Reddit Co-Founder Aaron Swartz’s Eerie Warning Before Death

“Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves.”

-Aaron Swartz, Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, 2008

Gone are the innocuous MySpace days of social media interactions that allowed personal customization and direct, unfiltered communications with real-life friends and family- a bygone experience, all without privacy-invasive tracking and payment options.

Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social sites now resemble massive corporations that exploit their users’ most sensitive information for profit and political chicanery (in fact, Facebook has its roots in military data mining operations).

Long before censorship became a trending term, Christians faced documented discrimination and expulsion in the West- especially in academia- since the early-to-mid noughties.

This phenomenon was famously exposed in Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008). The film showed university professors on the chopping block for merely appealing to the possibility of some kind of intelligent creator (after scientifically observing a world full of intelligence).

Since judgment begins with the house of God (1 Peter 4:16-19), the rise in censorship off the back of the popularity of militant “new atheism”, is fitting. However, it is now apparent that the gauntlet is falling on all who hold any minute allegiance to objective truth.

Who Was Aaron Swartz?

One who sought to de-commercialise academia, particularly the science departments, was a free-speech advocate and founding member of Reddit, Aaron Swartz. He co-authored the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto and was involved in many innovative internet projects, such as being the Creative Commons metadata advisor, and was also responsible for the content namespace of the RSS protocol.

He was even instrumental in defeating the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) through his vast influence as a Reddit founder and tech influencer. SOPA was a policy that was rushed through in a bid to galvanize internet service providers to block specific websites from the internet should copyright infringement be alleged- a device that could be used to end free speech online.

Recently controversy has surrounded Reddit when it was discovered that, in Orwellian 1984 style, Mr. Swartz was “unpersoned” and removed from the Reddit Founders listing:

Like Reddit, The Progressive Change Campaign Committee seems to have also distanced itself from Aaron Swartz as there is no mention of him on their website, even though in his personal blog Aaron mentions being a co-founder.

Why would these “progressive” organizations want to cut ties with Aaron?

Aaron Swartz Last Speech

In a keynote speech on May 21st, 2012, Aaron discusses his involvement in bringing down SOPA to fight internet censorship, which ended with this warning:

“It will happen again. Sure, it will have yet another name, and maybe a different excuse, and probably do its damage in a different way. But make no mistake: the enemies of the freedom to connect have not disappeared.”

Only 8 months later on January 11th, 2013, Swartz committed “suicide” in his apartment.

Before his “suicide”, he had been fighting a two-year court case that, according to his girlfriend Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, had “drained all of his financial resources“.

Aaron’s case involved his crime of downloading potentially sensitive scientific MIT documents from JSTOR, a subscription-only service (JSTOR charges libraries as much as $50,000 in yearly subscription fees to access its archive), that could possibly have been used to expose black-op programs like Iran-Contra (Gary Webb faced a similar fate), gain of function activities, or expose the myriad of NGOs that manipulate scientific research and data behind exuberant academic paywalls for the benefit of oligarch private interests.

Such a sentiment was communicated by Aaron’s girlfriend:

“..before he died, he was devouring all the scientific literature he could find on drug addiction and effective interventions.”

In fact, Aarons’s father Bob Swartz relays that the Secret Service were involved in the investigation and asked if any of the university’s classified research had been compromised. Having a close working relationship with MIT, Bob Swartz also says the academic institution:

“has more than $940 million in government contracts for the classified research it conducts in its Lincoln Laboratory” (Source).

It is also possible that Aaron had plans to expose the financial motivations behind climate change activist and their globalist interests. Colleague of Aaron and founder of public.resource.org Carl Malamud gives testimony to this possibility:

“I heard from a friend of his, Aaron told him he was going to analyse the data for evidence of corporate funding of climate change research that led to biased results, and I totally believe that.” (Source)

This would make sense as Aaron had shown interest in global warming issues:

Such a sentiment would later be confirmed by mentor and friend Lawrence Lessig, who hinted that he was planning on analysing the data to uncover corrupt science as he had done with a legal database under Lessig’s guidance at Stanford.

Suicided?

The term “suicided” has been popularised by journalist and researcher James Corbet, who has exposed many convenient suicides by people who were on the road to exposing federal intelligence corruption.

Aaron’s suicide has some peculiarities.

Boston Magazine ran an exclusive piece that details a conversation between Aaron and his father, Bob Swartz. Aaron relayed his experience of arrest by a Secret Service Agent, solitary confinement, and draconian charges with regard to his MIT lawsuit to the plot of Franz Kafka’s, The Trial. The Boston Magazine article reveals:

“Bob had admired Kafka, but didn’t remember the plot of The Trial. He asked Aaron to remind him how the story ended.

