“Without Freedom of Thought there can be no such thing as Wisdom; and no such thing as Public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech.” —Benjamin Franklin (1722)

Earlier this week, our team wrote about the latest maneuver in the Left’s war on free speech, the coordinated attack against Twitter, whose new owner, Elon Musk, is determined to eliminate that platform’s suppression of free speech.

You may not have an account with Twitter or that other social media giant, Facebook, which is maintaining its allegiance to Big Gov and Demo speech suppressors. But make no mistake: Those platforms are major influencers of public opinion and, by extension, elections. Thus, they have a major impact on the future of American Liberty if they are successful in suppressing the voices of those of us who support and defend it.

Yeah, I know. Before Musk took over, Twitter was the biggest of the Big Tech speech suppressors. That platform, in collusion with the Democrat Party and its Leftmedia propagandists, led the charge just ahead of the 2020 election to conceal the blockbuster Biden/ChiCom pay-to-play schemes that were detailed on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

So, what changed? Musk announced his platform would no longer wantonly target conservative speech, declaring, “The world should know the truth of what has been happening at Twitter.” He condemned Twitter’s leading role in the Biden corruption coverup. Naturally, the enemies of Liberty and free speech immediately decompensated into a fit of now-familiar fear and rage.

That has manifested in an effort to defund Twitter — including some of its biggest funding sources, the “invisible” influencers who are controlling the news you read. I am referring to, of course, commercial advertisers.

That’s right, key advertisers are dropping Twitter. According to The Washington Post, “More than a third of Twitter’s top 100 marketers have not advertised on the social media network in the past two weeks.” Of course, WaPo is cheering and now lobbying Big Tech monopolies Apple and Google to drop Twitter’s app from their respective stores.

The Post’s “technology columnist/reporter,” Taylor “Cyber Bully” Lorenz, is promoting the cancel culture aggression of Harvard Law’s leftist “transgender” activist Alejandra Caraballo: “Apple and Google need to seriously start exploring booting Twitter off the app store. What Musk is doing is existentially dangerous. … It’s like opening the gates of hell in terms of the havoc it will cause. … I can’t even begin to state how dangerous this will be.”

Actually, what is really “dangerous” is the Leftmedia/Big Tech assault on free speech, including their efforts to defund free speech platforms.

For a deeper dive into why big companies have pulled ads from conservative media platforms, I turned to my friend, researcher David Black, Ph.D. As founder of 2nd Vote, a national database exposing woke corporate agendas, he has devoted as much time as anyone to this issue. Dave noted that big corporations have aligned themselves with big government, and thus many believe, correctly, that advertising with organizations that express opposition to big government political agendas will result in unfavorable treatment. (Think “corporate cronyism.”) For this reason, they are steering clear of media platforms, including Twitter, that dare allow objective conservative news and conservative opinion.

David lays out the reason why many companies appease the Left: “Radical leftists are well-organized and well-funded (Soros, Gates, Bloomberg, etc.), and they coordinate protests and boycotts well. Conservatives, who support free speech, don’t gang up on those whose speech does not fit their political narrative.” He adds: “The Left’s objective is all about money, power, and elitism. These socialist radicals have six primary targets: 1) Protected 1st Amendment freedoms; 2) The protection of Liberty by the 2nd Amendment; 3) Sanctity of life; 4) Safe civil society protected by enforcement of laws and the integrity of borders; 5) Critical thinking and fact-based education; 6) American ingenuity, especially environmental problem solving as opposed to the Left’s ‘climate change’ agenda.”

So, how do these big corporate cancel culture cowards control what and how news is reported to you? They do it by strangling media outlets of their life’s blood: advertising revenue.

Twitter is just the latest of the free speech platforms to lose advertising. The same thing has been happening with Fox News and every other commercial conservative-leaning news platform dependent on ad revenues. Some are self-censoring their reporting to avoid additional losses, and there’s nothing “fair and balanced” about that little secret.

One incoming question I see perennially when asking our readers to support our year-end mission and operation funding is, “Why don’t you take advertising to offset your expenses like other conservative publishers?”

First and foremost, as we explain on our Mission page: “Our website pages and emails are certified 'Ad Free.’ … We do not accept advertising to ensure our advocacy and editorial content is not restrained by commercial influence — as is the case with all mass media outlets. Thus, you will note our website and email editions are free of the offensive advertising which clutters commercial news websites.”

Long before the Big Tech and social media outlets existed, we understood the invasive but silent role of advertisers in the editorial rooms. Thus, we chose to be ad-free at our inception in 1996, and our mission and operation budgets are not and never have been sustained by advertisers, or any political, special interest, or parent organization.

Your Patriot Post team relies 100% on the goodwill and generosity of those who support Liberty — that’s you.

Like many mission-based organizations, we raise over half of our annual budget in the last two months of the year. However, this is the first time in years that our campaign is running behind where it should be at the end of November.

Please support our 2022 Year-End Campaign today. It’s the most cost-effective investment you can make to keep the light of Liberty burning bright!

Thank you for all you do on many fronts in support of freedom.

Mark Alexander

Publisher, The Patriot Post
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

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