Trump’s Free-Speech Fandango
Puppets all the way down
So, Donald Trump dropped this fierce speech, promising to “reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans,” prompting an ecstatically joyful reaction from Elon Musk and from RFK, Jr., who says it makes Trump one of “the greatest U.S. presidents since Lincoln.”
Sorry, it’s a long and necessary quote:
If we don't have free speech, then we just don't have a free country. It's as simple as that. if this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and Liberties will topple just like dominoes. One by one they'll go down.
That's why, today, I'm announcing my plan to shatter the left-wing censorship regime and to reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans. And “reclaim” is a very important word in this case, because they've taken it away. In recent weeks, bombshell reports have confirmed that a sinister group of Deep-State bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left-wing activists, and depraved corporate news media have been conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people. They have collaborated to suppress vital Information on everything from elections to public health. The censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed, and it must happen immediately.
And here is my plan: First, within hours of my inauguration I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business, or person to censor, limit, categorize, or impede the lawful speech of American citizens. I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as mis- or dis-information, and I will begin the process of identifying and firing every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship—directly or indirectly, whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ, no matter who they are.
Second, I will order the Department of Justice to investigate all parties involved in the new unlined censorship regime, which is absolutely destructive and terrible, and to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified—these include possible violations of federal civil-rights law, campaign finance laws, federal election law, securities law, and antitrust laws, the Hatch Act and a host of other potential criminal, civil, regulatory, and constitutional offenses. To assist in these efforts, I am urging House Republicans to immediately send preservation letters—and we have to do this right now—to the Biden administration, the Biden campaign, and every Silicon Valley tech giant ordering them not to destroy evidence of censorship.
Third, upon my inauguration as president. I will ask Congress to send bill to my desk revising section 230 to get big online platforms out of censorship business from now on. Digital platform should only qualify for immunity protection under Section 230 if they meet high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination. We should require these platforms to increase their efforts to take down unlawful content such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism, while dramatically curtailing their power to arbitrarily restrict lawful speech.
Fourth. we need to break up the entire toxic censorship industry that has arisen under the false guise of tackling so-called mis- and disinformation. The federal government should immediately stop funding all nonprofits and academic programs that support this authoritarian project. If any U.S. university has discovered to have engaged in censorship activities or election interferences in the past, such as flagging social media content for removal or blacklisting, those universities should lose federal research dollars and federal student loan support for a period of five years, and maybe more. We should also enact new laws laying out clear criminal penalties for federal bureaucrats who partner with private entities to do an end run around the Constitution and deprive Americans of their first fourth and fifth amendment rights. In other words, deprive them of their vote. And once you lose those elections, and once you lose your borders, like we have, you no longer have a country. Furthermore, to confront problems of major platforms being infiltrated by legions of former deep-staters and intelligence officials, there should be a seven-year cooling-off period before any employee of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DNI, DHS, or DOD is allowed to take a job at a company possessing vast quantities of U.S. user data.
Fifth, the time has finally come for Congress to pass a digital Bill of Rights. This should include a right to digital due process. In other words, government officials should need a court order to take down online content, not send information requests such as the FBI was sending to Twitter. Furthermore, when users of big online platforms have their content or accounts removed, throttled, shadowbanned, or otherwise restricted—no matter what name they use—they should have the right to be informed that it's happening, the right to a specific explanation of the reason why. and the right to a timely appeal. In addition, all users over the age of 18 should have the right to opt out of content moderation and curation entirely and receive an unmanipulated stream of information if they so choose. The fight for free speech is a matter of victory or death for America, and for the survival of Western Civilization itself. When I am president, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control will be ripped out of the system at large. There won't be anything left.a By restoring free speech, we’ll begin to reclaim our democracy and save our nation. Thank you, and God bless America.
Though I’m dismayed by the idea that they are “left-wing” political actors, I agree that the Biden administration has engaged in an assault on free speech and the unique protection offered to free speech by the First Amendment. It’s arguably the worst such assault since the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917-8.[1] I agree that the Biden administration and the bulk of the Democratic Party and its allied media created a public-private “censorship cartel,” much as Trump describes, that “must be dismantled and destroyed,” much as Trump describes.
Except, just one little thing my Colombo-Spidey senses notice: “We should require these platforms to increase their efforts to take down unlawful content such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism,”
Excuse me while I fire up my eighteen-wheeler to drive through that loophole.
Please harken to what President-elect Trump, no free-speech “absolutist,” tells us in the midst of this militant anti-censorship rant: The Trump administration will require platforms—i.e., demand via legal and financial governmental coercion— to increase their suppression of any content “promoting terrorism.”
