<p>In 1980, the book &#8220;Friendly Fascism&#8221; warned that <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=fascism+dailywire&amp;rlz=1C5GCEM_enUS998US998&amp;oq=fascism+dailywire&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60l2.2899j0j9&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Big Government and Big Business</a> would align and join forces in America, suppressing the common man, while ushering in a new era of tyranny wrapped in a false sense of patriotism while being served with a &#8220;smile.&#8221;</p>
<p>Now, newly uncovered emails suggest that the Biden White House pressured Big Tech into a similar form of &#8220;Friendly Fascism&#8221; even more than previously known by targeting private speech under the guise of COVID-19 precautions.</p>
<p>While the U.S. government was apparently coordinating with Big Tech on public-facing social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, there has been scant reporting on how the executive branch wanted personal and encrypted messages censored — until now.</p>
<p>On Friday, investigative journalist David Zweig <a href="https://davidzweig.substack.com/p/biden-white-house-pressured-meta?sd=pf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that he obtained White House emails thanks to the court case <em>Missouri v Biden </em>which showed that only six days into the Biden administration, key high-ranking staffers were already pestering Facebook&#8217;s parent company, Meta, to take action to limit COVID vaccine &#8220;disinformation&#8221; across its platforms — including Meta&#8217;s private messaging app, WhatsApp.</p>
<p>Based on that article, in late March of 2021, Rob Flaherty, Biden&#8217;s White House Director of Digital Strategy, sent Meta an email demanding answers to what the company was doing to prevent certain messages that cast doubt on the COVID vaccine from proliferating on WhatsApp.</p>
<p>&#8220;Flaherty wanted to know what they were doing to reduce harm on the messaging app,&#8221; Zweig reported. &#8220;Seemingly dissatisfied with earlier explanations, on March 22, 2021, he wrote, &#8216;If you can’t see the message, I’m genuinely curious—how do you know what kinds of messages you’ve cut down on?'&#8221;</p>
<p>Unlike Facebook, WhatsApp contains no public-facing aspect of its platform. It is used solely for users to have an encrypted way of communicating with each other. Ninety percent of groups have less than 10 individuals in each group, according to the emails obtained by Zweig.</p>
<p>During the White House&#8217;s email exchanges with the company, Flaherty sent a series of questions, seemingly all related to making sure that Meta could be trusted to limit free speech.</p>
<p>At one point, the WhatsApp representative tried to politely explain to Flaherty how WhatsApp is different from other social media sites, thus negating the need for most moderation efforts as found on other sites.</p>
<p>Flaherty responded he was &#8220;Very aware ☺️&#8221; — replete with a smile emoji, unlike that grin warned about in that 43-year-old book — how the app worked as he tried to bully Big Tech into joining forces with Big Government.</p>
<p>WhatsApp, according to Zweig, had chosen instead to send certain pieces of information to its users to counteract any potentially harmful speech. They also argued that because no &#8220;virality&#8221; was impossible on the application, then they were limiting the spread of unapproved speech that the White House was trying to limit.</p>
<p>By April 2021, the emails indicate that Flaherty was still fed up with Meta for not properly answering his questions.</p>
<p>&#8220;I care mostly about what actions and changes you’re making to ensure you’re not making our country’s vaccine hesitancy problem worse,&#8221; he emailed to Meta at the time. &#8220;I still don’t have a good, empirical answer on how effective you’ve been at reducing the spread of vaccine-skeptical content and misinformation to vaccine fence sitters.&#8221;</p>
<p>Now, why is this important given everything we know from the Twitter Files, the nixed-Government Disinformation Board, and other &#8220;misinformation&#8221; efforts?</p>
<p>For years, Democrats have argued that the ability for lies that could damage the nation to go viral necessitates a close relationship between the government and Big Tech, working hand-in-hand to protect the American public.</p>
<p>WhatsApp, however, is effectively no different than a phone call, email, or a chat at the bar with your friends. What is being said in those messages is none of the government&#8217;s business — so long as it is not encouraging or part of a crime.</p>
<p>Zweig&#8217;s report raises new questions about how far the Biden White House was — or is — willing to go to block speech that it does not approve of. Worse, it seems they&#8217;ll try to trample on private citizens through Big Tech with a smile on their faces — or in their own emails.</p>
<p><em>The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.</em></p>

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‘Friendly Fascism’: Biden White House Wanted To Censor Even Private Speech Over COVID Vax