Social media behemoth Facebook has just acted to censor and suppress Ron Paul’s latest weekly column, “The Coronavirus Hoax,” based on a hatchet job “fact check” by the notoriously biased “Politifact” organization.
At issue is Dr. Paul’s statement that National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci’s claim that the coronavirus is “ten times more deadly” than the seasonal influenza virus is “without any scientific basis.” Fauci made the claim recently in testimony before the US Congress in a move that significantly ramped up the fear factor in the US over the virus.
The Politifact “fact check” is literally drenched in sarcasm and bias, with Ron Paul being described as “a sometimes conspiracy-minded Texas doctor” and Fauci described as a “universally trusted person.”
For a “just the facts” analysis, that’s a lot of editorializing.
The Politifact hit piece admits that, “It’s not yet known what the death rate from the current coronavirus, COVID-19, will be,” but concludes nevertheless that, “early data indicate it is more than 10 times higher than the death rate for the flu.”
So if you don’t know how can you know?
One reason to question the “scientific basis” of Fauci’s claim is that Fauci contradicted his own statement before Congress in a recent article he co-authored in the New England Journal of Medicine.
If a scientist writes one thing in a scholarly journal and testifies very differently before Congress, does it not raise questions as to the “scientific basis” of the divergent claims?
Here are the two Anthony Faucis. Which one is scientifically based? Both can’t be:
(bigger)
Founded by the Poynter Institute, Politifact is an outfit with a clear political agenda and it is not to promote truth and accuracy in the media. Rather, it is all about suppressing media outlets with which they disagree. It is all about creating blacklists in a McCarthyite push to control the flow of information.
Interestingly enough, major funders of the Poynter Institute include “open society” advocate George Soros along with Charles Koch (both founders and major funders of the “Quincy Institute“).
Soros loves an “open society” as long as it does not in any way challenge his own political biases. If anyone holds different views, he’ll spend millions to shut down debate.
The Poynter Institute is also funded by the United States government itself, via major grants from the National Endowment for Democracy. So here is what happens when you scratch below the surface a bit: The suppression of views like those of Ron Paul which are unpopular among those who control the foreign policy narrative are actually financed by the US government itself.
Do any of our dear readers support the US government taking our tax money and using it to shut Ron Paul up?
How is it that Facebook tries to sell itself as politically neutral, just making sure only facts are allowed through, while at the same time partnering with such a politically biased and unethical organization as Politifact and the Poynter Institute? Is Facebook really about fostering a lively debate or is it about controlling the narrative favored by the Washington elites?
We have fact-checked Politifact’s fact checkers and we find them to be biased, sloppy, and inimical to the values we should share as Americans in favor of open debate.
And Facebook? End your suppression of Dr. Ron Paul’s op-ed on the coronavirus!
