Updated Dec 7: Another screenshot showing ‘webuser17’ offering to pay money to Michael Landry, owner of Tantramar Community Concerns to get conversations with Bonnie Swift and accusations of her using ‘fake profiles’.
During Tantramar’s recent municipal election campaign, former admins Jean-Pascal Lavoie and John Dale of the Tantramar Community Concerns Facebook group (previously named Sackville Community Concerns) were removing posts and comments by mayoral candidate Ms. Swift and others, according to Michael Landry, the Facebook group’s owner. This may have affected the election results since people weren’t able to see and discuss her platform, unlike the other candidates.
Michael also said that he hadn’t been closely monitoring the group for the past 2 years so it is likely that many other voices were being silenced even prior to the election.
Jean-Pascal has referred to people he disagrees with as “fascists” on Facebook. According to econlib.org: “As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power. Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners.” The accusations of fascism might instead be a case of the psychological phenomenon known as “projection”.
Then Jean-Pascal and John Dale had the audacity to contact the Elections NB Officer to complain about election interference (again another projection of what they themselves are potentially doing). Unfortunately there is a growing trend in society of censorship, cancel culture, intolerance to opposing views by people who will even stoop to contact a person’s employer to get them fired. Again, see how this is actually a type of fascism, exerting control via private owners (employers or advertisers at corporations).
Jean-Pascal thinks that violent fascists are rising in small towns.. These irrational fears often originate from the corporate media. Here are 2 of Jean-Pascal’s recent messages to Michael:
As I mentioned in a previous article, “these types of extreme views can often result in mental illness and even alcoholism, which can result in some of the unhinged activities that I am describing in this post.”
The funny thing is that I’m personally for individualism and as small a government as possible, which is the furthest thing from fascism or nationalism (which has a collectivist mentality). Who are the ones working with government, media and big tech to silence opposition? Who are the ones pushing war and promoting big pharma without allowing a sensible debate? The reason things get so contentious is that people are fighting over power and control of other people via the government which has way too much impact on our lives.
Michael is tired of the censorship which is happening not just locally but on multiple fronts (even on Twitter as we have seen lately). It appears that the people censoring can’t handle different opinions or are even able to debate the topics without resorting to ad hominem attacks, appeals to emotion or even worse. Recently in the US, the government and big tech colluded to censor stories about Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, in particular on Twitter. 16% of US voters admitted they wouldn’t have voted for Biden if they had known about the story. This has similarities to what happened to mayoral candidate Bonnie Swift on the Tantramar Community Concerns Facebook group.
Michael recently added me as one of the admins of his group because I am against the growing censorship and intolerance to opposing views in social media, big tech, corporate media and the government. As admin and according to the rules I have been approving posts from both sides of the political spectrum. But we mainly want everyone in Tantramar to unite and learn about all the wards (challenges with amalgamation, local businesses, events) which is what we are seeing a lot more of lately on the Facebook group. However, even though vigorous debate is welcome, according to the rules Michael created, any abuse or nitpicking of an admin results in an instant ban. But ultimately things might devolve to separate echo chambers as usual.
