Americans’ freedom of speech is under extreme threat if Harris is elected president
By isabelle // 2024-09-16
Copy
 
American citizens are being actively censored on social media thanks to Biden-Harris administration initiatives, and this is something that former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants all Americans to keep in mind when they head to the polls this fall. In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, he warned about the role that current leadership played in keeping Americans from discussing important and potentially life-changing topics that the government doesn’t want them to talk about. Just how important is it for them to keep Americans silent? He pointed out that within just 37 hours of taking office, the Biden-Harris administration opened up a portal giving the FBI access to social media posts made by Americans across numerous platforms. They then invited the CIA, IRS, DHS and CISA to take part in shaping the narrative. He identified CISA as “the center of the censorship industrial complex that is in charge of making sure Americans don’t hear things that their government doesn’t want them to hear.” The CDC and other agencies were able to change posts, issue shadow bans, and remove accounts. It’s something that also happened to Kennedy, who says his account with nearly a million followers on Instagram was removed. “They say it was for misinformation, but they could not point to a single post that I ever made that was factually erroneous,” he told Carlson. He added that even Facebook admitted in an email chain to the White House that what he said was not actually untrue, prompting the White House to create a new category that could be used to censor people known as “malinformation” to describe “information that is factually true but nevertheless inconvenient for the government.” They also told Facebook their Section 230 immunity was at risk if they didn’t comply. This immunity is given to social media sites to protect them from lawsuits related to statements people publish on their site. Facebook wouldn’t be able to exist without this protection, so it’s not surprising that they were willing to go along with everything the White House pressured them into doing. This is something that goes against the spirit of the Constitution, as George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley explained: “If government officials are directing or facilitating such censorship, it raises serious First Amendment questions. It is axiomatic that the government cannot do indirectly what it is prohibited from doing directly.”

Big Tech censorship at the government’s behest is threatening freedom of speech

In damning testimony before the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government last year, journalist Michael Shellenberger described in great detail how American taxpayers are footing the bill for “a censorship-industrial complex run by America’s scientific and technological elite, which endangers our liberties and democracy.” He explained how government agencies, NGOs, academic institutions and other parties are engaging in active censorship on topics ranging from climate change and fossil fuels to COVID-19 origins and vaccines. Shellenberger also pointed out that the American government has funded organizations that coerce advertisers to boycott social media platforms and news outlets that aren’t willing to play along with their censorship demands or share information that goes against the government’s preferred narratives. They’re doing this, he says, by creating blacklists and demanding that platforms censor or ban these individuals. He also corroborated Kennedy’s claim that government officials have pressured social media companies to censor “disfavored users and content.” Although hot topics like immigration and the economy are rightfully taking center stage in the run-up to the election, it’s important to keep in mind that our First Amendment rights are very much at stake and that the censorship we are seeing is only likely to get worse if Democrats maintain their control over the White House. Sources for this article include: TuckerCarlson.com X.com Docs.House.gov
Copy