Of course Trump is right about Twitter. What are we even talking about? Of course he is.
The Wall Street Journal, and other conservative venues, have the shivers over the president’s recent executive order concerning social media. The EO takes aim at section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which allows social media platforms some leeway to moderate content without being held legally responsible for that content.
Twitter is misusing that protection in order to censor conservative speech. There is no question about this. There is no gray area. They put a warning on a Trump tweet expressing concern about the possibility of fraud in mass mail-in votes. The warning referred readers to leftwing sites like CNN and The Washington Post whose views on this matter differ from the president’s. Do they fact check tweets from CNN to tell readers that the president disagrees? Of course not.
The other day, Trump tweeted some thunder at the thugs looting and burning Minneapolis. Twitter put a warning on the tweet, saying it “glorified violence” because it contained the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Left wing tweets — like one from leftist filmmaker Michael Moore encouraging rioters to “demolish” a local police station — which the rioters did — carried no warning.
The Twitter Head of Site Integrity is Yoel Roth, a man who has called the Trump administration Nazis and suggested that the “flyover” states that voted for him support fascism. When this was pointed out, Twitter head Jack Dorsey said, “Please leave our employees out of this,” because he was “ultimately responsible.” What the hell does that even mean? A Stalinist lowlife is undermining the president’s right to communicate with the people. Hit the road, Jack.
The Wall Street Journal frets: “Facebook, YouTube and Twitter aren’t utilities or soapboxes in the park. They’re businesses that earn piles of money by selling ads against your missives. They’re within their rights to set community standards and spike posts they deem a violation.”
Nonsense. Nonsense too are legalistic arguments that Twitter is not the federal government and therefore not subject to the First Amendment.
This is a classic case of conservatives vanishing up their own fundament on the issue of speech. Conservative media outlets tremble now if a social conservative expresses the opinion that homosexuality is a sin. They cancel conservatives who fear demographic change through unchecked immigration, accepting the leftist charge that this is bigotry per se. They avoid those — like myself — who feel that feminism is destructive to the lives of women.
This policy in conservative media outlets comes down to this: “We are yellow-bellied cowards afraid to fight the war of ideas lest it cost us money and reputation but, boy oh boy, are we going to sound angry about stuff so you’ll pay us gobs of money to scream and yell uselessly while the left takes over the country.”
Social media is the new way we talk to one another. If our free speech is being hampered on social media — and it is being hampered by leftists who want to silence conservatives — that has to be fixed. That there may be problems and obstacles to fixing that is part of the process. Solve the problems. Overcome the obstacles. However it’s done, do it. It’s not allowed. It’s not American. And if somehow we’ve mistakenly made it legal, change the bloody law.
The Left used to understand that corporations can become dangerous power centers that threaten freedom. But now, since corporations are largely in line with leftist ideas, they’ve abandoned that truth. It remains a truth nonetheless. If teams of conservative lawyers working round the clock can’t figure out that giant communications corporations censoring conservative speech spells the practical end of the First Amendment and therefore can’t be protected by the First Amendment, then my prescription is that we get some different lawyers.
A visceral hatred of Donald Trump in some quarters of conservativism has blinded conservatives to the fact that he is the one and only major conservative figure who understands the battle we’re in. It’s not against Democrats. It’s not against socialists. It’s against a communications industry — news, entertainment, and now social media — in which censoring the Right has become the norm.
Trump is absolutely right. Twitter is censoring conservatives. By any means necessary, it has to be stopped.
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