For some years, ever since the concept of “free speech zones” erupted on places like college campuses, I’ve been telling people, with a defiant tone, “I live in a free speech zone. It’s called the United States of America.” As far as I’m concerned, I have the right to say as I please, write as I please, read as I please, and nobody has any business telling me otherwise.
There are, however, other schools of thought. On Saturday, legal scholar and writer Jonathan Turley laid out the details of a House Judiciary report detailing the efforts of several shadowy organizations to censor right-leaning content on various social media platforms, and those efforts are an affront to anyone who understands the concept of free speech.
Few Americans have ever heard of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, let alone understand how it shapes what they read and hear in news and commentary. That may soon change.
An alarming new report of the House Judiciary Committee details this organization’s work to censor conservative and opposing viewpoints in the media by targeting figures such as Joe Rogan and entire social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter).
It is part of a massive censorship system that a federal court recently described as “Orwellian.” The sophistication of this system makes authoritarian regimes like China’s and Iran’s look like mere amateurs in censorship and blacklisting.
Elon Musk, we may note, has come out as something of a hero in all this. His purchase of Twitter – now “X” – has resulted in that platform’s being dragged kicking and screaming into the realm of a free-speech-friendly platform. It’s not perfect – not yet – but since Musk’s takeover it has been moving in the right direction.
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It’s up to readers, not any kind of activist organization, to decide what is “misinformation” and what is not. Granted, the various social media platforms are private companies, and while it’s anathema to the idea of freedom of speech for them to indulge in this kind of censorship, they, and groups like the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM,) are tacitly supported by members of government. As Turley points out:
Through the years, I have testified repeatedly in Congress on this system supported enthusiastically by President Biden and his administration. It has proven to be a frustrating game of whack-a-mole for civil libertarians. The Democrats in Congress have uniformly opposed any investigation or action on censorship while denying for years that there was a coordinated effort between government and corporations. When we were successful in uncovering components of this system, they were often quickly shut down as the work shifted to other components and assets.
One of the most insidious efforts has been to strangle the financial life out of conservative or libertarian sites by targeting their donors and advertisers. This is where the left has excelled beyond anything that has come before in speech crackdowns.
This is dangerous. This is using the weight of government to suppress free speech. This isn’t about policies made in a vacuum by these social media companies. This is about government actors, as Mr. Turley notes, including the president down to unnamed members of his administration and, we feel certain, members of Congress in effect using these organizations to lean on the social media companies. They are targeting the platform’s income streams – advertising – and they are succeeding at it.
It’s as though some government agents in shiny suits, porkpie hats, and sunglasses were showing up at some of these social media companies and telling them, “Nice little social media site you have there. It would be a shame if anything… happened to it.” That’s not literally what’s happening, of course – but it sure as hell is figuratively what’s going on. As evidence, we can note, as Jonathan Turley points out, that Democrats have been opposing any effort to look into these censorship efforts. Remember when Democrats used to claim to be in favor of free speech? No longer, it seems.
We do indeed live in interesting times. Now, First Amendment or no First Amendment, we can only conclude that elected and appointed government officials support a social media censorship scheme. That’s Orwellian. It’s something that one would expect from the Soviet Union or Communist China, not the United States. And it needs to be stopped, by the courts if necessary. We are Americans, dammit. We, and no one else, should be deciding for ourselves what is “disinformation.” Anything else is unthinkable.
