How To Combat Censorship No Matter Who Wins The Election

At President Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, the crowd reflected a fast-growing awareness that America is on the precipice — and that America is also on the cusp of being restored to its glory. Their exhilaration — and sense of community — was through the roof.

But they also expressed something less definable, something that comes with liberation: an enormous sense of relief.  But relief from what? And how could it be relief with the election’s aftermath still unknown?

It was relief from something even bigger than the turmoil of this election: isolation. The walls of propaganda-induced isolation are being torn down as people lose their fear of expressing thoughts that our governing elites have deemed politically incorrect.

We’re becoming more connected as a result of speaking openly. It feels like we’re actually starting to break through the loneliness epidemic that has plagued America for too long as we shed our compliance with political correctness and the self-censorship that keeps us divided.

Political censorship plays a far bigger role in causing social isolation than we ever thought possible. We’re also learning how damaging isolation is to our psyches and society as a whole. Isolation is the constant stressor that aggravates illnesses, both physical and mental. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called it “the reigning feature of addiction” and explained that community is the only real solution:

Political censorship, on the other hand, is the roadblock to community formation.

Free Speech Is the Cornerstone of Democracy

People have varying opinions on which issue is most important in this election: inflation, the border, crime, and so on. But no issue is more critical than the survival of free speech.

First, without free speech, we can’t openly talk about any of the other problems, so we can’t really solve them. Democracy fails in the absence of free speech.

Second, our First Amendment right to free speech is under attack as never before. Kamala Harris, who claims free speech is a “privilege,” not a right, promises to open the door wide to shutting down the X platform and even imprisoning anyone whose speech is not politically correct. 

The Harris-Biden administration routinely used the power of law enforcement to censor free speech on Big Tech media platforms during the Covid era and to favor its preferred narratives on all other issues. Recently, John Kerry criticized the First Amendment, calling it a “block” to government control of information. Hillary Clinton has repeatedly called for criminalizing speech. This is a common refrain among our ruling elites.

Third, controlling speech is a key tool in the arsenal of tyranny. Tyrants detest open conversations because they are the primary means of building loyal relationships they can’t control. They are the means for exchanging and digesting ideas, for verifying what is real from what is fake, and for discerning the truth.

Without free speech, people end up as isolated individuals, kneeling at the altar of those who tell us what to think and what to say.

There’s No Going Back to That!

No matter what happens with the election, Americans must keep that MSG rally spirit going and reverse the damage caused by the censorship industrial complex. How do we do that?

First, we all need to take a hard, clinical look at how we have come so close to losing the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. We cannot begin to escape this bondage until we grasp the processes, patterns, and behaviors that got us here.

The censorship industrial complex exploits our natural fear of ostracism to cow us into compliance with their agendas. That fear is the most effective tool of social control because it is so hard-wired into our human nature. They stoke it through identity politics, political correctness, and mob agitation. Their control of the media induces people to self-silence.

Second, let’s reject the shallow claim that a group of oligarchs regulating our conversations will somehow “protect” us from “misinformation.” That big lie is actually a conduit of real disinformation. The restoration of our republic depends on calling this out as a vile lie.

Third, we must build lots of “parallel polises,” communities in which people can speak openly to one another and share ideas. This is critical because anti-speech activists have captured virtually all of our institutions, particularly in the media and education. In communist Czechoslovakia, pro-speech advocates Václav Benda and Václav Havel made clear that building “parallel polises” is the best path out of a totalitarian system.

Finally, but far from least, more Americans must make a point of gathering informally to talk openly and often about things that really matter, especially about how the propaganda-censorship machine operates, how it threatens our humanity, and how to resist it.

Small discussion groups — even of three or four — meeting in the spirit of organic community are ideal. Think of such gatherings as a sort of cell system with the advantage of being highly decentralized. They can offer stability in times of chaos and disorder. Groups like this can have a ripple effect on society at large, an effect that Havel describes in his epic essay “The Power of the Powerless.” 

To promote such a movement, I offer a model loosely called stellasbookclub.com. My website includes study guides and lists of books, articles, movies, and documentaries that can help people crack the code of what I call the weaponization of loneliness.

Americans Are Beginning to Connect the Dots

Fortunately, it’s starting to dawn on Americans that our loneliness epidemic is largely the result of a manipulative propaganda-censorship machine that keeps us from talking to one another. We’re catching on that isolation is not only unnatural and dangerous to survival, but isolation is manufactured through attacks on free speech.

This should be obvious despite the pathetic attempts of the propaganda media to paint the lovefest at Madison Square Garden as some sort of a hatefest. The truth is that Americans have long been starving for a true sense of connection with one another.

More and more people can now see that the Harris-Walz machine would simply empower a fourth Obama term to “fundamentally transform America” into a globalist oligarchy that has no respect for free speech, due process, election integrity, and basic fairness, guaranteeing more miserable isolation.

The good news is that we are at a turning point in breaking down the censorship regime that’s designed to keep us atomized and at each other’s throats. But there’s still a lot of work to do to understand how we got to such a dangerous place. So, no matter what happens with the election, we must keep working to dismantle the weaponization of loneliness.

This means we must keep talking and throwing wrenches into the machinery of loneliness. We must keep coming together in love for our neighbor. The fundamental restoration of America depends on it.

Stella Morabito is a senior contributor at The Federalist. She is author of “The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer.” Her essays have appeared in various publications, including the Washington Examiner, American Greatness, Townhall, Public Discourse, and The Human Life Review. In her previous work as an intelligence analyst, Morabito focused on various aspects of Russian and Soviet politics, including communist media and propaganda. Follow Stella on Twitter.