By Mike Huckabee
September 10, 2024
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With the repeated assaults on the First Amendment coming from the left, I consider it to be on life support right now. If we lose this election and they gain even greater control of technology, further entrenching themselves in the “Justice” Department, the patient will likely die.
Of course, as we detailed last week, this is part of a dangerous global effort to silence dissent, helped on by shameless American leftists with global influence such as Hillary Clinton, who encouraged Europe to use their Digital Services Act (DSA) to go after Elon Musk for not “monitoring content” to their satisfaction on his social media platform X. (They were just fine with the old Twitter when they were allowed to intervene and shape its conversation.) Canada routinely arrests people for making statements the government decides are “hate speech.” Venezuela has started fining citizens $9,000 a day for getting their news from X, and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (mentioned as likely our next Attorney General if Kamala is elected) is praising that effort. And surely, you’ve heard what’s happening in Brazil (“Where the nuts come from,” and now, they’re running the government.)
https://instapundit.com/
If you were Rip Van Winkle and had just awakened after a 20-year sleep, you’d...well, first, you’d wonder what the heck “X” was, as well as TikTok and all the other social media that too many people are glued to. But once you understood that, you’d say, “Hey --- wait a minute! This can’t be happening! What happened to free speech in supposedly ‘free’ countries??”
The latest thing --- it happened on Saturday --- that would really confound old Rip is the report that an American investor, the Silicon Valley billionaire Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners, went on MSNBC to call for the criminal prosecution of a fellow American --- who else but Elon Musk? --- for undermining the federal government. Musk had dared to share his opinions on X.
What the ---??
On the MSNBC show “Last Word,” McNamee tried to make the case that since Musk’s companies have federal contracts and are being paid by the U.S. government, he should be “prosecuted” for “undermining” them with what he says online.
“You have somebody who runs a really strategic defense and aerospace project for the federal government who’s actively undermining the government that’s paying him. And somewhere in that is a legal case that needs to be prosecuted,” McNamee said. He did not specify where that “somewhere” was in the law. He did invoke the words “national security,” which are being tossed around a lot these days by leftists who support policies that, ironically, would appear to undermine national security quite a bit.
The context of this jaw-dropping remark was a discussion of the accusation by self-styled hate-speech watchdog group the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) that on Musk’s platform, he had put up a “bat signal” to “racists and homophobes.” X Corp. is now suing the group, saying that the CCDH published “misleading claims” and exaggerated the prevalence of harmful content on X to discourage investment from advertisers, which is exactly what groups like this are trying to do to anyone who expresses conservative thought.
Musk maintains this group supports its conclusions with data that’s “illegally scraped” and cherry-picked. The CEO of CCDH, Imran Ahmed, stands by his group’s reports. It was in an appearance on CNN that he said, “...we all know that when [Musk] took over, he put up the bat signal to racists, to misogynists, to homophobes, to anti-Semites, saying Twitter is now a free speech platform. He welcomed them back on.”
First, to say “we all know” ANYTHING casts his so-called “study” in a bad light because it falls way below the bar for good science. His conclusions are entirely subjective, and he also apparently believes he can read Musk’s mind and discern racist, hateful motives. Perhaps he doesn’t even realize that the argument could be made that he himself is using hate speech against Musk by calling him a racist and a bigot. He and his group are using their own “bat signal” --- to advertisers, in this case to keep them away from X. So Musk is just turning their own rules against them.
Here’s more on Ahmed’s appearance on CNN…
McNamee was specifically responding to this watchdog group’s claim that Musk was guilty of spreading “false or misleading claims about the U.S. election” through his posts on his social media platform, which have received “nearly 1.2 billion views.”
So that’s it. The election. We’re about to have another election, so it’s time for the left to crack down on any independent observations about the vulnerabilities of our system. Gosh, we wouldn’t want to “mislead” anyone into thinking this election won’t be letter-perfect, even though it surely won’t be. They’re demanding we accept the system as it is and not question it in any way (unless Trump wins) or we’re “undermining our government.” But you and I know: speech about politics and elections is the most important kind of speech to keep free.
McNamee said that Musk, “like any American, has a right to his own opinion, and he has a right to express his opinion.”
Then came the “but.” There’s always a “but.”
Actually, the word was “however.” “HOWEVER, that right is not unlimited. He is under some special limitations that would not apply to normal people because his companies, specifically Starlink and SpaceX, are government contractors and, as such, he has obligations to the government that would, for any normal person, and should for him, require him to moderate his speech in the interest of national security.”