Aaron just stared at him.

‘They killed K., Dad,’ Aaron told him. ‘They killed him.'” (Source)

Bob would come to the same conclusion when at Aaron’s funeral he famously said:

“Aaron did not commit suicide but was killed by the government.” (Source)

Aaron’s younger brother Noah Swartz in an interview for the documentary film The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014) mentioned Aaron’s stress and paranoia that the FBI would break into his apartment when he was not there:

“He was very stressed. If you thought, like, the FBI was like, going to come to your doorstep any day. Any time you went down the hall, even to do your laundry and they would break into your apartment because you left the door unlocked, like I’d be pretty stressed…He wouldn’t give any sensitive information about his whereabouts, during this time, because he was so afraid that the FBI would be waiting for him.” (Source)

This paranoia was not unjustified, the FBI has visited their family home in the past and Aaron was well aware the Patriot Act would be used to silence or dispose of people via the ruse of National Security concerns:

In fact, it was the Electronic Crimes Task Force that was the organization that involved the Secret Service in Aaron’s case. The Electronic Crimes Task Force was established through the Patriot Act.

Stephen Heymann was the lead prosecutor who relentlessly went after Aaron even though in June 2011, JSTOR reached a settlement with Bob and Aaron Swartz whereby they paid a fine of $26,500. After this point, JSTOR considered the case closed and publicly stated:

“We have no interest in this becoming an ongoing legal matter.” (Source)

A fact worth mentioning is that Stephen Heymann was previously involved in a cybercrime case of sixteen-year-old Jonathan James in 2000, which likewise ended with a suicide. In a suicide letter, Jonathan wrote:

“The feds play dirty.” (Source)

Rejecting a plea bargain settlement, Aaron pursued the case in court. Aaron’s defense attorney, Elliot Peters, was confident that they would win the case and that a conviction was not justifiable.

Robert Swartz believes that Heymann’s prosecution never anticipated that Aaron’s case would go to court. It’s clear that the prosecution’s strategy was to cause the defense to buckle under a plea bargain by leveraging the threats of draconian sentences and a drawn-out legal case that would exhaust Aaron’s resources.

On the day of his death, Aaron had made plans to have dinner with a friend and activist Ben Wikler (people who plan to kill themselves don’t tend to make plans with friends), something that was highlighted during Wikler’s eulogy:

“That day, Taren was coming home to get him and bring him back over to our house for dinner.” (source)

There was no suicide note, and according to his girlfriend, no warning, and no signs of depression:

“I believe that Aaron’s death was not caused by depression.” (source)

Aaron was also working on a project called SecureDrop before his death, a means through which leaked documents could be easily and securely sent to journalists.

Two days before his death he was making plans to start a new organization that appears to be related to decentralizing government power structures:

 “On January 9, two days before he died, he spent hours deep in conversation with our Australian friend Sam about the new organization Aaron was in the early stages of building. Sam asked him whether he had support, and Aaron replied that everyone who was competent enough to support him was, in fact, supporting him – classic Aaron pessimistic arrogance, but also a reminder that he knew his friends were standing with him. Sam gave Aaron a quick overview of Australian politics; Aaron expressed astonishment at how easy it would be to “take over Australia”, but concluded that a country of only 20 million probably wouldn’t be worth it.”

Finally, Aaron was a co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) having joined to spearhead “Wall Street Reform” and “SOPA” related issues.

The idea of oligarch institutions seeking to ruin and deter Aaron was a sentiment expressed by his girlfriend:

“I believe that Aaron’s death was caused by a criminal justice system that prioritizes power over mercy, vengeance over justice; a system that punishes innocent people for trying to prove their innocence instead of accepting plea deals that mark them as criminals in perpetuity; a system where incentives and power structures align for prosecutors to destroy the life of an innovator like Aaron in the pursuit of their own ambitions.”

Despite all these revelations, there was no autopsy conducted on Aaron’s body…

Can we say for certain that Aaron’s death was in fact murder?

No, but not because there is no evidence.

