America
Silencing Free Speech
censorship by Big Tech and “fact- checkers” like NewsGuard, preventing Americans from hearing about new ideas and viewpoints. A study by the Media Research Center
C
cited Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter as the worst off enders for, among other things, blocking accounts linked to former President Donald Trump, silencing coverage of Hunter Biden’s business links to the White House, and comments about critical race theory. Meanwhile NewsGuard, which claims
The New Censorship O
How the left embraced government control of digital speech. BY MARTIN GURRI
n march 9, in the bowels of the Capitol building, a gathering took place of a type that might be possible
only in Washington, D.C. The host was Jim Jordan, Republi-
can from Ohio, chair of the curiously named House Select Committee on the Weaponization of Government. The guests: Matt Taibbi and
Michael Shellenberger, semi-famous for revealing in the “Twitter Files” the deeply tangled relationship between the social-media platform and the fed- eral government. The subject was freedom of speech
in the digital age. Taibbi and Shellenberger had been
invited because they had a troubling story to tell about the abuse of power — what Jordan meant by “weaponiza- tion.”
According to Taibbi, federal enti-
ties, from the White House to the CIA, had developed a “formal system” to convey their demands to the digital platforms regarding what could be said online and who could say it. Shellenberger called it the “censor-
ship-industrial complex.” The substance of the Twitter Files
appeared to confi rm these allegations. The FBI loomed large in Twitter’s con- tent-moderation decisions. During the controversies surround-
ing the 2020 presidential campaign, Twitter leaned heavily on the judg- ment of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Any opinion that off ended estab-
lishment sensibilities was a target for suppression. At the same time, the speech police
protected from criticism members in good standing of the establishment, with a special fondness for Dr. Antho- ny Fauci. It did that for Joe Biden, too, before and after his election to the presidency. As Taibbi and Shellenberger observed, these maneuvers were unprecedented in the lifetimes of those assembled at the hearing. The new censorship seemed to
rely on universal elite conformity. No debates had been held; no enabling laws passed. Democrat committee members
largely ignored the testimony that Taibbi and Shellenberger presented. They showed no interest in discussing the boundaries of free speech. Taibbi and Shellenberger were “Elon Musk’s chosen scribes,” bought
to be an unbiased fact-checker, has also targeted conservatives, according an investigation by Rep. Neal Dunn, R-Fla. Dunn, a House Energy and Commerce
Committee member, told a congressional hearing that NewsGuard defines itself as a journalism and technology tool that rates the credibility of news information and tracks online misinformation. “However, they are partnered with Big
Tech, Big Pharma, the national teachers union, and even government agencies,” he continued. “In fact, $750,000 went from the Department of Defense to NewsGuard in a government contract.”
and paid for “to promote his chosen narrative.” I happen to know Taibbi and Shellenberger, as well as Bari Weiss, another author of the Twitter Files. They are independent souls. None is a Republican; all three began life as lib- eral Democrats and are now, in Weiss’ phrase, “politically homeless.” But nobody was really expected to
believe the accusations hurled at them in the hearing, least of all the accusers, which probably accounts for the list- lessness that prevailed between bursts of performative anger. What, then, motivated the House Democrats to such a determined exer- cise in personal destruction? The modern left espoused a radi-
cal version of Jeff ersonian individual- ism. Born at Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement in 1964, it considered the primary threat to democracy to lie in the great hierarchical institutions like the university, the corporation, and government. The postmodern establishment left
SEPTEMBER 2023 | NEWSMAX 23
onservatives and independent thinkers are being targeted for
FAKE NEWS/MCLITTLE STOCK/SHUTTERSTOCK
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