Ah, there it is: “national security.” With those two words, McNamee has creatively carved out an exception for Musk as an individual. Question: What does Musk’s right to express a personal opinion have to do with an ongoing government space contract? Answer: Nothing.
As you might imagine, legal analyst and free speech advocate Jonathan Turley had something to say about this. In a column on Monday, he slammed McNamee as “the latest denizen of the global elite to call for criminalizing speech to silence those with opposing views...like many liberal baby boomers now joining the anti-free speech movement.”
Free speech used to be the defining right for the left, Turley says, but now they’ve decided it’s an existential threat. We think it’s because, this time, the voices being silenced are the ones disagreeing with their own.
Turley calls McNamee’s rationale for criminalizing Musk’s speech “shallow and irrational.” It’s fine with McNamee if CEOs adopt far left views, Turley says, but he can’t tolerate Musk opposing those views.
Turley says that “according to McNamee, if your company makes something that the government wants (including rescuing the currently stranded astronauts in space), he must give up his right to express political views, including against censorship.”
Turley describes an ad campaign that Facebook (Meta) ran to encourage young people to happily accept “content moderation.” Joshan, Chava and Adam were all born in 1996, and in the ads, they say the concepts of privacy and censorship should evolve with technology. “These days, everything is connected,” Joshan says. “I’ve changed so much in 25 years. Shouldn’t Internet regulations change, too?” Then screens come up that say, “We support updated Internet regulations that include privacy...content moderation...elections...data portability.”
Content moderation? Elections? What do they mean about elections?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Here’s Meta employee Aaron, a nice young man who works in content moderation, talking about regulating harmful content, including “misinformation.” At the end of the ad, we see that “Aaron is one of the 40,000 people working on safety and security issues.” Yikes.
https://about.meta.com/
Anyway, as Turley points out, the ad campaign wasn’t too effective. He doesn’t explain how they measured its effectiveness but does say they’ve gone to “Plan B,” which is to push the control of speech through “national and global regulation.” McNamee and Bill Gates are supportive of this.
While supporting guidelines that “protect” users from “disinformation,” Turley says, “they’re selling the same defective product [censorship, popular for centuries], with the promise that less freedom will lead to a better life.” Believing that is nothing less than foolish.
Speaking of “protecting users from disinformation,” that might be helpful in my personal lawsuit againt Meta, the parent company of Facebook. For months, they ran a defamatory, totally fabricated and libelous article and ad that claimed I was taken off of television due to an auto immune disease that left me debilitated and was starting to recover due to ingesting cannabis gummies! They certainly didn’t moderate THAT content because when a conservative gets smeared and outrageously lied about, it’s fine. Meta has obtained a high-dollar law firm which to no one’s surprise has many connections to the highest levels of the Democrat party and their attempts to censor those of us on the right. Let’s hope my case will be in front of an honest judge instead of the partisan hacks like the ones Donald Trump had in New York.
https://about.meta.com/
RELATED: In a previous column, Turley discussed the efforts of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who as head of the Labour Party “has long been the smiling face of censorship.” Blair is actively calling for global censorship now; here’s what he said on LBC Radio:
“The world is going to have to come together and agree on some rules around social media platforms. It’s not just how people can provoke hostility and hatred but I think…the impact on young people, particularly when they’ve got access to mobile phones very young and they are reading a lot of stuff and receiving a whole lot of stuff that I think is really messing with their minds in a big way.”
Ah, it’s for the children. Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Hoyle agrees with Blair, saying “misinformation is dangerous” and even that they need to “factually correct what’s up there.” (Of course, they decide what’s factually correct.)
“...I believe it should be across [borders],” he added. “It doesn’t matter what country you are in; the fact is that misinformation is dangerous and no misinformation, or threats, or intimidation should be allowed to be carried out on social media platforms.” (Authoritarians in other nations have long seethed over the US having the First Amendment.)
Turley warns that this is part of a “comprehensive campaign from our political elite” to enforce censorship on a global scale.
This might, in the long run, turn out to be the most important issue of all in our coming election. Vote like your freedom depends on it, because it does.
ALSO RELATED: Trump said Thursday that if he’s re-elected, he’ll appoint Elon Musk to head a government efficiency commission --- similar in concept to the Grace Commission formed by President Reagan --- and Musk has said he would do it, with “no pay, no title, no recognition.” This commission would do a “full financial and performance audit” and “track down fraud and improper payments made from government programs.” About time, though the left is going to go even crazier, if that is possible.
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