Speech suppression is a habit that the Biden administration and its liberal supporters can't seem to break. Many staffers may have picked up the habit in their student years: Colleges and universities have been routinely censoring "politically incorrect" speech for the last 30 years. As Thomas Sowell noted, "There are no institutions in America where free speech is more severely restricted than in our politically correct colleges and universities, dominated by liberals."
Now, the Biden administration seems to be giving the colleges and universities some serious competition. Like many Democrats during the Trump presidency, they have come to see suppression of "fake news" as the ordinary course of business and indeed a prime responsibility of social media platforms.
For decades, print and broadcast media have been dominated by liberals, but Facebook, Google and Twitter have developed a stranglehold over the delivery of news which exceeds anything that the three major broadcast networks and a few national newspapers every enjoyed. If they suppress a story or a line of argument, it largely disappears from public view. And to the extent that it lingers, it can be stigmatized by these multibillion-dollar companies as "misinformation" or "fake news."
Speech suppression was exactly what White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki had in mind last week when she called on Facebook to suppress 12 accounts that she said were spreading "misinformation" about COVID-19 vaccines. These accounts, she said July 15, were "producing 65% of vaccine misinformation on social media platforms."
"Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful, violative posts. Posts that would be within their policy for removal often remain up for days, and that's too long. The information spreads too quickly."
And she wasn't aiming her demand at just Facebook. "You shouldn't be banned from one platform and not others," she added a day later. The message was surely not lost on these companies, whose fabulously successful business models are vulnerable to government disruption.
Like most speech suppressors, Psaki protested her good intentions. As did her boss, President Joe Biden, who, when asked about Facebook on Friday, said simply, "They're killing people." The implication is that any advice contrary to the current recommendations of public health officials -- contrary to "the science" -- is bound to increase the death toll.
This is more in line with Cardinal Bellarmine's view of science than Galileo's. As Galileo knew, science is not acceptance of holy writ but learning from observation and experiment. Today, in dealing with a novel and deadly virus, current science is a body of hypotheses only partly tested and subject to revision based on emerging evidence.
There's a long list of things once believed to be "misinformation" about COVID that are now widely accepted. One prime example: the possibility that the coronavirus was accidentally released from the Wuhan lab. For more than a year, this was widely treated as a wacky right-wing conspiracy theory. Facebook slapped "warnings" on it and boasted that it reduced readership -- i.e., suppressed speech.
Then, in May, former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade, in an article that Facebook let slip through, argued a lab leak was likelier than animal-to-human transmission, and a group of 18 bioscientists called for a deeper investigation. The Biden administration, to its credit, soon reversed itself and opened its own investigation and, reportedly, multiple officials now believe the lab leak theory is likely correct. Some "misinformation!"
That example provides powerful support for Galileo's view that debate over scientific matters takes place best out in the open. But of course the urge to suppress speech is not limited to science. As conservative commentator Stephen L. Miller wrote, "Removing information on vaccines will translate right over to anything they think is misinformation on gun violence, or climate, or healthcare or what defines a man or woman. Which is why they are doing this."
If you think that's extravagant, consider that, as Townhall's Guy Benson argued, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been stretching its ambit to studying gun violence and climate change even while letting its core mission of advancing public health atrophy, as shown by its inability to produce a COVID test.
It's easy to imagine this administration pressuring Facebook and other social media to suppress information on other issues. For example, as the New York Post's Michael Goodwin noted, his paper's negative stories about Hunter Biden's shady business dealings, which were largely blocked from public view in the weeks before the 2020 election.
Speech suppression is evidently habit-forming. Which is why a constitutional amendment was passed back in the 1790s guaranteeing "freedom of speech, and of the press." Or is that obsolete in these modern times?
Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.
COPYRIGHT 2021 CREATORS.COM
19 comments:
I really miss the common sense no nonsense Thomas Sowell. Really reconsidering our bequests in our wills to colleges and universities.
Hey Kangfish, if you’re so for free speech, why don’t you stop censoring and moderating the comments section on your posts? lol right
boycott disney..
"Speech suppression is a habit that the Biden administration and its liberal supporters can't seem to break."