“Promoting” is a slippery word that was placed in Trump’s speech about free speech quite deliberately. The context of a discussion of social media platforms makes it clear: Trump is not here saying his administration will require suppression of material acts of terrorism but of speech acts promoting terrorism, which he’s defining, along with “child exploitation,” as “unlawful” and outside the realm of free speech.
Is there anybody on planet Earth who does not see exactly what is going to happen? “Promoting terrorism” will replace “misinformation” as the free-speech, First-Amendment exception, the rationale for more government-mandated censorship in the realm of political speech and expression, not less. At least in any of the many corners of the discursive universe where the word “terrorism” might be conjured up. And guess where, above all, that most definitely will be? You have one guess.
As the people who wrote that speech for Donald Trump, and as Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. know, that is already happening elsewhere in the world. In the UK, Richard Medhurst, Sarah Wilkinson, and Asa Winstanley have been arrested, detained, and raided for violations of the Anti-Terrorism Act for expressing support for groups labelled as “terrorist” by the British government. Similar repressive actions are taking place in Germany and France under that pretext. This is a new, spreading template for suppressing pro-Palestinian speech (though it can be used more widely) that Donald Trump is here announcing he will bring to the U.S.
“Terrorism” is no less imprecise a word than “misinformation,” and it’s no less epistemologically and politically dangerous for the government to claim the authority to determine its meaning, to which persons and groups it must be attached, and to punish or criminalize people for expressing support for such persons or groups. As in the British cases, that’s exactly what “promoting” will mean in the Trump free-speech regime—expressing support.
Do RFK, Jr. and Elon Musk, who so insistently and correctly point to the uniqueness of the First Amendment, which gives Americans free-speech protections that citizens of other Western “democracies” do not have, really want to honor and protect that “final redoubt” of free expression against the “promoting terrorism” game being run on it to protect Israel and the Zionist project?
It’s a rhetorical question. If either of them gave a damn about protecting free speech in the First Amendment sense, he would complain loudly against what’s happening in Britain and warn against the possible implications of Trump’s formulation in his speech, of which they are quite aware. But, as far as I know, neither of them have said a word criticizing those British arrests, though Elon has objected to British journalist Allison Pearson being questioned by police for allegedly “stirring up racial hatred” in a social media post. Meanwhile, he’s right now actively engaged in “throttling, shadowbanning, and otherwise restricting” his disfavored dissident—especially pro-Palestinian—content.
Police questioning a journalist for stirring up racial hatred in social media? “This needs to stop.” Police arresting journalists for expressing support for Palestine—i.e., “promoting terrorism”? Meh. The “free speech” position of Trump and Co.
Musk, Kennedy, and other Trump stans bemoan the worldwide assault on free-speech—Europe’s Digital Services Act, Canada’s Online Streaming Act—that the Biden administration’s “censorship cartel” was part of, but when it comes specifically to the repression of pro-Palestine, anti-Zionist speech…Well, per the UK’s Anti-Terrorism Act, or the U.S.’s Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, or any other bill Trump cooks up to please his Zionist donors, is that “lawful content”? It’s a complicated dance.
Let’s be crystal clear: Whatever Tim Walz or Kamala Harris or Donald Trump or Miriam Adelson say, the First Amendment does not allow the government to censor, or “collud[e] with any organization, business, or person to censor, limit, categorize, or impede” misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, nice speech, smart speech, stupid speech, satanic speech, or speech expressing support for any political group in the world, armed or unarmed, no matter how the government labels them. The USG may have the authority to prevent material support for persons or organizations it defines as “terrorist” but it is constitutionally forbidden from censoring or impeding speech that gives political support for, or promotes the cause of, any such person or organization.
The U.S. government defined the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela (until 2008!) as “terrorist.” One hero and Prime Minister of Israel from its current ruling party described himself as the ”Father of terrorism in all the world” and another proclaimed, in an article entitled “Terror”: “Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can be used to disallow terror as a means of war…We are very far from any moral hesitations …terror is for us a part of the political war appropriate for the circumstances of today.” American citizens could not be censored or impeded from expressing support for, or promoting the cause of, the so-called “terrorist” anti-apartheid resistance, including Nelson Mandela and all of its constituent personnel and organizations. Nor can they be censored from supporting and promoting the cause of the Zionist colonial enterprise, including all of its self-described “terrorist” constituent personnel and organizations.
Let me pre-emptively and defiantly state the position that I am certain Donald Trump is telling us he will use the power of the U.S. government to censor and impede, because it “promotes terrorism”:
I have no ability to materially support it, but I do emphatically politically support, and will promote the cause of, Palestinian resistance to the Israeli state and the Zionist project, including armed resistance, with all its constituent personnel and organizations like Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Palestine Islamic Jihad, and all its allies like Iran and Ansar Allah/Yemen, no matter how the United States government decides to characterize them. As is my constitutional right.
