Despite its modest size, NC has twice stood up to the bullying tactics of the Censorship Industrial Complex (2016, the Washington Post; 2024, Google). Please help us to continue our track record of success by giving generously at the Tip Jar.
The goal of the political leadership in the US, the EU, the UK, and other ostensibly liberal democracies is simple: to gain much greater, more granular control over the information being shared on the internet. As Matt Taibbi told Russell Brand in an interview last year, both the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Biden Administration’s proposed RESTRICT Act (which Yves dissected in April, 2023) are essentially a “wish list that has been passed around” by the transatlantic elite “for some time,” including at a 2021 gathering at the Aspen Institute.
The same goes for the UK’s Online Safety Bill, which Kier Starmer would like nothing better than to beef up. Likewise, Canada has introduced sweeping new internet regulation through its Online News Act, which includes, among other things, a link tax, and Online Streaming Act. So, too, has Australia through a censorship bill that is strikingly similar to the EU’s DSA and even includes a punitive fine of up to 2% of global profits for social media companies that do not comply.
It’s not hard to see why. With economic conditions deteriorating rapidly across the West, after decades of rampant financialisation, kakistocracy, and corporatisation, to the extent that even the United Nations is now one giant private-public partnership, the social contract is, to all intents and purposes, worthless. Even the WEF admits that corporations, its main constituency, have turbocharged inequality. Populism is on the rise just about everywhere and angry and fragmented protest movements have been growing since at least 2019.
Thanks largely to the countervailing information still available on the internet, governments are rapidly losing control of the narrative on key issues, including the war in Ukraine and Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Their stock response has been to clamp down on the ability of citizens to use the internet to generate, consume and share important news, dissenting views and uncomfortable truths.
These, I believe, are among Naked Capitalism’s core functions: to share the pressing news of the day from around the world, primarily through its Links and Water Cooler pages; to produce valuable, in-depth analysis of economic, political and geopolitical trends and developments in its original posts; and to raise, and elicit from its commentariat, dissenting views and uncomfortable truths.[1] It is an essential, empowering and edifying service that is arguably in greater need today, in this age of encroaching digital censorship, than at any time since the site’s inception almost two decades ago. To support this independent source of information, analysis, and debate, please go to the Tip Jar and give generously.
Naked Capitalism’s ability to fulfil those functions, however, is likely to face mounting obstacles and challenges in the months and years to come, as (to paraphrase former State Department official Mike Benz) the Blob, spearheaded by the US State Dept, the UK Foreign Office and the military, intelligence and diplomacy arms and assets of NATO, escalates its proxy war against freedom of speech and “all global manifestations of domestic populism.”
But to quote Shakespeare, though Naked Capitalism “be but little, she is fierce.” Despite its modest size, this site has twice stood up to the bullying tactics of the Censorship Industrial Complex. In 2016, NC was one of some 200 independent media websites classified by the CIA-and-Ukraine-ultranationalist-connected PropOrNot blogsite as useful Russian idiots. It was one of the opening salvos against the independent media during the Russiagate madness. When the Bezos-owned Washington Post featured a front-page article amplifying the shady group’s unfounded allegations, NC’s response, through its equally fierce lawyer, was to call for an prompt retraction as well as demand a prominent public apology and an equally prominent opportunity to reply. Readers rallied then to support us; will you have our back again in this fight for open information? Our donation page beckons!
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Nick Corbishley 