There is a recent uptick in governments putting regulations into place to censor speech, which is a direct censorship of thought as well. The Western governments of this earth have no choice but to give up on the charade of “being for individual rights.” I note the Western oriented governments because the communists, autocracies, and the Islamist States, do not pretend to protect or value individual rights. The DSA, the European Union’s 2023 “Digital Services Act,” is already trying to establish the EU has the arbiter of online speech. The sovereign value of the individual, which is most profoundly displayed in the authenticity and freedom of his or her speech, has been discarded as though it is some worn-out, antiquated notion. The EU, recall, is a transnational entity, and its leaders are far from being born out of populism. This is a problem for the United States as well despite its wonderful Constitution enshrining the Freedom of Speech in the First Amendment. The US’ leaders have largely enacted a form of fascism to effectively outsource its censorship behind the scenes. Elon Musk’s Twitter Files exposed this in a carte blanc sort of way. By fascism here, I simply mean that there is a collusion between the State and corporations in order to perform the will of the State. It can be out in the open or done in secret; in the US, during and after the exposure of these censorship efforts, this violation of the 1st amendment has been flushed out into the open. The Biden administration appointed a disinformation Czar, Nina Jankowicz, had openly called for the government to verify, edit, and even remove online speech deemed “inappropriate.” Appropriate to whom is the critical question. I will drop a bunch of links from left leaning and right leaning sources that corroborate these details. What changed in the 21st century that forced so-called “governments of the people” to become god over what you can say? In a word, internet.
The 20th century centralized all information provided to the people through radio and TV. This provided the god-like ability not only to tell the people what to think about, but it allowed for the framing of the Overton window. Take this montage as an example of just how the news is artificially scripted and then I will discuss this Overton window a bit.
This window is framing the two sides of any conversation, and it sets the parameters of how far speech should go on a particular subject. Hence, the notions of Right vs Left, or Democrats vs Republicans or Conservative vs Liberal. Such a framing sets up the Hegelian dialectic with its harrowing “solution” needing to be some medium or tertium quid. If radio and TV can set the parameters of the topic, then it can advance a definite agenda albeit slow moving. Why should radio and TV control the framework of how and what can be discussed? My point in all of this is that TV and radio in the 20th century enabled governments to control speech and thought through these media agencies. The governments could promote themselves as the good guys, as the defenders of freedom and speech while at the same time control speech and limit freedom. I have to admit I admire the pure craftiness of it while also hating it. The alleged CIA “project mockingbird” is a long known and discussed conspiracy; this project was designed to craft the narratives for the news rooms across the nation in order to craft the Intelligence Agencies’ narratives. Interesting as the allegation is, it is moot at this point. The montage ab0ve–along with many more if we cared to look–provides the evidence of coordination. The topics discussed and how they are presented all point to a fascist collusion between government and media. Figuring out if it is the CIA or what have you is irrelevant for my purpose here.
The internet and more specifically the social media platforms introduced the first cracks in the governments’ ability to frame public conversations. I used to teach epistemology, and I always taught that if I can frame a conversation, then I can win that conversation. To cite one hotly disputed recent event in American politics, was January 6th an insurrection (hard left) or a riot (Fox news Rino position)? This is the Overton window or the framework that has been set for how this event must be understood by the public–the boundaries the conversations must stay within. Before this gets entirely too political, the takeaway is to realize that someone is settings the frameworks for thought. Social media has now enabled the population to set their own frameworks and to popularize them without the governments consent or meddling. This came to a head in the past four years, culminating with Musk buying Twitter, Trump starting Truth social, and the ascendency of Rumble. There are other platforms too that are not guilty of the fascist censorship collusion with government: i.e., bitchute.
We know Twitter was guilty of massive censorship under the directives of government via the reporting of Matt Taibbi in the Twitter Files; Taibbi testified before Congress with the subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in 2023. If you want to read all the exposure of the Twitter Files–it is voluminous–go to Musk’s twitter and search for Twitter Files. If you search for it on almost any search engine, you’ll be met with some AI or top search result designed to discredit it. I just did a search on Brave–which is arguably “freer”–and my top result was Wikipedia, which only three paragraphs in asserts: “A major aspect of the examination surrounded false assertions by Musk and others that Twitter had been ordered by the government to help presidential candidate Joe Biden in the coming election by suppressing an October 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop.” If you watch this clip from the testimony before Congress, you’ll see that Taibbi discusses in detail the collusion and direct line of control the government had on Twitter in respect to not only the laptop story but, according to Taibbi, 100,000s of accounts and their content.
This testimony effectively contradicts wikipedia’s reporting on the matter, which is a disappointment, since I had so much hope in wikipedia in my 20s that it would be a democratization of knowledge, yet here we are.
The argument before all this exposure went something like this: the 1st amendment only prevents the government from stifling speech, it does not apply when a private company like Twitter censors speech. Back then, we would have to take the line of argument that twitter is now the new town hall and therefore should allow for just as extensive freedom of speech as what could happen anywhere in public places, which would entail allowing all speech. In Taibbi’s exposé, he likewise reports that ex FBI and ex CIA agents all had long and prominent positions inside of Twitter. The government could say, “hey we are not censoring speech, that’s Twitter, and they can do what they want.” We now know that the FBI and other agencies had a direct line to Twitter and worked together, which made Twitter the enactor of the will of the State while allowing the State–before all this came out–plausible deniability.
The Western nations “had it good” in the 20th century; they could set the frameworks of thought and speech without many even thinking to question it. Internet has produced two very different routes. On the one hand, the internet can provide the governments of this world the ability to control, collect intel, and obliterate all privacy that every historic tyrant would be jealous of. On the other hand, the internet can become the most powerful tool for the protection of a free press, protecting a people’s ability to become or stay free. Freedom of speech only matters when someone’s speech is disagreeable to my own. If someone echos my opinion, then her speech doesn’t need to be protected from me trying to stop it. That governments in Europe–and to some degree in the US even if beat back in our courts many times–are criminalizing certain speech as “hate speech” may be a very dangerous slippery slope. The pertinent question is, “hateful to whom?” The free exchange of ideas cannot survive governments determining what speech is hateful and what is not because ‘hateful’ and ‘protecting government power’ will align to some degree at some point. To suppose otherwise is a fundamental naiveté and abysmal misunderstanding of human nature. Lord’s Acton’s quote lives on infamously: “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Who has more power than governments with militaries? Who has more power than transnational entities like the EU that represent many militaries?
Dr. Scalise
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/damning-report-details-biden-admins-big-tech-censorship-push
Former Biden Disinformation Czar Launches Group to Defend Online Censorship