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Samizdata quote of the day – why did Zuckerberg choose now to confess?

Consider Mark Zuckerberg’s revelation and its implications for our understanding of the last four years, and what it means for the future.

On many subjects important to public life today, vast numbers of people know the truth, and yet the official channels of information sharing are reluctant to admit it. The Fed admits no fault in inflation and neither do most members of Congress. The food companies don’t admit the harm of the mainstream American diet. The pharmaceutical companies are loath to admit any injury. Media companies deny any bias. So on it goes.

And yet everyone else does know, already and more and more so.

This is why the admission of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was so startling. It’s not what he admitted. We already knew what he revealed. What’s new is that he admitted it. We are simply used to living in a world swimming in lies. It rattles us when a major figure tells us what is true or even partially or slightly true. We almost cannot believe it, and we wonder what the motivation might be.

Jeffrey Tucker

30 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – why did Zuckerberg choose now to confess?

  • Paul Marks

    The House of Representatives is investigating – so Mr Zuckerberg may wish to get his confession, and justification “the government made me do it”, out before he is exposed.

    In truth Mr Zuckerberg was involved up to his neck in the rigging of the 2020 Presidential Election – and not just by censorship on his platforms, he provided, via front “charitable groups”, almost half a billion Dollars for the rigging of voting and vote counting.

    With the possibility of President Trump returning to the Whitehouse and appointing a real Attorney General (not an establishment stooge such as Bill Barr) Mr Zuckerberg wants to avoid prosecution for conspiracy to commit election fraud in relation to the 2020 Presidential Election.

    However, as with Google – I expect there still to be an in built Democrat bias on the platforms of Mr Zuckerberg.

    So he is playing both sides – trying to get the Democrats to win (but not so blatantly as in 2020), but also preparing for a possible return of President Trump and a real Attorney General.

    Mr Zuckerberg knows that whilst President Trump is quick to anger he is also quick to forgive – always open to making a deal.

    Sending out smoke signals that say “I am not really your enemy – the government made-me-do-it” is a logical tactic.

  • Exasperated

    More from Jeffrey Tucker’s article
    Re:election fortification
    “It is an outright coup that overthrew an entire generation of leaders who stood up for freedom and replaced them with a generation of leaders who acquiesced to power exactly at the time it mattered the most.”

  • Exasperated

    More from Jeffrey Tucker
    Re: Covid censorship
    “People like me had come to believe that average people were simply cowards or stupid not to object. Now we know that this might not have been true at all! The people who objected were simply silenced!”

  • Exasperated

    Zuckerberg, and his allies in Tech, did a staggering amount of damage for which no amount of money can
    Compensate. Facebook supported the lies, people died and innocent children have had their futures trashed.

  • Paul Marks

    Exasperated – quite so.

  • Exasperated

    I’ve seen a couple of explanations. They’re pretty much what you’d expect, CYA and deflection from whatever is occurring this election cycle, getting out ahead of negative publicity. On the more honorable side, maybe he,too, was snookered by the coverup of Biden’s decline or he prefers Bobby Kennedy?

  • Exasperated

    I don’t follow Zuckerberg so don’t know his views on Zionism, Gaza, et al. Regardless, maybe he is aghast at how anti-Semitism is now violent, random, SANCTIONED AND CELEBRATED, by the very people he supported. Isn’t it ironic, that he was an enabler?

  • Paul Marks

    Yes Exasperated – Mr Zuckerberg supported radical leftists and they turn out to want to exterminate “rich Jews” – such as …… as well as wipe Israel off the map.

    Some of the people pushing the official line about Covid really believed it.

    They thought that Early Treatments were “horse poison” and so sat at home getting worse and worse till they died, because “there are no effective early treatments” – even though they were.

    And some of the people dying of the Covid “vaccines” were people who pushed them – although not all the people who pushed them really took them.

    It is very much like the people who pushed the election rigging of November 2020, or the FBI psyop of January 2021 (Roy Epps and other puppets) – creating a totally out of control government without grasping that such a government can turn on them, and will do so.

    Much like the people giggling at the antics of New York (and other) courts – both civil and criminal, till they anger the wrong person (perhaps by mistake) and find themselves stripped off their money and property in rigged civil trials, or sent to prison for imaginary crimes.