Why am I sure Trump is going to try to censor, if not criminalize, the paragraph I just wrote? Because he has said, in response to the fact that “We (i.e., American imperialists, but especially Zionists) are losing a lot of people because of the Internet,” that he wants to gather up “Bill Gates and a lot of different people” (i.e., all the people who are smart because they’re wealthy, like Elon Musk) to figure out how to “clos[e] that Internet up in some way,” and to hell with all the “foolish people” who will object, “Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.”
I’m sure because he’s said he will use the power of the federal government to eliminate radical leftists, Marxists, and jihadists—i.e. those who oppose capitalism, imperialism, and Zionism—from U.S. colleges.
I’m sure because Trump already started doing this in his previous administration, issuing an executive order that implicitly threatens campuses that allow anti-Zionist protest with loss of federal funding—an order that was criticized by the moderately critical Jewish group J-Street because it "appears designed less to combat anti-Semitism than to have a chilling effect on free speech and to crack down on campus critics of Israel.”
I’m sure because Trump this year vowed to his donors: “If you get me re-elected, we’re going to set that [pro-Palestine] movement back 25 or 30 years …any student that protests, I throw them out of the country.”
I’m sure because, as I write, he is filling up his cabinet with fanatical Zionists like Elise Stefanik, who already led the charge to eliminate criticism of Israel from college campuses, as well as Mike Huckabee and Pete Hegseth, who accept Israel’s unquestionable biblical right to colonize Palestine, and Mike Waltz, who criticized Biden’s unconditional support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza as insufficient. Trump’s cabinet will supply the same unconditional support of Israel’s ethnic cleansing that Biden did, but without the substantively meaningless, girly-boy rhetorical gestures about the concern for Palestinian lives and self-determination, which is “promoting terrorism.” And anti-semitism.
I am sure the Trump administration will try to pull off censoring and criminalizing pro-Palestine, anti-Zionist speech. It will” require” social media platforms “to increase their efforts to take down” such content, “flagging [it] for removal or blacklisting.” It will move to “immediately stop funding all nonprofits and academic programs” that allow teaching or demonstrating for pro-Palestinian positions, withdrawing “federal research dollars and federal student loan support for a period of five years, and maybe more.” It will, at least for the sake of crushing opposition to the sacred cause of Zionism, do every anti-free-speech thing Trump charged the Biden administration with, because, as Trump defines it, that won’t be a restriction on free speech but a restriction on misinform… oops, “promoting terrorism.”
It’s a complicated dance, but Trump has laid out the steps.
I am also sure free-speech “absolutist” (and “government efficiency” expert) Elon Musk will go along with it. (He’s already doing it on his platform!) So will RFK, Jr., who claims free speech is an “existential issue.” As I said, they can prove me wrong right now by specifically denouncing the UK’s use of “supporting terrorism” to shut up Richard Medhurst, Sarah Wilkinson, and Asa Winstanley, by acknowledging and rejecting the possible troubling implications—especially in light of his other statements and actions—of Trump’s “promoting terrorism” free-speech exception as given in his speech, and by assuring us explicitly that they will not censor, and will oppose any effort to censor, any speech supporting Palestinian resistance like the paragraph I wrote above.
They won’t do that. They will both go along with Trump substituting “promoting terrorism” for “misinformation” as an excuse to stifle free speech, because they both are Zionists, who believe it is virtuous and wonderful—and a necessary exception to “free speech” principles—to support the Jewish-supremacist colonial ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Good riddance to the assault on free speech, along with the sanctimonious hypocrisy, of Biden, Kamala, and company, who instituted proto-fascist censorship policies in the name of fighting “fascism” and “misinformation.” Welcome to the blatant Zionist fanaticism of Trump and his $100-million Adelson crew, who will rail on about free speech and—in the name of fighting “terrorism”—wage a vicious campaign to shut up, if not lock up, anyone who dares speak on behalf of Palestine and against the acknowledged terrorism of the Zionist colonial project.
Puppets all the way down.
Hearing Trump’s rousing speech, which, “alone,” establishes him as “one of the greatest U.S. presidents since Lincoln,” and watching his bold appointments, I feel confident in saying that the censorship cartel that undermines free speech will be eliminated as surely as will the neocon cabal that undermines peace. America will be as great as it ever was.
Have a refreshing drink of Kool-Aid.
[1] It’s worth remembering that those laws “were directed at socialists, pacifists, and other anti-war activists,” and landed the socialist Eugene Debs in prison—from which he ran for president in 1920 and received a million votes. There’s nothing new about political lawfare used to hobble a presidential candidate.
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