The Bible posits that the world is in the grip of the Father of Lies. With each passing day I am inclined to agree.

Today there is a war on truth and free thought. It is a war fought on the airwaves, in the newsroom, on social media, in print and in lectures. It is a war for nothing less than your mind.

This is not a war fought with guns or bombs--not yet. The weapons of choice are obfuscations, emotional hijacking, memory-holing, cyberswarming and outright deception. When these weapons are exposed and blunted, the next step is censorship, discriminatory firing, demonetisation and no-platforming. In recent times we are seeing the latest round of escalation: riots and targeted violence. The purpose is to smother the truth with lies, and punish everyone who speaks the truth.

Who are the ones running this war? The radical progressives who wish to bend the world to their whims. The oligarchs who profit from the manipulation of demographics, economies and politics. The governments allied with them who seek to keep the people under their thumb.

Who are their targets? They are the people who commit the crimes of thinking for themselves and speaking their minds. They are the ones who express even a hint of skepticism of the party line. They are ordinary people whom these oligarchs wish to control. People like you and me.

The Quiet War

Everybody knows the political orthodoxy. Manmade climate change will lead to an environmental apocalypse. Neo-Nazis are right-wing extremists threatening the world. Anyone who criticises Islam must be Islamophobic and racist. Diversity uber alles, and everyone who questions it are racists/sexists/homophobic/transphobic/bigots. The mainstream media always tells the truth.

And if you question the narrative, you are branded a heretic and punished.

James Damore was fired for distributing a memo that highlighted the echo chamber in Google. The mainstream media lied about his memo and disappeared his citations. The Establishment turned him into a villain, ruining his job prospects everywhere in the technology sector, for the crime of daring to contradict the narrative and shine a spotlight on potentially illegal HR practices.

Damore's departure is a symptom of a deeper rot within Silicon Valley. If a high-profile user's politics do not completely agree with those of a platform, they are gone. Google, Facebook, YouTube, PayPal and Patreon have been relentlessly purging thoughtcriminals from their platforms--and the mainstream media ignores them.

Here is a sampling of their latest victims:

Paul Joseph Watson was banned on Facebook for a video making fun of a feminist, a video in which the 'target' was in on the joke. His YouTube account was also demonetised.

YouTube personalities Diamond and Silk discovered their videos were demonetised, and are now filing a class action suit.

Pop critic Rageaholic's YouTube videos were demonetised shortly after uploading. Even an innocuous one discussing the games he's looking forward to in 2018.

Giovanna Laine was issued a strike for a livestream and the video was removed -- 3 hours before it was scheduled to begin.

Patreon deleted high-profile right-winger Lauren Southern's account while allowing those of violent Antifa users to stand.

YouTube has demonetised every firearm channels -- but not channels that promote gun control.

Public intellectual Thomas Wictor's YouTube account was terminated. After he posted a video on Vimeo, his account was restored without comment.

PayPal banned Jihad Watch from accepting donations on its platform -- though the ban was quickly rescinded.

The Amazing Atheist's YouTube content was demonetised.

SouthFront, which reports on world conflicts, had their YouTube account terminated.

Social media network Gab had its app refused from the Apple App Store nine times, and their Android app was taken off the Google Play Store. The official explanation was that Gab promoted hate speech. But that same hate speech is prevalent on other social media networks like Twitter, Facebook and tumblr, whose apps are not banned.

Twitter has shadowbanned high-profile members of the SFF community, including Brian Niemeier. Shadowbanned users can't see replies to their tweets, and their friends can't see the original tweets. More troublesome personalities, chiefly right-wing personalities, had their accounts deleted.

Google altered its search algorithms to filter out 'fake news'. According to Renegade Inc.:

Wikileaks experienced a 30% decline in traffic from Google searches. Democracy Now fell by 36%. Truthout dropped by 25%. Its own traffic dropped by 67% percent over the same period. Alternet saw a 63% decline in traffic. Media Matters saw a 36% drop in traffic. Counterpunch.org fell by 21%. The Intercept fell by 19%.

Silicon Valley is running a campaign to punish users who do not toe the party line, and the mainstream media isn't covering it. With so many high-profile creators taken off the airwaves and so little from the media, the only conclusion is that the media is deliberately hiding the news through non-coverage.

And when the news can't be hidden, the mainstream media will obfuscate it.

The media machine spotlit the Neo-Nazis who marched on Charlottesville. Self-righteous condemnation and op-eds flood the papers and the screens whenever someone so much as utters a "Sieg Heil!". But what about Antifa and their riots in Berkeley, Hamburg, Seattle and Boston?

The media ignores the Antifa who show up with makeshift weapons and body armour, bottles of urine and brass knuckles and bike locks. They downplay the actions of the Antifa thugs who attack everyone around them, framing it as self-defence or as a response to right-wing violence or the presence of Trump supporters. They won't talk about how Antifa rioters violently disrupted speeches by conservative darling Milo Yiannopoulis.

It's clear who the mainstream media sympathises with. CNN claimed that Antifa seeks peace through violence before amending its headline shortly after. Other journalists have expressed sympathy with Antifa.

The media is painting Neo-Naxis as right-wing extremists to smear everyone on the Right while studiously ignoring Antifa violence. When Donald Trump condemned "both sides" at Charlottesville for committing violence, he is attacked for not explicitly calling out the Neo-Nazis. And the media won't discuss the similarities between the antifascists and actual fascists.

The culture war is spilling into the streets. This war is not about the Left or Right; the victims of these oligarchs come from both sides of the political spectrum. This is about defining acceptable discourse and rewriting history. This is technology oligarchs punishing content creators who pushed controversial opinions that do not square with their ideology. This is the mainstream media burying the truth to further a political agenda. This is a deliberate collusion to hide the truth.

This is a war for your mind.

The Weapons of Truth

This war isn't limited to politics. This is an extension of the culture war fought over Gamergate, Sad Puppies, the Hugo Awards and the Dragon Awards. The dark powers seek to control everything: your culture, your politics, your beliefs.

If you value freedom of speech and conscience, you have to fight.

Get off hostile platforms. Sooner or later, the oligarchs will come for you. Strike first. I stopped using Google as a search engine a long time ago. I barely use Facebook and Twitter if I can avoid it. If I have to reference a mainstream news site, I use archive.io. If the oligarchs choose to engage in economic warfare, reprisals are called for.

Use alternative platforms that support your right to think and speak freely. Gab is my social media platform of choice. DuckDuck Go is my default search engine. Brave browser can replace almost every Net browser, including Google Chrome. Infogalactic is superior to Wikipedia. I'm on Steemit partly as a defence against government censorship. By supporting and building these alternative platforms, the oligarchs cannot silence you.

Always speak the truth. Truth is the sword that cuts through all deceptions and sophistries. By always seeking and speaking the truth, you develop an immunity to manipulations and lies, and gain an understanding of the true state of the world. No amount of lies can override the truth; you need only the courage and the will to speak it.

If you diverge from the narrative by even an infinitesimal degree, the social justice warriors will brand you a Nazi -- and they claim it is righteous to punch a Nazi. If you dare to speak your mind, you will be on their hit list sooner or later. Like it or not, you're now a part of the culture war, the war to take back your right to speak freely.

But deny the oligarchs your soul and continue speaking the truth, and they will have no power over you.

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The Dragon Awards needs YOU to hold back the tide of SJWs who wish to hijack them. Vote for No Gods, Only Daimons under the Alternate History category. You can find the novel here, and you can sign up for the Dragon Awards here.