On Monday morning, I ascended to Twitter heaven.

I had been on Twitter since 2016 and never once received a prior warning or reprimand. This wasn’t my second or third strike. This was an online assassination that went straight to a permanent ban. No reason was given. I conduct myself professionally and have always been sure to responsibly present our arguments. I don’t quarrel with individuals on social media and have never even used profanity or crude rhetoric. Simply put, by no reasonable standard of measurement could it be argued that I violated even the most ambiguous Terms of Service. This was just another case of naked censorship.

It also wasn’t my first rodeo. I was banned by Facebook and PayPal in the mid-2000s, long before it became altogether commonplace for dissidents to be banned from everything. At this point, I very nearly have been banned from everything, including YouTube, Amazon, and every known credit card payment processor in the universe. Frankly, I have never known any other reality.

Because of this, I was relatively late to join the Twitter party, not arriving until the fall of 2016. Within weeks, Hillary Clinton was featuring my Twitter account in a campaign ad against Donald Trump. Though my work had been covered/targeted by countless print and broadcast media outlets long before my tenure on Twitter, there was no doubt that Twitter boosted my audience and led to greater exposure. By the time the end came this week, my Tweets were routinely gathering tens of thousands of views, sometimes hundreds of thousands. One recent Tweet generated in excess of one million views, which, in truth, is probably the reason I have been taken out.

I suppose the only real surprise was that I was able to last there for as many years as I did. When it comes to arbitrary censorship, the interesting thing is that you just never know when or why you’ll be taken out. As I said, I certainly didn’t do anything to bring this upon myself; the timing of these things is always random. You just wake up one day and you’re gone. In the meantime, there are a limitless number of minority racists whose accounts are littered with profane, hate-filled rants that call for the actual murder of White people. Of course, those accounts are safe.

I was hardly the only one to be shipped off to the Twitter Gulag this week. At the exact same time that I was banned, Dr. Kevin MacDonald and Dr. Tomislav Sunic, among others, were also shuttered. MacDonald and Sunic, especially, are gentlemen and legitimate scholars whose voices deserve any and all platforms. Still, if the party has to end, it’s always better to leave with friends. It was not lost upon us that we all survived the previous regime only to be banned by Elon Musk’s operation.

One commenter wrote that we could take our bans as a high compliment, as well as “an independent verification that you all stand on the moral high ground of truth and courage.� Sure, at least there’s that, but MacDonald alone had a following numbering five Roman legions that have now been dispatched into the ether.

It would be disingenuous for me to tell you that it isn’t somewhat maddening to build up a large, organic following only to have it evaporated on a whim. Like most people, I don’t like being violated. But what I like even less is to hear men whine about things not being fair. I have long possessed an admiration for the Machiavellian nature of our enemies. They have done to me exactly what I would do to them. I respect that. They have set the rules and we should remember them.

I do not now, nor have I ever believed in the equality of individuals or ideas. We are right and they are wrong. If I were in control, I would be eager to do everything within my power to extract the anti-White, “woke� agenda from our society. Root and stem. I give my enemy credit for being more ruthless than our people, who are still too noble for their own good. While we ought not to lose the moral compass that separates us from our adversaries, we must see things clearly.

Still, the one message above all others that I want people to remember during this teachable moment is that we cannot apologize for our positions or behave during times of difficulty in a way that brings dishonor to our cause. It is an animating thing to engage in the struggle of one’s time. In the best of us, it will stir the Faustian spirit that exists within our hearts and minds. Without trials of principle, you will never know whether or not you are honest. Making the hard decision during times of challenge brings honor to our ancestors and solidifies our standing as a man.

As a friend of mine recently put it, great men are never made except through great trials. Adversities aren’t obstacles, but rather our greatest opportunities — to get better, forge our character, work harder, become smarter, and prove our worth. You won’t know what you’re made of until your time comes and you face a decision. We should welcome these opportunities, whether it be something as trivial as a social media ban or during other situations when the stakes are much higher.

At the end of the day, I remain thankful for the opportunity to serve and hope that whatever example I set can be done for the greater good of our collective. In the meantime, the show must go on and it’s time to get back to work.

James Edwards hosts The Political Cesspool Radio Program. When not interviewing newsmakers, Edwards is no stranger to making news himself, having appeared as a commentator many times on national television. Over the course of the past two decades, his ground-breaking work has also been the subject of articles in hundreds of print publications and media broadcasts around the world.