"It's easy to imagine this administration pressuring Facebook and other social media to suppress information on other issues."
Today's top-performing Facebook link posts by US pages are from:
Fox News.
Fox News.
Occupy Democrats.
Fox News.
Ben Shapiro.
Ben Shapiro.
Ben Shapiro.
An0maly.
Do the followers of these right wing nut jobs not stop and think about how they read these stories of "oppression" by Facebook ON FACEBOOK?
What do you expect from the Special Ed kids on the left, the group that says jogging is racist, crossword puzzles are racist, and birds have a racist past? Just go to their websites, watch their shows, watch their news, and see the stupidity of these “college educated” morons. Of course they want to suppress speech, the ministry of information wants to control the narrative and the programming.
@5:41
You are just as brainwashed and delusional as the “left” you so vehemently deride. You are ao clueless and believe that you are actually more informed by the opposition that is appealing to your confirmation biases.
Kingfish, do you take offense to this article? He’s calling you the Biden administration and a liberal. Are you gonna take that from this loser at the Washington examiner?
@10:41
I am bot at all surpised that Mark Zuckerberg permits controlled opposition pundits like Ben Shapiro while silencing opposition that doesn’t conform the false left/right paradigm of acceptable discourse. Ben and Mark both have a singular goal and work both sides of the false paradigm to ensure that your interests align with theirs. A major component of that shared interest is a divide and conquer stratagem that keeps the focus of the sheeple directed at shadow boogiemen and not the real enemy of every American.
This reads like a job interview for the onion.
The right has put this country in a no win situation. Their inability to distinguish when someone is blatantly lying to their face has left us with no good options. We obviously can’t force them to be competent, so we either let them kill us all in their pursuit of ignorance or start making some changes.
8:12
This according to the person who still believes that the Steele Dossier was real.
Q anon people do not have a monopoly on being gullible victims of sophisticated psychological operations.
This isn’t a left or right issue. It is an issue of our government and media are controlled people who are intentionally manipulating the right/left into hating each other more than the conspirators themselves.
The conspirators worst fear is for their names to become household names.
If only one could actually suppress the speech of Jordan and Greene just for a few minutes of calm and civility!
Crazy, rude, and loudmouth have never stopped being legal.
As always, those who are civilized get to ostracize and reject boors. They can still holler as long as they don't disturb the peace or harm others.
15% of the mentally ill, whatever the percentage is of the elderly with Alzheimer's and dementia, and a percentage of those whose IQs are below average, found a way to bond and feel good about themselves on social media.
“When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”
If you really want to blow your mind then dig out a copy of Radiohead’s 1997 album “OK Computer”
Re-read all of the song titles and note they have names like “Electioneering” and “Paranoid Android” and lyrics such as “Overthrow the Government. They don’t, They Don’t Work For Us” in the song “Karma Police” and I can’t tell is the bullshit of the last decade has just been repeating for centuries. Or, are Radiohead actually prophets?
I was born in 1999 btw so all of this is new to me.
Those that believe there is a left, right divide in the political world, will never be able to arrive at the truth. The only divide is between the haves and the have-nots. Money, lots of it, or the lack thereof is the parting line.
@10:12
I would expand that to “The Money Masters” vs “The Debt Slaves”
What we need is a thread on blog censorship, so Kingfish can really get his rocks off.
@10:12 Absolutely correct. They divide us on left versus right, black versus white, mask vs no mask, pro police vs anti police to distract us because they know if the average Americans unite, then all hell would break loose against the elites and DC swamp members and its propaganda arm (corporate media) who believe they know better how to run our lives than we do. The independence of the States used to be the ultimate hedge against that "tyranny" until they allowed themselves to be at the mercy of the federal teat financially.
Interesting thread posted by the number 1 speech suppressor in the Metro. With stupid shit excuses like: You typed in all caps. Your post was fine except you called somebody a bad word. I knew your opinion was not true so I culled it. Your post goes against my racial narrative (today). You referred to me as KF or Fish or Kingfart instead of The Kingfish.
Dayum man...relax. It's a forum. Let people talk. You'd be a great professor controlling a Milsaps classroom and kicking people out of the class for good.
This attempted post is not intended to result in it being up on the page.
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