VAGUE RULES

August 23, 2021 Adam Riva

Written by Simon Esler and edited by Adam Riva, VAGUE RULES breaks down Mao Zedong’s blueprint for tyranny as mimicked by modern Big Tech companies. This film explores the lesser-known authoritarian techniques employed during the global pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and how they provoke the darkest aspects of human nature.

TRANSCRIPT & SOURCES

On October 10, 1950, the Chinese Communist Party, lead at the time by Mao Zedong, launched the Instruction on Suppression of Counter-Revolution campaign.

It involved communist party committees across all of China initiating a massive effort to “suppress and purge counter-revolutionaries.” As justification for this large-scale operation Mao cited an active population of various “counter-revolutionary elements” numbering more than 2 million people.

This brutal campaign was waged on the people of China for two years, with more than 2.6 million people arrested with 710,000 put to death…as “counter-revolutionaries.”

Zedong’s initial orders were that 0.5 percent of every thousand in each targeted locality be put to death. Of course he also stated that if a region’s “counterrevolutionary problem” was “more serious” they could increase the killing to 1% per thousand. He later gave permission to his troops to break past these kill quotas asking that they keep it capped between 1.5% and 2%.

By January 1951, Zedong was receiving reports of the campaign’s success, such as the report sent to him on the brutal killing of over 5000 people in western Hunan. His response to the report was :

“This disposal is very necessary…especially those places where bandits are rampant, where there are many bullies, and where secret agents are concentrated, we should kill a few batches…all places must hurry to do so.“

By the 22^nd of that month, Zedong sent a telegraph which read:

“You have killed more than 3,700, which is good, kill 3 or 4,000 more… you can kill 8 or 9,000 people this year as a target”.

On February 5, 1951, Zedong received a report from the Northwest Bureau of the Central Committee with a request for approval to kill in all provinces without his explicit permission. Zedong responded:

“For those who are sentenced to death, it is enough to execute them with the approval of the special department for lighter cases.”

As the commissioners governing each province began to implement genocide without Zedong’s oversight there was a local desire to follow the example of their superiors. Eventually the authority to sanction killings was passed down from the provincial level to the county level, with nothing but the vague notion that victims had been labeled as a “counter-revolutionary,” a term with no real definition.

How did it come to be that Mao Zedong’s desire to eradicate his opposition was not only carried out according to his orders, but even worse, those working under him became desperate to be seen by Zedong as increasingly ruthless?

How did the brutality of Zedong’s subordinates exacerbate to the point of killing citizens competitively?

While the genocidal element of this campaign seems like the most insidious aspect of this chapter in Chinese history, there was a hidden undercurrent of social engineering at play that was perhaps the driving force behind genocide, one that tends to elude the Western mind. Have despotic world leaders utilized this tactic again since it worked so terrifying well over half a century ago?

On March 9th, 2021 the Epoch Times published an article entitled Communist Tactics to Force Self-Censorship Sweeping America. In it they included a section entitled Vague Rules:

“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the world’s most notorious censor of free speech, has for decades used the method of making its policies intentionally vague. During its past political campaigns, for example, the central leadership would issue a decree that “rightists” and “counterrevolutionaries” were to be punished. The next lower rung of Party officials wouldn’t be told what exactly makes one a “rightist” or a “counterrevolutionary” and perhaps not even what the punishment should be. No official, however, would want to be seen as too lenient—that would carry the risk of being labeled oneself. As such, each successive level of bureaucracy would intensify its interpretation of the policy, leading to ever more extreme results. In some periods, the hysteria went far beyond self-censorship, as even refraining from political speech wasn’t enough.“

As we saw in the case of Mao Zedong’s Suppression of Counter-Revolutionaries campaign, the result was CCP authorities essentially begging Zedong for permission to kill more people with less oversight.

But this isn’t a matter of Chinese history anymore. Intentionally vague rules, put in place to enable tyranny, while they have been rampantly at play through the Covid narrative, are not new to North America.

YouTube

For years, YouTube’s content policies have used incredibly broad terms to perform their role as the gatekeeper of 5 billion hours of daily video content.