To recap, Aaron:

• Helped develop RSS, an uncensorable method of communication
• Co-founded PCCC and wanted to see Wall Street reforms
• Co-authored the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, a document that encourages open-source information and government transparency
• Recently achieved a massive political victory by thwarting SOPA
• Warned that attacks on online free speech would continue
• Had attracted the attention of the Secret Service, who led a federal prosecution due to the classified research associated with MIT
• Was potentially going to use the downloaded JSTOR documents from MIT to uncover conflicts of interest via corporate funding for climate change research
• Settled an agreement of financial reparations to JSTOR who considered the case closed
• Had expressed that his treatment by Secret Service Agents reminded him of Franz Kafka’s The Trial where the protagonist is eventually murdered by the prosecution
• Was, according to his younger brother Noah Swartz, paranoid that the FBI would break into his apartment
• Was aware that the Patriot Act would be used to silence people on the internet under the ruse of National Security
• The prosecution was led by the Electronic Crimes Task Force, which was established off the back of the Patriot Act
• Prosecutor Stephen Heymann was involved in a previous “cybercrime” case where Jonathan James likewise committed “suicide” writing in a death note: “The feds play dirty”
• Defense lawyer, Elliot Peters, was confident that Aaron would win the case in court
• Father, Robert Swartz believes that the prosecution had not anticipated the proceedings to go to court
• Had made plans to have dinner with friend Ben Wikler on the day of his death
• Was in the process of starting a new organization and says he had the support needed to see it succeed (the project seems to be related to Australian government centralization)
• Was actively developing a tool called SecureDrop that would privately connect whistleblowers to journalists
• Showed no signs of depression
• Was investigating drug-related addictions and solutions through scientific literature
• Was not given an autopsy
• The funeral was marked by his father saying that he did not commit suicide but was killed by the government
• Is not listed as a co-founder of Reddit or the PCCC on their websites

There is indeed a strong inductive argument to be made that his sudden death was the direct or indirect cause of bad actors wanting to permanently silence him, and due to his high profile, make an example of him.

It Will Happen Again

Let Aaron’s warning from his 2012 Keynote speech burn into your mind:

“It will happen again. Sure, it will have yet another name, and maybe a different excuse, and probably do its damage in a different way. But make no mistake: The enemies of the freedom to connect have not disappeared.”

A false flag or intentional attack on internet infrastructure is likely going to be the justification for online censorship.

Mentor of Aaron Swartz and funeral eulogist, Lawrence Lessig, suggests that an internet Patriot Act has already been written and is awaiting a key event to bring into law:

Just as the events surrounding 9/11 resulted in the Patriot Act that justified mass surveillance of citizens, so too technocrats from Klaus Swab’s World Economic Forum have warned of terrorist “cyber-pandemics” on the back of internet dependence due to COVID-19 lockdowns:

“COVID-19 dramatically increased the dependency of economies and societies on digital technology, increasing the vulnerability of individuals, businesses and governments to cyberattacks.” (Source)

Could such “cyber pandemics” not provide the necessary catalyst to pass an Internet Patriot Act and permanently end the free flow of information online?

We have already started to see internet censorship and academic scorn from legitimate medical and scientific professionals who do not agree with the oligarch propaganda surrounding COVID-19, and Russian websites such as RT News being blacklisted in the UK:

Aaron’s Last Blog

Aaron’s last blog entry, a month before his death, on the 1st of November 2012 details Christopher Noel’s Dark Knight Batman film.

He believes the films are a nihilistic representation of the futility of political reforms:

“The films are mirror images, one about the failure of liberal policies; the other about the failure of conservative policies. In this sense, The Dark Knight is truly the final film in this nihilistic trilogy, documenting the hopelessness of anything outside that usual left-right struggle.”

In his detailed critique, he concludes by emphasizing the pragmatic nature of the films where the Joker succeeds in his mission while Batman and Harvey Dent fail:

“Throughout the film, we’ve seen various desperate attempts to change the system by ignoring the usual rules: Batman originally thought he could inspire change by being a cultural exemplar, but only ended up causing a bunch of kids to get themselves hurt by dressing up as him. Dent thought he could clean up the system by pushing righteously from the inside, but ended up cutting more and more ethical corners until his own personal obsessions ended up making him a monster. The Joker had by far the most interesting plan: he hoped to out-corrupt the corrupters, to take their place and give the city ‘a better class of criminal’….And the crazy thing is that it works! At the end of the movie, the Joker is alive, the gangsters and their money launderers are mostly dead, and their money has been redistributed (albeit though the deflationary method of setting it on fire)”

Batman, having essentially ended the crime monopoly in Gotham through failure (while causing havoc), is now the focal point of public score and resentment.

The final words typed by Aaron Swartz on his blog concluding The Dark Knight series ring with a bitter irony:

“Thus Master Wayne is left without solutions. Out of options, it’s no wonder the series ends with his staged suicide.”

Whether Aaron’s death was staged or not, what is clear is his growing pessimism about legal political reforms and a desire for change through pragmatic, perhaps even criminal, means.

We Don’t Need More Humanism

This nihilistic attitude and an embrace of pragmatic morality stem from Aaron’s “new atheism” beliefs which were particularly rampant throughout the ’00s.

