UPDATE: The Left’s War on Free Speech Continues

Even amid positive developments like a resurgence of free speech on X (formerly Twitter) and lawsuits against the Biden administration for colluding with Big Tech to intimidate, silence, and censor their political opponents, the left is continuing to double down on its efforts to weaponize government power to curb Americans’ First Amendment rights.

Greater public awareness about government attempts to silence free speech, thanks in large part to the Twitter Files and revelations from Republicans on the House Weaponization of Government Subcommittee, has meant that the left now has to rely on more subtle ways to implement their censorship operations. One of their favorite tactics is to use appeals to “public safety” concerns and warnings about “hate speech” as cover for mass surveillance and censorship.

Last week in New York, for instance, Governor Kathy Hochul unveiled a new “counterterrorism” effort to respond to a reported rise in anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic incidents in the Empire State – a legitimate concern that on the surface seems like it warrants a governmental response. The governor’s office specifically touted funding for investigations of suspected hate crimes and to deploy more state troopers to protect synagogues and other houses of worship.

But as part of the new program, Hochul also quietly allocated $700,000 to the Social Media Analysis Unit within the New York State Intelligence Fusion Center – a division of the New York State Police that works in coordination with federal intelligence agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.

The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) a government watchdog group dedicated to exposing unlawful censorship and free speech violations, called Hochul’s move a “gimmick” that further paves the way for “blanket social media surveillance.”

“As a Jewish man who has represented dozens of Muslim survivors of hate crimes, I know all too well how alarming the recent surge in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic threats have been, but these surveillance stunts are not the solution,” said STOP Executive Director Albert Fox Cahn. “For years we’ve been told that ever more invasive social media scraping will somehow magically keep us safe, predicting crimes before they happen. It’s failed.”

Shortly before the funding announcement, Hochul openly admitted that state law enforcement agencies were “ramping up” social media surveillance efforts. “We’re very focused on the data we’re collecting from surveillance efforts, what’s being said on social media platforms,” the governor said. “We have launched an effort to be able to counter some of the negativity and reach out to people when we see hate speech being spoken about on online platforms.”

For free speech advocates, that’s a chilling statement – that a state government is now “reaching out” to (read: directly threatening) citizens for things they post online.

As the case of conservative activist Douglass Mackey shows, the left has already taken things one step further and is prosecuting Americans for posting disfavored speech online. Earlier this week, Mackey was sentenced to seven months in federal prison for posting a joke about candidate Hillary Clinton online in 2016 – even though at least one liberal activist made the exact same joke about Trump and faced no consequences.

There has been no clearer example of the left’s ceaseless push to silence anyone they disagree with than the effort to silence former President Donald Trump. Following Trump’s challenges to the 2020 election, every major social media platform banned Trump’s accounts.

Now, amid a deluge of spurious lawsuits designed to keep Trump off the ballot in 2024 – and possibly send him to prison – Democrat prosecutors and partisan judges have placed a “gag order” on the former president to prevent him from defending himself publicly.

All of these developments are also occurring against the backdrop of an ongoing court case, Missouri v. Biden, where a federal judge has already found that the Biden administration “likely violated the First Amendment” by colluding with social media giants to shut down certain narratives disfavored by the Biden administration like the COVID-19 lab leak theory. Court documents show that Biden administration officials provided a veritable hit list of everyday Americans to Big Tech companies.

There are also some alarming signs that Democrats’ disregard and even open disdain for free speech is trickling down to their voters. According to public polling released by Pew Research earlier this year, 70 percent of self-identified Democrats support the government restricting what appears on social media in order to combat so-called “disinformation” – a subjective term that modern leftists use to refer to anything that doesn’t fit their narrative. Just 39 percent of self-identified Republicans surveyed by Pew said the same.

In September, another survey from RealClear Opinion Research found that a full 47 percent of Democrats – nearly a majority – believe that Americans should have a right to free speech “only under certain circumstances.” Meanwhile, 74 percent of Republicans said free speech rights should exist “under any circumstances.”

These survey results raise the troubling question of whether it is Democrat elites who are turning their supporters against free speech or the masses of Democrat voters who are signaling to their leaders that they no longer value the First Amendment.

If the latter situation is indeed the case, the country may have a much deeper crisis to deal with than just a few authoritarian-minded politicians and bureaucrats.

Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on Twitter @ShaneHarris513.