Democrats Abandon Free Speech

Glen Greenwald

Democrats and liberals as a cultural attribute and as their political dogma no longer believe in free speech. That is not hyperbole. Democrats in Congress have spent the last two years abusing their majoritarian power in Washington by explicitly threatening big tech CEOs that, unless they censor more political content, which Democrats dislike or find offensive, then these companies will suffer legal and retaliatory and regulatory punishment from the U.S. government. I've spent much of the last two years reporting on the various ways they have done so. 

But these comments I'm about to show you from Democratic Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts uttered during one of the many hearings, where big tech CEOs were summoned and explicitly ordered to censor more, perfectly reveals the mindset of the Democratic Party. Listen with your own ears to their own words. They're telling you what they want:

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA): Problem. The issue is not that the companies before us today are taking too many posts down. The issue is that they're leaving too many dangerous posts up.

Now, so accustomed are Democratic politicians to ordering around social media companies that way with censorship orders that they now just publicly issued their threats as if it's normal for the U.S. Government and Democratic Party lawmakers to dictate to private actors how to censor. Because in left-liberal political culture that is now normal.

On Thursday, Congressman Adam Schiff, who gets a lot of justified credit for being the most dishonest member of Congress, but not nearly enough credit for also being its most authoritarian, invoked the framework of identity politics to justify his power to interfere in Musk's decision making about what must be censored on Twitter. The California Democrat issued this decree, quote: "On Elon Musk Twitter slurs against black people have tripled. Slurs against women are up 33%. Slurs against Jewish people up 61%. And slurs against gay men are up 58%. These numbers are abysmal and unacceptable".

"Today, congressman Mark Takano", his fellow California House Democrat, "and I are demanding action". Oh, they're demanding action. Who cares? To begin with these statistics, though, now, gospel among level journalists, are completely fabricated. Where do they come from? Who measured that and how? I have no doubt they came from this newly baptized priesthood called "online safety experts", which basically consists of a few parasocial friends, which left-liberal journalists made on Twitter. But much more importantly, who is Adam Schiff to issue dictates to private social media companies regarding how they must censor more aggressively? In what conceivable way is it appropriate for members of Congress who wield significant power over tech companies to be demanding which people and viewpoints must be silenced? 

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the First Amendment is violated not only when government officials like Schiff enact laws explicitly censoring content they dislike, but also when they use their power to threaten or coerce private actors such as Twitter to censor for them, exactly as Democrats have been doing.

In 1963, the Supreme Court ruled that Rhode Island legislators had violated the Constitution's free speech clause when they began pressuring bookstores -- not legally requiring, just pressuring bookstores -- to remove books those lawmakers had deemed inappropriate. The Court in Bantam Books v. Sullivan rejected their excuse, the same one Democrats like Adam Schiff offer now, namely, our programs, quote, "do not regulate or suppress the content, but simply exhort booksellers to comply as though it's voluntary".

But the Supreme Court recognized the obvious reality here when powerful politicians with the ability to regulate or harm your business suggest  repeatedly that you censor, of course, that will be understood as an order to do so and thus violates the Constitution. As the Court explained:

People do not lightly disregard public officials’ thinly veiled threats to institute criminal proceedings against them if they do not come around... The operation of these legislators was, in fact, a scheme of state censorship effectuated by extra-legal sanctions. They acted as an agency not to advise, but to suppress.

The relentless threats over the last two years of congressional Democrats and even sometimes from White House officials to big tech platforms to either censor more or else face punishment threats they are now issuing to Elon Musk, due to his refusal to obey their censorship orders, far exceeds -- exceeds -- what the 1963 Court found to constitute unconstitutional coercion to censor. 

And the 1963 case, the punishment was implicit but today's Democratic officials, they are very explicit about their intentions. When I first reported on the Democrats' escalating pressure campaign to force big tech to censor, Ben Wizner, the director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, told me: "For the same reasons that the Constitution prohibits the government from dictating what information we can see and read, and also prohibits the government from using its immense authority to coerce private actors into censoring on its behalf. 

Now, at some point, a judicial ruling will be required on whether the Democrats' years-long threat to censor more similarly violates the First Amendment, but what we now know for sure, from documents obtained by The Intercept in late October and from Matt Taibbi's reporting last week, is that it is not just the Democratic Party, but far worse the U.S. Security State that is heavily involved in determining which information is censored over the Internet and which information American citizens are and are not allowed to hear.

Indeed, as Taibbi's reporting revealed, Twitter's chief censor, Yoel Roth, reveled in the fact that he met weekly -- weekly -- not only with the FBI but also with agents of Homeland Security. A more alarming and I will say fascistic scheme is hard to imagine. Democrats have largely succeeded in constructing an extra-legal framework where they have harnessed the power to commandeer big tech's control of our discourse, all while injecting the menacing presence of the U.S. Security State and its trained disinformation agents to further control the information flow to which the American public has access.