The #FreeStacy Story: Why Was My @rsmccain Account Suspended?

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Unexpectedly, and without explanation, my @rsmccain Twitter account was suspended Friday evening. Based on past experiences, my guess would be that this resulted from a complaint by one of the leading “social justice warriors” (SJWs) who have been at war with #GamerGate since August 2014. However, there was no reason stated for the suspension, and who knows? So I’ve switched to the @SexTroubleBook account I created to promote my book and meanwhile, friends who are fed up with Twitter’s bias and censorship started the #FreeStacy hashtag. This morning I shared some thoughts with a blogger friend who followed the #GamerGate saga:

As I have said for years: Being notorious is not the same as being famous, but it’s better than being anonymous.
That is to say, I don’t often complain about being hated or misunderstood. It comes with the territory. I started out in the news business as a $4.50-an-hour staff writer for a tiny weekly newspaper in Austell, Georgia. Most people have no idea what I did before I got involved in political journalism as an assistant national editor for The Washington Times in 1997, or even have any idea of the work I did there. The vast majority of people who read my blog or follow my Twitter feed have no knowledge of or interest in my personal “backstory.” It’s not about me. I am not the story. I am the guy telling the story, or I am the guy making jokes about the story. I understand that. But I think some people in the New Media era lose sight of this reality.
Politics is like football. It’s a team sport. Until I was in my mid-30s, I was a very partisan Democrat. Bill Clinton (who I voted for in 1992) cured me of my Democrat loyalty. During the 1990s, I began a rather deep autodidactic study of politics, history, economics, philosophy, etc. My politics are conservative, my economics are Austrian, my faith is Christian. It’s that simple — and certain people HATE me for it. But those people hate everybody who is not a Democrat. Fine. I understand that kind of hate, having once been a Democrat myself, but Democrats think of their personal hatred as “social justice.” And so I understand them better than they understand me.
However, it’s not about me. . . .

You can read the whole thing at The Ralph Retort.

This has been a crazy experience, but then again, my whole life has been a crazy experience, so I’m cool with it.

UPDATE: Linked by Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom, Legal Insurrection, Da Tech Guy Blog, Battleswarm, featured at Twitchy, Vox Day, now a Memeorandum thread and welcome, Instapundit readers!

UPDATE II: Robby Soave quotes me accurately at Reason magazine, and they’ll probably never forgive him for it.

UPDATE III: Here’s a podcast I did today:

UPDATE IV: Linked by Donald Douglas at American Power and by Dean Esmay at Dean’s World. Arguably the most interesting post, however, is Ken White at Popehat explaining why he really, really dislikes me and yet . . .

Well, he hates me with every fiber of his being, which is OK. It is a free country, and nobody is required to like me, or even to pretend to like me. However, if Hillary is elected president and our nation descends into anarchy and civil war, and from this chaos emerges a military junta in need of a Supreme Leader as figurehead of New America, I’m available for the gig.

Under such a regime, Generalissimo McCain will not only be obeyed, but also respected and, in fact, it will be the duty of his people to admire and praise the Generalissimo.

Is such an outcome . . . likely? Probably not, but you can’t say it is impossible. You are my people, America, and should circumstances require me to rescue our beloved nation — a swift coup d’état, at a time of crisis — then you understand it will be my duty to answer the call. The Enemies of the People will tremble! And the enemies of the Generalissimo are also the Enemies of the People, obviously.

Blog wars? The Generalissimo will be merciful. It would ill behoove the junta to be settling personal grudges and besides, our manpower will be strained to its limits, rounding up Women’s Studies majors and feminist Tumblr bloggers, giving them a few days’ training, loading them onto C-130s and dropping them by parachute into places like Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, etc., as part of our effort to bring about world peace.

 




 

427 comments

  3. Frankly, I am fed up with people saying that “X is a private company so they are within their rights to blah blah blah.” Well, no. Private companies cannot discriminate on the basis of a host of things, including religion and sexual orientation which, arguably, Twitter is doing. Some bakers and florists can attest to that. Someone, someday may sue them one day, and many of us will be applauding.

  8. Could you share the email you received about your suspension? It seems odd that it wouldn’t mention violating Twitter rules. If you didn’t see such an email, be sure to check spam folders.

  9. A private company should be able to discriminate on anything it wants. That also means people can discriminate against a company for any reason. Companies usually succeed by giving customers what they want under reasonable terms (price, location, etc.)

    That’s freedom.

    “Discriminate now.”

    It’s when government interferes with choice that stuff gets screwed up.