According to Ben Wikler’s eulogy, the people Aaron admired the most were Robert Caroll and Ira Glass, both hardened skeptics and atheists.

The “ends justify the means” pragmatism is the modus operandi of all atheistic utopian ideals stemming from Darwin’s occult philosophy, which in modernity, has resulted in the reign of terror, killing of the Australian Aboriginals, Stalin’s Iron Curtain, Mao’s Great Leap Forward, Pol Pot’s Killing Fields, the abortion industrial complex, and now the rising technocratic surveillance state.

Romanian Minister Richard Warmbrand relays that his atheistic torturers justified their atrocities by quoting Lenin’s pragmatic philosophy:

“I often asked the torturers, “Don’t you have pity in your hearts?” They usually answered with quotations from Lenin: “You cannot make omelets without breaking the shells of eggs,” and “You cannot cut wood without making chips fly.” I said again, “I know these quotations from Lenin. But there is a difference. When you cut a piece of wood it feels nothing. But here you are dealing with human beings. Every beating produces pain and there are mothers who weep.” It was in vain. They are materialists. For them nothing besides matter exists and to them a man is like wood, like an eggshell. With this belief they sink to unthinkable depths of cruelty.” -Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ, Chapter 2

Likewise, Howard Scott, founder of Technocracy Inc., details the ontology of humans by describing their similarities to impersonal matter, like rocks or trees or dirt:

“Attention has already been called to the fact that the human body is composed chemically of the ordinary substances of which rocks are made. So are dogs, horses, and pigs.

In an earlier lesson, while discussing the ‘human engine,’ we pointed out that the human body obeys identically the same laws of energy transformation as a steam engine. This also is true of dogs, horses, and pigs.

These facts might lead one to suspect that human beings are very far removed from the semi-supernatural creatures they have heretofore supposed themselves to be.”

-Technocracy Study Course, LESSON 21. THE HUMAN ANIMAL, 21 .2 Supernaturalism of Man

This type of argumentation is a fine example of what is known as a non-sequitur (does not logically follow). Just because there are similarities within the biological makeup of living organisms (such as carbon) does not mean all living organisms have the same origin, function, or value. It would be like saying “I can swim, whales can swim, I’m therefore no different from a whale”.

When this irrational ideology is adopted, however, humans must be dominated like other natural forces or animals by the will of the strong. As Carl Tichrib rightly pointed out:

“When naturalism is our basis for reality and scientific materialism our source of authority, when consumerism becomes our purpose and product our identity, then what is Man but a number? Humanity simply turns into another thing to be engineered, another statistic to be cataloged. We become a human resource. Modernity in the West celebrated the building of great and marvelous things, but it did something to the soul.” – Carl Teichrib, Game of Gods, p 77

Sadly this worldview of scientism that Aaron embraced is the exact philosophy that is driving internet censorship and global surveillance which will benefit a small group of technological elites.

Founding member of the Trilateral Commission and National Security Advisor for the Carter Administration highlighted this elite class utilizing technology to their advantage:

“More directly linked to the impact of technology, it involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled and directed society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite whose claim to political power would rest on allegedly superior scientific know-how. Unhindered by the restraints of traditional liberal values, this elite would not hesitate to achieve its political ends by using the latest modern techniques for influencing public behavior and keeping society under close surveillance and control. Under such circumstances, the scientific and technological momentum of the country would not be reversed but would actually feed on the situation it exploits.” -Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, p253

Unfortunately, Aaron was biting the hand that made his philosophical framework. A kingdom is indeed not divided against itself (Matthew 12:26). Since this secular humanist pragmatic philosophy views man no different than the animals it kills and eats every day, why should such elitists show any compassion or mercy to one who opposes their utopian goals?

This secular humanist ideal and its godless morals are still shaping society today.

It’s this exact philosophy that is moving us swiftly towards a global technocratic neo-feudal state. Embracing and promoting its ideals and morals is not going to slow or stop its influence, but as Brzezinski stipulated, would rather help it “feed on the situation it exploits.”

“Aaron thought he could change the world just by explaining the world very clearly to people.” – Noah Swartz (Source)

Regrettably, Aaron’s solution to the problem was misapplied. The world does not need more activism, political lobbying, protesting, or information about the situation, in short, the world does not need more humanism.

The world needs transcendent accountability to God and an objective reason to care for one another. The world needs a Biblical ontology that values humanity above the matter around us that we bend to our use.

The world needs Jesus, the One it’s rejecting.

No, we don’t need more humanism, we need more God.

In short, the world needs righteousness, a transposed righteousness that does not puff up but humbles, a righteousness of grace, a righteousness that exalts a nation (Proverbs 14:34).