In some Western countries – perhaps most notably the United Kingdom – everyday citizens are being arrested and even imprisoned for Facebook posts that aren’t approved of by the government. But it’s all done for our protection, so no need to worry.
In the US, at least, it is clear that the war on free speech is being waged for political purposes. Censorship efforts are coming almost exclusively from the political left. Progressives are no longer even hiding their hostility towards free speech. Alexander Vindman, who became a darling of the Democratic Party after testifying against then-President Donald Trump during the latter’s first impeachment hearings, recently gloated over the Telegram CEO’s arrest.
“While Durov holds French citizenship, is arrested for violating French law, this has broader implications for other social media, including Twitter,” Vindman posted on X. “There’s a growing intolerance for platforming disinfo & malign influence & a growing appetite for accountability. Musk should be nervous.”
Naturally, Vindman went after Musk, who is almost universally despised by the left. There probably isn’t a social media platform in existence that is not being used by certain people for nefarious purposes. Why, then, did Vindman not suggest that Mark Zuckerberg should be worried? More to the point, should the CEO of any social media company be held criminally liable for the activities in which some of their users engage?
In the US, at least, it is clear that the war on free speech is being waged for political purposes. Censorship efforts are coming almost exclusively from the political left. Progressives are no longer even hiding their hostility towards free speech. Alexander Vindman, who became a darling of the Democratic Party after testifying against then-President Donald Trump during the latter’s first impeachment hearings, recently gloated over the Telegram CEO’s arrest.
“While Durov holds French citizenship, is arrested for violating French law, this has broader implications for other social media, including Twitter,” Vindman posted on X. “There’s a growing intolerance for platforming disinfo & malign influence & a growing appetite for accountability. Musk should be nervous.”
Naturally, Vindman went after Musk, who is almost universally despised by the left. There probably isn’t a social media platform in existence that is not being used by certain people for nefarious purposes. Why, then, did Vindman not suggest that Mark Zuckerberg should be worried? More to the point, should the CEO of any social media company be held criminally liable for the activities in which some of their users engage?
Misinformation About Misinformation
A growing intolerance for platforming disinfo? Chilling stuff, particularly when one asks oneself, who gets to decide what constitutes “disinfo.” The answer, of course, is the authorities, the very same people who spread plenty disinformation of their own. There was the Trump-Russia collusion story, replete with falsehoods but reported ad nauseam by the establishment media. Then came the anti-COVID restrictions – now proven to have been largely ineffective. Yet we were told they were essential to stopping the spread of the virus. There are plenty of other examples of people in positions of authority peddling misinformation while telling us they want censorship to protect us from misinformation.
Hate speech and misinformation are almost entirely defined by the progressive left to encompass any opinions they don’t like or any information they don’t want the general public to know.
Alexander Vindman may be of little consequence, but another opponent of free speech could possibly become the next vice president of the United States. During a 2022 MSNBC interview, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, now Kamala Harris’ 2024 running mate, said: “There is no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.” That is a disturbing perspective. Ironically, it is also disinformation. The US Supreme Court has ruled that there is no exception to the First Amendment when it comes to hate speech. Also absent from the First Amendment is any prohibition on saying things that are not true.
Like a disturbingly large number of people on the left, Walz firmly believes that government should regulate speech. He backed the idea of creating what has been labeled a “bias registry” in Minnesota. The plan was to encourage residents of the state to report so-called bias-related incidents to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. Effectively, it was a tool for tattling on your neighbors for “thought crimes.”
It is reasonable to conclude, then, that if the Harris-Walz ticket prevails in the November election, it will herald the birth of an administration hostile to free speech. It is also reasonable to ponder the possibility that, in the name of protecting the people, the US government and many of its foreign counterparts will step up efforts to regulate what can and cannot be said on social media platforms – or even in public, for that matter. Benjamin Franklin once wrote: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” While the true historical context of this quote is a little different from what most people understand, it still contains a valuable lesson about the dangers of trading freedom for some notion of safety.
Graham Noble, Chief Political Correspondent & Satirist at LibertyNation.com. This article was first published HERE
5 comments:
It's interesting that an American who says that anti- COVID restrictions were "largely ineffective" as if that were a good thing, seems to have forgotten that over a million of his fellow citizens died from COVID and maybe that was connected with his free-speech hysteria. Seems they were quite happy to be free to die. Here in New Zealand we were a little more pragmatic and accepted the good advice provided by our public health officials and got to live to complain about it. I know whose version of free speech serves me the best.
Keeping us 'safe' by using self-appointed spies and informers to dob in anyone who expresses opinions that are disapproved of.
I've seen this working at university level and where it is grossly abused by the aforesaid dobbing in academic staff they don't like or who failed them. The right to cross-examine informers is often absent.
In reply to Anonymous
"...who says that anti- COVID restrictions were "largely ineffective" as if that were a good thing..."
I think the point is that, what we were told was "necessary" and grounded in "science" (despite completely contradicting the existing Pandemic Preparedness Plan - presumably also grounded in science - which was far less disruptive, far too measured, and insufficiently restrictive for the needs of ours and other governments around the world) has since proven to have been ineffective. In other words, the Single Source of Truth got it wrong, and the critics got it right.
When the Single Source of Truth is demonstrably wrong (about anything, given its claims to absolute truth) and the "disinformation spreaders" are right, what does that say?
In general, truth is banned in the service of upholding lies, not the other way around. Truth can stand on its own two feet and can stand up to scrutiny, while lies cannot. The things we aren't "allowed" to say, think and believe are true, not false.
You and anyone else have always been free to mask-up, lockdown, vax-up, and hide in fear to your heart's consent - state mandates were never needed. The reason they needed universal coercive policies is because if people could be left to choose based on their own reason and weighing up the pros and cons (the basic principle in a "democracy"), 90% would have chosen not to, and their choosing not to would have shown the other 10% that the dire narratives were empirically false and unsustainable.
Killing free speech to keep us safe? Only if your definition of safe is total control and dependency on the STATE for your very existence like in North Korea. Oh wait...
Anonymous 11.37 should learn when you have dug yourself into a hole then you should stop digging. It's sad how the free-speech mob persist in gaslighting us to prove how their brave and noble stand against tyranny was correct. The only metric that matters is death toll, and by world standards we simply didn't have one. The virus actually didn't give a toss about your politics. It was an equal opportunity killer that took out the left and the right and everybody in-between. Sometimes democracy has to take a back seat when the nation faces a crisis it has no immediate defence against, but has to figure how to save lives in a big hurry, and in our case that's precisely what happened. Be thankful some had the leadership qualities to stare down the danger until a vaccine was invented and we once again were able to exercise a personal choice about whether we lived or died. Millions around the world weren't so lucky.
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