George Orwell’s 1984 offered a terrifying glimpse of a dystopian future that should have been seen as a warning, yet, sadly, it’s become a roadmap for leftist totalitarianism. In fact, we’ve watched a key theme of Orwell’s seminal novel unfold like clockwork over the past couple of weeks.
Before the release of the Bureau of Economic Analysis report indicating that the U.S. economy contracted in the second quarter of 2022, the Biden administration, anticipating the news, sought to redefine what a recession is.
“What is a recession? While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle,” the White House claimed. “Instead, both official determinations of recessions and economists’ assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data—including the labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production, and incomes. Based on these data, it is unlikely that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year—even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter—indicates a recession.”
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So what is a recession, according to the White House? Surely they must at least agree there is some objective standard, right? Wrong. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked last week for a definition, and she refused to offer one.
“We don’t — we don’t — not going to define it from here. I’m just going to leave it to the NBER [National Bureau of Economic Research], as we have stated and how they define recession.”
Since then, the media has joined forces with the Biden administration, arguing that two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth doesn’t mean we’re in a recession. Even Wikipedia has updated its references to “recession” to adhere to the White House talking points.
Now, as PJ Media’s Rick Moran recently reported, posts criticizing the Biden administration for redefining “recession” will get flagged on Facebook and Instagram as “false information” because of what “independent fact-checkers” say.
Politifact rated the claim that “the White House is now trying to protect Joe Biden by changing the definition of the word recession,” as “false,” even though they’ve previously used the longstanding definition (two consecutive quarters of negative growth) in prior fact-check rulings. Now, social media posts pointing out that the White House has redefined recession will be flagged and suppressed. In other words, the social media gatekeepers have decided that we can no longer even debate what a recession is. Whatever the Biden White House says, goes.
This is quite terrifying. Not just because of what is happening, but the lack of outrage over it. We’ve seen the federal government collude with the mainstream media to redefine recession, all while social media is censoring speech that calls them out for it.
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