    The Revolution always eats the Revolutionaries.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Bill Barr a “stooge”? 😵‍💫

    That’s over-egging it a bit. This is also why the Trump defenders strike me as losing the plot.

    Biden won primarily because he got more votes, not by fraud. And that ought to be the issue that worries Republicans and independents: why so many voted for a ghastly operator like Biden.

    Look, I get it: people want to recycle the stolen election narrative. It’s a comfort. The problem however is that the US is split tight down the middle. And far too many young adults buy into Leftism. The question is what to do about it.

  • Paul Marks

    Bill Barr was very clearly a stooge. President Trump admitted, when he appointed Barr, that he did not know him – that he, President Trump, was a following advice. That was a fatal blunder by President Trump.

    Bill Barr made no real effort to investigate the election rigging of 2020 – he just denied it.

    But the Mr Barr never made any effort to investigate anything.

    As his own book says (whether it was ghost written or not) his first thought on hearing of the death of Jeffrey Epstein was that some people might think it was not suicide, and that it would be bad for them to think that Mr Epstein had been murdered.

    Think about that Johnathan Pearce – Mr Barr did NOT react by thinking “a man has died – let us investigate”.

    He ASSUMED it was suicide – and his only thoughts were about how to convince other people of that.

    It was the same with the election.

    Take up the establishment line – and stick to it.

    Never do any actual work, investigate nothing. That was Bill Barr – on everything.

    A bit like a mainstream journalist – going to press conferences and copying out press releases.

  • Paul Marks

    Yes Johnathan Pearce – Mr Biden got 81 million votes.

    But a lot of those votes were not from voters.

    This you should know – but you clearly do not.

  • Clovis Sangrail

    @Jonathan Pearce

    Biden won primarily because he got more votes

    With respect, I suspect this is wrong, unless you mean

    was recorded to have more votes than Trump,

    but your text implies not.

    I’m very interested to hear why you think otherwise, even though, at this point, it really doesn’t matter.

  • Toby James

    Except it does matter, because although there have been some moves to tighten up election processes and electoral rolls and to clear out some of the more obviously corrupt officials, most of the massive vote rigging machinery installed by the Establishment/Dems/Rinos is still in place.

    I expect that Mr Pierce is wrong, and that the split is quite far away from 50/50, and the media (wholly in the tank for the Dems) is maintaining the fiction of a close race, so when the vote steal occurs again it doesn’t appear obvious.

    The trouble is that Harris is a truly awful candidate, and following the Biden strategy of lying and hiding shouldn’t work, ceteris paribus. All other things aren’t equal though. It’s only because of the steal that it’s close, and why she may still ‘win’.

    81 million votes for Biden? No chance.

  • bobby b

    I think that JP has this model of “election theft” in his mind that must include nefarious people at the counting centers fudging and miscounting and manufacturing ballots, and doing so in such a manner that a proper audit could uncover the scheme.

    That’s mostly not what happened.

    What happened is that a small number of states – 6 or 7 – passed laws prior to the election that made it a trivial effort to get real ballot forms mailed and handed out to people who were not qualified voters, or even to places that simply manufactured many voter identities out of this air.

    Once that step was taken, the actual return and counting of those ballots would never show any problems. The problems had already occurred. The election became truly unauditable, because the fraud took place long before voting day.

    That’s why I’ve never looked to any court action to correct the vote. Any court examination could only begin with the steps that took place long after the true fraud. The only way to address this fraud will be to change the laws in those states, or to refuse to count the votes from those states in any federal election until they correct them themselves.

    Courts won’t normally touch “political questions.” The choices that states make in crafting their voting laws are essentially political questions. We have to solve this fraud politically, not in the courts.

  • Fraser Orr

    To bobbyb’s point, it is worth considering this study which surveyed people who submitted mail in ballots and found 20% of them were invalid.

    https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/one_in_five_mail_in_voters_admit_they_cheated_in_2020_election

    A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports and The Heartland Institute finds that 21% of Likely U.S. voters who voted by absentee or mail-in ballot in the 2020 election say they filled out a ballot, in part or in full, on behalf of a friend or family member, such as a spouse or child, while 78% say they didn’t

    This is in reference to people who weren’t necessarily trying to commit fraud, but did anyway. It is surely just the tip of the iceberg of people who actually were trying to swing the race without any moral scruples since “orange man bad” is a end that justifies any means whatsoever.

