{"id":1636001,"date":"2022-09-08T07:17:45","date_gmt":"2022-09-08T11:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1636001"},"modified":"2022-09-08T07:18:16","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T11:18:16","slug":"bidens-maga-republican-screed-gives-gatekeepers-the-green-light-to-purge-political-foes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/bidens-maga-republican-screed-gives-gatekeepers-the-green-light-to-purge-political-foes\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden\u2019s \u2018MAGA Republican\u2019 Screed Gives Gatekeepers The Green Light To Purge Political Foes"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fbidens-maga-republican-screed-gives-gatekeepers-the-green-light-to-purge-political-foes%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1636001&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>There are a lot of ways to analyze an address like the one Joe Biden gave last week from the steps of Independence Hall. One can view it from the perspective of its insane optics (the weird lighting and blood-red background call to mind Dante\u2019s \u201cInferno\u201d) to its inherently contradictory language (calling for unity while also calling half the country a \u201cthreat \u2026 to the very soul\u201d of America).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But there is another, more practical matter: How does Biden expect this to end? Does he really think that using the office of the president to re-christen an entire group of Americans as extremists whose existence \u201cthreatens the very foundations of our republic\u201d will somehow compel them to see the light, as it were? To step out of their red-colored haze, and vote Democrat? To suddenly reconsider the Senate run of failed presidential candidate Evan McMullin or to pour one out for future MSNBC contributor Liz Cheney?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Or by summoning the same language <a href=\"https:\/\/ricochet.com\/1307446\/biden-warns-that-maga-republicans-pose-clear-and-present-danger-to-nation\/\">used to justify suppressing the speech rights<\/a> of Americans in World War I, is he laying the predicate for something much darker?<\/p>\n<p>One of the features of our current political realignment is the retrenchment of the so-called \u201celite\u201d class into an intractable monolith: The people who sit atop our political, cultural, corporate media, and educational institutions all share the same exact values. They almost uniformly vote Democrat, they engage in ritualistic and performative displays of wokeness, they believe words are violence, and that there is no bigger threat to Our Democracy\u2122 than Donald Trump voters.<\/p>\n<p>When viewed through this lens, Biden\u2019s speech takes on a much more pointed aim: a not-so-subtle directive to the oligarchy and the Democratic courtier class that \u201cMAGA Republicans\u201d are not just the embarrassing, demented, idiot rubes they are forced to share a country with. They are now <em>officially<\/em> the out-group \u2014 a rogue, extremist danger to themselves and others \u2014 and should be treated as such.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In tagging the 78 million people who voted for Trump as akin to domestic terrorists, Biden\u2019s speech serves two codominant roles: to label half the country as a threat and to use this designation as a bat signal to the institutional arbiters of social, cultural, and corporate America to disassociate, shun, shame, and reprimand. And, critically, do it all with the formal imprimatur of the White House. <\/p>\n<p>After all, Biden\u2019s address wasn\u2019t a campaign speech. Incredibly, it was pitched \u2014 and covered by corporate media unquestioningly \u2014 as a policy address.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The Mother Lode of Cancellation Attempts<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Biden\u2019s formal slicing of the electorate into \u201cgood voters\u201d and \u201cbad voters\u201d will only encourage the trend toward the woke totems, dissent shaming, and push for intellectual homogeneity that is coursing through higher education and the arts. But where it could carve new ground is by formalizing the nascent practices of corporate America to ideologically weaponize access to the market. After all, you don\u2019t want to be seen doing business with <em>fascists<\/em>, right?<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s one thing to shun half of America\u2019s voters from the corridors of polite society and the highest of ivory towers (though still unconscionable in its own right). It\u2019s quite another to seem to nod approvingly in the direction of cutting half of America off from the guts of capitalism itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In this sense, Biden\u2019s speech represents the mother lode of all cancellation attempts. And corporate America has already shown itself to be a willing partner. What began several years ago as the comprehensive deplatforming of provocateurs such as Laura Loomer (who is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.palmbeachpost.com\/story\/news\/politics\/elections\/2020\/08\/12\/far-right-candidate-laura-loomer-banned-from-most-social-media-suspicious-of-comcast-glitch\/42204793\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">banned<\/a> from Twitter, Periscope, Facebook, Instagram, Medium, GoFundMe, Venmo, MGM Resorts, PayPal, Lyft, Uber, Uber Eats, Chase Bank, and even the T-shirt company TeeSpring) has slowly crept inward, culminating in the simultaneous deplatforming of then-President Donald Trump \u2014 not only by the Big Tech giants but by his campaign\u2019s email service, credit card processor, and two of his banks.