PayPal on Oct. 8 sent out an update to its terms of use, or acceptable use policy (AUP), that included a shocking addition. It reserved the right to confiscate $2,500 from people’s accounts if they spread “misinformation.” It was a clear announcement of what many already suspected: PayPal has enlisted in the information war.

This comes weeks after PayPal blocked several important accounts in the UK, including Toby Young’s personal account, the Free Speech Union, and the DailySceptic. These are hugely important venues for the English-speaking world in countering the COVID propaganda narrative. It was no accident that they were targeted.

[. . .]

By the following day, PayPal reversed itself, claiming that the banning of “misinformation” was just a mistake.

My take is that the PayPal bums don't have the courage of their convictions. The 'woke' warriors believe in their cause only as long as commitment to it does not affect their bottom line. But when protests cause revenues to drop, they reverse their course, and then lie about their reversal!  A trifecta of outrages: the destructive anti-free speech agenda; the cowardly and crass reversal of course; and then the lies about the reversal.

The Tentacles of the Social Media Octopus

In America we once believed our First Amendment prevented a government monopoly on information. But in the age of globalization, the Internet, and social media, the state has become the enemy—not the protector—of free speech.

One obvious sign is that the Biden Administration keeps trying to create new sorts of ministries of truth or “Disinformation Governance Boards.” It alleges such Orwellian censors must combat “disinformation” and “misinformation.” In fact, these bureaucracies are designed to criminalize unwanted free expression while also advancing state propaganda.

Among our Washington officials, the following myths were once declared the official version of the “truth”:

  • Mounted border patrol agents “whipped” innocent illegal aliens.
  • Officer Brian Sicknick was violently “killed” by Trump protestors.
  • An “armed” insurrection sought to stage a pre-planned coup on January 6 designed to overthrow the government by violent means.
  • Christopher Steele’s dossier was a factual, well-researched compilation.
  • Justice Brett Kavanaugh was a serial sexual assaulter.
  • Jussie Smollett in Chicago’s wee hours valiantly fought off white, racist MAGA-hatted thugs.
  • Hunter Biden’s laptop was abject Russian disinformation.
  • And Joe Biden does not suffer from serious cognitive issues.

What is unique about these lies is not that the government and its media partners advanced them, but that to this day, some continue to disseminate such untruths in spite of widespread and publicly available information discrediting them.

California Governor Gavin Newsom just signed into law a bill criminalizing the work of doctors who express public doubts about medical orthodoxy. Specifically, the law warns that so-called dissident opinion is synonymous with “misinformation.” It is now a crime for doctors to spread “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.”

If we were to criminalize all of history’s doctors who “contradicted scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care” then Hippocrates, Edward Jenner, Louis Pasteur, and Marie Curie would have been felons in their day.