creating an alternate reality. But few ask why they are apparently leftist, let alone satisfactorily answering the question—to my satisfaction, that is. How are we to understand the blatant and well-documented leftist bias and the censorship of nonleftist views and sites by these companies? Why leftist? Is the internet leftist merely because those in Silicon Valley have been indoctrinated into leftism?
And should we adopt the view that since Google, Facebook, Twitter and others are private enterprises, they can be as biased and censoring as they like? After all, aren’t these private platforms and not public utilities, with no obligation to represent views with which they disagree? They are no more obliged to do so than I am obliged to allow some Antifa member into my home to spout his, her, or zir beliefs, right?
These are the kinds of questions I address in this talk. The answers should go a long way toward explaining the disavowed yet blatant attempts on the part of Big Tech internet companies to decide the 2020 election, and much, much more. In terms of the election, they’ve interfered in the election with completely favorable coverage of one candidate and unfavorable content along with the near-complete blackout of favorable content about another. They’ve likewise made a rigged election result appear to be a credible result. Then they’ve censored or banned everyone from the president on down from talking about how the election was rigged. That’s more than an in-kind donation. They may be considered accomplices in a federal election crime. They represent a fraud on public credulity.
1. The Governmentalization of Private Industry
In Google Archipelago, I argue that these Big Digital goliaths, or what I call the Google Archipelago, act as appendages of the state, at the very least. They are state apparatuses, or, to use a postmodern neologism, they are “governmentalities.” In a series of lectures entitled Security, Territory, Population, the postmodern theorist Michel Foucault introduced the term “governmentality” to refer to the distribution of state power to the population, or the transmission of governance to the governed. Foucault referred to the means by which the populace comes to govern itself as it adopts and personalizes the imperatives of the state, or how the governed adopt the mentality desired by the government—govern-mentality. One might point to masking and social distancing as instances of what Foucault meant by his notion of governmentality. While Foucault’s usage has merit (yes, Foucault exhibited a few redemptive, libertarian tendencies), I adopt and amend the term to include the distribution of state power to extragovernmental agents—in particular to the extension and transfer of state power to supposedly private enterprises. This governmentalization of private enterprise, and not the privatization of governmental agencies and functions that leftists like Foucault decry, is the real problem with “neoliberalism,” as I see it.
Or do they amount to the same thing? We are witnessing the governmentalization of private industry, the turning of supposedly private enterprises into state apparatuses, and the growth of the state through putatively private extensions of it.
2. Governmentalities in Action
For clear and pertinent examples of governmentalities in this sense, consider government contractors that comprise the so-called shadow government. As depicted in the documentary Shadow Gate—which was banned from YouTube after just one day—according to two whistle-blowers who worked for military and intelligence contractors for many years, government contractors like Dynology, Global Strategies Group, Canadian Global Information (CGI), and many others engage in intelligence projects that include interactive internet activities (IIA). Such “social media psychological warfare” and “social media influence operations” rely on masses of data that social media and other sources provide and are designed to influence individuals, groups, or populations to behave in ways desired by the “deep state,” or other customers. Desired behaviors include voting for particular political candidates; supporting desired political movements and outcomes; and opposing undesired political candidates, movements, and outcomes—both at home and abroad. According to the Shadow Gate whistle-blowers, social media psychological warfare, which includes fake news, was initially developed for intelligence agencies but has been used and sold by intelligence contractors independently. They claim that social media psyops were employed in an attempt to tie Trump to Russia and discredit his campaign. The dominant narrative, of course, is that it was used by Russia to benefit Trump’s election. According to the Shadow Gate whistle-blowers, it was also used to whip up the recent “protests” after the death of George Floyd, while other sources claim that and the hype about the protests was itself fear porn whipped up by Russia-initiated psyops. Still others maintain that the protests themselves were part of a Russian psyops campaign targeting black Americans.
What does this have to do with Google, Facebook, and other digital media companies? IIA operations use and mine their sites, apparently gaining immunity from “fake news” designations. But these platforms are more than passive participants in personal data mining, social media psychological warfare games, and social media influence operations. A brief look at their inception, funding, and histories should make this clear.
3. State and State-Connected Funding of Google and Facebook
First, both Google and Facebook received start-up capital—both directly and indirectly—from US intelligence agencies. In the case of Facebook, the start-up capital came through Palantir, Accel Partners, and Greylock Partners. These funding sources either received their funding from, or were heavily involved in, In-Q-Tel.
