PRGuy and the future of the free press
PRGuy – the political activist on Twitter that no one will miss – has decided to ‘take a break’ now that their apparent lord and saviour Anthony Albanese has been elected to government.
The anonymous Twitter account has spent the last couple of years appearing to act as an unofficial promotional account for Dictator in Chief, Daniel Andrews, and was a prominent fixture fighting against the Freedom Movement in Victoria.
PRGuy has frequently come under fire, with many suspecting (and that is all it is, speculation) that the account owner potentially works for, or has some kind of connection to, the Labor leadership in Victoria.
To that end, Rebel News reporter Avi Yemini has attempted to uncover the identity of PRGuy via a legal request to Twitter, causing the account to take several sudden and mysterious leaves of absence. Yemini announced yesterday that his legal team has a massive development in the case against PRGuy.
Legal proceedings were begun after the account allegedly published defamatory statements, accusing Yemini of being a ‘threat to Australia’s national security’ also a ‘criminal’ and that he had contributed to ‘surging Covid cases’. PRGuy deleted the tweets, but the case against PRGuy will serve as a test regarding Twitter’s willingness to hand over the identity anonymous trolls when they post content that would otherwise be open to prosecution.
Unmasking PRGuy – whether you follow Twitter or not – could do a lot of damage to the Labor Party if it turns out that any of the accusations about its anonymous operator are true. Of course, PRGuy may be a completely unrelated entity who simply successfully captured the mood of the Left online. No one will know unless Yemini’s case proceeds.
Leaving Twitter, PRGuy put out the following statement, ‘Now, I am taking some time off to try to heal and repair what I’ve neglected in my life these last two years. But I’ll be back. I cannot ignore my responsibility to use my voice. I am facing legal action, which many of you are aware of – this will not silence me. I am not going away – suing me will make me louder.’
PRGuy finishes by asking for money on a GoFundMe account.
Over the last few years, the anonymous account has put out questionable and (allegedly) defamatory content aimed at political and social figures that opposed Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. The Liberal Party certainly copped more than their fair share of vitriol, as did members of the independent press and the wider conservative community.
The public aren’t particularly interested in PRGuy – they want to make sure that public money isn’t being used to prop up a political attack account, as some have alleged. In a world where Labor supporters have pledged, or at least fantasised about, destroying certain alternate media publications that challenge the well-funded leftist worldview – the very least these Twitter accounts can do is put their name against their accusations.
After all, as soon as the election results came in, twice-failed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was back on Twitter, apparently sore about unflattering headlines that ran during his political demise.
‘The Murdoch monopoly, especially their pathetic propaganda outlet, “The Australian”, campaigned viciously against a Labor Govt. Thanks to you, the people, they failed – and were exposed as a Liberal Party protection racket and a cancer on democracy.’
Interestingly, Rudd makes no such criticism of decidedly left-wing publications – of which there is an oversupply – whose behaviour over the last eight years has been unhinged, anti-reality, and tilted so heavily toward Labor the so-called ‘news’ media may as well have ‘I heart Albo’ as the byline.
What should concern every Australian is that the purpose of the Left does not appear to be limited to winning the federal election – it seems to extend to a desire to erase their political opposition. To silence their press in order to protect the fragile feelings and indefensible policies of Labor from scrutiny.
Replies to Rudd’s thread included blue-tick journalists and commentators excited by the prospect of shutting down opposition to the taxpayer-funded ABC, with one replying, ‘The poisonous bile never ends. We must rid ourselves of Murdoch infestations if our democracy is to survive.’
Most people will recognise that the moment a government starts dismantling its political opposition in the free press in favour of state-run media, the country ends up with a dictatorship – not a democracy.
Already we have had Mark McGowan come out and childishly complain about reporters asking Albanese tough questions during the election campaign – questions that Albanese ran away from because either he didn’t have the answers, or the answers wouldn’t look very friendly in a headline. This is the same Mark McGowan who had the nerve to call Peter Dutton an ‘extremist’ when it was McGowan who turned Western Australia into a police state for two years, ensured that the unvaccinated lost their jobs, and – to quote the Premier – told the unvaccinated to ‘make a booking [for vaccination] today otherwise life is about to get very difficult for you.’
PRGuy will be back, anonymous or unmasked, but what we must be careful about is the future of the free press in this country now that a potentially censorious and emotionally fragile political party is in charge. What if, for instance, censorship of the press becomes required to ‘protect the health and safety’ of Australians – or to ‘save the planet from a climate emergency’?
…this is already what the ‘community standards’ of Twitter attempt to do.
By Flat White
Appeared on fml.lol
