Posted on 04/29/2022 7:02:39 AM PDT by Tench_Coxe
Below is my column in USA Today on how the Musk purchase of Twitter has forced politicians and pundits to move from corporate censorship to calls for good old-fashioned state censorship.
Indeed, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has declared Musk’s pledge to restore free speech values on social media as threatening Democracy itself. She has promised that “there are going to be rules” to block such changes. She is not alone.
Former President Obama has declared “regulation has to be part of the answer” to disinformation.
For her part, Hillary Clinton is looking to Europe to fill the vacuum and called upon her European counterparts to pass a massive censorship law to “bolster global democracy before it’s too late.”
(Excerpt) Read more at jonathanturley.org ...
1I notice the the theme now seems to be using Europe to impose censorship on companies in the US to circumvent the Constitution.
Brings to mind this complaint from 200+ years ago:
"He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:"
I won't go as far to say the people mentioned and their fellow travelers/enablers are an existential threat, but they seem to be hell bent on going that way.
VIDEO: Meet the Biden DHS national head of censorship, America
https://rumble.com/v12uq5l-meet-the-biden-dhs-national-head-of-censorship-america..html
Thanks for posting.
More, from your linked article.....
...Progressives, in the meantime, have adopted a dangerous shift in their strategy of calling for corporations to censor speech.
Last week, former President Barack Obama made this shift clear in his much covered speech at Stanford University. Just days after Musk re-enforced his bid for Twitter with the support of many in the free speech community, Obama warned that social media was “tilting us in the wrong direction.” He called for more censorship of disinformation while calling himself “pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist.”
Obama has never been viewed as an ally on free speech by those of us who have been attacked for our “absolutist” views. Moreover, calling for censorship as a free speech absolutist is like claiming to be a vegetarian while calling for mandatory meat consumption.
Obama favors free speech only if it does not include disinformation, including what he considers to be “lies, conspiracy theories, junk science, quackery, racist tracts and misogynist screeds.”
However, it was notable that Obama called himself “pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist,” not a free speech absolutist. The point became clear later in the speech when Obama noted that the First Amendment does not restrict private businesses from censoring speech. The First Amendment is not the full measure or definition of free speech, which many consider a human right.
For years, the First Amendment distinction has been the focus of liberals who discovered a way to circumvent constitutional bans on censorship by using companies like Twitter and Facebook. Now, that successful strategy could be curtailed as shareholders join figures like Musk in objecting to corporations and media acting like a surrogate state media.
Faced with that prospect, Democrats are falling back to their final line of defense – and finally being honest about their past use of corporate surrogates. They are now calling for outright state censorship. Obama declared: “This is an opportunity, it’s a chance that we should welcome for governments to take on a big important problem and prove that democracy and innovation can coexist.”
He is talking about imposing “standards” on companies to force them to censor “lies” and “disinformation.”
As is often the case, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stripped away any niceties or nuance. Clinton called for the European Union to pass the Digital Services Act (DSA), a measure widely denounced by free speech advocates as a massive censorship measure. Clinton warned that governments need to act now because “for too long, tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability. The EU is poised to do something about it.”
Clinton’s call for censoring disinformation was breathtakingly hypocritical. President Obama was briefed by his CIA Director John Brennan on “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.” The intelligence suggested it was “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”
Moreover, her call for censorship came just weeks after special counsel John Durham offered more details about the accusation that her campaign manufactured a false Russian collusion theory. ...
Nazis gotta be Nazis… looking at you, “Ministry of Dipshytery”
“I won’t go as far to say the people mentioned and their fellow travelers/enablers are an existential threat...”
Ok, I’ll say it for you. They’re no better than red commies and they should be dealt with similarly.
“First Amendment absolutist” - GIVE ME A BREAK.
0bie follows Antifa’s 1st Amendment interpretation, which is “I can say anything I want to you or about you and if you dare to disagree with me, let me remind you that this club in my hand is not just for image.”
The thug interpretation, in other words. This is the freedom to shout you down and make threats against you if you try to keep talking anyway; the freedom to push snuff or porn in your face and in your kids’ faces and (again) make threats against you if you have a problem with it; the freedom to racketeer against you and drive you away from your home if you speak out against their criminal operations.
The average person’s confusion about what constitutes “free speech” drives a great deal of the thuggery and the internet makes it easier to push this idea because the thug who’s threatening you may be a thousand miles away, or right next door
Example, if you ban someone from your website for making threats against other members, or discussing criminal stuff, or trying to hack the site, you get branded as being against free speech. Thugs and criminals love this type of “free speech.”
Another example: Gangsters (many of them illegal aliens) move into your neighborhood and start to racketeer against you, i.e., screaming and threatening you at all hours of the day, selling drugs near your property, trespassing, etc, trying to force you out of your house - and when you finally call the police, it is explained to you that “this is freedom of speech.”
While it’s a benefit to be able to listen to someone’s poorly-expressed opposing viewpoint without losing one’s temper, and to dismiss rancorous, abusive, threatening speech with a little laugh and a joke, it’s never a good idea to mistake all speech as free speech.
An intelligent person would be hella offended at 0bie calling himself a “first amendment absolutist” when he tells us in the same sentence that he’s going to be part of the force cracking down on your rights - including free speech.
Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out.
Xi reaping benefits from his investments thanks democrats much.
.
Absolutely against the first amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights…
Augusto Pinochet please pick up the courtesy phone.
If only so much misinformation didn’t turn out to be information...if so many conspiracy therories didn’t turn out to be conspiracies.
They are communists, and they aren't hiding it (other than throwing the word 'democracy' around like they actually care about it). Just as troubling is the total silence from the GOP - plenty of avenues of attack against the Leftists, yet most of the R's seem to be in hiding.
The Republicans are cowards or fellow criminals. Those that aren’t, Greene, Gosar, Biggs, and Boebert, are attacked from all sides by the communist wind machine and lawfare apparatus.
In 1994 the GOP caucus ran on Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America.
This year the pubbies will run on “we’re not democrats.”
Sad.
I’ll never vote rat, but I don’t have to vote GOP.
With the Dems looking so bad, I suspect you’ll see a third party candidate for POTUS in 2024 funded undercover by leftys attempting to pull off a Clintonian plurality win. Some Hollyweird guy or business executive that they can market to uncritical “centrists”.
Not the strategy of a winner.
And attacked by their fellow Republicans.
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