Surviving Capitalism (Not) : A message from Patrice Greanville, chief editor of The Greanville Post.

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, January 27, 2018

A message from Patrice Greanville, chief editor of The Greanville Post.

The following is Patrice Greanville's introduction to Caitlin Johnstone's post entitled "Facebook Is Throttling My Articles, So It’s Time To Diversify Platforms. Hi Steemit!"

By now only those who are really NOT paying attention may be s[h]ocked to hear the corporate plutocracy is actively and furtively stifling genuine left/dissenting news and comment on social platforms, media and other venues. What is happening to Caitlin Johnstone is also happening to us. The Greanville Post has lost almost 45% of its circulation since mid-2016 alone, with dramatic losses after the election of Donald Trump, and although many new readers continue to make up for some of the downturn, the impact cannot be denied. Proof that only the real left is affected (and some of the “wild right”) is that the fatuous liberaloid blogosphere—still calling themselves “the left”, a cruel joke— sails on without disruption, and possibly even with some assistance from the powers that be. Since it is clear that Facebook, Twitter, Google and the rest of that uber corporate sneaky tribe are soon likely to become fully hostile territory to true journalists and dissidents in the United States and the rest of the West, it’s time to seek new platforms, and other modes of mass communication and struggle. We may soon contemplate the need to go back to a version of the Russian Zamisdat. 1984 is now, and the liberals, as we warned all along, now openly in cahoots with the CIA, and still idiotically rallying under the banner of the Democrats, are the chief undertakers of free speech. It was bound to happen. Lenin once said that the capitalists would sell revolutionaries the rope to hang them with, but he may have been wrong. Contemporary capitalists with their shitloads of highly-paid prostituted advisors and sentries are not liable to make that tactical mistake. From the beginning of the 20th century, at least, the US ruling class has completely understood the value of controlling the thinking of the masses, and reality has been shaped accordingly. The neutral Internet eventually came to challenge that underhanded stranglehold on people’s ability to grasp the truth, a dangerous thing for a blood-soaked fake democracy, and now the global plutocrats are clamping down. Creative thinking and much courage will be needed to survive and hopefully prevail in this brave mew world being thrust upon us.