New York Times Calls Free Speech “Proto-Fascism”

…because we all know that Fascist and Communist countries encouraged “free speech”

Some of the change in positions noted… Musk, like Trump, cause a “coming out” as THE FIVE notes:

Dennis Prager (a little under the weather) shares his thoughts on the New York Times calling free speech “proto-fascism.”

A clip from the NEW YORK TIMES and FOX NEWS also covers it:

This is why his deal to purchase Twitter is so dangerous. In recent years, there has been progress toward positive freedom of speech — real work to give everyone, truly everyone, more meaningful occasion to speak. Mr. Musk apparently wants to shut that down. Instead, in a moment of proto-fascism on the political right, his priority seems to be to undam the flood of bile and bigotry and bullying and disinformation.

The country already faces the very real prospect, starting at noon on Jan. 20, 2025, of a descent toward racist authoritarianism and a protracted slide away from liberal democracy. If your idea of what the country needs in this moment is less clamping down on hate and lies and more rightists gone wild, whew….


MINISTRY OF TRUTH


The only “Fascistic” enterprise from Musk buying Twitter is our government wants to counter with a Ministry of Truth, via ACE OF SPADES:

Good morning, kids. Thursday and information, misinformation, disinformation, dat information and bullshit remains the hot topic of conversation. Elon Musk’s “Grabbe”-ing Twitter by the weeping Vajaya has caused both the wailing and rending of garments on the Left and exultation for us normal people. While I would caution us not to commence a venturi effect on our nether regions just yet, Musk has been saying the right things about economics and taxation for quite some time, earning him the ire of all the wrong people. The actions of the EPA in blocking the construction of a SpaceX launch facility in Boca Chica is textbook government retribution. And that’s just for starters. Whatever his motives may be, he has painted a big fat target on himself.

Our ability to communicate freely via the internet hangs in the balance even now. We barely escaped that Orwellian (what the hell isn’t these days?) “Net Neutrality” Act — for now. The internet absolutely broke the stranglehold on both the crafting and mass dissemination of information that Leftist propagandists had had for decades and, along with talk radio, both confirmed what many had feared to be the true nature of who and what has been running the government and society and, more importantly, revealed those truths to a vast audience that was heretofore unaware.

All of that said, Musk acquiring Twitter, in and of itself, is not going to win the war for free speech. But it may very well be the moral equivalent of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. It both absolutely shocked Imperial Japan, who had not been attacked in centuries and electrified American morale, which had taken a pounding since Pearl Harbor. Afterwards, the Japanese set about to finish off America once and for all, or so they had hoped. Same thing with the junta in power.

The Department of Homeland Security is setting up a Disinformation Governance Board in an attempt to combat “misinformation” online.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas spoke about the “just established” governance board during a congressional hearing on Wednesday, arguing it would help reduce domestic threats to the United States.

Nina Jankowicz, a fellow for the Wilson Center, confirmed reports that she would direct the board, sharing her official government portrait on her social media profile.

“Cat’s out of the bag: here’s what I’ve been up to the past two months,” she wrote.

She claimed the new board was created to “maintain the Department’s commitment to protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties”…

… Jankowicz has long been an advocate for social media censorship and regulation.

In October 2020, Jankowicz testified to the House Select Committee on Intelligence on the dangers of misinformation and conspiracy theories and how to stop it online.

“Disinformation is a threat to democracy,” she warned and criticized the government and social media platforms who have “all but abdicated their responsibility” to address ”domestic disinformation.”

Just fucking wow. I mean, where does one even begin to try and unpack this hideous farce? Aside from the fact that this hag was pimping the now proven lie that the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, there’s this thing called THE FIRST AMENDMENT that, like Charlie Gibson, she apparently has never heard of. The government does not get to decide what is and what is not misinformation. There are laws governing things such as slander and libel, as well as this thing called common sense which is supposed to, in theory, give the individual pause before shooting his mouth off as well as the right to discern for oneself what is and what is not truth. The consequences for either of those being on the individual.

Moving on from the philosophical, under what authority does this “politburo” have the right to exist in the first place? What regulatory power, completely illegitimate that it is, will it wield in supposedly maintaining the DHS’ “commitment to protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties?” Will it amass dossiers – pun absolutely intended – on people who object to the sexualization, disfiguring and brainwashing of their children? On those of us who consider the very government that is forming this commission illegitimate on the basis of the mountain of evidence proving the 2020 election was stollen?

And once it has amassed those dossiers, what is the punishment for spreading disinformation, otherwise known as stating one’s opinion? Considering the Junta and its supporters define what happened on January 6th as the greatest threat to our precious democracy (*vomit*) since the Civil War, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined, one assumes there will be 3:00AM raids followed by incarceration in the Garland Archipelago if not Gitmo, incommunicado and indefinitely.

I’m suddenly reminded about the arguments around the limitations or even abolition of the Second Amendment. The Left always insisted that the Founders never anticipated automatic weapons and machine guns back in the 18th century. The counter to that argument was, should we abolish the First Amendment since they never anticipated massive printing presses, television, radio and — wait for it — the internet either? Well, I guess the answer to that is a big old “yes!”

If the Second Amendment was always the final firewall between liberty and tyranny, the First Amendment I guess was the penultimate and, at least in theory, the strongest. Much of this also centers around the battle for who controls the speech. This whole notion of “safe spaces” from being offended has both crippled the last few generations as well as been used as a weapon with which to terrorize us into submission via group coercion, be it at work or even at home. The nature of being free runs antithetical to being safe. Those who argue for safety will hide behind the veneer of being benign and doing things “for our own good.” What was that thing that’s supposed to be paved with good intentions?

That said, I’m not buying that anymore. There are no good intentions with those who seek to silence us. They do these things not for our own good but for theirs. If agents or informants of this pathetic Ministry of Truth are reading this, come and get me and the publishers who wrote my book.

You can also round up Anthony Fauci. He claimed yesterday that the pandemic was over.

Whoops! Did he say the pandemic was over? No! What he really said was it’s NOT over.

Dear Lord how I hate these people. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out, especially if Musk purges the Goebbels acolytes from the Twitter ranks. The Left has already “woke” (heh) a sleeping giant with the assault on children. Let’s see how they react if they are silenced and/or threatened because they use Twitter as a means to communication…..

(More at ACE OF SPADES)