Saturday, February 6, 2021

French president joins other world leaders warning the dangers of Big Tech censoring Trump - Thomas Lifson

 

​ by Thomas Lifson

If you think Joe Biden’s presidency is just the normal back-and-forth of power sharing by election, you are kidding yourself.

It’s come to this: Americans have to learn about how to practice free speech and about threats to democracy from foreign leaders. From France, for crying out loud!

Our Big Tech and major media are now so compromised by their allegiance to the slow-motion coup underway that it takes outsiders, leaders of democratic states like France, Australia, Mexico, Hungary, and Poland, to warn Americans that our democratic republic is slipping away.

This has never happened before.

If you think Joe Biden’s presidency is just the normal back-and-forth of power sharing by election, you are kidding yourself.

AP has the story of the President of the French Republic’s upset at the muzzling of Trump:

French President Emmanuel Macron says he was “very upset” by the way social networks muzzled Donald Trump at the tail end of his U.S. presidency.

Speaking in a recorded video chat with scholars, Macron cited Trump’s example in arguing for more government regulation of social media platforms. The comments, which Macron made in English, were released Thursday by the Atlantic Council think tank.

“At the very second when they were sure” that he would not hold onto power, platforms that had previously “helped President Trump to be so efficient” in making himself heard “suddenly cut the mic and put the mic on mute and killed ... all the platforms where it was possible for himself and his supporters to express themselves,” Macron said.

“It was a unique answer to deliver, but it’s not a democratic answer,” he said.

Emmanuel Macron (photo credit: Estonian presidency, crooped)

Alexander Hall of Newsbusters has the story of Macron’s shock, but adds to that an account of other democratic leaders that are warning us. It should be read in full, but here are some of the key points:

 In the weeks following Trump’s censorship on Twitter, Hungary joined Poland as one of the premier European powers taking on Big Tech. Hungarian Minister of Justice Varga Juditannounced in a January 26 Facebook post: “After consulting with the heads of the involved state institutions, the Ministry of Justice will propose a law to the Parliament this spring about the regulation of the great tech companies’ Hungarian [operation].” Varga warned would-be censors that Hungarians will not tolerate technological tyranny from Big Tech: “The deliberate, ideological or business-motivated digital damaging can no longer happen without consequences in Hungary!” 

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack accused Big Tech of “censorship” following the U.S. Capitol riot. “There’s been a lot of people who have said and done a lot of things on Twitter previously that haven’t received that sort of condemnation or indeed censorship. But I’m not one who believes in that sort of censorship,” McCormack said. 

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador declared earlier in January plans to make an international anti-censorship coalition were already underway. “I can tell you that at the first G20 meeting we have, I am going to make a proposal on this issue,” he declared. Obrador slammed Big Tech for behaving “as a sort of Spanish Inquisition on what is expressed.” Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard also commented: “Given that Mexico, through our president, has spoken out, we immediately made contact with others who think the same.” Mexico had reportedly “heard from officials in France, Germany, the European Union, Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia," reported AP News.

I am so old that I remember when the United States of America was regarded as the leading democracy of the world. Actually, it wasn’t that long ago.

 

Thomas Lifson  

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/french_president_joins_other_world_leaders_warning_the_dangers_of_big_tech_censoring_trump.html 

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