Speaking to the packed audience at the New Culture Forum in London while watched online by thousands of social media, Nigel Farage made it clear that Brexit in the UK, Donald Trump's election, and the rise of various other populists "could not have happened without the use of social media."
Interestingly enough, widespread concerns over election rigging and fake news espoused by Liberals only began to be circulate after Trump won. And then after conservatives began accusing leftist media of being fake news itself, the term was abandoned by the left.
As Breitbart states:
"...owners of the social media platforms that had facilitated the “global revolt” had become a “threat” to the “democratic process”, by practices such as the shadowbanning and censoring of conservatives. A tape leaked to Breitbart News Network last week revealed leftist political bias in the highest echelons of power at tech giant Google and sent shockwaves through the media and tech establishment."
As Nigel Farage said in his own words,
"The reaction that we’ve had from those that own these social media sites pose a threat, in my view, to free speech — indeed the entire democrat process. We have got to stop the bias... when Trump won when the owners of those social media sites began to change their thinking and indeed their practices... The day after Trump got elected, that the biggest internet search engine, the most powerful, important tech company in the world… effectively declared war on the whole populist revolt that was happening across the West."
He then specifically addressed how these companies, lead by similarly liberally biased tech moguls, have what many would consider a soft monopoly on social media:
"We have fewer than a handful of companies that now control the entire future of our democratic debate across the entire Western world and I think that now has very worrying implications.”
“I do think the issues at stake here are so fundamental and so important we cannot allow the whole future of political discourse… to be held in the hands of two or three people who through their own mouths have shown themselves not to be politically neutral,” he said.
According to Brietbart, he then gave what was either a rousing vote of confidence (or a craftily worded suggestion) for the Trump campaign:
"I believe that Donald Trump and [campaign manager] Brad Parscale will go into the 2020 Presidential Elections promising a Bill of Rights for social media, doing their best to address this imbalance, to end the bias,” he said, adding that similar bills could be adopted in the UK and Europe.
“This is the means by which the future generation will gain their information, will form their opinions. We have to do our absolute utmost to make sure this is done in a fair, unbiased way as it can be.
“The whole future of trust, faith, and belief in our democratic processes relies upon it.”
When asked by Breitbart London about collusion between Facebook and Germany's Angela Merkel to censor critics of her open-borders refugee policy, Nigel Farage warned against using conventional political methodologies of previous political generations, “If you want a solution to this, don’t rely on mainstream politics because it’s going to suit mainstream politics to get that relationship closer — as it has done with the big banks and the multinationals.”
The issue of Tech censorship is one which has heavily divided conventional establishment conservatives against newer populist conservatives. As MRCTV has summarized previously.