Perhaps you, too, do not have enough fingers to count the times you’ve seen hypocritical “news” puppets and politicians employ the avenues and the action of free speech to deride free speech for others.
Hypocrisy seems to be in their DNA.
And, even as defenders of the principle of free expression and defenders of the First Amendment see Hillary Clinton again spouting like a teapot against people offering opinions and information online (something the Babylon Bee appropriately lambasted, and Hillary's statement coming despite her old campaign's involvement in the bogus "Steele Dossier" propaganda), and on the proverbial heels of the Minnesota Lockdown Maniac Tim Walz displaying his twin towers of ignorance and ignominy by first claiming he can be an arbiter of “mis” or “dis” information and then claiming that people offering information he doesn’t like are dangers to “our” “democracy”, we get to see another self-righteous, blind-to-irony proclamation against free speech – offered by the use of free speech – from the Washington Post.
Last week, the Post’s Sarah Ellison, Amy Gardner, and Clara Ence Morse knocked their heads together to offer a lengthy screed denouncing Elon Musk and X for, essentially, having a large number of users who engage in the horrendous activity of exchanging information and opinions.
The trio opened by attacking Musk for sharing what they claim are false statements about irregular voter registrations in numerous states – their claims of Musk being wrong, were, of course, lacking any hyperlinks to his original claims or the information that they say refutes his claims. Because, evidently, that’s proper journalism and the right way to treat readers, in the eyes of the WaPo staff.
But the gist of their triologue is a textual approximation of Kamala Harris’s claim that because X has “such influence” (in reality, because so many people freely choose to join and follow the posts of others – which, as we all know, is truly, truly evil), it should be “regulated” and, perhaps, shut down or broken by the federal government.
Hence, we see this, with the wondrous phrase “experts say” included, as a bonus:
“Musk’s online utterances don’t stay online. His false and misleading election posts add to the deluge of inaccurate information plaguing voting officials across the country. Election officials say his posts about supposed voter fraud often coincide with an increase in baseless requests to purge voter rolls and heighten their worry over violent threats. Experts say Musk is uniquely dangerous as a purveyor of misinformation because his digital following stretches well beyond the political realm and into the technology and investment sectors, where his business achievements have earned him credibility.”
So, let’s see if we can figure this out. On the one hand, we have X, which, when it was called Twitter, and under the control of Jack Dorsey, selectively banned people, arbitrarily silenced posts, and actually accepted money from the federal government as “compensation” for that kind of activity, but which changed and became more open, month-over-month, to freedom of expression (and many more users) under Musk… And, on the other hand, we have the WaPo-boosting federal government, which not only engaged in that Dorsey-era payoff activity to censorious Twitter, but has been shown to have engaged in literally paying so-called “news outlets” and “fact-checkers” to attack journalists (like those here at MRCTV) and to have had posts removed from social media such as Facebook.
And yes, it is the Washington Post, owned by government-tied Jeff Bezos of Amazon, that uses its freedom of speech to raise a flaming sword of “justice” and claim that the freedom of speech at X is “dangerous.”
To support their insipid claim, the trio add:
“After Musk bought Twitter, he made deep cuts in staff responsible for maintaining standards on the site, courted major conservative figures, and reoriented the platform to boost the reach of his account, which frequently spreads false statements without being subject to the kinds of fact checks that previously existed on the site. He reinstated accounts previously banned for violating the platform’s rules, including Donald Trump’s, and promised to usher in a less restrictive era.”
Well, God forbid that Trump be reinstated, allowing people to see what he might also be posting elsewhere at his Truth Social, or what he might say at a rally.
Related: Biden FBI Reignites Big Tech Censorship Ahead of Elections
Would these WaPo narcissists like to prohibit public gatherings on literal land where people can speak, and to make sure that the government prejudges the statements people might say at public places?
It is this idea that private places like X should be mistakenly called “public” even though they stopped taking government money… it’s this bombastic implication that government and its backers (whatever angle they take for on myriad policy levels) can define what is “misinformation” or “disinformation” and then work to censor it (as seems to be the intent of the US government, when it comes to RT contributor Scott Ritter).
Heck, a House committee earlier this year cited the federal government’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) for funding attempts to censor and downgrade-through-so-called-fact-check the commercial viability of websites such as DailyWire and The Federalist.
Because, clearly, the feds know best, and you should be blocked from seeing what the feds say is “dangerous information.”
It’s difficult to determine which is more offensive. The feds continuing to take our money as they tell us their censorship zealotry is “for our good,” or people at the unabashedly untrustworthy Washington Post telling us that it’s the idea of a wider scope for free speech that it the threat.
As these writers, and Walz, and Harris, and Hillary, tell us they are defending “democracy,” we can remind them that in political terms, democracy is gang rule, not self-rule, and that, outside the polis, the real way to “democratize” society is to allow for more individual choice. By expanding the individual sovereignty of each of us out here in the “demos,” we actually see freedom, i.e. the ability of individuals to handle their own lives, and preferences can be revealed, ideas tested…
When they push “democracy” within the political sphere, they want to reduce the ability of individuals to be free of oppression.
They want control.