On Monday, former Texas congressman Ron Paul posted that he had been suspended from Facebook. The company gave him a broad explanation of “repeatedly going against our community standards” despite Paul never having received a warning or violation notice in the past.

“With no explanation other than “repeatedly going against our community standards,” Facebook has blocked me from managing my page. Never have we received notice of violating community standards in the past and nowhere is the offending post identified,” tweeted Paul.

With no explanation other than "repeatedly going against our community standards," @Facebook has blocked me from managing my page. Never have we received notice of violating community standards in the past and nowhere is the offending post identified. pic.twitter.com/EdMyW9gufa

— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) January 11, 2021

His son, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, followed up the tweet with his own.

“Facebook now considers advocating for liberty to be sedition. Where will it end?” asked Paul.

Facebook now considers advocating for liberty to be sedition. Where will it end? https://t.co/Ws6pBq923N

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) January 11, 2021

What did Paul post that got him suspended?

Paul linked back to an article from the Ron Paul Institute detailing the extreme censorship happening in big tech, and for that, he was censored with a suspension.

What social media may have actually taken as “dangerous” was the fact that in his article, Paul points out that Trump’s suspension came about after social media companies declared that what he was saying was dangerous, but as Paul points out, Trump never called for violence:

Last week’s massive social media purges – starting with President Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter and other outlets – was shocking and chilling, particularly to those of us who value free expression and the free exchange of ideas. The justifications given for the silencing of wide swaths of public opinion made no sense and the process was anything but transparent. Nowhere in President Trump’s two “offending” Tweets, for example, was a call for violence expressed explicitly or implicitly. It was a classic example of sentence first, verdict later.

Paul then goes into how the social media companies are running defense for Joe Biden and doing their best to make people believe he’s pure as the driven snow despite him and the cabinet members he has lined up being everything we’ve been complaining about for decades.

Paul arrives at the conclusion that the social media companies only pose as private companies acting independently outside of the government, but that in reality, they’re effectively a propaganda arm of the statists in our government:

Those who continue to argue that the social media companies are purely private ventures acting independent of US government interests are ignoring reality. The corporatist merger of “private” US social media companies with US government foreign policy goals has a long history and is deeply steeped in the hyper-interventionism of the Obama/Biden era.

“Big Tech” long ago partnered with the Obama/Biden/Clinton State Department to lend their tools to US “soft power” goals overseas. Whether it was ongoing regime change attempts against Iran, the 2009 coup in Honduras, the disastrous US-led coup in Ukraine, “Arab Spring,” the destruction of Syria and Libya, and so many more, the big US tech firms were happy to partner up with the State Department and US intelligence to provide the tools to empower those the US wanted to seize power and to silence those out of favor.

In short, US government elites have been partnering with “Big Tech” overseas for years to decide who has the right to speak and who must be silenced. What has changed now is that this deployment of “soft power” in the service of Washington’s hard power has come home to roost.

Apparently, this was enough for Facebook to suspend Paul.

The fact that Paul was suspended for that should frighten people. Pointing out the relationship between government and big tech is a thing that shouldn’t be hidden at all, yet it would appear that Facebook would rather you not read that, or hear any defense of Trump whatsoever, whether the thing being said is factual or not.

If Facebook is a platform as outlined under section 230, then this post should not have had to come down. It violated no TOS. It does not incite violence. It’s an op-ed from a former Congressman who points out the relationship between big tech and the government and comments on its connections to foreign policy.

Why would Facebook want to take this down? Why suspend Paul despite having no previous strikes against him?

Facebook is asking for the Streisand Effect to take place, but more importantly, it’s showing its hand with this overreaction to Paul’s post.