The Covid Twitter files were always the main course

Much to the lickspittle's lament, the Covid 'Twitter files' appear to be next on the menu in Musk's attempted reordering of the online public square. They also happen to be the most important.

Spare a moment for the “it’s just a nothingburger” crowd . . .

Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 @JackPosobiec

“These Twitter Files are a NOTHINGBURGER”

Because it’s starting to look like it’s going to be a long few weeks.

If proof that Twitter’s top executives lied to both Congress and users in regards to censorship efforts during the 2020 Presidential Election, and the undeniable truth that they acted on requests from political actors and government agencies are to be so easily dismissed as empty calories by DNC activist types and the self-styled ‘disinformation reporters’ of the world, perhaps the main course is going to be harder to ignore.

For, like it or not, the new owner and CEO of Twitter woke up this morning and chose Lord of the Rings-themed violence, which doesn’t bode well for retiring establishment saint Dr. Fauci, or Twitter’s once-mighty Covid misinformation apparatus.

When the outgoing NIAID Director and Chief Medical Advisor to the President of the United States draws comparisons to Tolkien’s Grima Wormtongue — who in LOTR lore sought to weaken the actions of King Theoden of Rohan with words and poisons, on behalf of the literal forces of evil — it’s safe to say the gloves are off, but indeed they should be.

Elon Musk @elonmusk

For writers such as yours truly, Weiss and Taibbi’s ‘Twitter Files’ were always the table-setter for more important conversations to come. While no feat to be proud of, consumers of independent media or those with conservative leanings by the standards of our ever-shifting cultural Overton Window have been aware of DOJ backdoors and campaign/media meddling for some time.

As a citizen of Justin Trudeau’s Canada, that’s merely par for the course . . .

I hope you had more meaningful plans than to spend weeks watching the Public Order Emergencies Commission into what is still a clear abuse of the Emergencies Act, but if nothing else, and in lieu of any likely favourable outcome for those living in a rather balmy banana republic, at least the general public was let in on how like-minded legacy media are primed by their political masters.

Be it through Slack, encrypted back channels, or candlelit dinners, staffers and advisers really do meet with columnists and editors, and cut mutually beneficial deals to serve their preferred outcomes. During the POEC, Alexander Cohen, DComm for Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, Marco Tiananmen-dicino, was caught via text message sharing news of friendly media who were ready, willing, and able to disparage the Freedom Convoy at the word go.

Once unleashed, the coverage was ruthless. Within 24 hours, every man, woman, and child that lined the highways and warmed by the trash-barrel fires on Wellington Street were taken from their already unpleasant socially-engineered outgroup and placed into the proverbial Cooler.

And it’s therein where Twitter has done the most damage. The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election was indeed influenced by an unholy alliance of big tech, and Democrat-adjacent assets with a win-at-all-costs mentality — a mission for which they have yet to abandon, nor show any contrition for — but that was still a largely American phenomenon; Twitter’s early role in shaping Covid hysteria and policy, first by highlighting safetyism at all costs as a means of sticking it to Trump, and then continuing to amplify the worst aspects of the Chinese approach to viral contagion, created socially-engineered ingroups and outgroups in the first place, leaving that aforementioned 'wormtongue’ to wreak untold harms across the globe.

We all recall the worst of that feedback loop. A craven and compromised ‘expert’ such as Eric Feigl-Ding (who quietly moved his family to Austria, where schools were open, while serving as a teachers’ union asset and working to shutter blue state American schools) would sound the alarm with a bevy of radioactive emojis, then reporters would amplify said message, leading to your next local press conference boiling down to nothing but an onslaught of “why aren’t you doing more?”

Overnight, Twitter morphed from deeply flawed and unhealthy digital town square, to mind virus — and only recently has it had but a hope of regaining its initial utility.

Raised up and amplified were the kinds of men and women you would never follow on a path from Hobbiton to Mount Doom, let alone take advice from under any normal circumstances. A group that had been asking to speak to the manager since time immemorial was suddenly handed a bullhorn, placed on a stage, and given the protection of a robust misinformation apparatus that we will undoubtedly learn in due time was influenced by powerful big pharma lobbyists, and ‘public health’ representatives acting on behalf of billion-dollar partnerships.

Meanwhile, the principled doctors and scientists among them were blacklisted, de-boosted, and censored for the cardinal sin of being right too early about those who over-sold the faux-benign nature of non-pharmacological interventions (read: any/all CCP-influenced measures) as well as the too-good-to-be-true efficacy numbers (and relative dangers) of the vaccines, and that comical about-face in regards to masking — which, as we beat on ceaselessly towards three years of living with Covid-19, may as well be thought of as the Democrat or Liberal MAGA hat.

Jay Bhattacharya @DrJBhattacharya

Still trying to process my emotions on learning that @Twitter blacklisted me. The thought that will keep me up tonight: censorship of scientific discussion permitted policies like school closures & a generation of children were hurt. 1/2

With a generation of children now harmed, and millions of adults impacted by the run-off from delayed access to care, powerful behavioural psychology, isolation, the virus itself, and yes, even not-all-that-adverse reactions to the mRNA shots themselves, if we are to heal to the best of our abilities while also serving as citizens of the digital town square, the Covid Twitter files to come must be as robust as they are unflinching.

And much as the lickspittles will try, they cannot be allowed to get away with dismissing them as some “nothingburger.”

Without Twitter, there would have been no lockdowns, no elevation of wide-eyed and zealous snake oil salesmen, nor many more of the weakest and weirdest among us.

But there was Twitter.

We can’t undo what has been done, particularly a conjunction of cataclysm on such a scale, but while we’re all gathered here around the fire, we may as well strive to bring reason to the unreasonable, and support in the rebuild of all that’s been broken.

In waiting for the news to come, that starts by unpoisoning the well.