CCN Claims to Expose Abuse. So Why Did They Silence an Actual Abuse Survivor Who's On Their Side?

 There is a little backstory needed here, because apparently we cannot have a simple disagreement on Facebook anymore without somebody turning it into a full-blown soap opera.

Yesterday, Mr. CCN himself, Bill Josh, apparently showed up on the Facebook page of a follower of this blog and started going after her while accusing her of being the person behind this blog. According to the account provided to me, Bill was attempting to intimidate her and calling her names while making that accusation. As much as I wouldn't mind her being a co-author, she's not.

There is one rather amusing problem with that whole situation. CCN had already blocked her.

She cannot see what CCN posts from her account. She cannot interact with their page. She had also blocked Bill Josh on Facebook. So since Bill wanted to "inform" her of some things, he apparently had to dust off an old Facebook page called Bill’s Belt Bustin BBQ to get around that block and continue the interaction.

Ol' Bill was pretty pressed about me saying that it was my opinion that he was flying back to Washington.

There's something about an old adage... something about "he that doth protest too much." You all know that one.

In the middle of all this, CCN also named this woman in one of their posts, which appears to have brought the entire thing out into the open.

The interesting part isn't simply that CCN and this particular woman disagree politically. That happens every day on Facebook. The interesting part is who they managed to piss off.

This isn't somebody who is coming at CCN from the political left. Quite the opposite. She, quite openly, thinks the sun rises and sets in Jim Walsh. She has loyally defended Republican candidates and causes.

In other words, CCN managed to alienate someone who is politically much closer to them than many of the people they routinely argue with. That takes a certain level of commitment.

Then there is the issue of what happened in the comments.

The screenshots show this woman repeatedly confronting CCN over deleted comments and accusing the page of deleting her posts while allowing other people to say things she considers far worse. She specifically compares her treatment by CCN with her previous interactions with Brittany Voie, saying that Voie never blocked her or deleted her comments, even when she was criticizing her.

She is clearly pissed off.

She also repeatedly accuses CCN of deleting posts after she challenged them, particularly posts involving Jim Walsh and other political controversies. CCN, for its part, tells her to stop tagging them and says that their purpose is to report facts rather than engage with the candidates' campaigns.

That would be a perfectly reasonable position for a news-oriented page to take. The problem is that once you start deleting someone's comments, blocking them, naming them in posts, and then engaging with them through another Facebook account after they have blocked you, the distinction between "we're simply reporting facts" and becoming an active participant in the fight gets considerably harder to explain.

There is another part of this that I find particularly interesting.

This woman identifies herself as an abuse survivor. Whatever anyone thinks of her politics, her personality, her comments, or her choice of language, deleting her comments and shutting down her ability to respond doesn't make those underlying disagreements disappear. It simply means the disagreement is no longer visible on CCN's page.

That is their page and they are certainly entitled to moderate it according to whatever rules they have established. What they don't get to control is how people react when they believe those rules are being applied selectively.

This woman is making it abundantly clear that she believes she is being treated differently.

One of the more revealing comments comes when she essentially says that Brittany Voie had been subjected to far worse criticism from her and still didn't delete her comments or block her.

That comparison matters because it cuts through the usual argument that this is simply about political disagreement. She isn't saying, "You deleted my comments because I'm a Republican."

She's saying, in effect, "I've disagreed with people on the other side of the aisle before, and they didn't treat me this way."

That's a very different complaint.

There is another issue here that I think deserves to be called out.

CCN has positioned itself as being concerned about exposing abuse and holding people accountable for abusive behavior. Yet from where I'm sitting, this episode raises a very different question: Are they actually interested in giving abuse survivors a voice, or are they interested in abuse only when it serves the political narrative they are pushing?

That distinction matters.

If CCN's primary objective is to keep the spotlight off Joel McEntire's alleged conduct and redirect attention toward Terry Carlson, then stories from other abuse survivors that complicate that narrative become inconvenient. An abuse survivor talking about her own experience isn't particularly useful to a smear campaign against somebody else.

According to this woman's account and the screenshots she provided, her comments were deleted and she was blocked. The author of this blog saw the comments and saw how this woman talked about DARVO. I want her to know that she was heard, and that her story is important. Her experience does not become less valid simply because it doesn't fit neatly into someone else's political narrative.

That is where the whole thing becomes especially ugly.

You don't get to claim you're exposing abuse while simultaneously silencing an actual abuse survivor because her story is inconvenient to the narrative you're trying to create.

If the goal really is to expose abuse, then abuse survivors should be allowed to tell their stories, even when those stories don't fit neatly into your political agenda.

If the goal is instead to use allegations of abuse as a political weapon against an opponent, then people need to be honest about that.

Those are two very different things.

I don't blame this woman for being furious. Abuse is horrible, and no abuse survivor should be silenced simply because her experience doesn't fit someone else's political storyline.

CCN can moderate its own page. It can establish whatever rules it wants. What it cannot control is the public reaction when people see what appears to be selective moderation and ask why.

CCN didn't just piss off another political opponent. They apparently managed to piss off one of their own side's supporters.

Judging from these screenshots, she has absolutely no intention of letting them forget it. I don't blame her. Abuse is horrible, and no abuse survivor should be silenced. Whatever anyone thinks of her politics or her comments, she has every right to be angry if she believes she is being selectively silenced or treated differently.

Human beings really did invent the internet so everyone could communicate instantly. Then we discovered the block button and somehow made everything considerably more complicated.