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Kamala Harris’s Banana Republic on Free Speech

Posted on Friday, September 6, 2024
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by Outside Contributor
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In 2019, Vice President Kamala Harris told CNN’s Jake Tapper that social media companies “are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation and it has to stop.”

Does it?

Every two-bit authoritarian in history has justified censoring its citizens as a way of protecting them from the menace of disinformation.

But social media sites, contra the reliably illiberal Harris, aren’t “directly speaking” to anyone. Millions of individuals are interacting and speaking to millions of other individuals. Really, that’s what grinds the modern left’s gears: unsupervised conversations.

Take the Brazilian Supreme Court panel that unanimously upheld the decision by one of its justices to shut down Elon Musk’s X over alleged “misinformation” fears.

We must assume that the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, who once promised to ban guns via an executive order, agrees with Justice Alexandre de Moraes’s decision to shut down a social media platform for refusing to bend to the state’s demands of censorship.

The Associated Press reports that the Brazilian high court’s decision “undermines the effort by Musk and his supporters to cast Justice Alexandre de Moraes as an authoritarian renegade who is intent on censoring political speech in Brazil.”

Really? Because it seems to me that the state shuttering one of the popular social media sites unmistakably qualifies as a ban on political speech, whether one person is responsible or an entire government.

And make no mistake, it is politically motivated. “Just because the guy has a lot of money doesn’t mean he can disrespect this (country),” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva argued. Well, the South American nation’s constitution, like ours, apparently protects free expression – making no distinction between the poor and rich: “Any and all censorship of a political, ideological, and artistic nature is prohibited.” You can tell Brazil is super serious about the matter because the bullet point appears in Chapter V, Article 220, or page 148 in my translated copy.

Let’s concede, however, that de Moraes isn’t any kind of renegade, merely a conventional Brazilian autocrat. In the same way, Musk isn’t merely another billionaire but a tech CEO who generally views free expression as a neutral principle.

I suppose the best evidence for this claim is the fact that even as Brazil bans Musk’s site, he allows the far-left Lula to have an account on X with 9 million followers.

In Europe, free expression is also ostensibly protected by the constitution. Well, the right is contingent on “national security,” “territorial disorder,” “crime,” “health” and other highly malleable issues that ultimately allow police officers in the United Kingdom and Germany to show up at your door and throw you in prison for offensive posts.

As the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once pointed out, “Every Banana Republic has a Bill of Rights.” The question is: How close are we to being one?

Uncomfortably close is the answer.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently admitted that senior Biden administration officials “repeatedly pressured” Facebook to “censor” COVID-19 content, including “humor and satire,” during the pandemic. Zuckerberg vowed that he would never let his company be pushed around again. I’m sorry if we don’t take him at his word.

Tech companies enjoy unencumbered free association rights and are free to keep or kick off anyone they desire from their platform, as they should. Before Musk’s purchase of Twitter, now known as X, contemporary left-wingers celebrated the independence of social media platforms. “If you don’t like it, build your own Twitter,” they would say.

OK. But when corporations, who often spend tens of millions each year in Washington rent-seeking and lobbying for favorable regulations, take marching orders from state officials and giant federal bureaucracies on the contours of permissible speech, we have a big problem.

If presidential candidates truly cared about “democracy,” they’d be advocating anti-cronyism laws and forbidding government officials from interfering with or pressuring private entities on speech.

But, these days, many Americans no longer view free expression as a neutral, liberal virtue worth defending. Foremost among them, apparently, is the Democratic presidential ticket.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books – the most recent, “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.” His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on Twitter @davidharsanyi.

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PaulE
PaulE
1 month ago

Hey, all dedicated Socialists and Marxists believe the government should control what people are allowed or not allowed to say or write. The Democrat Party of the United States is completely overrun with Socialists and Marxists and has been for quite a few years now. Just look at Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren, Maxine Waters, AOC and just about any other Democrat politician these days. So, Harris’ perspective is perfectly in-line with the Party’s perspective.

There is no such thing as free speech in any of the existing Marxist run countries around the world today, and most socialist governments are busy trying to legislate free speech out of existence as fast as they can. See U.K., France, Germany, etc.. If anyone has studied the ideology of Marxism to any degree, read world history to any meaningful depth, or visited any one of the many existing socialist countries around the world for an extended period of time in the last 5 years, you would be well aware that the government’s desire is always to muzzle what the people are allowed to say and write.

JPop
JPop
1 month ago

Evil doesn’t like to be challanged with the truth (or alternate view).

Nannie
Nannie
1 month ago

It’s only going toget worse until we all stand up and say enough.

Phillip Nagle
Phillip Nagle
1 month ago

The worst misinformation from the social media sites has come at the governments behest. We now know that the FBI was one of the driving forces behind the Trump/Russia collusion hoax. The Hunter’s Laptop Was Russian Disinformation Hoax was initiated by 61 former intelligence officials and the FBI, which had already internally confirmed that it was Hunter’s laptop, remained silent. Don’t forget that it was bureaucrat in the various federal medical bureaucracies, who fearing they would lose funding over their funding of the infamous Wuhan Lab, out and out lied about the source of COVID 19. There are dangers of misinformation from social media but not nearly the danger of misinformation from our own government.

Staber
Staber
1 month ago

Clay Travis had a good take on Kamala Harris’ policy schizophrenia. Every time she floats a flip or a flop that is counter to what the more vocal and farthest to the left Democrats believe, there is silence. No outrage from AOC, Sanders, Warren, and all the usual idiotlogical blowhards. Why? They know it is all a smoke screen to get Harris elected. Backpedaling and obfuscation would begin January 21, 2025 under cover fire from the sycophants in the left wing media.
Remember the mantra of the left and the farther left you go the more unbarred the holds are maximum lies, hyperbole, hypocrisy, back pedaling using slick definitions of concepts and words. It’s been going on long before Biden was installed.
“The ends always, always, always justify the means, always.”

Gallagher
Gallagher
29 days ago

Was that Free speech when Nancy scored 40 Mill off the stock Market?

Grace
Grace
1 month ago

100% FREE SPEECH, NOW & FOREVER!!!

Dr. Sam Adams
Dr. Sam Adams
29 days ago

Free speech to the controllers ( socialists, fascists, and Marxists) means you can only agree with their definition of such.I have been blocked by Yahoo regarding their propaganda news items, my comments are not to their liking.

Gerald
Gerald
29 days ago

Two full generations of government run schools have taught them ‘what’ to think, instead of ‘how’ to think. Citizens that know ‘how’ to think can figure-out what is ‘misinformation’, what to believe, or not. Reduce the size of government, starting with eliminating the department of education. Keep on eliminating ‘departments’ until freedom once again over-shadows the size of government.

lawrence greenberg
lawrence greenberg
1 month ago

There is only one reason to censor anyone: you are lying and they are not, and allowing them to speak freely will expose you as the liar you are. It is worth noting that a study of history will show that the use of censorship by governments has been done almost exclusively by the political Left.

David Millikan
David Millikan
28 days ago

Communist harris policy on Free Speech is that there is none except for her Communist democrat Party. Censorship is their policy of Free Speech.

Barbara Durand
Barbara Durand
1 month ago

I always find it humorous that you are worried about censorship while a large portion of your following is removing books from libraries. Talk abut stifling free speech!

The aftermath of a disaster while the flag hangs.
Governor Tim Walz giving a speech at a Podium in September 2024
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