    I think this is largely unfixable, (unless all you who are advocating that the right should play dirty too think that the right should also start stuffing the ballot box.)

  • Snorri Godhi

    I’d like to stress once again that, in a true democracy, it is not necessary to prove that massive fraud happened to declare an election null and void: it is only necessary to prove that massive fraud COULD have happened.

    It is time to face the reality that the US is not a true democracy, and it probably has never been in my lifetime.

    WRT evidence that massive fraud did happen in 2020, just today i found this (via Instapundit).

  • bobby b

    “I think this is largely unfixable . . . “

    Easy to fix practically. Hard to fix politically, unless voter sentiment changes in the affected states. (Or, unless the rest of the states can pressure the affected states to change even if they’re unhappy doing so.)

    Once upon a time – ten years ago? – we had a good system. At some point before elections, you went to a gov office and showed documents proving that Jon Smith lived at such-and-such an address, and that you were that Jon Smith. You were then registered as a voter.

    Then, on voting day – one day – you went to the polls, with photo ID to prove you were the Jon Smith on the voter rolls. They gave you a ballot, and crossed off your name, and you marked the ballot and put it in the box. Simple.

    Now, in the interest of getting all people – not just the motivated ones – to cast a vote, some states mail certified ballots out to all and sundry, and many who don’t even actually exist. With very few safeguards, they then accept these marked ballots back – not even checking to see who marked them – and count them in the election. Totally unauditable. That’s nuts.

    We can easily go back to the proper system. We need a federal statute that says that, for federal elections, only voters in states that comply with certain requirements (see above) will be able to vote. That would push Georgia, et al, to get back in compliance.

    But we need a prez and a Congress willing to do so. And we might even be close to that situation come November. (But I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy.)

  • Snorri Godhi

    I see that bobby has immediately contradicted me, saying that, even early in this century, massive fraud could not happen. And yet, people claim that it did happen in 1960.

    Incidentally, when i wrote “democracy”, i meant it sensu lato: I did not mean “rule by the people”, but simply a system in which there are elections of consequence, and only qualified people get to vote in such elections.

  • bobby b

    “I see that bobby has immediately contradicted me, saying that, even early in this century, massive fraud could not happen.”

    Not really a contradiction. I simply didn’t address the kinds of fraud that existed before the new mail-ballot craze. I didn’t touch on computerized-vs-paper-ballot systems, or the older systems of the polling workers “losing” or “finding” piles of ballots. I even ignored the pay-per-vote systems of the machine cities.

    But the sheer numbers affected by the new systems – and the incredible ease with which they are gamed – place them into a new and more dangerous subset. Except in certain places where the Machine reigned supreme, these new mail systems skew the vote more drastically.

    One step at a time, in rank order of impact.

  • Snorri Godhi

    Bobby: Thank you for the clarification!

  • Paul Marks

    In case anyone honestly can not remember what happened in the United States Presidential Election of 2020 – and it is almost four years ago now (so memories may be fading).

    First the courts, both State and Federal, refused to enforce the election laws of several States – “Covid” was given as the excuse for this, although neither the laws nor the State or Federal Constitutions mention Covid or any other plague – and terrible diseases (that killed very large numbers of people) were common when the United States Constitution and State Constitutions were written.

    After this failure of both State and Federal courts to enforce State election laws in several States occurred, there was a tidal wave of essentially uncheckable “mail-in ballots” numbering into the millions. As anyone familiar with elections knows – “postal votes” (as we call them in the United Kingdom) are difficult and time consuming to check – dealing with millions of them makes an honest election impossible (which was the obvious intent of the people who pushed this policy in the United States).

    However, in spite of this, it is quite possible that not enough fake mail-in ballots had been prepared – hence the shutting down of the counting of votes in several key cities, late on election night, and the clearing away of Republican election observers (due to the wonders of modern technology I personally watched, via mobile phone cameras, the count being “stopped” in several key sites – and Republican count observers being cleared away, sometimes being locked out).

    Then vast numbers of new votes were “found” in key States (specifically in key cities – flipping those States) enabling Biden/Harris to “win” the election.

    It is quite possible that even honest “postal voters” (as we call them in the United Kingdom) would have had an edge for Biden/Harris – if Democrats (real people – rather than fake people who exist only on election rolls) prefer to vote that way. But it is not possible that the sort of overwhelming contrast between votes on the day and mail-in ballots that were “found” late in such States as the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania could have occurred.