  11. Here’s the truth American journalists are too stupid to pursue: take away a half-dozen crackpot delusional mentally ill lesbian writers from 25 to 45 years ago and there are no women’s studies classes, no Gamergate, no Anita Sarkeesian, no Brianna Wu, no Arthur Chu, no white privilege, no rape culture, no Bechdel Test, no Sad Puppies, no Jessica Valenti, no Laurie Penny, no Amanda Marcotte, no Zoe Quinn, no “cisheteros,” no trigger warnings, no Black Lives Matter, no “male tears,” no “mansplaining,” no “sex is consent,” no Mattress Girl, no UVA Rolling Stone hoax, no “slut shaming,” no Pussy Riot, no Title IX extortion racket, no 1 in 5 rape lies, no “intersectionalism,” no Randi Harper, no Shanley Kane, no heteronormativity, no gender binary, no misgendering, no Bruce Jenner, no “compulsory heterosexuality,” no “manspreading,” no Patriarchy, no “marginalized,” no “colonial gaze,” no ableisms, no transphobia, no safe-spaces, no “race bending,” no sci-fi authors appealing to Disney for permission to put in gays in Star Wars novel movie tie-ins, no diversity literary panels, no female Thor, no “gendered slurs” or toys, no rape cover-ups in Europe, no Jezebel, no The Mary Sue, no army units wearing red high-heels, no imaginary “people of color,” no “My pronouns are…”, no one-sided harassment policies, no co-ed bathrooms, no 13 yr. olds getting hormone therapy, no “cultural appropriation,” no colleges routinely banning speakers, no calls to “de-white” your library, no scientists being shamed for their shirts, no lied-about Nobel winners running off to Japan, no National Union of Students passing a motion for gay men to stop imitating black women, no “toxic masculinity.”

    Imagine something as nutty and with almost as narrow a foundation as the Church of Scientology having that kind of impact on the American landscape and then imagine journalism as being dead in America.

  14. Twitter is no longer a “private company” it is being publicity traded and publicity traded companies loses some rights.

    And really Twitter and Facebook are almost like a public utilities. People use them to get news etc

  15. Folks I was suspended a few years back simply because I challenged the #FreeKate narrative that an adult having finger sex with a minor in a public bathroom an expression of love. It was only a matter of time that the megalomaniac thought police went after bigger fish.

  16. You’re right, it is publicly traded.

    But (and this is the Really Important Bit), it answers to it’s ownership and not the general public.

    A company succeeds by making it’s customers happier than the competition.

    It sounds to me that we need Twitter competition.

  17. Will Twitter become the next Tumblr and eventually the next MySpace?

    I don’t use Twitter or Facebook because of their fascist tendencies so I have no horse in the race, but banning thought from a venue rarely helps that venue thrive and survive. But fascists don’t seem to have figured that out.

  19. It’s an economic truth: If you aren’t paying for it, you are NOT the customer; you are the product being marketed to others. Twitter limiting and censoring people for political reasons is doing nothing more than controlling the product it is selling to its chosen market.

    Yes, we need a conservative social media platform, but it would receive no more recognition from modern culture than does Fox News, and MUCH worse in the way of verbal assaults and insults.

  20. Had one briefly, under duress.

    I studiously avoided [email protected] until my boss’s best client, mr rockstar-of-the-industry-fly-around-the-world-genuine-big-shot-himself cornered me @ work on one of his projects.

    ****
    Mr Man : (with barely perceptible thai accent) you see my photos from Thailand? Big success, lots of fun. You friend me on facebook, comment on photos.

    Me: I’m not on facebook.

    Mr Man: YOU FRIEND ME ON FACEBOOK, COMMENT ON PHOTOS

    Me: yes, okay

    Mr Man: say “hi” to father.

    ****

    I lasted about a year. Then I posted a comment about going to a friend’s wedding to which my brother wasn’t invited, Ditched it shortly thereafter.

  23. I don’t use them because of what they support with the money they get. It was disappointing to see Hot Air go to Facebook comments, given Morrissey’s supposed Roman Catholicism, and where the money goes that they get off their data mining scams.

    Drumwaster is exactly correct. The users of those scams are the product and if you use them you are allowing yourself to be sold for the benefit of organizations like Planned Parenthood who get support from both of those SJW businesses.

  26. Neo, these are SJWs we’re dealing with. Rules aren’t for them, just everyone that doesn’t agree with them.

  27. The entire idea of “public accommodation” was started by the left and applied to anyone that invites the public to use their service or facilities. The left applies the concept with alacrity to anyone that is doing something they don’t like, then retreat behind the “private business” thing when they are called on it.

    In other words, they lie. But they are SJWs and SJWs always lie.

  28. They can also be sued for allowing the behavior as well. Whewn the stock price does fall, I think you can expect it to happen.

  29. How did Scientology become what it is? How do people move to S. America and end up drinking poisoned Kool-Aid?

    Now imagine each of those having the sheen of being extensions of the Civil Rights and women’s equal rights movements. Hubbard probably dreamed he could’ve pulled that one off. He’d have been a frickin’ governor.

    Don’t underestimate how much this cult passes itself off as anti-Jim Crow and the women’s vote. Looking at gender studies text books and lectures tells a different story, and they’ve had decades to practice and perfect their circular Orwellian arguments that have that surface plausibility but which suck in all logic and reason. Suffice it to say there is a reason they’re not eager to debate people. This is how hate speech is mainstreamed into the public arena as “social justice.”

  34. No one has an inherent right to use another entity’s soapbox for public trash-talking. Their property, their rules, end of story. Not that this perverse obsession over “SJW”s isn’t comical to behold.

  40. It’s autocompleting…for now. Not trending, though, probably because a lot of people are still using #FreeStacy.

  42. You don’t have to tell me.

    I’m the guy who still gets flamed because I once wrote “The people making the loudest noises about “diversity” are the very ones who want to take it away.”

    Truth still works, it just has to be carefully applied and concentrated.

  50. I don’t use them for the same reasons and then some.
    I would lose 90% of my clients if they knew I am a Conservative, so I choose not to participate in any of that crap.
    I’m probably better off.

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