Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro exposed the powerful global entities working to deplatform and demonetize conservative voices in a new Twitter thread.
Shapiro explained in the Monday thread how the World Economic Forum (WEF), the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), and NewsGuard were all working together to crack down on so-called “misinformation” and dictate what media is “safe” for advertising.
🧵Here’s how the World Economic Forum is quietly working to demonetize and deplatform right-of-center voices, including @realDailyWire, using authoritarian tactics and hall monitor “fact-checkers” like @NewsGuardRating. https://t.co/xgukS5n6d5
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) July 31, 2023
The WFA, which represents 90% of “global marketing communications,” launched the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) in 2019. Soon after, the World Economic Forum adopted GARM as one of its “flagship” projects.
“GARM is an unholy alliance between huge advertisers and social media companies like Google’s YouTube, China’s TikTok, Meta’s Facebook & Instagram, and even Twitter/X and Snapchat. GARM developed something they call the ‘brand safety floor & suitability framework,’” Shapiro explained.
The Daily Wire co-founder said the framework might be fine if it stuck to things like blocking child pornography, but it also included cracking down on viewpoints that GARM found objectionable.
“But their authoritarian nature kicked in, & they decided to ban cultural commentary they don’t approve of, like when we say men can’t be women,” Shapiro said.
“Legacy media, new media, and even independent podcasters are subject to these rules. If you violate them and say true things the elites don’t like, they can blacklist you, demonetize you, or deplatform you,” he added.
Shapiro said that he doesn’t think that WEF chairman Klaus Schwab believes that transgender-identifying influencer Dylan Mulvaney is actually a woman, but that supporting that position degrades family and social fabric, “making power easier to take from the top.” He added that it also makes the activists marching against capitalism now on the side of the powerful.
One of the organizations that “helps” advertisers meet GARM standards is NewsGuard, which rates American media on supposedly apolitical criteria. According to NewsGuard, it helps identify so-called “misinformation” that is “inappropriate for advertising support.”
“The little compliance crusaders at NewsGuard engage in performative virtue signaling by going around issuing scores to media outlets based on their allegedly ‘apolitical’ criteria,” Shapiro said.
The partnership has made even some lawmakers concerned. House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) subpoenaed officials from GARM and the WFA, saying that the two appeared to be facilitating “collusion among their members in a manner that may violate U.S. antitrust law.”
The end goal of the initiatives, Shapiro explained, is to control information and restrict what people can and cannot be exposed to.
“There are certain industries where a violation of antitrust law isn’t going to result in disaster. The Left’s increasing desire to monopolize news and commentary isn’t one of them. Take the time to know the players like your freedom depends on it, because it does,” Shapiro concluded.
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