Yesterday I received an email saying “Woohoo – you just got paid! $3,383.92 was just sent out to you from Patreon covering earnings up to July 6, 2021.”
Woohoo indeed. When your boss fires you with “here’s the money we owe you, now get out of here” he doesn’t say “woohoo.” But Patreon is run by mindless robots, and they’re even more obnoxious than the lousiest boss.
A dozen emails down, another Patreon bot wrote: “Hey there! We hope you’re having a good day. We’re writing to give you a heads up about a small change for some of your patrons…” (Long story short, Patreon was changing their terms to grab a bigger share of the money, as they so often do. Apparently the grab-more-money bot hadn’t heard that I was fired.)
A few more emails down, another Patreo-bot wrote:
“Dear Dr. Kevin Barrett,
We are writing to let you know that your account is currently suspended because it violates our Community Guidelines. If you want to reactivate your account, please read the Community Guidelines carefully and make any necessary updates to your creator page. If you have any questions, please answer directly to this email and a member of the team will be in touch as soon as possible….Please don’t hesitate to reach out, we are happy to answer any questions you have about this process.
Best,
Patreon team”
I wrote back:
“Hello,
I don’t believe I have violated any community guidelines. But after reviewing them, I noticed the new guideline on ‘medical misinformation.’ That policy, which presumably relates to COVID, didn’t exist when I started posting on Patreon. Since my show is primarily a platform for hearing ‘the other side of the story’ on all of the most important public policy issues, I have featured a couple of scientists and doctors, like internationally-acclaimed peer-reviewed biowar expert Meryl Nass MD and anti-aging scientist Josh Mitteldorf, who disagree with some of the CDC and WHO policies. So I assume that must be the problem.
Please note that I have also interviewed experts who support CDC and WHO policies, like historian Eric Zuesse and science professor Gideon Polya. I think my overall coverage of COVID issues is ‘fair and balanced’ given that the whole purpose of my show is to critique mainstream perspectives from the most defensible and interesting angles.
I would appreciate it if someone at Patreon could help me figure out what I need to do to remain in compliance.
Best
Dr. Kevin Barrett”
But nobody at Patreon was interested in being reasonable. Another mindless bot wrote back:
“Hi there,
Thank you for your patience.
Upon further review, we have determined that the content on funded by your project (sic) fundamentally misleads the public with dubious claims and unsubstantiated theories regarding COVID-19.
In the interest of the public’s general safety, your page will not be reinstated and will be permanently removed.”
So why am I a threat to public safety? It isn’t “COVID denial.” Unlike many in the alternative info-sphere, not to mention most of the 74 million Trump voters, I have consistently opined that COVID-19 is probably about as dangerous as mainstream scientists say it is.
So what “dubious claims and unsubstantiated theories” could they be talking about? I think I know the answer: Ron Unz’s claim that COVID-19 likely emerged out of a bio-war attack on China and Iran by American neoconservatives.
By promoting that hypothesis, I made the Associated Press/Atlantic Council list of “The Superspreaders Behind Top COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories.”
The AP and Atlantic Council didn’t intend my “superspreader” anointment as a compliment. They published my location alongside a picture of me that might as well as have had a target drawn on it.
Do the CIA-linked wonks at the Atlantic Council honestly believe the likely truth about COVID is a threat to “the public’s general safety”? They might. Maybe they think it could end the American empire, a destabilizing prospect that might make the world a riskier place. Or maybe they think the truth about US biowarfare could spark public outrage in China and set the stage for World War III. (And yes, I think we all can agree that World War III might threaten public safety.)
In any event, Patreon’s censorship was obviously political, not medical. They terminated me shortly after I broadcast back-to-back interviews with two big-name American politicians, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Sen. Mike Gravel. The Kucinich interview touched on America’s extreme corruption including high-level political assassinations, while my rebroadcast Gravel interview, complete with newly-minted transcript, featured the Senator speaking powerfully for 9/11 truth. These topics, like COVID as neocon biowar, are taboo in the lamestream as well as pseudo-alternative media; they are career-killers, because the careerists have gotten the message that the Deep State will crush anyone with sufficient “reach” who talks about them.
I am not a Trump voter, nor a Q follower. But I do know something about the Deep State, because I have read the literature, beginning with the work of UC-Berkeley professor Peter Dale Scott, who popularized the term. The permanent government that oversees US imperial policy accepts that committing crimes in service to empire is part of the cost of doing business. Among their crimes: Massive, treasonous, 4th-Amendment-violating surveillance of political “threats,” including dissident Americans like me. If they noticed me having subversive conversations with names like Kucinich and Gravel, and promoting ideas like Unz’s COVID hypothesis, they might well have decided that the time has come to try to put me out of business, or at least make my life more difficult. First step: demonetization. Destroying a person financially is one way to shut them up.
Well, I am not going to shut up. So here I am on Substack, a platform explicitly dedicated to the proposition “that hosting a broad range of views is good for democracy…We just disagree with those who would seek to tightly constrain the bounds of acceptable discourse. We think the principles of free speech can not only survive the internet, but that they can help us survive as a society that now must live with all the good and bad that the internet brings.”
Woo-hoo! That’s a scintillating mission statement, Substack. As a guy dedicated to expanding the Overton Window to truly panoramic dimensions, I could hardly have said it better myself.
So my former Patreon subscribers, and everyone else who appreciates no-holds-barred free speech, are invited to subscribe to me here at Substack.