In 2019, guided by the alleged notion that they were purging “white supremacist” content, youtube went on a massive censorship campaign, deleting thousands of videos they claimed were hate-speech. During the purge they triggered outrage in users who were actually aligned with the fight against white supremacy.

The removal of historical videos of Hitler and educational breakdowns of white supremacist history wasn’t something youtube could chalk up to an algorithmic issue either, given that youtube themeselves confirmed that every single video taken down had been subjected to human review.

Under the pressure of vague rules about hate speech, in a highly politicized work place, filled with a desire to please their superiors, Youtube employees had gone too far and begun the process of deleting history itself.

Facebook

Similarly, Facebook launched a policy aimed at combatting online hate. Yet again, a vague rule operating under the term “Hate Speech” was put in place. However, Facebook insiders soon exposed how the policy was actually being applied.

Former content moderator Ryan Hartwig blew the whistle on Facebook, sharing a screenshot describing how the policies were truly being enacted.

“Anything that is DELETE per our Hate Speech policies, but is intended to raise awareness for Pride/LGBTQ” was to be allowed, the post stated, specifying that “this may occur especially in terms of attacking straight white males.”

It gave an example:

“Straight white males are filth for not fighting more on behalf of LGBTQ.”

Another Facebook content moderator, Jose Moreno, explained that right wing users were considered to be in the same group as Hitler, Nazi’s and other hate groups. According to Hartwig there were absolutely no left wing individuals on the list Facebook was circulating entitled “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations.”

Unsurprisingly, the impact of all this lead to even more extreme measures, with a third Facebook moderator, Zach McElroy, speaking out to expose that Facebook had given the green light to allow death threats to anyone on the “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations” list, exposing millions of Trump supporters to company sanctioned death threats on one of the largest social media platforms on earth.

With vague rules implemented from the top down, and the constant pressure to “protect the public from hate,” it had become normalized for Facebook employees to enable death threats based on someone’s political view point.

Amazon

Amazon recently enacted a policy allegedly for banning books that contain “Hate or Offensive Speech.” Of course, their changes lack any proper definition of what they term hate & offensive speech.

Rather than giving explicit definitions that would allow authors and publishers to navigate the rules, Amazon purposefully left them to guess. Naturally this has resulted in increasingly bold attempts at self censorship by authors and increasingly harsh forms of digital book burning from Amazon moderators.

Almost immediately after Amazon made this policy change they began to remove books which they claimed “framed transgenderism and other sexual identities as mental illness.”

In the public battle that unfolded from Amazon’s censorship campaign against books that “framed transgenderism as a mental illness,” their true position eventually became very clear.

During this time, Amazon was selling the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The manual clearly lists Gender Dysphoria as a Mental Disorder.

Ryan T. Anderson, author of the censored book When Harry Became Sally, states that:

“Everyone agrees that gender dysphoria is a serious condition that causes great suffering. There is a debate, however, which Amazon is seeking to shut down, about how best to treat patients who experience gender dysphoria…the real deciding factor seems to be whether you endorse hormones and surgery as the proper treatment or counseling,”

According to Anderson the vague rule principle had been applied in an attempt to increase the actual number of transgender surgeries and hormonal treatments. This minor change in Amazon’s policies had seemingly been designed to suppress information on all modalities of dealing with gender dysphoria except medical alteration, reframing the tech giant, who controls 80% of the book retail market, as a purveyor of psycho-biological warfare.

Lockdowns

But there is perhaps no better example of violence arising as a result of purposefully vague rules than the North American response to lockdowns, social distancing and masking. In Canada the chaos being generated by overly generic leadership has become obvious.

On Thursday, January 14, at 12:01 a.m. the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford issued a drastic new set of lockdown rules.

The Toronto Star reported that

“Citizens are supposed to only leave the house for essential purposes (food, medical needs and exercise), yet other things like construction operations and curbside pickup at non-essential businesses can seemingly continue. Critics are pointing out some of the new rules are confusing and contradictory,”

The Mayor of Toronto even publicly wondered:

“Is a skating rink an organized social or public event or is it not? We have a limit of 25 people on those rinks.”

Ford said “elected officials” who say they’re confused “aren’t being responsible.”

