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It is the sine qua non of a successful coup to first and foremost ensure the takeover of the means of information: radio, television, and newspapers. That is what the Greek colonels did in the last successful European coup back on April 21, 1967. Some years later, a colonel tried to overthrow the elected post-Franco Spanish government but failed, having taken over the Parliament rather than the TV and radio station.

This, of course, is old hat to Central American banana republics, and an everyday occurrence in the Middle East and in every developing African country. And now for the first time, a rather developed country that has been a democracy since its creation almost 250 years ago has abolished (canceled) free speech—unless, of course, it passes muster with the three great American oligarchs who decide what we can say.

Before I describe these three great American men who have the ultimate veto over our free speech, a word about the new online network platforms that represent a new kind of power that poses a challenge to the power of the state. These network platforms began as decentralized entities, but turned into oligarchical weapons for stifling speech their masters did not agree with. Simply put, a very few are excluding a hell of a lot from a domain the courts have recognized as a public forum. In other words, to hell with the First Amendment unless we like what you say. Which today means sex offenders have a right to access online social networks, but an ex-president of the U.S. does not.

And it gets better. An independent social media site, Parler, was closed down thanks to Amazon (and Apple), which is like GM shutting down Ford because the latter represents competition. Throughout this, a few Republican senators have raised their voices, but no one really took notice. What is being shut down, actually, is news and opinions the three oligarchs do not wish you to know. It’s as simple as that. Corporate monopolies and the left have now teamed up to shut down free speech in the latest form of cancel culture. The alliance of leftists and woke capitalists is the most lethal since the Stalin-Nazi pact of 1939, and it aims to regulate all thought from school to retirement. Control, censor, and cancel are the order of the day in social media, as Big Tech now regulates speech—and eventually our thoughts.

So who are these great men who have replaced, say, George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Abe Lincoln as our heroes? I find what they have in common are their good looks. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg’s face gives the impression of being covered by a silk stocking like those worn by bank robbers; Jack Dorsey, the Twitter man, looks like a 1960s drugged hippy bum fished out from the San Francisco Bay; while the richest, the Amazon man Jeff Bezos, is a poster boy for a sex-pervert satyr threatening young virgins in a French blue film of the ’30s. Great looks go hand in hand with great powers—just remember how handsome Hitler and Stalin were. These last two would have been envious of Zuckie, Jeff, and Jack’s thought-control abilities, as it would have saved them lots of manpower wasted in the camps.

The above and other tech giants now dominate the Democratic Party, own much of the media, and can manipulate the social media platforms, where a growing proportion of Americans get their news. Congress is not about to do anything about this because the Democrats are in charge, and even if they were not, powerful lobbies by the techies would go into overdrive to stop any legislation against their monopolies.

So what will the future bring under such circumstances? I see America becoming less democratic and increasingly feudal, with a middle class sort of becoming extinct. Small businesses such as mom-and-pop stores are already extinct because of Amazon; manufacturing and agricultural businesses are on their way down. What is to be done? With Congress in the pocket of the oligarchs, not much, I’m afraid. Soon there will be bans on ideological language, as it is now called by woke students and oligarch followers; words such as “woman” and “breastfeeding” will be banned.

Over in Britain, where wokeness is as virulent as it is over here, Boris’ government has decided to do something about it. The education minister has decreed that universities that stifle free speech and torpedo Britain’s history will be denied funds. Ditto for charities and other such bodies that depend on government subsidies. This is a good first step, as the Brits want to defend their culture and history from a noisy minority of activists who are attempting to rewrite Britain’s past.

And yet, never in a million years would I have suspected that I would write such a column as this one. A civil right of every American to speak freely was the first thing I learned about this country when I arrived here from Europe at age 12. Yet Google, Apple, and the three controlled by the beauties I’ve mentioned above are denying that right to millions of Americans, and Congress is doing nothing about it. Time to call in the Marines—our freedom of speech is disappearing faster than the three beauties’ billions are multiplying.