<\/p>\n<p>The small business, social media startup Parler found itself similarly assaulted when it was simultaneously banned from the Google app store and the Apple app store, and booted from Amazon\u2019s hosting services \u2014 all on <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/02\/22\/court-docs-show-facebook-played-much-bigger-part-in-capitol-riot-than-parler-yet-no-consequences\/\">blatantly pretextual grounds<\/a>. And it wasn\u2019t just their market access infrastructure. \u201cEvery vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day,\u201d Parler\u2019s then-CEO John Matze <a href=\"https:\/\/video.foxnews.com\/v\/6221679825001#sp=show-clips\">confirmed<\/a> to Fox News.<\/p>\n<p>Glenn Greenwald <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ggreenwald\/status\/1567293323336978432?s=20&amp;t=xJMIoK6LbIHo98HvcAhGgQ\">calls<\/a> this effect \u201cde-personing,\u201d and it\u2019s a good way to describe the burgeoning ideological conditioning of major market players. Users who are engaged in offline behavior that the world\u2019s largest non-bank lender, Paypal, in partnership with the Anti-Defamation League deem to be \u201chate speech\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=h4CfvFEsdRY\">are removed or denied access.<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>The email provider Mailchimp cut off services for the Northern Virginia Tea Party group in 2020 when they used the service to organize a recount rally in support of President Trump. Last year, I was inexplicably banned from Mailchimp\u2019s subsidiary TinyLetter for sending out a <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/07\/16\/government-dictating-what-social-media-bans-is-tyrannical\/\">column<\/a> I\u2019d written for the New York Post. (I\u2019m still banned! I took my newsletter <a href=\"https:\/\/rachelbovard.substack.com\/\">to Substack<\/a>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Bank of America will <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/business\/wp\/2018\/04\/11\/bank-of-america-to-stop-lending-to-some-gun-manufacturers-in-wake-of-parkland-massacre\/\">no longer lend money<\/a> to certain gun manufacturers. Citibank <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/citigroup-imposes-restrictions-on-gun-sales-by-business-clients\/\">will not process<\/a> some gun sales by their own customers. During the Trump administration, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, and U.S. Bank <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/economy\/banks-bow-to-pressure-to-stop-profiting-from-trumps-immigration-policy-but-big-tech-remains-defiant\/2019\/03\/10\/87bec704-40ea-11e9-a0d3-1210e58a94cf_story.html\">refused to provide banking services<\/a> to the private prison industry in protest of Trump\u2019s immigration policies. These same federally-insured banks and a handful of others now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawenforcementtoday.com\/banks-refusing-to-do-business-with-people-who-do-work-for-i-c-e\/\">refuse<\/a> to provide depository services to federal contractors who do work for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Payment and funding sites such as Paypal, GoFundMe, and Patreon <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeednews.com\/article\/blakemontgomery\/the-alt-right-has-a-payment-processor-problem\">recently banned<\/a> users they deemed \u201calt-right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then there are, of course, the massive Big Tech platforms that work <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aflegal.org\/news\/afl-lawsuit-uncovers-more-audacious-cdc-documents-revealing-the-biden-administrations-blatant-complicity-with-big-tech-to-push-disinformation-and-suppress-and-censor-free-speech\">directly with the White House<\/a> to decide which users and content to ban. This not only affects speech, it limits access for the millions of small businesses that use Google and Facebook, the world\u2019s two largest digital advertising firms, to access the market. And God forbid you write a book with a political or policy message that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailysignal.com\/2022\/01\/09\/based-on-false-assumption-amazon-still-censoring-book-on-transgenderism\/\">upsets the world\u2019s biggest book retailer.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>All of this amounts to a uniquely American form of ideological social credit that determines access to the platforms and services that form the basis of the modern economy. The government isn\u2019t mandating it, but a speech like Biden\u2019s offers tacit approval, if not outright encouragement, of such measures. And the ideological fusion between the Democratic Party and leading corporations ensures the new hierarchy will be enforced.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Creation of an Underclass<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Seen in this manner, Biden\u2019s speech does far more than give the country the collective creeps. It formalizes the creation of an underclass. It says, from the official White House podium, that it is now appropriate and indeed necessary for the preservation of democracy to cut off \u201cMAGA Republicans\u201d from every avenue of influence and material gain.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The message is already being socialized across the airwaves. The Washington Post\u2019s Greg Sargent called Biden\u2019s claim that Trump voters pose a foundational threat to America <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2022\/09\/02\/biden-speech-philadelphia-trump-maga-republicans-democracy\/\">\u201cundeniably correct.