Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –  host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Dr. Carol Swain to the newsmakers line who explained the details of being recently censored on LinkedIn.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line by all-star panelist Carol Swain. Carol, I’ve got a couple of questions for you. To start off with the one we ended the last segment on. What does it mean for Nashville as a community now that the Community Oversight Board is totally controlled and run by social justice warriors who hate the police?
Swain: I don’t see the (COB) Community Oversight Board being any different than Nashville as a whole. We know that the city council is leftist. And it fits in with other cities run by Democrats. Nothing new.
Leahy: Well, yep. I think you’re probably right in that regard. You know, Craig Huey is a digital marketing expert who is a refugee from California, and he thinks it’s time to try and take back the city of Nashville. We’ll talk to you a little bit later about that because I have some ideas I want to share with you offline.
Swain: Wait a minute. Take back the city of Nashville? Take back the city? We’ve never had the city. We have to take it for the first time.
Leahy: Okay, we’ll take it for the first time, Carol. I’m with you on that. Now I want to ask you a question about censorship and Carol Swain. You are apparently having your account restricted by LinkedIn. Tell us about that.
Swain: Well, first of all, I am a path breaker. And so that means things happened to me that don’t normally happen to other people. So I’m always blazing a new trail. I guess it was Saturday or Sunday when I tried to log in to my LinkedIn account and I was told that I needed to verify my identification. And so I uploaded my driver’s license, verified my identification, and then I was told that I was restricted. There is a process to appeal.
I appealed and I went through the process first of finding out why was I restricted. And they cited on January 21 the day after the inauguration that I posted a comment that asked people if they were paying attention to what was happening in the states where voter fraud had been reported. And I made some comments about the investigations that were ongoing at the time. And I used hashtags about the election that they didn’t like. #ElectionFraud and #ElectionStolen.
And then when the Mike Lindell special was aired on One American News, I sent it out and those were my two infractions. And usually, I’ve been told that LinkedIn takes down posts that they don’t like and they warn you. They slap you on the hand. They restricted my entire account. And I appealed and pointed out that I’m an award-winning political scientist and that I did not violate their rules that other people post articles.
And my statements had not been proved false nor had the Mike Lindell special. They responded that they would investigate more. So it kept getting escalated up to different levels. And finally, I told them they had 24 hours to get my account back on or I would go public. And this is after they sent me a letter saying it would be 14 days. I also contacted One American News. They covered it last night. But they got it back up in 25 hours.
And they told me that as long as I behaved myself, (Leahy laughs) they would not restrict my account permanently. I responded again that I did not see how I could have violated their policies and that I had not posted anything that had been proven false. We went back and forth a few times and then the person finally said your account is back up. As far as I’m concerned this matter is closed. (Chuckles)
Leahy: Well, obviously, this is the technique right? They limit freedom of speech and they play these games. And you go through a process and they never tell you really all the details of it. You did finally get those details. Nothing wrong with what you posted obviously. This is part of the ongoing problem of censorship from Google, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Ultimately Carol, do you think LinkedIn will find an excuse to shut your account again?
Swain: Probably not. I’m too much trouble. I kept challenging them using reason and facts. So with LinkedIn, I’m not that worried about them. Maybe I should be. I would not want to be shut down by Twitter or Facebook because I have a large platform there. But at the same time I realized that it could happen and that’s why I’m on MeWe, Gab, CloutHub, Local, Telegram, and I’m sure I’m missing a few.
Leahy: Parler is back up. Are you back on Parler?
Swain: I’m on Parler but I’ve not been able to open my account. I didn’t try yesterday. But yes, I’m glad that Parler is back up. And I don’t believe you can squelch truth. And no matter what they do to us I don’t believe it would be effective. It’s just like in the Bible. Whenever they tried to squelch the gospel it spread more rapidly.
And I’m finding that a lot of liberals are concerned about the cancel culture because they don’t know when it will turn on them. And as a consequence, we have more allies. It’s not just conservative. And as far as the platforms, a lot of people say leave Facebook, leave Twitter, or leave all of these formats. I say no. I don’t want to be part of a ghetto. I don’t want to preach to the choir. I want to have an exchange. And I feel like part of my role in life is to get people to think.
Leahy: Facebook and Twitter, how big is your platform with them?
Swain: Well Facebook, I have 74,000 followers on my public page. And then I keep my personal page at 5,000. Now people come and go. I think some of those people are leaving Facebook. But I have over 1000 people waiting that I can just plug in when I’m ready. And I had a problem with Facebook a few days ago.
They said I had violated one of their policies, but they didn’t say which post had violated the policy. So I have to go through the process of trying to email through their system which is very difficult. But I emailed several different addresses for more information. And I kind of had an idea which post was the offending post because only one had been removed.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.Â
The question comes to mind, is Tennessee headed back into another “Dark Age” as it goes along with political pressure from the Left? Any educational agenda whose underlying premise is to fabricate history to make citizens more comfortable about themselves, is destined to failure. Time to shine some light on these agendas before the damage is unrepairable.