Republicans watched the Dems vigorously engage in censorship for the past 10 years. You'd think they learned a thing or two about the First Amendment, but no. Whatever party is in power tries to ignore the Constitution and the party out of power cosplays a Constitutional law prof.
Here's eight prominent Democrats advocating for censorship in recent years:
Oh, and then there is this (confirmed by Grok):
Before we have a debate about a topic--here, "free speech"--we should decide exactly what we mean by "free speech," which encompasses far more than the First Amendment. Excellent point by Geoffrey Miller:
Constitutional free speech is grounded in clear rights, laws, precedents, & principles, centered around retraining gov't from meddling in public discourse. We should strongly protect constitutional free speech, and be very wary of gov't censorship -- whether directly, or through gov't collusion with Big Tech, social media, or AI companies.However, cultural free speech is much more complicated, nuanced, and subject to renegotiation -- which is what we've been seeing over the last ten years, and especially in the last week.
Civilized people accept thousands of informal restraints on cultural free speech. For example, we use the power of informal social rewards and punishments to discourage
- kids from lying
- spouses from dissing each other
- journalists from acting like propagandists
- teachers from indoctrinating students
- companies from violating traditions and trust
- people from burning our flag
- sociopathic trolling on social media
- comedians from making false & incendiary claims
- politicians from demonizing their opponents to incite political violence among their supporters
All of these are restraints on 'cultural free speech', and they could be seen as micro-versions of 'cancel culture', but they're widely supported, and they're not directly related to gov't censorship or First Amendment law.
Yes, the First Amendment helps establish and reinforce the social norms around cultural free speech, and cultural free speech helps reinforce the willingness of citizens, politicians, & judges to protect our First Amendment rights.
But I see a lot of people, on both Left and Right, confusing the two forms of our civilization's commitment to free speech.
https://x.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1967227762592338048
Mike Benz discussed the Smith Mundt Act with Joe Rogan, as summarized by Wall Street Ape:
The Smith-Mundt Act is trending on X, don’t let this momentum die
We must Restore the Smith Mundt Act and call it The Charlie Kirk Act to end legalized mainstream media propaganda
Mike Benz talks with Joe Rogan about what Barack Obama really did by repealing the Smith–Mundt Act
It’s SO MUCH BIGGER than just allowing use of propaganda on Americans, it allowed for: - Infiltrate and co-opt the universities
- The unions
- The media
- The politicians
- The judges
It allowed
- Foreign policy establishment can fund groups that effectively work with prosecutors domestically or that work at media, dual sort of dual use
- To give them foreign grants to do media propaganda abroad but they operate here, or social media censorship to coerce foreign countries to pass foreign censorship laws that explicitly and are intended to attack US social media companies and in US peer-to-peer speech
“1948, Congress recognized the Frankensteinian monster they were creating by authorizing a covert permanent department of dirty Tricks. And this is their phrase, not mine, to do this cloak and dagger to infiltrate and co-opt the universities, the unions, the media, the politicians, the judges, the whole swarm army. You know what I have been calling for a long time, the USAID Truman Show”
“That are effectively a movie set being constructed by the US State Department and its sister influence orgs — The CIA”
“So the Smith–Mundt Act was always designed to say, listen, you can do this dirty stuff abroad, but it can't come home. We have that protection, which lasted for 70 years and only, we only lost it a decade ago.” By BARACK OBAMA
ALL THESE THINGS and more were to be allowed to be used OVERSEAS ONLY, the Smith–Mundt Act was created to ensure that
But then Barack Obama got installed, he repealed the Smith–Mundt Act and now ALL THESE TOOLS were used against the American people and we paid for it all
Every person in America needs to watch every second of this video. There would not be a single Democrat voter left. Obama was installed to start the takedown of America and use our own agencies against us
You could also argue THIS is why we have so many activist judges
People don't simply get banned from social media. There's always a back story and we rarely know the details. And since at least 2020, that back story has typically involved the elaborate machinery of the censorship-industrial complex, including corporate media, NGOs and the U.S Government.
Charlie Kirk has now been assassinated, but the story of his banning in 2020 is instructive. Matt Taibbi has investigated the 2020 banning of Charlie Kirk in "Twitter Files: The Muzzling of Charlie KirkAt a crucial juncture in the 2020 presidential election, the Washington Post used a tried-and-true method to pressure Twitter to remove Kirk." Here's an excerpt:
Kirk was banned once, then finally actioned again, and again, with groups like the DFRLabs and New Knowledge working with the Washington Post and other outlets to advertise the action.It's always the same story. People being censored/banned/shadow-banned and it takes a hell of a lot of work by uniquely stilled, motivated and rare people like Matt Taibbi to get to the bottom of it. Therefore, we rarely every know what really happened. How elaborate is this censorship machinery? In this post, Camus summarizes a video by Robert Malone explaining the Fifth Generation PysOp that we are up against:
Efforts to remove Kirk aren’t urgent background to his assassination, but the episodes do play a part in the overall story. Unquestionably, antagonists of Kirk and Donald Trump recognized that he was an important Internet voice, and the repeated actions sent a signal that he needed to be removed — either for spreading “disinformation” or for more dubious claims of “inauthentic” activity. That there were repeated efforts to go after the same person before the 2020 election also speaks volumes. No other figure in Trump’s orbit had the kind of reach with young people and the same Internet savvy.
Dr. Robert Malone unveils the unsettling architecture of modern control.In true 5th generation warfare, you never see your opponent. The question isn't "who," but "what." What is the puppet master behind the globally harmonized COVID crisis? Klaus Schwab? Biden? Fauci? These are but surrogates. The true managers of the message remain hidden.
Over the last three years, a silent coalition formed. Western governments, NGOs, transnational organizations, Big Pharma, media conglomerates, and financial corporations merged into public/private partnerships—a euphemism for the new fascism.
Their mission: To execute the most massive, globally coordinated psychological operation in the history of the Western world.
Their weapon: The very same military-grade PsyOps strategies, tactics, and technologies developed for modern combat theaters.
Their target: Their own citizens.
We have been subjected to a perpetual, calculated campaign designed not to inform, but to direct. To manipulate. To control.
The world we believed existed is gone. It's time to see the battlefield for what it is.
Greg Lukianoff began his TED talk with this: "2023 and 2024 were the two worst years for mob censorship and shout downs on record."
He then offered these Four Truths about free speech:
1. You are not safer for knowing LESS about what people really think.
2. Free Speech Cures Violence (Free Speech is the best alternative to violence).
3. Free Speech protects the powerless (free speech is the best check on power ever invented).
4. Even "bad" people can have good ideas (and good people aren't always right). ("Just because I hate your guts doesn't mean you are wrong.") ("The way we figure out truth ... doesn't work if you just talk to people your already agree with.").
Greg ended his talk with this gem:
"To understand the world it's crucial to know what people really think . . . For that, we need free speech."