    In the State of Georgia the farce continued well after election day – with more and more votes being “found” (created) in order to defeat the Republicans there and give control of the United States Senate to the Democrats.

    So it was never “just Trump”.

    In 2022 Arizona (one of the “problematic” States of 2020) engaged in some of the worst election rigging outside such “third world” countries as Liberia.

    Again NOT against “Trump” – this was an election for Governor. Republicans going to vote were told there were “problems with the voting machines” (voting machines are another mess – there is no justification for electronic voting machines rather than paper ballots) and, of course, there was another tidal wave of uncheckable “mail-in ballots” – without even the excuse of “Covid” this time.

    The Wall Street Journal denied that the election for Governor of Arizona was rigged, although it obviously was rigged, and at that point the “conservative” part of the mainstream media lost any credibility – they showed that when it came to a key conflict they would always side with “the system” AGAINST the people.

    Again this is not really about “Trump” it is about anyone (anyone at all) who challenges “the system”.

    By the way it is rural areas that, possibly, have an excuse for not finding all the votes at once – big geographical distances and so on. NOT cities.

    If urban areas “find” lots of votes late on – then anyone with any experience of elections knows that the-fix-is-in.

    This goes back many years (“in Chicago the dead vote” is a saying that is many decades old) – but in 2020 it was on a SCALE that had never been seen before – and not just in one urban area, but quite a few.

    It cost a lot of money to organise this. And there have been several books (one a recall on the take over of a county in Pennsylvania, and even one documentary film, on the matter.

    Everyone “on the right” in America knows of the “Battle of Athens”, Tennessee, in 1946 where corrupt Democrats and their corrupt police force were defeated by the citizens – the effort at election rigging defeated.

    But the behaviour in both November 2020 and on January 6th 2021 was very different – in Athens Tennessee in 1946 the citizens were ARMED and defeated the police in a gun battle. In November 2020 large numbers of people could shout at counting centres (or outside them – there was a lot of shouting by people who were not allowed in) – but they were unarmed and helpless, it was the same in 2021.

    A vast number of citizens could turn up in Washington D.C. in 2021 – but as they were unarmed (and the vast majority of them never went to the Capitol Building anyway – the rally was about a mile away) they were never going to achieve anything.

    As for the tiny minority who went into the Capitol building – they did exactly what “the system” wanted them to do, indeed the people who pushed the idea of entering the Capitol buildings were working for the FBI.

    They may not have been willing servants of “the system” (some people were blackmailed), but they were servants of “the system”.

  • Paul Marks

    As for the courts – as they showed as far back as 1935, when they allowed the government to steal all privately owned monetary gold and to violate all contracts – public and private, the courts will always in-the-end side with the Washington D.C. – Wall Street New York, system AGAINST the people.

    After all, they justify it to themselves, otherwise there would be “chaos and bloodshed”.

    Perhaps so – but there is going to trouble anyway. As the economic system (that vast FRAUD – “the system”) breaks down in 2025 and “President Harris” tries to push a digital currency and international “governance” and the end of the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights.

    So Chief Justice Roberts – doing what you did in 2020 and what your fellow Republican (yes Republican) Supreme Court Chief Justice did in 1935 (use the Constitution as toilet paper – in order to preserve “peace”) will not work again.

    There is not going to be “peace” – regardless of what you do. So you might as well be honest – as dishonesty will no longer preserve “peace”.

  • Paul Marks

    As Jeffrey Tucker knows “Wickard v Filburn”, the 1942 Supreme Court judgement that ended food freedom in the United States (even when a farmer is just growing food for their own consumption – let alone selling food to their neighbours) and, over the following decades, gradually handed over all power over food to the government and the pet Corporations (a handful of Corporations now have a stranglehold on American food and this is NOT a natural market process – it is the result of regulations) was privately justified by World War II.

    Privately the legal establishment of the time knew that “Wickard v Filburn” was nonsense (indeed evil nonsense) as a legal judgement – but “there is a war on” was the private justification.

    However, when World War II ended in 1945 – Wickard V Filburn did not go away.

    And neither of the Gold Clause cases of 1935 had this excuse – the United States did not enter World War II till 1941, there was no World War in 1935.