In 1999, CIA created In-Q-Tel, its own private sector venture capital investment firm, to fund promising start-ups that might create technologies useful for intelligence agencies. As St. Paul Research analyst Jody Chudley notes, “In-Q-Tel funded Thiel’s startup firm Palantir somewhere around 2004. In 2004, Accel partner James Breyer sat on the board of directors of military defense contractor BBN with In-Q-Tel’s CEO Gilman Louie. Howard Cox, the head of Greylock, served directly on In-Q-Tel’s board of directors.”
In the case of Google, as independent journalist and former VICE reporter Nafeez Ahmed has detailed at great length, Google’s connections with the intelligence community and military run deep. Ahmed details that relationships with DARPA officials yielded start-up funding, and direct funding from the intelligence community (IC) followed. The IC saw in the internet unprecedent potential for data collection and the upstart search engine venture represented a key to gathering it.
In 2003, Google began customizing its search engine under special contract with CIA for its Intelink Management Office, “overseeing top-secret, secret and sensitive but unclassified intranets for CIA and other IC agencies,” according to Homeland Security Today. In 2004, Google purchased Keyhole, which was initially funded by In-Q-Tel. Using Keyhole, Google began developing Google Earth.
Intelligence agency backers also included In-Q-Tel itself. In-Q-Tel’s investment in Google came to light in 2005, when In-Q-Tel sold its $2.2 million in Google stocks. A no-bid contract with the NSA sister agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), followed in 2010. Google’s connections with the IC and military communities also involved personnel exchanges, including the acquisition of the former head of DARPA and Highland’s Forum cochair, Regina Dugan, who left the agency in 2012 to become a senior Google executive overseeing the company’s new Advanced Technology and Projects Group.
“From its inception, in other words,” Ahmed writes,
Google was incubated, nurtured and financed by interests that were directly affiliated or closely aligned with the US military intelligence community, many of whom were embedded in the Pentagon Highlands Forum.
Second, and lest I be accused of the genetic fallacy, it should be noted that Google technologies were developed largely in connection with the IC and military and thus bear the earmarks of IC and military interests. And Google’s contracts with the IC have continued. Moreover, these platforms and social media outfits fully cooperate with the IC and military, handing over data to the NSA upon demand and granting them backdoor access to user data. Google was a deep-state asset from its inception and remains one to this day.
Furthermore, it is possible that tools developed by the IC and military have been acquired by private contractors and are being used by these platforms and social media giants to influence the behavior of users of their services. In particular, former IC contractor Patrick Bercy alleges that social media psychological warfare tools that he developed for the Defense Department were acquired, possibly illegally, by General James Jones, formerly the National Security Adviser under then president Obama. In partnership with the Atlantic Council, where Jones is now the executive chairman emeritus, Facebook, Bercy alleges, is using social media psychological warfare tools, supposedly for the purposes of “restoring election integrity worldwide,” and “to combat election-related propaganda and misinformation from proliferating on its service.” It just may be that what is deemed “fake news” by Google and social media platforms represents the truth about the fake news that the platforms themselves are proliferating.
In short, Google, Facebook and others are not strictly private sector entities; they are governmentalities in the sense that I have given to the term. They are extensions and apparatuses of the state. Furthermore, these platforms are governmentalities with a particular interest in the growth and extension of governmentality itself. This includes championing every kind of “subordinated” and newly created identity class that they can find or create, because such “endangered” categories require state acknowledgement and protection. Thus, the state’s circumference continues to expand. Big Digital is partial to the interests and growth of the state. It not only does business with statists but also shares their values. This helps makes sense of its leftist bent and their preference for the deep state Democrats. Leftism is statism.
4. Russia, Russia, Russia! Or Chy-na!
This talk would be incomplete without a treatment of the “actually existing socialism” in our midst, including its most significant, official state form, namely “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” i.e., China. Much ink has been spilled and many airwaves have been congested with the “Russian interference” narrative. Nary a day goes by without multiple references to Russia’s attempts to influence or interfere in US elections using social media. Donald Trump has been consistently portrayed as Putin’s puppet, even after the “Russian collusion” narrative officially fell apart. Less has been written and spoken about possible influence and interference by the Chinese Communist Party, although one may hear about this from a few sources. The recent revelations about the business dealings of Biden & Son in China brought the issue to the fore in those few outlying media and social media outlets that didn’t seek to deep-six the story. I don’t mean to suggest that Russia does not attempt to interfere in US elections or other national concerns but rather to note that CCP influence and interference attempts go largely unremarked upon or are otherwise dismissed while having no less if not more significant implications, especially where free information exchange and expression on Google and social media platforms are concerned.
