In the past, I’ve talked about how Facebook has censored my main blog’s page for posting a meme of Kermit the frog driving a car. They didn’t like the idea of a puppet frog driving a car – said it would cause people to commit suicide, or something. But Facebook actually has a much longer record of censoring people. And conservative Rachel Bovard has the list.

Her article is up at the New York Post:

Consider how Facebook, in particular, treated the circumstances surrounding Kyle Rittenhouse, the teen acquitted last week of all charges in the self-defense killings of two men and the shooting of another during last summer’s riots in Kenosha, Wis. Immediately after the incident occurred, and despite video evidence which made a self-defense charge instantly plausible, Facebook declared it a “mass murder” and under that justification blocked searches for Rittenhouse’s name and any content in “praise or support” for him on the site — including links to contribute to his legal defense and videos purporting to show Rittenhouse providing aid to protesters.

In other words, Facebook determined that the only speech allowed on its platform was to declare Rittenhouse’s guilt, not his innocence. Perhaps prompted by Facebook’s actions or merely in spite of them, PayPal cut off affiliation with fundraising efforts for Rittenhouse, and so did GoFundMe.

Rittenhouse self-defense is “mass murder”, but Facebook won’t say the same about the Waukesha killings. They probably think that’s “self-defense” because the accused killer supports Black Lives Matter, just like all the Big Tech social media companies.

Politifact is one of the fact-checkers used by Facebook to censor speech that is critical of the Democrat party or its allies.

Rachel writes:

PolitiFact, a Facebook-affiliated arbiter of facts, declared it was “false” that Rittenhouse was in legal possession of his firearm. The “fact-checker” did so by failing to account for exceptions in Wisconsin law which made his possession legal. (The gun charge was thrown out during the trial for the same reasons.)

A jury has acquitted Rittenhouse on all charges — those brought by the prosecutors and by Facebook — so now what? Will all the accounts which were banned or otherwise punished for speaking in his defense be reinstated? Will the self-righteous fact-checkers at PolitiFact be held accountable in any way? Will Facebook admit it was wildly wrong or simply pretend like it didn’t make a blundering, ham-fisted judgment about Rittenhouse absent any due process, one which contributed to shaping a false national narrative?

I’ve written about Politifact’s record of “fact-checking” many times on this blog.

Politifact is in the news again for labeling actual video of Democrats explaining their opinions of v4cc1nes as “False News”.

Fox News reports:

Amid the Biden administration’s struggle to v4cc1nate Americans, a video surfaced comments made during the 2020 election cycle by the then-Democratic ticket that cast doubt in a v4cc1ne developed under President Trump.

Biden suggested back in August that any v4cc1ne that comes along is “not likely to go through all the tests that need to be done and the trials that are needed to be done.”

[…]Biden repeatedly indicated only if there was enough “transparency” would he take the v4cc1ne and that the “American people should not have confidence” in the v4cc1ne developed by the Trump administration if his concerns weren’t addressed.

Harris was heard during a CNN interview that getting a v4cc1ne that’s approved by the Trump administration would be “an issue for all of us” and “if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, I’m not taking it” during the vice presidential debate.

However, PolitiFact issued a so-called “fact-check” with the headline “Biden, Harris distrusted Trump with C0V1D-19 v4cc1nes, not the v4cc1nes themselves.”

This isn’t the first time that Politifact, which is used by all the big social media companies to “fact check” speech, has been caught protecting their favored political party.

Let’s see some examples of past bias.

Arizona Senate Race

Politifact screwed up their fact-check for the Arizona Senate race.

The Daily Caller explains:

PolitiFact incorrectly labeled it “mostly false” that Democratic Senate candidate Kyrsten Sinema “protested troops in a pink tutu” during its live fact-check of the Arizona Senate debate Monday night.

It’s an established fact that Sinema, a former Green Party activist who co-founded an anti-war group, wore a pink tutu at one of the multiple anti-war protests she attended in 2003.

“While we were in harm’s way, she was protesting our troops in a pink tutu,” Republican candidate Martha McSally, a former Air Force fighter pilot, said during Monday night’s debate.

Here’s their Politifact’s evaluation of McSally’s claim:

And here’s the photo of Kyrsten Sinema, protesting the troops, in a pink tutu:

The Daily Caller notes:

A 2003 Arizona State University news article at the time described Sinema wearing “something resembling a pink tutu” at one of the protests.

[…]Sinema openly associated with fringe elements of the far-left during her anti-war activism.

She promoted an appearance by Lynne Stewart, a lawyer who was convicted of aiding an Islamic terrorist organization, in 2003.

Sinema also reportedly partnered with anarchists and witches in her anti-war activism and said she did “not care” if Americans wanted to join the Taliban.

And now for the big one: Politifact’s fact-checking of Obamacare.

Obama’s claims about Obamacare

Avik Roy, health care policy expert at Forbes magazine, wrote about Politifact’s assessment of Obama’s promise to Americans about keeping their health plans after Obamacare.

In 2008, before the presidential election, PolitiFact rated Obama’s claims about Obamacare “True”:

Roy writes: (links removed)

On October 9, 2008, Angie Drobnic Holan of PolitiFact published an article using the site’s “Truth-O-Meter” to evaluate this claim: “Under Barack Obama’s health care proposal, ‘if you’ve got a health care plan that you like, you can keep it.’”

And she concluded:

[…]…people who want to keep their current insurance should be able to do that under Obama’s plan. His description of his plan is accurate, and we rate his statement True.”

Roy notes:

PolitiFact’s pronouncements about Obamacare were widely repeated by pro-Obama reporters and pundits, and had a meaningful impact on the outcome of the election. Indeed, in 2009, PolitiFact won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 2008 campaign.

Here’s the screen capture from 2008:

Before the election, it’s true! And Obama got re-elected, because people believed that. But what happened after the election?

In 2013, after the 2012 election, PolitiFact rated Obama’s claims about Obamacare “Pants On Fire”:

Roy writes: (links removed)

On December 12, [2013] the self-appointed guardians of truth and justice at PolitiFact named President Obama’s infamous promise—that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it”—its 2013 “Lie of the Year.”

[…][N]one of the key facts that made that promise “impossible” in 2008 had changed by 2013. The President’s plan had always required major disruption of the health insurance market; the Obamacare bill contained the key elements of that plan; the Obamacare law did as well. The only thing that had changed was the actual first-hand accounts of millions of Americans who were losing their plans now that Obamacare was live.

And the screen capture from 2013:

So when Politifact rates a statement by a Democrat as true, what they really mean is that it’s pants-on-fire-false, but it’s election time so they don’t say that. It’s not like the critical assessments of Obamacare from health policy experts were not out there between 2007-2012. I know, because I blogged on every study and report on the predicted effects of the law that I could find. But the intellectually lazy journalism-major clowns at Politifact couldn’t be bothered to read those studies and reports.

Secular left journalists are the stupidest people on the planet. Stick with reading The Federalist and Daily Wire if you want to know what’s really going on in the world.