    Nor could the cases be justified as a “temporary emergency measure” – as the stealing of privately owned gold and the violation of all contracts (public and private) was already two years old in 1935 – as it happened in 1933.

    It was clear that there was going to be nothing “temporary” or “emergency” about this.

    The Great Depression (itself caused by the New York Federal Reserve Credit Money, Benjamin Strong, bubble of the late 1920s – and the refusal by the government to allow wages to adjust to the bust of 1929) had the effect of undermining public resistance – in making people desperate, so desperate that they were willing to give up some (some) basic liberties as the government (and the companies under the FCC that controlled the radio stations) told the people there was no alternative – other than starvation.

    Out of desperation, and because they were endlessly lied to, the people went along with all this – hence the election of 1936. Most people still trusted the government – or felt they had no other choice.

    But the people have, in 2024, had enough – they will not go along with what is now planned. The intentions of the international establishment elite are now too obvious – their intention is now tyranny, total and absolute.

    People such as Harris/Walz, or rather the forces behind them, want to stamp down upon the faces of humanity for ever – tyranny, total and absolute.

    Submission will not lead to mercy – for they have no mercy. Non resistance will be met with the same savage treatment as resistance.

    Whether you fight or not – they will still come for you, and for your families.

  • Fraser Orr

    @bobby b
    Easy to fix practically. Hard to fix politically

    I’d go further, I think close to impossible to fix politically. After all, the current situation advantages the left that to dismantle it is like turkeys voting for thanksgiving. Why do the dems want DC and PR to be states? It isn’t because of some sense of disenfranchisement, it is simply a practical matter that it’ll give them four extra senators and four extra electoral college votes. I know you know this, but these people are entirely about advancing themselves and have no sense whatsoever of “doing what’s right.”

    We can easily go back to the proper system. We need a federal statute that says that, for federal elections, only voters in states that comply with certain requirements (see above) will be able to vote. That would push Georgia, et al, to get back in compliance.

    I think if you attempted this the whole left would all of a sudden be the greatest advocates of states’ rights since South Carolina shelled Fort Sumpter.

  • JohnK

    Paul:

    As you say, mass mail in ballots mean the fix is in. It only takes five cities in five states to steal the election. If it happened in 2020, it will happen in 2024. However, Biden was too obviously brain dead for the steal to be plausible. Once the assassination of Trump failed, he had to go, to be replaced by his ridiculous vice president, who, although stupid, does have mental capacity. The media are bigging her up as the new big thing, so it will not seem so shocking when she wins.

    I hope I am wrong, but tell me of a crime family which has ever surrendered voluntarily.

  • Snorri Godhi

    Thinking back about it, the most outrageous thing about 2020, for me, was the regime media rushing to declare Biden the winner.

  • You ask: “why did Zuckerberg choose now to confess?”
    Because it cost him nothing. No social opprobrium, no reduced share price of his company stock, no legal consequences. At least not yet.

  • Vampire Squid

    Late to the party here, but it should be noted that Zuckerbergs perfidy goes right back to 2008, when Google and Facebook provided the IT personnel for the first Obama campaign.

  • Paul Marks

    JohnK, Snorri and others – yes indeed.

    It is easy to call the bluff of the “mainstream media”, the Wall Street Journal included, who deny election fraud.

    Have paper ballots, cast after showing proper I.D., and counted in public.

    Why would the media object to this? After all they (including journalists who write on this site) deny that the elections are rigged, so going over to paper ballots, cast after showing proper I.D., and counted in public would NOT according to them, change the outcome of elections.

    So, by their own arguments, they have no reason to object to this.

    But sadly they are more likely to go the other way – have a Federal law that, for example, demands that all States go over to electronic elections overseen by a far left “Electoral Commission” perhaps led by a Marxist “judge”.

    Then you have BRAZIL – and yes the far left system was imposed in Brazil with the active support of agencies of the United States (the United States) government.

    The Biden/Harris Administration wanted “Lula” and co in office – some of the CIA and so on may regret it now (now it turns out that the regime they helped to power in Brazil are friends of Mr Putin), but they were up to their necks in this corrupt project a couple of years ago.

  • Paul Marks

    Vampire Squid – yes indeed, the “neutral” corporations were anything but neutral.

    “Our search engine is unbiased” – tell that to the marines.

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