by Robert Spencer
And she wants you to shut up and do what she says.
[Order a copy of Robert Spencer’s forthcoming book, Muhammad: A Critical Biography, by clicking here.]
It has been clear for quite some time that the Biden-Harris regime is no friend of the freedom of speech and dislikes the idea of dissent. It has tried on more than one occasion to curtail Americans’ Constitutional freedoms, all under the guise of protecting us. Making us blind slaves of the authoritarian state will save “our democracy,” you see. And now Kamala Harris, in complaining about free speech on X (formerly Twitter), has made it clear: her administration would be frankly and unapologetically authoritarian. It would, in short, be the end of America as a free society, and Kamala and her minions would say “Good riddance.”
As the far-left Brazilian government shut down X in order to silence dissidents in that country, Harris signaled that she was considering doing the same thing here if she wins in November. In a video that circulated on X Friday, we see Harris telling Jake Tapper: “He has, he has lost his privileges and it should be taken down.” It’s unclear whom she has in mind for this punishment, but the more she talks, the more it seems likely that she was referring to Elon Musk, and to taking down X.
Harris continued: “And the bottom line is that you can’t say that you have one rule for Facebook and you have a different rule for Twitter. The same rule has to apply, which is that there has to be, a, uh, er, uh, a responsibility that is placed on these social media sites to understand their power. They are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of, of, of oversight or regulation. And that has to stop.”
Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter/X, it has broken out of the lockstep in which the other social media giants march. They all went along willingly, and even eagerly, with the Biden regime’s determination to silence COVID dissidents, although Mark Zuckerberg has now broken ranks and claimed that he would have stood for the freedom of speech, but ultimately buckled under heavy pressure from the regime. Zuckerberg’s new stance strains credulity, especially in light of the fact that after Musk made Twitter/X into a bastion of the freedom of speech, Zuckerberg went so far as to set up a shadow Twitter called Threads, where users were warned openly that they might be silenced if their speech displeased the political elites.
Now Harris is calling for all the social media giants to march in lockstep again, just as they did in the good old days before Musk muddied the waters by disrupting their unanimity and at least slowing the progression toward total authoritarian control of speech. Harris wants the social media giants to submit to “oversight” and “regulation,” which means they will say what the leftist intelligentsia wants them to say, and only that. Other voices will be deplatformed, marginalized, and silence, just as they were everywhere before Musk and still are on most platforms.
This is just the latest indication of this regime’s authoritarian bent. In addition to its work for censorship on social media, the Biden-Harris regime is the first presidential administration to see its principal opponent indicted, and on charges that many see as flimsy and politically motivated. The Biden-Harris regime also tried and failed to establish a Disinformation Governance Board that would have effectively stamped out opposition to regime policies by labeling such opposition “disinformation” and silencing it accordingly.
Harris would no doubt insist, if she were suddenly overcome by a bout of coherence, that all she wants to do is helping the public by distinguishing truth from “disinformation.” The glaring problem with this claim is that what the regime and its henchmen call “disinformation” has more than once turned out to consist of truths that were inconvenient for the regime’s agenda and policies. One of the most notorious examples of this came in 2020, when Twitter, in an all-out effort to ensure that Biden would win the presidency, labeled the Hunter Biden laptop story “disinformation” and censored it accordingly. Fifty-one top intelligence professionals, all also avid to elect Biden, agreed that the laptop was “disinformation,” and Russian disinfo to boot, and that was that. Except the laptop was real.
We could soon be seeing many more instances of truths that harm the leftist elites being censored. The New York Post reported as far back as last February that the Biden-Harris regime was “spending millions on artificial intelligence research designed to make anti ‘misinformation’ tools which could then be passed to social media giants.” “Misinformation,” that is, in the eyes of the far-left wonks who are working on this project, and their overseers within the regime.
As always, such initiatives stem from a frank contempt for the American people, as does Harris’ taste for oversight and regulation of the only social media platform that allows for views that dissent from those of the dominant left. Harris and her fellow leftist elitists hold the American people in utter contempt, believing that we’re simply too stupid to be trusted to know right from wrong and choose our leaders properly. So Harris stands ready to silence dissent and make all our decisions for us, in accord with the will of her own handlers. That’s how totalitarian regimes work.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 28 books, including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad, The History of Jihad, and The Critical Qur’an. His latest book is Muhammad: A Critical Biography. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/kamala-harris-hates-you/
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