My talk with Ron Paul about Internet Cartel

The movement toward Orwellian censorship in various online platforms such as Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and Google seems to steadily gain momentum. As over 90 percent of the media in America is owned by only six corporations, it has never been easier to push propaganda and manufacture consent. Now the internet free-speech arena seems to be shutting down too in a historic display of illiberal intolerance toward specific groups in the West.

The allegation is that the anti-globalist, conservative and religious groups are particularly targeted, those who voice the need to respect national sovereignty and international law. The recent YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Vimeo ban on Alex Jones serves as an example, and libertarian voices such as radio host Scott Horton, whistleblower Peter Van Buuren and The Liberty Report host Daniel McAdams were also all banned from Twitter.

In the U.K., the recent jailing of Tommy Robinson has sent strong signals to the population: If you voice concern and protest, you might be jailed or removed from Facebook and Google. In Europe, the culture of fear is rampant, people think twice before they voice an opinion, like in the old Stasi systems of East Germany. People expect to be shut down any minute, and carefully take the time to save pictures and valuable conversations from social media. Trust in Facebook and Google seems to diminish by the hour, many expecting the free speech to soon be over on the internet.

In the recent abortion debate in Catholic Ireland, that changed the "no to abortion" 8th amendment of the constitution, the anti-abortion campaign groups were banned from using Facebook and Google. While pro-abortion groups, allegedly funded by George Soros, were favorably pushed all over the mainstream media, the no-side received almost zero media coverage. This all creates a sad feeling that we are slowly slipping into totalitarianism, which Hannah Arendt so eloquently described in "The Origins of Totalitarianism." She showed how individual liberty suffocates in a democracy when peer pressure and a culture of consensus takes over and the masses are controlled by the state. She points out that a totalitarian government then becomes even worse than a dictatorship, pushing for total control of what the citizens think about the family, religion, politics and so on.

The founder of The Liberty Report, Dr. Ron Paul, one of America's most respected voices, recently gave an exclusive interview to The Herland Report where we spoke about the issues concerning the growing intolerance in the West. Watch excerpts here, here and here. Dr. Paul is world famous for his critical views of the Federal Reserve, the military-industrial complex, NSA surveillance and U.S. participation in the wars abroad.

As censorship seems to be the new fashion in illiberal America, Dr. Paul surprisingly says that the trend will eventually die out in much the same manner as the Soviet Union. The system will come to an end: "The collapse of the Soviet system happened because it was a failed system. I think we have a failed system now that's affecting our culture. That is why you have the cultural Marxists in our universities preaching. They want to disrupt our culture so that they can mold it back together in a different type of centralized control. It is cultural more than economic Marxism. And certainly, the introduction to the neoconservatives has been a big deal."

In the interview, posted on YouTube, Dr. Paul adds: "The Soviet system didn't develop anything, and the same is happening to us right now. The only thing that we export now are dollars. We get a good deal because we have managed, through our military and economic power, to maintain a dollar system. Therefore, we have a tremendous advantage, but it's a system that is deteriorating, and it must be reversed."

He also adds: "The people who are on the defensive now are the people who believe in the superpower state. Even the neoconservatives are on the defensive because everything they do fails. Look at the Middle East. All our policies are failing. We help our enemies as much as we are supposed to help our allies."

In "The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy," T. J. Talmon notoriously states that totalitarian democracies break with the originally liberal form of democracy and are characterized by an unusually low respect for the right of the citizen to individual freedom. Because the goal of politics becomes that citizens should unite and agree, express themselves in unison and coordinate in groups, peer pressure becomes a method to keep people "in check." To gain control of citizen behavior becomes a goal.