Likewise, it is worthwhile to consider the differences between the objectives of these respective state-driven domains. As National Security scholars Michael Clarke, Jennifer S. Hunt, and Matthew Sussex argue:
For the Russian Federation, which has emerged as the West’s chief spoiler, the goal has to been to exacerbate existing social divisions in liberal democracies, to undermine public trust in key institutions, and to boost narratives around a host of statist themes: anti-immigration movements, the “alt-right,” and trade protectionism. In this way, Moscow has played the role of a wrecker, seeking to destroy the liberal order rather than replace it. It has utilized diaspora communities, fringe media, and political activists on the margins of political discourse as proxies, and has facilitated the leaking of compromising information to promote false narratives and conspiracy theories. China, on the other hand, has pursued an arguably more sophisticated approach given that it seeks gradually to supplant the Western order rather than simply undermine it. Its efforts therefore have been geared primarily around obtaining longer-term leverage through multiple channels of influence among elites in politics, business, and society.
Of the many tactics it uses to advance its agenda of actively shaping foreign perceptions and behaviors, China practices what Victor Cha of the Center for Strategic and International Studies called “predatory liberalism.” China “leverages the vulnerabilities of market interdependence to exert power over others in pursuit of political goals.” China flexes its economic muscle to spread its ideology and guard its reputation. Examples include pressuring Apple to remove its HKmap.live app from iPhones sold in China due to pressure by Beijing because the app enabled “illegal behavior,” as protesters used it “to target and ambush police” and to “threaten public safety,” or so China claimed. Another involved the NBA. When Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted on October 4, 2019, in support of the Hong Kong protesters, he was pressured to delete his post and apologize for “offense” caused to the Chinese people. Serving as a proxy for the CCP, the NBA in turn precluded any economic damage to its Chinese market that such a rhetorical breach might have caused.
Big digital platforms including Google, Facebook, and Twitter not only support the extension of domestic statism, they serve the expansion of foreign state ideology and power as well. While propaganda, censorship, and surveillance have turned social media into instruments of totalitarianism in China, China has invested millions into propaganda campaigns on social media and beyond its borders to extend its influence. Buying and usurping user accounts on Twitter and creating fake accounts on Facebook, for example, China seeks to influence the perception of the regime as well as promoting its agenda. Although Google’s Project Dragonfly was canceled and it is unlikely that Google will establish a search engine operative in China any time soon, Google nevertheless maintains offices and employees in China and sells cloud, AI, and other services there.
In accommodating their state customers and ideological sponsors, the dominant search and social media platforms have come to resemble the governments that they effectively serve and reproduce. This is especially true where China is concerned. Google, Facebook, and Twitter have adopted the CCP’s penchant for the regulation of speech, the dissemination of propaganda, and the suppression of dissident views. A few examples of direct interventions in search-related and social media control should suffice:
Facebook blocked posts that referenced a Chinese virologist whose research traced the SARS-2 virus to a Wuhan lab.
Six Chinese nationals now work on Facebook’s “Hate-Speech Engineering” team to produce algorithms that rank, and block content deemed too conservative, among other tasks.
Twitter purged tens of thousands of accounts critical of the Chinese government just days ahead of the thirtieth anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 2019.
Twitter employees train Chinese officials to amplify their pro-China messaging.
YouTube has deleted comments critical of the Chinese Communist Party due to “error.”
In a case of contradictory non-fact-checking, Twitter allowed over ninety thousand tweets from the beginning of April through May 2020 from two hundred diplomatic and state-run media accounts that suggested that the coronavirus originated in the US or the US military, among other claims casting doubt on its Chinese origin.
These are but a few of the examples of influence campaigns and tactics employed by China, and they do not represent the most egregious cases of the censorship and propaganda we’re encountering. Most of the censorship and propaganda is domestically oriented and produced. My point is more about shared ideological commitments and tactics than anything else.
