A Bloomington-Normal community advocate and conservative blogger was canceled by WordPress, but has gotten her site back up after several attempts.
BlnNews is a “conservative” website, that often publishes about local issues and facts surrounding things like taxation and COVID-19 responses from local government, Diane Benjamin authors and manages, and has been since 2012. WordPress, a publisher, did not seem to like a story regarding Ivermectin…a treatment to COIVD-19 that seemed to have been effective, according to some studies in India.
“I looked at the terms of use, there was actually nothing that was violated. I’ve been with word press since 2012, I’ve never gotten anything like this before. No warnings, no nothing,” said Benjamin.
Benjamin sent three messages to WordPress and they did not respond to any of them. By the fourth message her site was back up within 40 minutes.
“I was never told why it was taken down. Let me tell you what I think went on: There is one word that you’re not allowed to say on social media, do you know what that word is? Ivermectin. There was a story that I posted, I don’t if you remember when the media was reporting there were deaths everywhere in India,” said Benjamin. “They were burning bodies in the streets, they were piling up everywhere.Then all of a sudden the news went away. India cured the population by giving them Ivermectin. They pretty much eradicated COVID in India. They have millions more people than we do here in this country, they have maybe six cases a day. If that’s not proof Ivermectin works….”
Benjamin said we don’t live in America anymore, the America where speech is valued, where more speech is better.
“It’s about killing speech you don’t like now, because you don’t want to hear it,” said Benjamin. “That is so dangerous for the country. We can’t talk to each other, we can’t hear what each other has to say. I know the liberals that are listening are thinking I don’t allow people to comment on my site. There are some people I do not allow to comment, because I refuse to engage people who have no interest in hearing the other side. If you want to get on my site and just preach to me then call me names, no I’m not going to post your comment. If you want to engage in conversation, anybody is welcome.”
Benjamin’s story was picked up by local radio station WGLT and she said what this censorship did was show her who the haters were in town.
“The liberal radio station in town did a story and there were tons of comments to it. I got messages sent to me, personally, celebrating that my site was down and ‘the hater’s gone.’ Yeah, there’s a lot of hate on my site, isn’t there? It’s actually speech they hate,” said Benjamin.