At a recent Donald Trump political rally, Elon Musk took the stage and, in a few masterful words, explained why the 2024 presidential election is so critically important.
“This is no ordinary election,” Musk told the audience. “The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech. They want to take away your right to bear arms. They want to take away your right to vote.”
The audience agreed, erupting in loud cheers and applause.
“Free speech is the bedrock of democracy,” Musk continued. “If people don’t know the truth, if you don’t know what’s going on, how can you make an informed vote? You must have free speech to have a democracy. That’s why the First Amendment exists! The Second Amendment is there to ensure that we have the First Amendment!”
“The other side” (Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz) often complains about “misinformation” and “disinformation” and the need to “control” both.
Never mind that controlling misinformation and disinformation is simply Democrat Party code for eliminating the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Recent comments by prominent Democrats supporting censorship should be a warning that the socialists and Marxists who have taken control of the Democrat Party want to amend, if not obliterate, the First Amendment.
Recently, at a World Economic Forum (WEF) panel on climate, former US Secretary of State and Biden-Harris administration climate envoy John Kerry complained that the First Amendment prevents the US government from shutting down what it deems to be “disinformation” on social media.
“That makes it more difficult to hammer disinformation out of existence… particularly in democracies,” Kerry said.
As with all arguments against the First Amendment and free speech, Kerry neglected to say who decides what “disinformation” is. In totalitarian nations, “disinformation” and “misinformation” are whatever the government says they are. Offenders are often “disappeared” or executed. Listening to hysterical Democrats who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, I’m convinced that many members of that party would not oppose a similar fate for Donald Trump.
Some readers might recall the Biden administration’s attempt in 2022 to censor information it didn’t like when it created an Orwellian Ministry of Truth called the “Disinformation Governance Board” within the Department of Homeland Security. The initiative met with so much condemnation that it was mercifully scrapped a few weeks later.
Recently, a disturbing video of vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz has been circulating. In it, he asserts that there is “no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.”
Sorry, Tim. The First Amendment protects ALL speech, not just speech that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or you agree with. As the American Civil Liberties Union has said, “One person’s hate speech is another person’s free speech.”
When we allow an imperious government in Washington to ignore, weaken, or destroy free speech, we surrender our freedom to tyrants. Without a First or Second Amendment, we are subjects, not citizens.
Last month, banal Hillary Clinton vaulted onto the anti-First Amendment bandwagon. During an appearance on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, Clinton said “disinformation” and “propaganda” should be criminalized.
She wasn’t kidding. If someone is stupid enough to criticize the government, the president, or Congress, just “lock ‘em up.”
“There are Americans who are engaged in this kind of disinformation and propaganda,” Clinton said, “and they should be civilly, or even in some cases criminally, charged.”
And the anti-free speech beat goes on.
Two years ago, the Biden-Harris administration’s Climate Advisor, Gina McCarthy, demanded that social media prevent scientists who dispute the sacrosanct dogma of climate change from publishing their expertise and views on the climate.
“Tech companies must stop allowing specific individuals to spread disinformation repeatedly,” McCarthy barked. “Misinformation and disinformation around climate change threaten public health itself.”
McCarthy didn’t elaborate on how daring to oppose the sacred religious doctrine of climate change jeopardizes our health.
A few weeks ago, Democrat fanatic Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez joined the censorship chorus.
“We have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation,” AOC droned. “It’s one thing to have differing opinions, but it’s another entirely to just say false things. And so that is something we are looking into.”
What are Democrat politicians like AOC “looking into?” How the First Amendment can be obliterated or sidestepped? Once again, AOC didn’t explain who determines whether a comment is true or false. Or perhaps she wants to resurrect the DHS “Ministry of Truth” department so it can do it.
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently admitted in a letter to Congress that he had agreed to kill the Hunter Biden laptop story on his social media platforms after the FBI falsely “warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election.” As it turned out, 51 former US intelligence officials deliberately lied in a 2020 letter that the laptop story was Russian disinformation.
So, who is disseminating disinformation? Not the New York Post, whose investigative reporters reported the laptop story truthfully and accurately. In this case, it was the Biden administration and its lackeys in the Department of Justice and the FBI that fed disinformation to the country.
And that, folks, should scare the hell out of every American.
If there is one sure sign that a nation is headed toward totalitarian one-party rule, it’s when the ruling regime does whatever it deems necessary to silence its opposition and remain in power—including imprisoning political opponents or making them targets of assassination.
Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so, too.
In a 2023 testimony, journalist and author Michael Shellenberger told a House subcommittee that a “Censorship Industrial Complex,” including many organizations reportedly funded by the Biden-Harris administration, contributes to growing and maintaining the censorship of US citizens. Among examples, he cited the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory and those who called the COVID-19 lab leak in China a “debunked conspiracy theory.”
Nothing has energized the Censorship Industrial Complex more than the cult of climate change. The climate change doctrine has become a religion that shall not be questioned. Dissenting voices need to be censored, and those who fail to follow the faith are subjected to a modern inquisition in which they are threatened and vilified.
Melissa Fleming, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, announced in October 2022 at a World Economic Forum meeting that the UN “owns the science” on climate change and that it had, therefore, partnered with Big Tech, including Google, to launch censorship and disinformation campaigns.
“We partnered with Google,” Fleming said. “For example, if you Google ‘climate change,’ you will get all kinds of U.N. resources at the top of your search.”
According to Fleming, the partnership came about after U.N. officials were “shocked to see that when we Googled ‘climate change,’ we were getting incredibly distorted information right at the top.”
The term “distorted information” is code for any scientific data or argument that doesn’t support the putative perception of climate change disciples.
“We’re becoming much more proactive,” Fleming bragged. “We own the science, and we think the world should know it.”
She might have added that the kind of far-reaching censorship she and other globalist sycophants are advocating is the most dangerous threat to democratic nations since World War II. Totalitarian impulses, including censorship, lawfare, and assassination, are alive and well everywhere.
But who would have thought that the prime mover of today’s totalitarianism is the beating heart of democracy itself, the USA?
–30–
If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to ForeignCorrespondent and tell your friends to subscribe. IT’S FREE! WHAT A DEAL! If you’ve received this from a friend and would like to be added to our distribution list for future blog posts, please enter your email address in the sign-up in the notifications box at:
https://ronaldyatesbooks.com/category/foreign-correspondent.
You can also find my commentaries on Substack at https://ronyates.substack.com/ and the American Free News Network at https://afnn.us.
Please feel free to comment. WE LOVE COMMENTS!
