The politicised public has long been accustomed to the growing list of taboo topics that should not be raised on social networks if one doesn’t want one’s account blocked – such as questions about the fairness of the US election or, say, the corruption scandals surrounding the Biden family
Now banned words have already started to join their ranks. In recent days, a new term, “Blue Anon”, has rapidly gained popularity in American social networks. It is a carbon copy of QAnon, and means adherents of various liberal conspiracy theories.
There have been many of these in recent years, from the notorious “Rashgate” (which later turned out to have been devised by Perm con artists) to belief in a Trump conspiracy to stage a coup and stay in power. Incidentally, the latter also unites adherents of QAnon and Blue Anon.
Both of these quasi-religious sects complement each other perfectly. For example, they were holding their breath waiting for Trump supporters to start large-scale street riots – either on January 20, the day of Biden’s inauguration, or March 4. In reality, nothing happened on those dates, of course.
As soon as the Blue Anon concept started circulating in social media, Google instantly declared war against it, massively removing any references to this impertinent “anti-Soviet stuff” in its search results. God forbid naive voters should come across a satire of left-wing conspiracism!
Of course, not all search engines in the U.S. have yet buckled as much to liberal censorship as Google. In DuckDuckGo, for example, which is gaining popularity as a free-for-thought and free-for-dissent search engine, Blue Anon is in its due place.
The row over this ironic term represents the transition of corporate censorship into a new phase. Now the digital giants in the US are not only starting to tackle taboo topics, but also words that simply don’t fit into today’s progressive vernacular.
Malek Dudakov