As a journalist in China, Liu Hu was no stranger to punishment.
For reporting on corruption among government officials, Hu was arrested, accused of “fabricating and spreading rumours,” and fined.
But then one day in 2017 he suddenly found that he was unable to buy a plane ticket. The system just rejected him. He also found he couldn’t purchase certain train tickets.
Then he discovered that he was unable to acquire a loan from any bank, and even forbidden from buying property at all.
Eventually Liu Hu discovered his name on a government “List of Dishonest Persons Subject to Enforcement.” And there was no obvious way to appeal the designation, or have his name removed from the list.
Hu was one of the early victims of the Chinese social credit system which blacklists citizens who are found to be untrustworthy— in the sole discretion of the Chinese government.
Others on the list have been prevented from renting certain apartments, holding particular jobs. They’ve even,had their bank accounts frozen.
Sometimes, all it took to become blacklisted was an accusation from a disgruntled business partner, or a social media post critical of the government.
It’s almost like an official version of the Twitter mob’s habit of “canceling” people for wrong-think.
The Twitter mob may be easy enough to ignore for most of us. But now it’s become more mainstream to purge US residents who have bad social credit.
For example, PayPal has announced an inquisition in partnership with the Anti-Defamation League to research funding for extremism on its payment platform.
“PayPal and ADL will focus on further uncovering and disrupting the financial pipelines that support extremist and hate movements. In addition to extremist and anti-government organizations, the initiative will focus on actors and networks spreading and profiting from all forms of hate and bigotry against any community.”
They are extremely vague about what exactly they will consider extremist content. But we have some idea…
The New York Times, for example, considers the word “freedom” to be an “anti-government slogan,” according to a recent article on the protests in Cuba.
Remember the saying "The Have's and the Have Not's"? So in today's world, this does hold true in many respects, but in my opinion, today we have the: People who LIVE in reality, want their deserved Freedoms, might add at any cost, and we now have the: People who DON'T live in reality, rather they are part of a Covid Cult worshiping any Government mouth-piece spewing pure lies, in my opinion!
ReplyDeleteLove everyone, respect choices, but expectations are, they too must respect other's choices! Research is imperative to making the right choices for oneself, knowing yourself, plus, most important pray about what is right from wrong if in doubt. God helps the blind to see clearer their paths, figuratively, and literally! Take back your power to think for yourself, and evil becomes much powerless IMO! (: