Women’s health and civil liberties author and journalist Naomi Wolf had her Twitter account suspended and her YouTube channel frozen after she raised questions regarding the side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, the constitutionality of lockdowns, and the candor of Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Already considering legal action, Wolf decided to join the class-action lawsuit started by former President Donald Trump.
Her original plan was to sue Twitter on her own. She was then approached by Trump’s legal team, she told The Epoch Times.
Wolf hasn’t been given any explanation as to which of her content specifically triggered the suspension, despite her multiple attempts to reach out to both Twitter and YouTube, she said. In fact, she received no explanation whatsoever from either platform. Instead, Twitter told the media that she was spreading vaccine misinformation. She considers that both false and defamatory.
Neither Google nor Twitter responded to requests for comment by press time.
Wolf’s case highlights the escalation of social media censorship over the past several years. While the giant tech companies started with purges of voices that the establishment considered right-wing fringe, such as radio host Alex Jones and activist Laura Loomer, the list of taboo topics has now expanded so far that censors are coming after people like Wolf, a liberal feminist and life-long Democrat who used to be published by the establishment press, in newspapers including The New York Times and The Guardian.
Shortly after Wolf’s Twitter account was suspended, YouTube blocked her from accessing her channel, called “Daily Clout.” It’s not clear why YouTube took the action and why at that time. Much of the channel’s content over the past year has been dedicated to criticism of COVID-19 lockdowns and the prospect of vaccine passports. The channel’s last video was posted in late May, more than a week before YouTube’s action.
Inconvenient Voice
As a former political consultant for campaigns of former Vice President Al Gore and former President Bill Clinton, Wolf sees her line of inquiry crossing vital interests of her own party.“Dr. Fauci is clearly ... an important part of the Democrats’ brand and their reelection strategy, right? They’re going to run on having beaten coronavirus and he’s being made the face of that,” she said.
While she’s not alone in asking pointed questions, her reputation as a liberal makes her criticism particularly inconvenient, Wolf said.
Media Blitz
Within a few days of Wolf getting censored, several media outlets ran stories labeling her as being “anti-vaccine” and said she was deplatformed for posting misinformation about vaccines. She denies those allegations, noting that both she and her children are vaccinated.She called the reports “extremely inaccurate” and “defamatory,” noting that her social media posts were quoted “way out of context.”
It seemed to her that the articles all used the same source information, “as if from a press release,” though she didn’t want to elaborate further in order to avoid speculation.
“It was a very Stalinistic experience,” Wolf said.
Except for the Times of London, no outlet reached out to her for comment, she said. Even publications like The Guardian and The New Republic, which have previously published Wolf’s writings, ran their pieces without asking for her side of the story. Both publications didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time.
Wolf called the document “terrifying.”
It defines gene therapy as “products that mediate their effects by transcription and/or translation of transferred genetic material and/or by integrating into the host genome and that are administered as nucleic acids, viruses, or genetically engineered microorganisms.”
However, the FDA document says that “transmission to untreated individuals [via shedding] is an extremely low probability event.”
Responding via email, Wolf said that her “describing being personally alarmed” isn’t vaccine misinformation.
“I think it’s clear that when I said the white paper was ’terrifying,' that I personally found it terrifying,” she said. “I think these are fair questions to explore and honest emotions for me to share. I’m not a medical doctor—I am a citizen who has long written about the human body and the need to take care of it and to respect it.”
Concerns about spike protein shedding have so far been dismissed by experts.
In another tweet, Wolf recalled overhearing an Apple employee saying that the company was working on a technology that could deliver a vaccine with “nanoparticles that let you travel back in time.”
Uncontrolled Conversation
Wolf has received a number of warnings from Twitter over the past several months regarding COVID-related content.It resembled “behavior modification,” in her view, as the language used conveyed a “very demeaning way to treat any customer.”
“It was like the platform was training a 4-year-old. ... ‘This is your second warning’ and ‘You have a time out,’ like you’re sent to your room,” she said.
One piece of content that was flagged by the social media company was Wolf’s reporting that a number of women have complained about menstrual irregularity after receiving the vaccine. The topic has since been broadly picked up by the media, quoting experts as saying the vaccines are still safe, but also acknowledging that there’s a lack of research on this issue.
Wolf suggested that social media companies need to be more transparent about the extent to which they stifle discussion.
“If people are not supposed to engage in thoughtful discussion or even joking discussion or rhetorical questions and they’re not supposed to raise public health concerns, then people should know because I’m quite sure that would lead to an exodus to platforms where people can say, ‘Hey, I heard that post-menopausal women are bleeding,‘ or ’I experienced this myself.’ I mean, we have to be able to educate each other as human beings, or else we don’t live in a free society,” she said.
In the past, her reporting helped to identify subpar or even dangerous health products that government authorities initially considered safe. Each time, the investigation started with informal, anecdotal reports from patients and consumers.
“A lot of really important information that made breast implants better or made contraceptives pills better or took vaginal mesh off the market arose in uncontrolled discussions,” Wolf said.
She said she can no longer pursue certain leads with the same intensity now.
“Every day, I get women emailing me testimony of menstrual disorders, like really dramatic ones. I’m scared to even report them because then I lose the last few platforms I have,” she said.
Wolf stressed that she doesn’t believe this was the reason for her deplatforming.
“I mean, I talked about vaccines and women’s health and myocarditis [as a side effect of the COVID vaccines in some people] for the duration of the pandemic,” she said.
“It’s no secret that I was very critical of lockdowns, of what they were doing to the economy, to children’s mental health, transfer of wealth. I mean, I’ve been very vocal about all these things. That’s not when I was deplatformed. I was deplatformed when I posted Dr. Baric’s CV.”
