On Friday, although President Trump is still president of the United States, Twitter officially and permanently banned him from the site.  The other media sites were not far behind.  Indeed, they're systematically banning anyone associated with Trump's contention that there was election fraud.  Moreover, they're doing so by erasing Trump's actual words in order to present him as a vicious agitator.  They're also erasing the more than half a million peaceful supporters in D.C. to focus only on a small cohort.

On Wednesday, more than half a million peaceful people showed up in D.C. to support President Trump.  A minute percentage of that group ended up in the Capitol, and the police killed an unarmed Air Force veteran.  (Defund the Police has been silent about this killing.)  Debate will rage about whether Trump supporters were set up.  For the purposes of this post, the only thing that matters is that it was the justification the tech monopolies needed to start a purge.

The tech companies contend that Trump instigated violence and his supporters can no longer be trusted.  And no, it doesn't matter that for much of 2020, Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioted, burned, and looted and threatened, beat, and murdered people.  Not only did they stay on social media, but they were also lionized on social media and mainstream media for their thrilling, empowering exploits.

Trump did not instigate violence.  The tech tyrants have systematically deleted Trump's words and the search engines will not help you find them, but you can, with difficulty, discover what he said on January 6:

We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. (Emphasis mine.)

After the day's events, Trump was clear:

I know your pain. I know you're hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don't want anybody hurt. It's a very tough period of time. There's never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us — from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can't play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You're very special. You've seen what happens. You see they way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home. And go home in peace.

Twitter and Facebook deleted the video and locked Trump out.

Having erased facts so they could claim Trump incited violence, the tech monopolies were set.  To date, this is the purge, in chronological order, all predicated on Trump "promoting violence":

• Believe it or not, it started with Pence unfollowing Trump on Twitter.
• Zuckerberg personally banned Trump from Facebook.
• Snapchat locked Trump's account.
• Shopify removed Trump's organization and campaign store.
• Michelle Obama called on all tech companies to ban President Trump.
• Facebook deleted the Walk Away movement page, including 500,000 Walk Away testimonials.
• Twitter banned General Flynn.
• Twitter banned Sidney Powell.
• Google's YouTube terminated Steve Bannon's War Room podcast while 500,000 were watching in real time.
• Twitter permanently banned President Trump's personal account.
• The Gateway Pundit says Twitter banned hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other lesser-known sites that challenged election results.
• The Trump campaign's email service has banned the campaign from its platform.
• Twitter deleted the official President of the United States account (@POTUS)

At this point, some might be thinking a lot of people have said for a long time that conservatives should leave those hostile, censorious platforms.  There are free speech alternatives, most notably Parler (a Twitter alternative), Me-We (a Facebook alternative), Gab (another Twitter alternative), and Rumble (a YouTube alternative).  Considering that we are the product, why in the world were we giving ourselves away for free?

And finally, on Friday, Trump apparently did go to Parler.  The tech giants, though, were ready.  Because Parler is a bulletin board, not a publisher, it does not moderate "parleys."  Google has therefore removed Parler from the App store for "user safety."  Apple is threatening to do the same unless Parler starts acting like the other tech companies and censors speech Democrats find offensive.  Amazon is also making noises about deplatforming Parler.

This is what happens when private enterprise becomes the town square.  It seemed to make sense in a time when the mainstream media were manifestly biased.  It never occurred to people that the tech corporations would be just as biased, only with even more power.  We currently have a situation in which the president has no avenues of communication because corporations have silenced him.  Joseph McCarthy was a piker compared to today's Democrats.

Image: Trump banned from Facebook by Andrea Widburg.