Democrats Move to Silence Non-Liberal Speech

Posted on February 23, 2021 by John Hinderaker in Democrats, Free Speech

On paper, the Democrats have a tenuous hold on power in Washington. Their president is a cipher with severely diminished mental capacities, the Senate is a 50-50 tie, and they hold the narrowest House majority in decades. Nevertheless, the Democrats see what could be a once in a lifetime opportunity, and are pressing forward with their most radical agenda since they seceded in 1861.

Among other things, the Democrats are trying to repeal, in effect, the First Amendment, by barring conservative speech–or, rather, speech that is not consistently left-wing–from the public square.

We have seen this in the moves against conservatives and other independent voices by Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Go Fund Me and other tech titans. While these companies are no doubt motivated in part by ideology in putting their thumbs on the scale of public discourse, the truth is more sinister than that.

The major tech platforms are monopolies with obvious antitrust vulnerabilities, as we saw when the Trump administration brought an enforcement action against Facebook that seeks the divestiture of Instagram. The Democrats have not only urged tech platforms to silence conservatives, they are at least implicitly (God knows what is said in private) holding out the prospect of immunity from antitrust enforcement, which means many billions more in profits. This is the ultimate in 21st-century corruption.

But it gets worse: the Democrats are also trying to drive independent voices off the more traditional broadcast and cable platforms. Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center sent out an email today that included this:
The war against conservatives on social media has turned into a war against conservative broadcast media, as well. The House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology will hold a hearing tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. entitled “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media.” But will the Democrats in this hearing talk about the lies from CNN or MSNBC? Probably not, since the memorandum for the hearing specifically cited articles that bashed Fox News, Newsmax, and “conservative media.”
Two Democratic representatives have gone even further in their fight against the First Amendment. Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Jerry McNerney (D-CA) wrote letters to the heads of multiple TV providers. The letters demanded answers to questions such as “Have you ever taken any actions against a channel for using your platform to disseminate any disinformation?” and “Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN?” Unsurprisingly, the letters made no mention of any liberal news organization.
Please watch the hearing and comment on it.
Yes, please do! I have been following politics closely for more than five decades, and the Democratic Party’s war on freedom of speech is the most sinister thing I have witnessed in that time. What is truly chilling is how few Democrats are willing to stand up for freedom. I know of three: Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Taibai and Glenn Greenwald. Kudos to them, but it is shocking that not a single current Democrat office-holder is, as best we can tell, in favor of free speech. We are facing an existential threat to our traditional liberties.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archiv...ral-speech.php