OPINION:
If Elon Musk had purchased Twitter in 2020, Donald Trump would be president of the United States.
Think this is an overreaction? Just look at the Leftist meltdown after the news broke Mr. Musk acquired the company.
Hateful MSNBC host Joy Reid accused Mr. Musk of wanting a return to apartheid. “He misses the old South Africa in the ‘80s. He wants that back,” she pretended.
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CNN+ anchor and business professor Scott Galloway said Mr. Musk doesn’t understand free speech and wondered, “Does he want to kill a puppy on Twitter spaces live?”
And Leftist MSNBC host Ari Melber ushered in the return of Rip Van Winkle, warning Mr. Musk could use the site to censor political opponents. It was as if Mr. Melber had slept while this had been done for years to conservatives — by Twitter.
What set them all off was one word.
Freedom.
Mr. Musk declared what they fear: His purpose is to reinstate free speech on that platform. No more, no less. “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy,” he stated, and Twitter is “the digital town square.” He is calling for real transparency. And better still, he’s calling on Twitter to release its algorithms. When that happens, the world will see how much Twitter has been censoring speech.
Guaranteed: When that information is released, Americans will be shocked, and furious.
“I think we want it to really have the perception and reality that speech is as free as reasonably possible,” Musk said during a recent TED talk, “and a good sign as to whether there is free speech is is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like. And if that is the case, then we have free speech.”
Twitter et al are militantly opposed to speech that challenges their agenda. If a democracy cannot function as a result, so be it. If they have to lie, denying the shadow banning that was proven to exist, or lie to Congress denying a political agenda — so be it. It’s the price of totalitarianism. Their censorship serves a higher ideal.
Read the words of Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s CEO, who said in a 2018 interview: “Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment.”
Mr. Agrawal was serious, too. The Big Tech jihad against conservatives is at a fever pitch across all platforms, but more so on Twitter than anywhere else. The Media Research Center’s CensorTrack database now contains 3,713 examples of documented censorship against conservatives. Of that number, 1,986, or 53% came from Twitter alone. Just one site bans statements and organizations and even presidents of the United States if they dare challenge Big Brother.
Big Tech isn’t just trying to ban the conservative worldview, it wants to silence any information detrimental to its cause. Twitter censored or even banned conservative politicians, embraced the radical LBGTQ agenda, blocked discussion of the Wuhan lab leak and censored pro-life messages repeatedly. Even conservative satire sites, like the Babylon Bee, have been shut down because their humor is scoring points against the left.
During the past two years, Twitter and Facebook have canceled Biden critics 646 times. How can democracy survive under these conditions? The answer is that it cannot.
The primary story Twitter blocked from the American people was the Hunter Biden laptop story, known to be true by conservatives and conceded to be true by even the New York Times — safely 17 months after the election. The alleged illegal activities contained in those files could result in felony charges against his father.
The curtain of information was pulled over America’s eyes so firmly in 2020 that 45.1% of Biden voters in seven key swing states said they were unaware of the financial scandal enveloping Mr. Biden and his son. When told about it, a whopping 9.4% said they would not have voted for Mr. Biden. That would have given Mr. Trump every single swing state and a 311 electoral vote landslide.
Now Twitter has been purchased by the man who says it will now be “where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”
This may mean Twitter won’t clandestinely interfere with the 2022 and 2024 elections, and beyond.
Democracy and freedom are back.
It’s about time.
• L. Brent Bozell is the founder and president of the Media Research Center
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