5. Trump or Not-Trump
How does all this figure into the election? It’s clear that this presidential election has not been a contest between Trump and Joe Biden per se, but between Trump and not-Trump. It has been a contest between a boorish, rambling, irreverent, and politically incorrect gatecrasher versus a corrupt veteran of the political class. The “resistance”—which includes the mainstream media, the social media and “globalist” oligarchy, the neocons, the better part of the intelligence community, and an assortment of leftist political activists and radicals—has aimed at destroying the prior and supporting the latter. The political establishment has shown its sheer cynicism by propping up an enfeebled, high-stakes influence peddler and having him taken seriously.
I’ve considered the possibility that the anti-Trump fervor has been based largely on aesthetic revulsion. Indeed, aesthetic revulsion has been cultivated and promoted by the sponsors of the resistance. But the sponsors of the resistance don’t hate Trump merely because he fails to reflect the image of the effete intelligentsia. After all, look at how they’ve rehabilitated George W. Bush. No, there’s more to it.
Trump is a rogue parvenu who threatens (or threatened) the political establishment, not because he has [or had the potential to “drain the swamp,” an insurmountable task for any president or administration, but rather because he is unpredictable and might have stumbled upon and exposed “deep state” secrets and crimes. Trump has been an interloper, a nuisance, a thorn in the side of an elite cozy with elements that Trump has deemed inimical to American interests.
Further, Trump’s brand of nationalism interferes (or interfered) with the global interests of those who do business with our new Cold War opposition, and not only the kind we saw recently exposed in the case of the Joe Biden Swindling Company.
Finally, and most importantly, Trump has represented a line of defense, however tenuous and thin, of American liberties, liberties that stand in the way of a global governmental and extragovernmental order that thrives on lockdowns, masking, muzzling, banning, blacklisting, down ranking, memory holing, gaslighting, deleting, canceling, censoring, precensoring, and obliterating dissent and dissenters.
Concluding Remarks
Regardless of the election outcome, however, repressive and propagandistic governmentalities—including academia, cultural institutions, culture industries, information and intelligence technologies, mass media, political movements, social media, woke corporations, and more—are combining to effect a totalitarian creep under which its subjects are complicit in their own subjugation and hellbent to impose it on others.
Whether Trump or not-Trump is finally declared the winner of the 2020 US presidential election, we are in for the battle of our lives. A constellation of state and state-extended apparatuses has openly declared war on liberty, on us. We are all thought criminals now. Risk aversion will not do. What we risk by being risk averse is everything that makes human life worth living. In the face of an enemy that brazenly revels in its totalitarian character, it is time to put everything on the line for liberty.
BLM/Antifa Thugs Attack Trump Supporters, Including Children, After D.C. "Million MAGA March" Tyler Durden
Sat, 11/14/2020 – 19:20
Massive crowds of people converged at Freedom Plaza in Washington on Saturday, joining other rallies around the country to show support for President Donald Trump and ask for fairness in the election process.
As The Epoch Times’ Allen Zhong reports, the participants marched to the U.S. Supreme Court holding signs that read “Stop the Steal,” “Make America Fair Again,” and “Trump 2020.” Before the start of the march, the crowd heard speeches from prominent Trump supporters including Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and My Pillow founder Mike Lindell. Several other prominent figures including Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and former Trump advisor Sebastian Gorka were also on the speaking list.
Participants chanted slogans calling to “stop the steal,” which is also the name of the grassroots movement organizing the event in part. Organizer Ali Alexander told The Epoch Times in a previous interview that the events are a grassroots effort by a coalition of about a hundred activists and influencers to show “support for President Trump and fair elections and transparent counting.”
Similar events, although smaller in scale, were organized in around 50 other states on the same day.
Everything was very peaceful (not just mostly peaceful) until the crowds started to disperse and groups of BLM and Antifa activists began to appear, agitating attendees, and eventually turning to violence… even against children.
LIVE in DC: Posturing and heckling takes place on both sides of a barricade in front of SCOTUS. @mattmiller757 reporting for The Post Millennialpic.twitter.com/IbCTCvju1s
The most disturbing piece of footage depicts a family being attacked by Antifa. A mother is seen attempting to flee the area with her small daughter. He daughter is eventually thrown to the ground in the middle of a fight.
So – when will the media admit that the boarding up of stores/businesses/homes ahead of the election was not out of fear of a Biden victory, but a Trump win and the inevitable mostly-non-peaceful attacks and looting that would inevitably follow.
Norma had been vocal about her support for President Donald Trump before the election, and sees no reason to stop now. “I’m supporting Trump right up until the very end,” Scott said in her Trump shirt and buttons, carrying a flag.
