The left's fear of losing control of the narrative
"A brave new nightmare.” Those words from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich described the threat created by Elon Musk's bid to restore free speech values by buying Twitter.
Yet, despite warnings that censorship is necessary “for democracy to survive,” neither the Tesla CEO and billionaire nor ordinary citizens appear to be sufficiently terrified of free speech. Twitter confirmed Monday that Musk will acquire the company in a deal worth $44 billion. Once the deal is complete, Twitter will become a privately held company.
Progressives, in the meantime, have adopted a dangerous shift in their strategy of calling for corporations to censor speech.
Last week, former President Barack Obama made this shift clear in his much covered speech at Stanford University. Just days after Musk re-enforced his bid for Twitter with the support of many in the free speech community, Obama warned that social media was "tilting us in the wrong direction.” He called for more censorship of disinformation while calling himself "pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist."
Obama has never been viewed as an ally on free speech by those of us who have been attacked for our "absolutist" views. Moreover, calling for censorship as a free speech absolutist is like claiming to be a vegetarian while calling for mandatory meat consumption.
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Obama clearly does not mind if private businesses censor content. In fact, he supports their censoring of his political opponents. He is also making bogus claims of opposing "misinformation" when he did no such thing when Hillary and her operatives pushed the Russian collusion hoax which he had reason to know was a gigantic fraud. He did not speak out when over 50 former intel operatives said the material on Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation. That was the kind of disinformation that helped to get Biden elected.
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