\u201d<\/a> Over at MSNBC, DNC adviser Kurt Bardella went even further, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kurtbardella\/status\/1564420261998465024?s=20&amp;t=0SmcwuY52ApeUJohc6lSWA\">calling<\/a> \u201cMAGA Republicans\u201d a \u201cdomestic terrorist cell operating in America.\u201d The Atlantic contributor Peter Wehner <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2022\/aug\/21\/all-republicans-are-now-terrorists\/\">said<\/a> all Republicans are a \u201cdagger pointed at the throat of American democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Elements of the left in media, business, and universities have been salivating at the thought of embarking on a social purge of their political foes. Biden\u2019s speech has mainstreamed and given credence to that impulse. The White House has, quite clearly, tipped its hat to corporate- and media-led otherizing at a national scale.<\/p>\n<p>For a long time, the right\u2019s answer to this has simply been to \u201cbuild your own.\u201d This has become increasingly difficult as the very infrastructure of capitalism has become ideologically weaponized, and as multinational corporations have grown so powerful as to literally rival nation-states in terms of reach and resources. <\/p>\n<p>Small, dissident competitors struggle to reach the marketplace, blocked by <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/02\/22\/donald-trump-has-to-build-and-protect-truth-social-with-both-hands-tied-behind-his-back\/\">ideological gatekeepers such as Apple and Google<\/a>, or are just unable to compete with behemoths like Amazon who are simultaneously market access platforms, retail product rivals, and logistics chokepoints.<\/p>\n<p>But in the Biden era, it\u2019s also become next to impossible to create competing platforms based upon the twisted, circular reasoning that forces conservatives out of the mainstream toward alternative outlets, and then uses the existence of those alternative outlets as proof of the group\u2019s extremism.<\/p>\n<p>The Parler example remains superlative. Parler rose to prominence as a Twitter alternative based on free speech norms. Its popularity was, in part, based on the many users who were either banned on Twitter or disgusted by the platform\u2019s ambiguous and politically influenced moderation decisions. But as Parler grew in prominence, it was immediately labeled as a \u201cbastion of extremism\u201d by arbiters of mainstream influence such as congressional Democrats, partisan pundits, and the mainstream social media platforms. Thus the platform that existed because of a user base forced out by the mainstream was then labeled by the same people as \u201cdangerously extremist,\u201d which then justified its collective deplatforming.<\/p>\n<p>Chris Hedges, a former award-winning investigative reporter whose work was recently shut down by YouTube, described the phenomenon <a href=\"https:\/\/scheerpost.com\/2022\/03\/28\/matt-taibbi-meet-the-censored-chris-hedges\/\">this way<\/a>: \u201cThey push you to the margins and then, they demonize those spaces on the margins.\u201d He goes on, \u201cSo they push you into a space that they then demonize, and then use it as an excuse to shut you down. But they\u2019ve already in essence created the space in which you exist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For all the clownish supervillain feel of Biden\u2019s staging outside of Independence Hall, his message was very real: Hate your neighbor because he\u2019s a danger to the country. Biden\u2019s speech gave official permission to his fellow ideological and political travelers to fully demonize their political opponents in every arena in which they find them \u2014 a public message soon to be enforced by very private means, from the heights of social, political, and corporate power.\u00a0<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Rachel Bovard is The Federalist&#8217;s senior tech columnist and the senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute.  She has more than a decade of policy experience in Washington and has served in both the House and Senate in various roles, including as a legislative director and policy director for the Senate Steering Committee under the successive chairmanships of Sen. Pat Toomey and Sen. Mike Lee. She also served as director of policy services for The Heritage Foundation.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-comments mt-30 mt-sm-60\">\n<div class=\"article-comments-container d-flex flex-column align-items-center py-30\">\n    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"110\" height=\"106\" src=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/fdrlst-mark.svg\" class=\"img-fluid mb-20\" alt=\"The Federalist logo eagle mark\" \/>    <\/p>\n<p>Unlock commenting by joining the Federalist Community.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/plans\/pricing\/\" class=\"btn btn-on-white\">Subscribe<\/a>  <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are a lot of ways to analyze an address like the one Joe Biden gave last week from the steps of Independence Hall. One can view it from the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":573,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1636001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1636001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/573"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1636001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1636001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1636001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1636001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1636001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}