November 5, 2011

Absolute Freedom of Speech - Progressivist Style

Hatched by Dafydd

This blogpost isn't about the low-hanging fruit; these fruits have already dropped into the mud and are starting to rot.

ACORN -- remember them? -- have evidently been embarassed by yet another scandal: They were caught red-handed (such a glorious phrase!) funneling money to fuel the Occupiers, on Wall Street and Elsewhere, and even paying their own members to make signs and join the protests. Fox News reports and you decide:

The former New York office for ACORN, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in the self-proclaimed "leaderless" Occupy Wall Street movement, organizing "guerrilla" protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities, sources tell FoxNews.com.

The former director of New York ACORN, Jon Kest, and his top aides are now busy working at protest events for New York Communities for Change (NYCC). That organization was created in late 2009 when some ACORN offices disbanded and reorganized under new names after undercover video exposes prompted Congress to cut off federal funds.

So now, ACORN -- sorry, I meant NYCC -- has formulated its official response to disclosure of its covert ops... and it's a doozie:

Officials with the revamped ACORN office in New York -- operating as New York Communities for Change -- have fired staff, shredded reams of documents and told workers to blame disgruntled ex-employees for leaking information in an effort to explain away a FoxNews.com report last week on the group’s involvement in Occupy Wall Street protests, according to sources.

NYCC also is installing surveillance cameras and recording devices at its Brooklyn offices, removing or packing away supplies bearing the name ACORN and handing out photos of Fox News staff with a stern warning not to talk to the media, the sources said.

The depths of censorship, thought suppression, and manufactured unanimity to which NYCC is willing to stoop is positively Stalinist; only the hapless futility and hair-on-fire panic among the tree-nuts transmute base tyranny into lowbrow comedy. These are not your grandfather's totalitarians!

NYCC is also monitoring its staff’s behavior, cracking down on phone use and socialization. Officials have ordered all papers -- even scraps -- to be shredded every night, the source said.

"And all the supplies -- everything around the office that said 'ACORN' -- is now all in storage until this blows over," the source said. "People literally have to cover up the cameras on the back of their cellphones in the office."

"Now there’s no texting in the office, no phone calls in the office. They tell us to take our phone calls out into the waiting room where there’s an intercom, and then they turn on the intercom to hear our conversations. They’re installing new cameras and speakers around the building so they can hear everything.

"It’s almost like working at Fort Knox." [Emphasis added -- DaH]

No, Ace; it's like working in the Kremlin.

The level of censorship, driven by sheer paranoia, that permeates the Left may be comical; but such fear of exposure is also immanent (or inherent) in the ideology of socialism, in all its forms. Perhaps David Bohm would say it was part of the implicate or enfolded order that overlies all specific characteristics of the ideology; real-world details -- such as the crushing of of freedom, including freedom of speech -- unfold in all their inglory whenever socialist dogma meets reality.

Censorship and gag-orders are unfolded by application of the the Fundamental Syllogism of Socialism:

  • Socialism is, at its core, rule by "expert" administrators; cf. Otto von Bismark's administrative state.
  • Its model is that a handful of experts, freed from the interruptions of competition between factions (and of course the competition inherent in capitalism), can sort through all the data, separate fact from fallacy, and chart the course that serves the greater good.
  • But the illogical, uninformed yammering of ordinary people, non-experts, wastes time and distracts the experts from their vital, urgent work. Normally the latter can just ignore the former; but when the situation is tense, they haven't that luxury.
  • Thus, during a crisis, everyone but the experts must shut the heck up.
  • Alas, as things fall apart (since socialism doesn't work in real life), we always seem to be in a crisis.
  • Ergo, the peons should just shut up, keep shut, and shut up shuttin' up!

 

 

 

 

And there you have it: "Progresso" brand freedom of speech -- now with extra nuttiness! Maybe we need to Occupy ACORN.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 5, 2011, at the time of 8:23 PM

Comments

The following hissed in response by: LarryD

Given the damages being done by the Occupyers, I think tort suites are in order.

"Joint and several liability", NYCC, ACORN, SEIU, Soros, et al. Sue 'em all.

The above hissed in response by: LarryD [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 8, 2011 10:18 AM

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