Lefties ran over free speech and left it bleeding on the side of the road. But they keep pretending that they’re for some notion of free speech even as they denounce it.
Here’s Bill Clinton’s favorite troll, Robert Reich contradicting himself in a handful of paragraphs.
The Russian people know little about Putin’s war on Ukraine because Putin has blocked their access to the truth, substituting propaganda and lies.
Years ago, pundits assumed the internet would open a new era of democracy, giving everyone access to the truth. But dictators like Putin and demagogues like Trump have demonstrated how naive that assumption was.
At least the US responded to Trump’s lies. Trump had 88 million Twitter followers before Twitter took him off its platform – just two days after the attack on the Capitol, which he provoked, in part, with his tweets. (Trump’s social media accounts were also suspended on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch and TikTok.)
These moves were necessary to protect American democracy. But Elon Musk – the richest man in the world, with 80 million Twitter followers – wasn’t pleased. Musk tweeted that US tech companies shouldn’t be acting “as the de facto arbiter of free speech”.
When Putin censors the internet, it’s bad, but when Robert Reich and Big Tech monopolies do it, it’s good because they’re on the side of social justice.
Seriously.
Musk continues to tell his 80 million followers all sorts of things. I disagree with many of his positions, but ever since I posted a tweet two years ago criticizing him for how he treated his Tesla workers he has blocked me – so I can’t view or post criticisms of his tweets to his followers.
Seems like an odd move for someone who describes himself as a “free speech absolutist”. Musk advocates free speech but in reality it’s just about power.
Blocking somebody doesn’t take away his free speech. Banning him does.
Robert Reich is free to tweet what he wants, so is Musk. What Reich wants though is to ban people he dislikes while forcing them to listen to him.
That is just about power.
Musk has long advocated a libertarian vision of an “uncontrolled” internet. That vision is dangerous rubbish. There’s no such animal, and there never will be.
Vladimir Putin would agree.
As I argued last year, Dems have adopted the totalitarian playbook of authoritarian regimes, silencing, censoring, and arresting their political foes in the name of “democracy”.
If restricting “political pluralism” by labeling your opponents “foreign agents” is okay in D.C., why shouldn’t it be fine in Moscow? When Democrats deploy 25,000 soldiers to Washington D.C. to “protect democracy” after a disputed election, who can tell apart D.C. and Moscow?
“The Russian government’s use of laws on ‘extremist organizations,’ ‘foreign agents,’ and ‘undesirable organizations’ severely restricted political pluralism and prevented the Russian people from exercising their civil and political rights,” State Department spokesman Ned Price sniffed.
In July, Jen Psaki admitted that the Biden White House was issuing demands to Big Tech companies to take down “problematic posts” that spread what she claimed was “disinformation”.
The Biden regime was even touting some sort of “robust enforcement strategy” and demanding that all Big Tech companies should censor the same people.
“You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others,” she declared.
Putin would agree.