Last week I was permanently banned by Facebook for being a “dangerous person”. I found out about it not through Facebook, which failed to even send me a single email, but through media reports.

They’ve put me in the same category as Louis Farrakhan, a man who compared Jews to termites and once described Adolf Hitler as a “very great man”.

The Instagram (owned by Facebook) ban was even “funnier” given my page consisted mainly of selfies and videos of myself and my girlfriend feeding ducks. Super dangerous.

But as humorous as it is, I take exception to being defamed as a “dangerous person”.

To whom am I a danger, precisely? Mark Zuckerberg? A billionaire who wants to create a cult out of 2.4 billion people? A creepy oligarch who wants to dictate the thoughts that can be expressed by a third of the earth’s entire population? Who’s the bigger danger?

In tandem with this ban, Facebook instituted a new policy which states if you post material about people Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t like, it will be removed and you may be banned. Talk about a dangerous fucking egotist.

Holocaust denial? Still fine and rife across the platform. But defend Alex Jones or share an InfoWars link and you’re in big, big trouble.

And according to the new left, it is now “progressive” to allow a handful of corporate monopolists to control who has free speech and what opinions they can communicate. What was the point of the trials of humanity over the past 300 years if we were just going to end up with some little nerds in California dictating the terms of human civilization to us from behind their MacBook screens?

There’s also the absurdity of knowing that if someone who makes sardonic videos and snarky social media posts is that much of a threat to your establishment then your establishment must be really quite pathetic. I mean I’m hardly Robespierre. I make YouTube videos laughing at modern art and scoffing at brutalist architecture. If I’m that much of a “danger” to society, that’s more an illustration of how coddled and cowed western society has become.

CNN also labeled me an “extremist”, which I also take exception with. I refuse to be defamed as an “extremist”, too.

I have never advocated violence and I have never advocated “hate” against any individual or group. The establishment is putting me in the same category as human traffickers, serial killers, and terrorists. For what? Poking fun at pudgeball Michael Moore?

Media personalities glibly repeated this characterization without citing any evidence for their proclamations. I won’t allow that to stand. Maajid Nawaz was awarded over $3 million dollars after being falsely labeled an “extremist” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Like Nawaz, I have received death threats from Islamists. You know, actual extremists. I won’t allow a target to be painted on my back, which is exactly what Facebook and CNN are trying to do, and it isn’t like they don’t know it.

Facebook will shortly be put on legal notice about the harm that their actions have caused and will be mandated to turn over all information and internal discussions as to why I was designated as a “dangerous” person and why I was banned. Lawyers tell me their behavior is “fairly extraordinary”.

Meanwhile, what is anyone actually doing to stop the rapacious social media censorship of conservatives?

While the President’s tweets about me last week were nice, tweets aren’t nearly enough.

So surprised to see Conservative thinkers like James Woods banned from Twitter, and Paul Watson banned from Facebook! https://t.co/eHX3Z5CMXb

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2019

It’s not implausible to suggest that given the increasingly online nature of political campaigns, if platform neutrality is not secured, we could never see a Republican (or more accurately a true “America first” Republican) in the White House ever again.

Will Chamberlain’s excellent article asserting that platform access is a civil right is a good place to start as a template for what must be done.

Others argue Big Tech’s immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act needs to be revoked. If Facebook wants to act like a publisher and not a platform, let it be treated as a publisher. This would mean Facebook being legally liable for everything posted on their website.

It’s my right as a website owner to deny anyone else access to post on that website. But that means I am personally responsible for the content on my website. Facebook wants to have its cake and eat it. Facebook wants to deny access while simultaneously eschewing responsibility. Why should we allow that?

Also, isn’t it an extraordinary coincidence that leftists, notorious for their distrust of big corporations centralizing power and behaving with impunity, suddenly became massive fans of big corporations centralizing power and behaving with impunity when those corporations bought up the new public square and started censoring conservatives?

It’s almost like they aren’t actually liberal, have no actual principles, and are just feverish authoritarians who want to harness the power of corporate behemoths to silence their ideological opposition.

Isn’t it fascinating how leftists demand Christians bake the gay wedding cake under threat of financial decimation while reacting to Facebook refusing to provide a service with the tired old cliche, “It’s a private company, it can do what it likes.”

I’ll use that line next time a fracking company wants to plough through your living room.

The idea that leftists and self-proclaimed “journalists” – those who behave like activists in lobbying to deplatform conservatives – do so out of genuine concern for “hate,” “bullying” or “harassment” is also beyond ludicrous.

These are some of the most hateful, vindictive people you could ever encounter. They abuse their power to deplatform conservatives in order to satiate their spiteful vendettas. And in some cases, to prove their credentials to their new paymasters.

They derive sick pleasure from ruining people’s lives.

The Daily Beast exposed Pamela Geller’s children. They weren’t even political.

Geller has fatwas against her from Islamic terrorists and the American media exposed her children.

If, God forbid, one of these deplatformed people commits suicide, many on the left will be popping champagne corks. They’ll be laughing it up. These are not nice people.

When news broke of my Facebook ban, my Twitter direct mentions were flooded with vicious taunts and violent threats. But I’m the “hateful” one.

Save me the sanctimonious crap about “hate,” “bullying” and “harassment”. We know why conservatives are being banned and it’s purely political. It’s a pre-2020 purge. This is election meddling.

Anyone who watched the 2016 footage of Google executives mourning the election of Donald Trump and vowing to never let it happen again knows that for a fact.

As Dr. Robert Epstein has documented, the power of Google and Facebook algorithms to shift millions of votes in elections is vast and unprecedented. Now we learn that Facebook will ensure “authoritative” (establishment) sources appear far more frequently in news feeds.

It’s not sufficient to ban entire news outlets and prominent people – that’s not rigging the game enough – now they want to stack the deck even further against whoever’s left.

Despite all this, there’s also a kind of lobotomized peacefulness surrounding the idea of escaping social media entirely. Because of the way it was designed to keep people addicted, social media is personally responsible for the largest mental health crisis of our generation. The prospect of fleeing that insane asylum (despite the obvious crippling impact on my ego, career, and financial security) doesn’t even sound all that bad.

Paul Joseph Watson is the founder of Summit.News and has a SubscribeStar account where people can contribute to his work and legal fund.

This op-ed was originally posted at Human Events.