“Stay home. Stay home. I don’t know what more I can describe,” the premier said.

Ford’s new plan included a stipulation that police arbitrarily stop citizens for simply not being in their homes. It was met by outrage by many Ontario Police.

On Tuesday May 4, a group of Ontario police officers filed a constitutional challenge against the provincial and federal government, in addition to some of their superiors in the police force. Their lawyer stated that:

“Lockdown rules are ‘too vague and broad and aren’t clear enough to enforce uniformly and fairly.’”

This was the first time in Canadian history that the police have ever legally defied and challenged the federal government.

Reflecting on the way Mao Zedong’s followers were scrambling to maintain their position and political value, it’s especially relevant to analyze the scrambling leadership in Ontario. On March 3 Toronto’s Medical Officer of health was asked what Data was being used to keep small businesses closed. She responded by saying this question needed to be directed to provincial politicians. When asked if politicians were responsible for such major decisions Premier Ford explicitly stated that no politician in the country will ever disagree with a public health expert because it’s career suicide.

Politicians and public health experts are supposed to be the designers and purveyors of the lockdowns. If the politician is simply afraid of losing political power, and the health expert is simply regurgitating a script, the only logical conclusion is that someone above them is enforcing vague rules and watching them scramble to seek approval.

Rather than a public admittance that the lockdowns have been entirely ineffective, the net result of this communist style warfare in Ontario, has been the longest lockdowns in all of North America. As the historical pattern has shown, the end result of laws that lack the specificity to deliver Justice is moral degradation, and willful forms of abuse.

As yet another startling parallel, masking bylaws for children have lead to new forms of child abuse across the world. It has become a common occurrence in Toronto to see maskless parents screaming at their children to put their masks on unless they want to be forced to go home right away.

This bus driver was charged for hitting a small child for not wearing a mask.

This teacher was caught on tape shaming a child for being mask free due to his vaccine status.

Unchecked, the desire to cope with vague rules through controlling and abusing others spreads like a cancer.

While it is true that a “vagueness doctrine” exists in both Canadian and American constitutions for the very real danger that people in power use vague laws to abuse others, it has never been effectively called upon to protect citizens from big tech or the Chinese Communist style lockdowns.

Instead, in Canada, it has been allowed to escalate to its fullest expression, which should disturb us all, given the way this same factor lead so many in 1950’s China to beg Mao Zedong for permission to kill more ruthlessly and in greater numbers.

Vague rules reveal something essential about our true relationship with freedom.

When laws and social structures lack specificity, when we are placed within a space created by vague rules, we are prone to living from our shadows. We are enticed by the desire to dominate and fall into harmful hierarchies.

The rule of law is one of the structures we need to cultivate freedom, but more importantly, it needs to be precise and adaptable enough to deliver justice.

With a left wing, mainstream media echo chamber constantly bleating about destroying law and order, while dissenting political opinions are labeled as “extremists”, “domestic terrorists”, or “spreading misinformation”, understanding the freedom that effective law and order avails to us has never been more crucial.

Through the will of the people…there is hope. Tucker Carlson Tonight, a show that focused exclusively on calling for Equal Justice Under the Law and Free Speech, set the record for the largest audience in cable news history. Ontario police legally challenging their own superiors, in addition to provincial and federal levels of government, specifically over the harm of vague laws is a good sign.

The people’s desire to reignite the power of a functional legal system is rising.

If we hadn’t been confronted by the CCP warfare embedded in the COVID narrative we may have lived in endless denial about the true forms of social order that serve us. Now is our chance to purge this harmful pattern.

Understanding the way vague rules, or more importantly vague laws, become fertile soil for tyranny is a major factor in humanity’s awakening.

Interestingly, living under vague rules seems to beckon forth our shadows. The truth is that our collective psyche was primed for us to be weaponized against each other in this way. When we are insecure and feeling unsupported by the level of clarity and structure we need, we harden, we defend, we attack, we struggle for a sense of power and we betray.

If we can confront the desire to control others to maintain our position in the social hierarchy with bravery and transparency, perhaps then we will no longer be vulnerable these subtle forms of psychological warfare.